by Wonder Worman | Jul 24, 2010 | Less in the Landfill, Red Wiggler World
Play Outdoors is a cute kids store in Bend! They were having an outdoor party for kids a few weeks ago. Carlos saw an ad in our local paper and suggested I collect their damaged watermelons after “Watermelon Bowling”! After calling the store and getting the O.K. to pick up the watermelons, I thought…”Cool! My Red Wigglers are gonna be sooo stoked! They love watermelons!
Ana is ready to strike!
Gavin and Max are cheering her on!
Gavin, my nephew, is visiting over the summer. He could NOT wait to get his hands on a watermelon.
I love his expression!
This is actually Gavin’s carnage! He asked if there were any rules and got the response he wanted!
“No Rules!!!! Except to have FUN!!!!
He was the first kid to smash a watermelon!
Gavin set the stage for complete wreckage!
After a week of feasting, all of these are gone!!!!!
Way, way cool! Yo! (just got back from NYC)
by Wonder Worman | Jun 4, 2010 | Less in the Landfill, Red Wiggler World
I have been tweeting and facebooking about my newest worm adventure. Lavabelles has joined the “Wormability” movement!
Lavabelles is a really neat business. They have renovated 8 homes built in the 1940’s, I believe. I need to get the exact information from Cara, the head honcho. Each home is fully furnished with modern and turn of the century pieces. They can be rented for a night or as long as a month!
I was very excited when Cara wanted to expand her recycling efforts to include vermicomposting! Since this was my first gig with providing a worm service, I wanted to take my time researching to make sure this would be successful. With my camera in hand, I took photos of the property to find the best place for the worm bin and outside food scrap container. By the way, Carlos, my really talented, creative, designer husband, came along! He has an eye for this type of thing! Anyway, we found the spots, and then I was off to the stores to find the best containers. After a few hours, I found one for the kitchen and one for the outside.
This is what I found! This super cool stuff is on the kitchen counter in the “Flo” house. The container is for the preconsumed kitchen waste. Carlos created the “How to do the Red Wiggler” info poster which explains what the worms love and and hate to eat. There is also a condensed version on the counter, too.
Kudos to Carlos! Once again, he bangs things out and they look SWEEEEEET! Check out the stickers on the container.
After filling up the indoor container with food for the worms, it will be brought outside.
This is the outdoor food collection bin. I will be there every Monday to empty and sort the food for the worms. The renter does not have to worry about feeding the worms.
The last step of the composting process and my favorite, The Worm Bin. Not sure if you can see the combo lock there to the left of my logo. I assembled that nifty piece all by myself! It took me a few days and trips back to the house to ask Carlos how to work the drill, change the battery pack, and attach and detach all of the bits. Eventually, I was able to drill that sucker on!
I will be here once a week checking on my babies and making sure this operation runs smoothly! I am so excited to be doing what I love!!! There truly is nothing like it!
More to come.
Happy Worming.
The sun is finally making an appearance! I missed you!
by Wonder Worman | May 31, 2010 | Red Wiggler World, Sidetracks
I went to Camas, Washington over Memorial Day weekend with my family to check out Doug’s business Northwest Redworms. Doug is a really neat guy loaded with red wiggler information. His place is about 10 acres, and he has lots of chickens, too many to count, a cow named Mud, and some cats that wander around the place.
My visit’s goal was to ask questions and to learn from his success. When we arrived, he was loading up a guy’s pickup truck with worm castings. The castings were rich in color and actually looked like a batch that I recently harvested. Seeing the similarity, really got me excited. By the way, this guy drove from California just to get Doug’s castings!!!
We then began the tour of his business. He had bins all over the place. Some were made from concrete molds and were about 5 feet long with holes on the bottom. Others were made from wood rescued from the landfill. He had bins under trees and bins under frost sheets. The coolest compost piles were the free standing ones filled with animal droppings. Figures I’d like that! He was testing Alpaca Poop, too. After getting the gloves, we got busy digging into the pile. It was loaded with red wigglers, and there was steam coming off the top. I was amazed! The worms were there. After all of the research with hot composting, I thought the worms would not survive. The pile also had veggie waste and yard debris mixed in with all of the poop! I have a client who wants to start composting her Alpaca poop and will definitely be able to steer her in the right direction. I am excited to share my new found knowledge with the worm loving community of Bend!
I need to stop here cause
1) I feel like I am a terrible writer
2) and I have a feeling no one is even reading this blog!
kinda negative on my part! but have to say what’s in my brain!!!
more later….. I think LOL
by Wonder Worman | Apr 26, 2010 | Less in the Landfill, Red Wiggler World
Composting with Red Wigglers requires bedding material. There needs to be a mixture of green and brown waste. The green waste would be considered the veggie and fruits scraps and the brown waste would be the shredded newspaper/peat moss combination. In the past, I have been using a 50/50 combination for the bedding. This season I’ve changed the ratio to 75% newspaper and 25% peat moss. I want to mix it up a bit.
Making sure I do not have a lot of colored paper or the slick advertisements, I start the shredding process. Some vermicomposters like to use a paper shredder. I prefer to use my hands. Shredding the paper is very relaxing. I find myself day dreaming and traveling off to some tropical island. Any way! I wanted to share my new bedding material with you. I will keep you updated on the process and report if I made any changes.
Happy wormin’
by Wonder Worman | Apr 21, 2010 | Less in the Landfill, Red Wiggler World
Actually I delivered two bins today minus the Super Composting Red Wigglers. The weather this week has been rather silly! On Sunday, it was near 70, and today it was close to 40! Yucky for sure. The weather was not ideal, and I did not feel comfortable setting my red wigglers into their new homes. The worms will be delivered in about 2 weeks. By then, I hope the weather has improved and the nightime lows are above freezing.
My clients were very excited to get the bins even without the worms, knowing they can still compost. Food waste will be tossed into the bin and will begin to break down. So when the worms do arrive, the bedding will have food scraps for them to eat.
I am excited for this season of vermicomposting. I am scheduled to be at the Earth Day Fair this Saturday 4/24 in downtown Bend at the Environmental Center. There will be many local Earth loving people there!! Come down and say “Hi”.
More later! happy wormin’
Play Outdoors is a cute kids store in Bend! They were having an outdoor party for kids a few weeks ago. Carlos saw an ad in our local paper and suggested I collect their damaged watermelons after “Watermelon Bowling”! After calling the store and getting the O.K. to pick up the watermelons, I thought…”Cool! My Red Wigglers are gonna be sooo stoked! They love watermelons!
Ana is ready to strike!
This is actually Gavin’s carnage! He asked if there were any rules and got the response he wanted!
