Vermicomposting

According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (http://www.epa.gov/foodrecovery/), landfills are composed of 21% food waste, 15% paper and paperboard, 9% yard trimmings, and 8% wood. So over 50% of the "trash" going to the landfill is compostable!!

You may be thinking, yea but if I'm sending compostable materials to the landfill, they will decompose into the black gold (A.K.A) fertilizer that everybody is raving about. Wrong.

"When food is disposed in a landfill it rots and becomes a significant source of methane - a potent greenhouse gas with 21 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide. Landfills are a major source of human-related methane in the United States, accounting for more than 20 percent of all methane emissions" ((http://www.epa.gov/foodrecovery/).
 

Further, composting requires a bit of ingenuity, for example, when composting it is crucial to get the correct ratio of 70% “brows” to 30% “greens”. Brown materials consist of mostly Carbon such as: cardboard, paper, sawdust, wood chips, twigs, and drier lint…in other words “anything that doesn’t smell bad when it gets wet.” On the contrary, green materials are Nitrogenous, things like fruit and vegetable scraps…the things that fruit flies buzz about. 

Please check out the following link to see examples of brows and greens (http://eartheasy.com/grow_compost.html).

If you have a good ratio Carbon to Nitrogen, the microorganisms that go to work breaking down the food waste will be able to thrive.

If you live in an apartment, like me, with very limited yard space, you should consider vermicomposting. It’s composting that is accelerated by the use of worms, specifically, Red Wigglers. Normally food scraps take 6 months to a year to turn into compost. These worms eat up to half their body weight every day, so divide the weight of worms you have by two, and this is the amount of food scraps you can add to your bin everyday. In about two months you will have “black gold” A.K.A. worm poop. I found a lot of information on: http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/vermicomposting-and-vermiculture-worms-bins-and-how-to-get-started.html

http://www.missmodish.com/modish/2008/09/the-low-down-on.html

So it’s simple, you feed your worms, they eat and they poop. Worms are also hermaphroditic, so each worm has both sex organs, however, two worms are needed to make babies. Every once in a while your worms will wriggle into a mating worm ball.

So Slack made me an awesome worm bin, drill holes in the bottom for aeration and gave it a hinged lid. I got my worms in the sports section of WalMart…yea, they were going to be used as bait.You have to get the correct moisture level too wet and the worms crawl out. So far I have had 4 casualties. But I have also had many babies born. 

Things to remember

* Don't add animal product/waste to bin=bad smell and worms can't digest fats

* Get the correct ration of 70% browns to 30% greens

* Monitor the moisture- Soak browns and wring them out before adding them to the bin (too wet, worms drown, too dry and they shrivel)

* Once you have fertilizer, use it to pot a plant or give it as a gift.

 

Reduce, REUSE, Recycle

This is a post concerning women issues...therefore, gents, consider yourselves forewarned.

Think about the waste each female produces on a yearly basis. Let's say you get your period when you're12 and experience menopause by the time you're 50...that is  38 fertile years, 456 cycles, (let's say on average a period lasts five days and the pads are changed three times a day) and 6840 pads that you are indirectly sending to the landfill each year! 

Multiply this by the number of fertile women in the world and that is a lot of pads! To give you an idea according to the 2010 census, there were 157 million women in the United States alone (http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/cb12-ff05.html).

So if you have ever thought about ways of reducing your environmental impact or live by the “reduce, reuse, recycle” mantra you may find the topic of reusable homemade pads interesting.

Seamstress, Autumn Starnes at stuffyourfluff.etsy.com creates "handmade cloth diapers and other reusable baby and mamma products".

So I ordered some of her homemade pads and I had them sent to my work. So far I have not had to answer any, "so what's in the package?" questions, for which I am grateful because I already feel like a leper in office clothes.

Pineapple-weed

Common Name: Pineapple-weed
Scientific Name: Matricaria matricarioides
Description: A low-growing weed with light green feathery leaves and conical yellow flowers that when crushed emit a pineapple scent.
Flowers: June-October
Habitat: roadsides and disturbed areas
Use: The fresh or dried flowers are steeped in hot water to create a pineapple flavored tea.

I found pineapple-weed nestled in one of the medians of my work parking lot. My picture looks like this...











It's supposed to look like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matricaria_discoidea

I think I'm going to invest in a better camera...

If You Can't beat It, Eat It

                      

                      
If You Can't beat It, Eat it

Japanese Knotweed 
An invasive plant 
A pesky weed
A native species’ ultimate foe
It’s not enough to uproot this shoot
By tugging it to and fro

You’ll need
Herbicide
Pesticide
Rubber gloves and loppers
To waste away the underground rhizomes
That mysteriously beat the choppers

Cover your arms
Cover your legs
And cover your animals too
Cause while it’s fighting a battle underground
It’ll be poisoning you
Wash your clothes
Don’t touch your kids
And throw away your gloves
To protect yourself from these potent chemicals
That ultimately destroys the shrubs

You may pollute the waters
You may infect the ground
But at least your lawn will look beautiful
To everyone around

Or you could just eat it.

Scraping

The scraping continues. I’m about 1/3 of the way done. It is arduous, yet rewarding work. The hide is very thin and I accidentally scraped too hard and ended up poking a hole.  I am using a pizza wheel, that is bolted to keep its round blade in place. Traditionally a sharp stone would have been used, but my flint-napping skills are lacking.You can see the difference in color from the section I have worked to that which still needs to be manicured. The exposed material is soft and slightly oily to the touch.  It’s baffling that this traditional art came to be, given the highly sophisticated process.

 

Hide Tanning: Sunburned Skin

My hide has been racked and waiting for me to make a move for the past three months while I moved out of one house and into another and got settled. I went down to the garage last night and got the pizza wheel scraper that Slack fashioned for me. The flesh side was not surrendering to the blade so I flipped the rack over and started working on the hair side. Much to my surprise the skin was peeling off fairly easily like sunburned skin. I felt like blurting out, "that's a keepa" as I peeled away a 6" section which revealed soft, white, suede like material.

So to date the hide has been “fleshed”, “wet-scraped”, “de-haired” and “racked”. Once I finish “dry-scraping” the hair side, I will “egg-tan”, “stretch” and “smoke” the hide, but these steps will be discussed in detail as I perform them.

Squirrel Nests and Red Tailed Hawks

https://www.google.com

It all began with my love for squirrels. They are abundant, acrobatic, bandits. Where do they sleep? As it turns out they build nests in trees. They weave together sticks to frame their spherical homes and they insulate them with leaves. I've read that they have a front door and a back door for emergency escapes. During the winter they prefer hollows of trees, yet, when these are not available they stick to their limb nests. If you take a gander in the woods on a fall day, pause a while and you should hear what sounds like shuffling in the brush....all around you. This is the sound of squirrels readying their winter bungalows.

Once I discovered this awesome fact I started looking for squirrel nests during my morning commute. They are easy to spot during winter, just look for large clumps of leaves on the bare limbs of deciduous trees (those that lose their leaves at the end of their growing season).

It was during a typical morning commute when I noticed a very large bird perched on the limb of a quaking aspen. Was this an owl perhaps? Did anyone else see this? The more I looked the more of them I saw each morning. The birds were always on different limbs, trees, and facing in different directions. This was AWESOME; a juxtaposition of metal and wildlife.

I was slightly disappointed to learn (after watching a documentary on owls) that owls typically hide out during the day because they are preyed upon by hawks. As it turns out I have been seeing Red Tailed Hawks, A.K.A the kings of the day. Many migrate during the frigid months but some stay even during the severest of conditions.

So there is a lot to see whether you are trucking along at 75, stuck in traffic or on your way to a family reunion which you are not too excited about, you just have to be aware.

http://www.greglasley.net/images/RA/Red-tailed-Hawk-0019.jpg