Category: adventure

Compost Woes: Fine-tuning My Compost Pile: The Search for Black Gold

 

Not a pretty picture

 

We’ve had our composter now for a year-and-half or two years I think. It is definitely its second winter. Unlike last winter though things aren’t going as well. Instead of things breaking down and turning into a nice mulch I can spread into the garden. They’re turning into a stinky sewage. I’d like to blame this on the cold and rain but I don’t think they are completely at fault.

Our household has recently (the past six months) started composting everything possible. This means a lot of “green” is going into the composter. According to what I’ve been able to find out about composting all this “green” needs to be balanced out with “brown,” if you want the ideal environment for composting to occur. I’ve been neglecting the brown and throwing in a lot of “green” recently and things have gone sour.

That is okay though because I’m getting a little help from the United States Government:

 

The 1040EZ also known as "brown"

 

The Post Office had stacks and stacks of these packets sitting there waiting for John Q. Citizen to pick them up if they needed some tax assistance. I grabbed 20 or so figuring that’d help. I cut off the glue binding to the packets and shredded them:

 

A stack of about half of the paper I shredded

 

After the paper was shredded into the bin it went:

 

In two weeks this better look like compost...

 

Composting hasn’t turned out to be the simple formula I thought it was: scraps in, soil out. It takes a lot more tweaking and guesswork. I’m still getting the hang of it. If adding paper doesn’t do the trick I might have to get some straw or move the composter so that it gets more sun.

I never thought I’d be experimenting with the “art” of composting.

P.S. Love that title up there don’t ya?

 

Wherein I attempt to brew an ale Part. 2

This is just how I did it too

Last Friday was when I was supposed to bottle my apple crisp ale. I couldn’t though because the bottle caps had not yet arrived (either had the bottle capper.) Spoiling my plan to have this post appear here yesterday morning and why you are reading a post here on Tuesday. I received the capper on Saturday and the caps showed up on Monday.  Seeing as I was already behind schedule I decided that last night had to be the night. With the help of D I sanitized all the instruments, brought the beer out from its dark hiding space and tried to move it into a pot.

This is MY beer you go make your own!

Why did it need to go into a pot? Well the pot had some honey in it which I believe is necessary to either sweeten the beer after the yeast has eaten everything or give the yeast a little more to eat, maybe both. I have no idea really this is my first time doing this and I spent more time just trying to get the procedure right without worrying too much about the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ of it all. The hardest part by far was managing the suction in the hose and getting the beer to flow into the pot and afterwards into the bottles. I also had a small problem with some of my bottles, when it came time to cap them. They were screwtops. It only took me breaking one bottle and for D to point this out to me before I figured it out though! So, not a lot of beer was lost nor any additional bottles broken.

All total the one gallon kit made nine beers. One which I couldn’t drink because it had broken glass in it. Two which might become contaminated because I couldn’t cap them all the way. All in all not the most efficient use of my time or money. Beer is cheaper just about anywhere. These cost my, not including labor, more than $4 dollars a bottle. But, the experience of brewing my own beer is priceless, right? RIGHT? Right. Next time maybe I’ll share some with you.

Everything I need to get bottling...
Everything after it's been sanitized.
The mysterious art of siphoning... I'm not very good at it.
What's left after all the beer is gone, yum?
These might not make it two weeks. They're only 'half-capped.'
A bottle full of beer that I can no longer drink. *sadface is sad*

Vermiculture, or still playing with worms

J constructs a vermilculture box thereby making him responsible for 300 odd squirmy, slimy lives…

When D and I ordered the composter a year or so ago we had some trouble with the shipper not sending the the thing out for a month or so…  After numerous emails and a few calls to Amazon’s customer support people the composter finally arrived and with it, to make up for its delay, a worm composter or vermiculture box as well.

The Vermiculture box has been sitting in the garage in its shipping box since then.  Until today.  D had a pond to make and since she would be going to Ace and working out in the yard I figured now was a good time to finally get the thing put together and going.  Worm poo is fantastic apparently and I desperately wanted in on that action!

RANDOM FACT:  Worms can eat as much as their body weight in a 24 hour period!

So while D was picking up wife a wine barrel, some fish and a papyrus plant I got some worm take-out.  Once home I opened up the box and took at look at the box…  Everything looks the same here… and I only have half the instructions…

So what we have there is a water, or worm tea, collection tray, the bottom feeder tray, three additional feeder trays, a lid, two weed filters, and coconut coir.  Oh and a spigot for draining out the worm tea.  Once I found a complete set of instructions on the manufacturer’s website it wasn’t too difficult to assembly during which I soaked the coconut coir in some water.

RANDOM FACT: Worm poo is more commonly known as worm castings and worms can eat it too!  The more they eat it they better it is for whatever plants you decide to put it on.  Also, GROSS!

Now to add the damp coconut coir, mixed with some potting soil and food.  I put in some tomatoes, apple cores, leafy greens, and some figs.  Mix it all together and then add the worms!  I forgot to take a picture of everything mixed together with worms in it so you’ll have to use your imagination.

After I filled up the first feeding tray and added the worms I put on the second feeding tray and partially filled it with soil.  This vermiculture system works by slowly having the worms eat their way up through the boxes and then pulling out the lower ones and emptying them before placing them back on the top of the stack.  I’ve got to take care not to drown, cook, freeze, starve, or acid burn the poor beasties though so I’m sure micromanaging this all will be fun…

RANDOM FACT:  Worms will eat human hair?!

Finally, with all 3 feeder in I put in the last weed filter, which keeps the worms from getting out and other things from getting in and put the lid on it and placed it by the side of the house.  Where it should stay warm without getting too much direct sunlight.  I suppose during the winter if it gets too cold I can bring it into the garage.  The bins aren’t supposed to produce any odors.

Food. Delicious Food.

Between my self  and Mrs. Di over 400 pictures were taken of our New York City vacation.  The vast majority of those are of museum exhibits.  Really awesome museum exhibits but the reality is that they’re not the best taken pictures, and to anyone besides us they’re just not that interesting.  That doesn’t bother me, they perfect for what they are a chronicle of our vacation.  I’m not going to plaster pictures of every little thing at the Metropolitan Museum that I thought was great here, because chances are you’re not interested as interested in Roman Egypt as I am (but you should be!)  What you will find is something that everyone is interested in:  food

Despite all the food I ate in NYC I didn’t take as many pictures of it as I should have.  You’re not going to see the delicious spicy tofu soup I had in K Town, nor the incredible spread that accompanied it.  I don’t have any pictures of the delicious doughnuts we ate at Doughnut Plant; creme brulee, apple cinnamon, vanilla bean, etc.  Also missing is all the wonderful food bought and eaten of the streets.

“So what do you have to show us already?”

The thing that I was most envious of during my trip was the sheer variety of ethnic cuisines to be found in the city!  I’m sure that you could eat at a different restaurant featuring a different food style every day of the week for the entire year.  I feel lucky living where I do, in a college town with a racially diverse population that enjoys ethnic cuisine that’s close to two major metropolitan areas but it doesn’t hold a candle to New York City…

PS – I forgot to mention the bars… There are a lot of them.  They stay open ’til four in the morning.  I only went to this one:  McSorley’s.  They have good ale.

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