The Bokashi Experiment

Our new composter and bokashi bran

Let me start by explaining that we don’t have trash service where we live. We take our trash to the recycling and trash drop station every few weeks. Food scraps don’t go in the trash cans at our house. Otherwise, the they would be so stinky by the time we got to the transfer station that nobody would want to take it. Further compounding our food scrap problem, we don’t have a garbage disposal because we’re on a septic system.  

All of our vegetable matter goes to the compost pile where it eventually turns into a nice, dark compost. That leaves all the rest of the food scraps; meat, fish, non-veggie matter, etc, that we have to do something with. We can’t put them in the compost pile because they will draw unwelcome visitors, bugs and will smell bad, we don’t have any animals that would eat them (besides Buddy the Farm Dog, but he has a temperamental  stomach), we have no garbage disposal and we can’t leave it in the trash.

So… what is a family to do? Previously, we saved all the scraps in a plastic bag and froze them until the next trash run. While we have a large freezer with lots of space, this really isn’t a good option either. Food rotting in the landfill produces methane gas and methane is an even worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Enter the Bokashi Experiment…

Bokashi is a Japanese method of fermenting waste using a specific combination an anaerobic microorganisms. Anything can be Bokashi’d; meat, fish, dairy. Supposedly, the microbes complete the fermentation process in as little as two to three weeks. The finished product smells a little sweet and sour and can be buried in the yard, garden or compost pile. It can even be fed to worms (that may be a later experiment).

How does it work? All we really need to bokashi is a bucket with an air-tight lid on it, although I purchased a bokashi bucket with a spigot and a food masher. Food is placed in the bucket and sprinkled with a bokashi growing medium. My bucket came with a bag of bokashi bran. To properly inoculate the food scraps, start with a thin layer of bran on the bottom of the bucket then place about a 1" layer of scraps in small pieces (the smaller the better - this increases surface area), topped with a dusting of bokashi bran. Continue this layering until the bucket is full.

The inside of the bucket with the food masher

Bokashi bran in the bag. It smells a little like
sweet feed with a touch of sour.

The first addition to the bucket.

I started the bokashi experiment on 23 Jan with the remains of the New Year's Eve Party sausage and cheese dip and some leftover dumplings from Tuesday night's dinner. The bin is supposed to stay warm so the fermenting microbes can do their work. Melanie begrudgingly gave me permission to store the bin in the laundry room, which is adjacent to kitchen. That approval is only valid as long as there are no bugs or smells. I'll keep you updated on the progress as we go along. 

Free Straw!

I got a call this week from a guy cleaning out a barn. He asked me if I wanted the old straw he found in the loft. I made a trip (actually a couple of trips) to pick it up today.

What does one do with 84 bales of free wheat straw? Hmmm..... Let me count the ways:

1. Straw bale gardening in the spring.

2. Sheet composting for the garden.

3. Adding organic matter to the lawn and pastures.

4. Erosion control.

5. Sell it.

Items 1-4 are very possible. I don't know if there will be any left for #5.

More on what we do with it later...

The Case for Cast Iron Cookware

After my grandparents passed away, I inherited a heavy, black, crusty and well seasoned cast iron skillet from the estate. At the time, I didn't think about it much and it eventually got shuffled to the back of the cabinet where it was never seen.

One day I was cooking and needed an extra frying pan. All of our other frying pans were in use. I reached into the cabinet and pulled out the cast iron skillet. As I was using the skillet, I remembered my grandmother using this very pan. I then realized that it had been around for a very long time. It was solid. Sat flat on the burner and cooked evenly.  I wondered how many non-stick aluminum pans we have ended up discarding over the years because they rocked on the stove and/or were no longer non-stick. Yet this pan remained, still in excellent shape. I began looking at that pan in a different light after that day.

Since that time, the old cast iron skillet has become my favorite frying pan and I have added two other cast iron pieces to the collection, as well. I use the cast iron almost exclusively now. There are five good reasons for my abandoning the non-stick skillets.

1-  Non-stick pans eventually lose their non-stickiness. Where does all that Teflon go? My guess is that we’re eating our fair share of it. Teflon is not in one of the four major food groups and I would prefer not ingesting it.

2- The longer you use a non-stick pan, the worse it gets. The opposite is true with cast iron. The longer you use it, the better it gets – as long as it’s well cared for. Even when it's not well cared for, it is possible to rehab it and make it useful again.

3- Thin, aluminum, non-stick pans warp over time. Eventually, they no longer sit flat on the burner. I hate a pan that rocks on the burner. Cast iron remains flat.

4- Aluminum pans just don’t seem to heat evenly. The part touching the burner is always way hotter than the parts that hang off the side of the burner. This problem is compounded further if the pan is warped. The cast iron skillets conduct heat better throughout the entirety of the pan.

5-  Unlike Teflon coated pans, cast iron cookware can be scraped with metal. This means you don’t have to be picky about which cooking implements you use in the pan. (note: There are some warnings on the Internet that using a metal spatula can lead to damage of the seasoning of the pan. In my experience, a metal spatula, used reasonably, will not damage the seasoning of the pan.)

OK. Cast iron cookware is not without it's drawbacks. It's heavy, it's not perfectly stick-proof making it hard to clean at times, and it can rust if not cared for properly. These drawbacks seem small compared to the drawbacks of a non-stick pan. When presented with an option, I will reach for the cast iron every time. 

Home Grown Luffa

Everybody has seen a luffa at least once in their lives. Luffas are those rough, sponge-looking things that people put in the shower and never use. I'll have to admit, I was a little ignorant about what they were. I never gave them much thought and always just assumed they were some sort of natural sponge from the ocean. As it turns out, I was wrong.

I'm not sure how I came across the website, but last spring I found luffa.info and learned about growing luffas. On that website, they sell 50 luffa seeds for $6 so I decided to buy a pack.

I had great success starting the seeds in our sunroom. Unfortunately, we hardly ever go into the sunroom so I killed most of them with my neglect (it was a busy time). I did manage to salvage four plants. I put two next to our deck and two in the garden. Both grew very well and produced some nice luffas for us. As they grow, luffas look a little cucumbers when they're small, and grow into something about the size of a large zucchini.

We allowed the luffas to stay on the vines until well after the vines were dead this fall. This gave the skin of the gourd time to dry and made peeling them a little easier. Still, peeling the skin off was not easy.

Once they were peeled, we knocked the seeds loose and collected those for use this spring. Finally, we rinsed the luffa in a bucket of warm water to wash off the left-over luffa juice and let them dry in the sun.

We're going to try to grow some more this coming summer from the seeds we saved from these luffas. In the meantime, we are going to put the ones we grew last year to the test and see  what we can do with them. A brief search of the Internet revealed some great ideas for using the luffa fiber.

Here are some uses for the luffa:

- Use as a shower sponge to exfoliate the skin.
- Use as non-scratching pot scrubbers, particularly for those non-stick pans.
- Use as a bug gut scrubber the when washing a car.
- Mount on a stick and use as a back scratcher.
- Use as a filter medium in ponds and fish tanks.
- Use in arts and crafts projects.
- Use to texture painted walls.