Black Soldier Fly Larvae

I've written about our challenges in dealing with food waste around here. We've tried freezing the food and taking it to the dump periodically and we've tried fermenting the food in a bokashi compost bin (more on that later). Neither of these have worked well for us. Food in the dump isn't good for a number of reasons and we had problems managing the bokashi... most of the time it was just plain gross. Then I learned about the black soldier fly (hermetic illucens).

Black Soldier Flies can be found throughout most of the United States. They are very interesting animals. They spend the bulk of their lives in the larval stage. Then, they lose their digestive system and crawl off to pupate. They emerge as black soldier flies and at that point, their sole purpose in life is to reproduce.

Since they no longer have a digestive system, the flies are no longer interested in food. They will not buzz your food, land on it or carry disease. They lay their eggs near rotting things and the cycle begins all over.

We can use this cycle to deal with our food waste AND turn that waste into chicken and fish food. Last year I purchased the Biopod at a conference. The Biopod is a black soldier fly (BSF) composted. Food scraps, and other waste goes in and BSF grubs come out. In addition, for every 100 pounds of scraps that go into the Biopod, 5 pounds of good compost come out.

We started the Biopod in March with feed corn soaked in water. After a few days, it had started fermenting. Within two weeks we had our first brood of grubs. They devoured everything we fed them! Within a few weeks of starting the Biopod, we were harvesting a regular supply of grubs. The chickens loved it! I loved it! We were turning our food scraps into health chickens and eggs.

Here's our stock of BSF larvae. They add up quickly!

 This is a rotisserie chicken I found in the very back of the freezer. I figured that after sitting three years in the freezer, it would make better food for them than for us. This is how the chicken looked the morning I put it in the BioPod.

This is later in the afternoon. The hungry BSF grubs are doing their work!

The next day, the chicken is completely gone - except for the bones. 

Spring... Finally!!!

There is a sense of anticipation in the air around the farm. Last week it was cold and rainy. This week it has been warm and dry. The bees are starting to be active, the grass is starting to get a tinge of green at the tips, the fruit trees are about to burst forth in blooms and I've already seen some bugs flying around. Spring is almost here.

Along with the coming of spring are a whole host of tasks... herd maintenance, pasture maintenance, shearing, garden preparation and planting. I can't wait to work in the warmth!

So, now that we have survived Punxsutawney Phil's wintry prediction, we get on with enjoying the pleasant warmth that comes this time of year! Happy spring to everyone!

Southeastern Animal Fiber Festival

saffsite.org

I recently attended the Southeastern Animal Fiber Festival (SAFF) in Fletcher, NC, near Asheville (I'm always looking for a reason to head to the mountains). It was a great event and I learned a lot while I was there. I attended two workshops at the festival that were very helpful. One was a Parasite Management class that certified me to use the FAMACHA method of parasite control. The other was a pasture management class. I also walked around the displays and was amazed at all the different vendors and their products; everything from

Alpaca to Yak fiber and every sort of device ever conceived of to process it.

FAMACHA Parasite Control Class - This was absolutely the most useful class I have been to in a while. The premise of FAMACHA is understanding that parasites exist and we will never get rid of them. Instead, we manage them and work to prevent their resistance to various wormers by not over-treating the herd. Instead, we should evaluate each animal and treat the ones that need it. FAMACHA provides a method of evaluating the animals to see which ones need treatment. This method reduces the parasite drug resistance in the herd.

The basis of the FAMACHA method of parasite control is this; Intestinal worms have a short life-cycle. When we treat an animal with de-wormers, we develop drug resistant worms. These resistant worms of the treated animals will, over time, mix with the non-resistant worms of the non-treated animals and the drug resistance will be bred out of them.

I definitely recommend becoming FAMACHA certified. You need to attend a class to get the certification and the evaluating chart. The key to success in using this method is keeping good records and conducting regular assessments of the herd.

In addition to FAMACHA, the instructor gave the class a great run-down on the various classes of wormers available and how to use them. Here are a few key notes that I took away from the class:

1. Learn to do fecals. There are two types. Qualitative (presence of worms) and Quantitaive (how many worms).

2. Rotate your pastures if possible. Juvenile parasites stay on the bottom 1-2 inches of grass so if you are able to keep your grass long, the animals will graze on the tips of the grass and leave the parasites at the bottom.

3. Use the same wormers until you find that they are no longer effective for your herd.

4. There are really only three classes of wormer. There are a number of sub-classes of those three. There is little difference among the wormers in those subclasses so if one is ineffective, the others within that class will be as well.

5. Parasites will thrive in a warm, moist environment so keep that in mind when considering your worming program. Eliminate wet areas in your pasture areas (leaky tanks, etc.)

6. Don't let your animals have free access throughout the pasture. Find a way to divide your pastures up into rotational grazing areas and move them frequently through those areas.

7. If you have horses or donkeys they can follow behind in the grazing pattern and vacuum up the parasites the the alpacas/goats left behind. Ruminant parasites will not live in the equine body.

The pasture management class was basically a FAMACHA-lite class with some pasture management tips added in for good measure. I probably could have skipped this class and saved a little money, but I did learn a thing or two.

If you ever have a chance to visit the Southeastern Animal Fiber Festival, I recommend that you take the opportunity. It's cheap to get in and you will be amazed at what you'll see. Next years SAFF is Oct 30 - Nov 1. 

Conservation of Mass

One of the most profound things I learned in school was during my 8th grade Physical Science class and it has remained with me over the years. The Law of Conservation of Mass states (very roughly) that in a closed system, the mass of that system will remain constant over time.  The implication of this law is that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. It is simply reordered through a series of chemical reactions.

At a practical level this has huge implications. In the natural world, trees lose their leaves every year and those leaves enrich the soil for other plants. Plants turn energy and nutrients into plants, small animals eat the plants and turn them into energy, waste (which enriches the soil) and animal. Predators eat the small animals and turn them into energy, waste (again, enriching the soil) and predator. When the predators die, bacteria decompose the body and turn it back into free energy and its component parts again making it available for the plants. It's a brutal, yet elegant system. There is no waste. Everything is recycled and becomes nutrients for something else.

Consider this... If I bag all my grass clippings and take them to the dump, I am removing matter from my property and placing it in a landfill where it will eventually decompose, creating waste greenhouse gasses and leftovers. If I rake up and burn my leaves every fall I am using a chemical reaction to oxidize the leaves. The components of those leaves are not gone. The ashes represent what remains of the leaves on my property but the bulk of them were changed into hot gasses that were released into the atmosphere. In both cases, I am removing potentially useful matter from my property and creating waste rather than using it for my benefit. Likewise, when I drive my car to take the grass clippings to the dump, I am using the gasoline to produce energy to move my car by burning it. The gasoline is not gone, though. It is simply changed into heat and energy with the by products released into the atmosphere though the tail pipe in the form of waste gasses and water vapor.

Barry Commoner, a prominent biologist, ecologist author and former presidential candidate who passed away in 2012, wrote the book, The Closing Circle. In this book he draws on the Law of Conservation of Mass when he set forth his four laws of ecology. They are:

1. Everything is connected to everything else. There is one ecosphere for all living organisms and what affects one, affects all. 

2. Everything must go somewhere. There is no "waste" in nature and there is no "away" to which things can be thrown.

3. Nature knows best. Humankind has fashioned technology to improve upon nature, but such change in a natural system is likely to be detrimental to that system"

4. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Exploitation of nature will inevitably involve the conversion of resources from useful to useless forms.

Commoner's four laws are so obvious, yet so easy to overlook that it's scary. We are all interconnected - in so many ways. This is not just a World of nations, We are a planet of people and other species with a shared future. Landfill space is becoming scarce and nobody wants one in their back yard. We have developed farming methods that deplete and poison the soil for the microorganisms that live in it while the run off is polluting our rivers and oceans.

Finally, Law #4 is probably the most profound to me. We continue to use our resources faster than they can be replenished. We burn them, use them, break them down into their component parts, mix them together so their not recyclable and then throw them into the landfill where they sit forever, never to be seen again. One day those resources will be gone.

One of the best things we can do for our planet and everyone/thing on it is work to eliminate waste and/or harness it to our benefit. That's where the three R's come into play.

Reduce - Cut back on the stuff we use. Reduce trash, reduce stuff, reduce size, cut waste, or find more efficient ways of doing things.

Reuse - Find other purposes for things that are no longer needed or wanted OR find someone who wants it when you're done rather than sending it to the landfill

Recycle - Cut the amount of resources that go into a dump never to be seen again. Recycle waste food into useable food for other things and compost. Maximize your recycling program at home and work.

These are some of the things that drive our thinking here at Red Clay Farm. We try to find ways of keeping our organic material here on the farm and using it to our benefit rather than sending it to decompose in the landfill. We also work to reduce our waste as much as possible. Here are some of the ways we do that.

Animal Manure - This is composed of grass from our pastures, hay and feed that we have brought in to our farm. It is gathered routinely and composed with straw, leaves or grass clippings. We use it to spread back on the fields to enrich our soils. This way, we get more benefit from the money we spend on hay and feed. Not only does it go to keep the animals alive, but what is not useful to the animals is useful to the grass, and the microorganisms living in the soil.

Left-over human food - We make every effort to not send food scraps to the dump as well. vegetable matter gets put in the compost pile. Meats, fats and other non-compostable items get fed to our Black Soldier Fly Larvae (more on these in a later post). These guys make short work of any table scraps and, in turn, provide a tasty supplement to our chickens and, eventually, our aquaponics fish (our vegetarian tilapia don't like them). In this way we are turning our food scraps into chickens and eggs.

Paper, cardboard, etc - These items are shredded and used for various things such as worm bedding, chicken coop bedding and composting. We use broken-down cardboard boxes for sheet composting in the garden.

Recyclables - Our county recycles plastics, aluminum and glass so we make sure we support these programs.

Water - We live on a gentle slope that starts at the top of the property and runs towards the back of the property toward a creek. The contour of the property naturally channels rain water down the middle of the property. We are now developing a plan to try to stem the flow of water off of our property and keep as much of it as we can. Additionally, we are installing rain barrels at the gutter down spouts to keep that water as well.

Usable stuff - Items that we no longer want or need are donated to the local Habitat for Humanity Re-Store and to Goodwill.

We still have a long way to go, but we've started. Anything that we can use to enhance or enrich our farm stays on the farm. Anything that can be recycled in some way or another is. In this way we have greatly reduced the amount of trash we send to the land fill.

Hopefully this is not too long and manifesto-sounding. The long and the short of it is we can't just throw things away because there really isn't an "away" these days. All we need are a basic understanding of the natural laws of the world, some integrated solutions based on that understanding, and a willingness to make the changes in our lifestyle to implement those solutions and we can begin to make huge changes in the way we affect the Earth.

Ignorance Is Bliss!

This is one of my favorite Calvin and Hobbes strips, and it is SOOO true! This is what we're facing with climate change, resource over use, etc, etc, etc. Nobody wants to face the truth - ignorance is bliss. It would be nice to un-learn what I already know and live as though we have no problems. Unfortunately, I can't do that. I can see the cliff coming.

Sometimes change isn't fun, but I think it's better to do it on our terms than to have it thrust upon us without choice. We need to start making changes now.

Why Alpacas?

The Golden Girls the day we got them.

I am often asked the question, "Why Alpacas?" It's not a very easy question to answer because the simple truth of the matter is it just kind of happened. It all started a long, long time ago in a state, very far away.

Many years ago I walked into the Post Exchange (PX) at Fort Leavenworth, KS where a local alpaca farm had set up a display in the atrium of the store. They had spinning demonstrations, pictures and alpaca products for sale arrayed all around the display. I was captivated. At that point I had heard about this alpaca animal but didn't know much about it. Melanie and I spent quite a while there looking at the displays and asking questions.  After that day I started researching alpacas and frequently told Melanie that I wanted an alpaca farm when I grew up and retired from the Army. We kind of treated it as a joke but deep down, I was serious.

Fast-forward several years...

I began my transition from the Army in the winter of 2013 and my Army retirement ceremony was in February. One day shortly after the ceremony, Melanie made me get in the car and took me to Irmo, SC where we met a man who was selling four pet alpacas because he no longer had time to care for them. They were named after the Golden Girls; Sophia, Dorothy, Blanch and Rose. As my retirement gift, Melanie bought them for me. A week later we came back with the trailer to pick them up. Sadly, Sophia had an accident where she cut her eye severely on chicken wire and died before we could bring her home, but the other three became permanent residents of Red Clay Farm.

A few weeks later, I traveled to Emmitt Acres Farm in Bennettsville, SC to meet with an alpaca farmer friend I know. He was going to give me some pointers on raising alpacas. While I was there, he introduced me to 11 alpacas he was keeping on his farm. Their previous owner was a local farmer who had lost her battle with cancer and the alpacas were part of an estate sale. My friend told me I could buy the herd of 8 registered females, 1 registered male and 2 unregistered males for a song. So I did. A week later they arrived at our farm and joined the golden girls.

I suddenly found myself with an instant alpaca farm on my hands and I needed to figure out how to be an alpaca farmer. I'm still figuring it all out but we're making progress. That will be the topic of another post later on.

Some of the girls after shearing this year.

So, why alpacas? Here is my list of reasons:

1. I like them. They are interesting animals. They are curious, a little standoffish and cute.

2. They are a potentially profitable livestock and offer an opportunity to provide a product that does not require slaughter (although, that is an option. Alpaca is the other red meat in South America). Alpaca fiber is among the softest fiber there is. Additionally, alpacas can sell for a few hundred dollars to several thousand dollars depending on the market and the quality of the animal.

3. They are fairly low maintenance animals.

4. Alpacas have padded feet and are easy on the pasture (although if given a chance, will eat the grass to a nub).

5. Alpacas use communal dung piles which makes clean up fairly easy. We collect and compost the manure to improve our soil around the farm.

So, there you have it... the exciting story of an accidental alpaca farmer and why I do it. Stay tuned to this station for more news and information about alpacas, goats, worms and other miscellany.

Bees!

I have been anxiously awaiting the time to go pick up my bees since I ordered them in mid-March! The 10th of May finally arrived and I drove just over two hours to Luray, SC where the Coosawhatchie Honey Farm is located to pick up my 5 frame Nuc of bees.

Anthony, the proprietor of the honey farm met me and talked me through the bee installation and gave me three points to remember. He said if I could master these three things I will be a successful bee keeper.

1. Never let the bees have more comb than they need because if they're not using it, something else, such as hive beetles and other bad things, will.

2. Learn what the queen's eggs look like. Eggs are only eggs for about three days before they hatch into lavae so if eggs are in the hive, the queen was active at least three days ago.

3. I forget.

I guess I have a 66% chance of being a successful bee keeper. It's been 5 whole days and they're still alive - so far, so good!

Pulling the frames out of the nuc and installing in the hive

A healthy brood comb

I must admit that I was a little worried about installing the bees but it was really no problem. I put on my bee suit and started adding frames. Anthony told me that I should put the brood comb on the wall sides of the box and then alternate between filled frames and new foundation. Once the frames were installed I opened the queen and put her in the box to do her thing.

The queen and her attendants

For a while I was afraid that I was not going to get everyone in the hive. There were hundreds of bees who did not want to leave their nuc and every time I tried to shake them into the hive they would fly around and land on the nuc again. Finally I got smart and took the nuc box down to the house. Once it was gone, everybody started to get the right idea.

Every time I shook them out of the box they would swarm and land in the box again.

The final piece of advice Anthony gave me was to feed them a mix of two gallons water and 20 pounds of sugar until it is all gone. Once it is gone, then it would be time to install the next deep super.

They finally started getting the idea.

There is a lot of science, trial and error to this bee thing and the stakes are high. Not only are the bees dependent on me getting right, but they have required a substantial up-front cost for the hive, equipment and bees. Failure would be costly.

I guess I better figure out what that one thing I forgot is.

A Simple Farmer's View on Global Climate Change

Today I am going to depart from the descriptions of my loony experiments and discuss a topic of real importance. Three days ago, the government released the National Climate Assessment. The report finds that global climate change is here now and that human activity is most likely causing it. Coincidentally, the report was released just as I was finishing the book Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How it CanRenew America by Thomas L. Friedman so I am looking at the data presented in the report in a new light.

By now I think that most of us agree that the climate is changing in some way. We have higher highs, lower lows and our storms are getting larger and more severe. These changes are bringing a whole host of second and third order effects, as well. Freidman calls it “Global Weirding.” We can argue amongst ourselves for days about why the climate is changing and get nowhere. While I personally believe that we are affecting the climate with our waste production, I find this to be a useless argument. It has been so politicized over the years that it goes nowhere. Anyone can pick a set of data and use it to prove their point on either side of the argument. Liars figure and figures lie.

I believe that a better argument is this. The fact is that we are getting more crowded by the day and there are only so many resources on the Earth. The human population topped 7 billion just over a year ago and is steadily climbing. Across the planet are millions, if not billions, of people struggling to live a better life and they’re starting to make it – think China and India. The increased population and all those increased living standards are putting a huge strain on our global resources – air, water, land, oil, fuel, wood, minerals, etc. We are very quickly using all of our resources without a plan. In the process we are polluting our land, water and air and eliminating the Earth’s natural response mechanisms. What will happen when the larder is bare?

What happens when you can’t find what you need at a particular store? You go somewhere else, right? The same thing happens on the Earth. There are finite amounts of natural resources in the ground and growing on the land. As people find their land can no longer support them, they start migrating to other places. Cities, already swollen and overpopulated, will become more crowded. Infrastructure will become strained, causing unrest among the population. At a national level, nations will move to secure resources for their populations causing regional conflicts and war. The future is not bright if we continue down the road we’re on. We may not see it in our lifetimes but our children and our childrens’ children will.

We continue to deplete our resources at an alarming rate without any plan or consensus on how to move to a sustainable lifestyle. Politicians argue that any change in our current unsustainable systems will destroy our economy and limit our ability to compete on a global scale. That argument is rather short-sighted if you ask me. I guess that’s what we’ve become… a nation of short-term thinkers. Yes, there may be short-term pain for the country as we shift from a consumption economy to a sustainable economy but that short-term pain is far better than the long-term misery we are going to face if we don’t make some sort of change. Maybe we deserve that misery.

That brings me back to global climate change. We are just now starting to feel the effects of a warmer climate. Already we are seeing big changes; larger storms, record temperatures melting ice, droughts. Further down the road we will see increased ocean levels, reduced land and even bigger changes in climate and storms as we continue to pollute our air and trigger the positive feedback loop of carbon release from which we may not recover. But that’s not all! A recent study found that crops grown in a high carbon dioxide environment have fewer nutrients so not only will we be able to produce less food but it will be less nutritious as well. We can twiddle our thumbs and argue about who or what is responsible while our ship sinks OR we can take action. And here’s the thing… If we take action to move to a more sustainable economy, our greenhouse gas production will necessarily fall.

I, like Thomas Friedman, have a hope for a better day. Unfortunately, in the words of the former Army Chief of Staff Gordon Sullivan, “Hope is not a method.” We have to do something about it. My family works hard to do our part but our actions don’t amount to much more than one atom of a drop in a bucket. We ALL have to row in the same direction! I agree with Friedman that America has the World leadership role, the responsibility and the ability to affect lasting change, AND that we can benefit from making that change and being the world leader!

I am attempting to write this essay in a politically agnostic way and I don’t feel qualified to discuss the correct policy changes we need to make to affect a change. I’m sure there are many controversial decisions that must be made. If you’re looking for examples I wholeheartedly recommend Friedman’s book. I don’t know how we are going to do it given our current political climate. I just know we have to do something. Anything is better than what we’re doing now!

So now it’s up to us. Change is never easy. Change is usually controversial. Change is necessary for our survival and the survival of this planet I’ve come to love. What are you going to do to make a change?

IBC Aquaponics Update for Earth Day

Happy Day After Earth Day! Between work, an exciting HS soccer game, feeding the herd and working around the farm, there was just no time to add anything yesterday, but I am making up for it today.

One of the classes I attended at the SC Organic Growers Conference back in March was an Aquaponics "How To" class. During the class, I picked up a number of good pointers and things that I wanted/needed to change on our small aquaponics system that day. So, this year for Earth Day I updated our IBC Aquaponics system I built last year.

In the system I designed, our pump was always on and the growing bed was always filled with water. One of the things I learned in the class was that the water level needs to rise and fall. This is because there needs to be some level of oxygen in the growing medium for the health of the plants and to keep the stuff that gets trapped in the rocks from becoming a stinky, anaerobic mess. There are two good options for doing this; build a bell siphon or put a timer on the pump.

There are lots of resources for building a bell siphon. Here is a link to instructions on how to build one if you would like to try. If you do a Google search for bell siphon you will find thousands of great resources on how to make one. One day I might try to add one to the system but for now I took the easy route and added a timer. I chose a simple indoor timer (the pump plug is in our sun room) that I found at Walmart and set it to power the pump for an hour and turn off for an hour. This setting seems to be working well for now but I may make some changes to it once things get warmer.

The second addition I made to our aquaponics system is the addition of red wiggler worms to the growing medium. Apparently, no aquaponics system is complete without worms. They eat all the crud that gets added to the growing medium; fish poo, dead plant roots, bug pieces, etc. Occasionally a worm will fall into the tank below and provide some tasty protein for the fish. I only added a handful of worms to our system at first. I want to see how they do before I add more.

Worms are not affected by the water in the growing medium. They do not drown as I once thought they might. Worms conduct transpiration through their skin and can take in oxygen from water. Again, the trick is to let some oxygen in to the bed occasionally so they can breath.

This year I found a great local source of tilapia at Southland Fisheries and added 35 tilapia fingerlings to the tank instead of the goldfish we used last year. Tilapia are a good choice for a small aquaponics system for a number of reasons. First, they are fairly hardy fish and tolerate a wide range of water qualities. Second, they like and need warm water. This is especially important here in SC where it gets pretty darn warm in the summer. I should be able to keep the water in an acceptable range through the end of Oct which will give the fish plenty of time to grow.

Our final addition to the IBC Aquaponics system was to add some plants. Thirty-five fish will create a lot of waste that will need to be filtered out by the plants. We added a variety of lettuce, spinach and tomato plants to start with and I am looking forward to seeing them grow.

Just a word of caution on adding fish... Consider adding your fish gradually so you can condition the beneficial bacteria in the growing media. If you add too many fish at one time the waste they produce can overwhelm the nitrobacter in your system and the bacteria won't be able to handle the amount of nitrogen in the water. This can cause a major fish kill. Make sure to monitor the amount of nitrites and nitrates in the water and do a partial water change if it gets too high. You can get water test kits in any fish store. In our case, we kept goldfish in the tank all winter and added 10 tilapia about 2 weeks ago to get the nitrogen cycle started.

Well, that's it for this entry. If you have any questions about the things we did to our IBC Aquaponics system, please drop me a line. Happy Earth Day a day late!

Bee Keeping

Bee hives near our old home in Pfeffelbach, Germany

Bees are fascinating animals and I have always been interested in them. Last year during the Midlands Farm Tour we met some folks who kept bees on their farm and that planted to seed in my mind that I would like to try my hand at bee keeping. So, this year - despite my minor allergies to bee stings - we are adding a bee hive to our menagerie. There are a number of reasons for my desire to keep bees.

1. I like honey and it is expensive!

2. Bees are excellent pollinators. 

3. Bee's are facing some survival challenges and I would like to do my part to keep them going.

For most of the winter I planned to build a top bar bee hive. I found a good plan for the hives and bought the wood. Unfortunately, time conspired against me and I found myself in the midst of spring, with no bee hive built and most of the following weekends filled with other activities. I decided to buy my hive and get started.

Our son in his new bee-keeping suit. He's excited
to be a new bee keeper.

After several Internet searches and some discussions with other bee keepers I know, I found a pretty good bargain at Walter T Kelley's Bee Keeping Site. I purchased the Deluxe Beginner Outfit which comes with the hive, a bee keepers shirt, veil and pith helmet, a feeder, a smoker and smoking material, and honeycomb foundation. I still had to assemble the hive and frames but it is pretty easy to do. All the parts fit together perfectly and the frames go together with no problems.

The next challenge was finding the bees to put in the hive. My goal was to have the hive built and bees installed when the orchard started flowering but quickly learned that we should have planned a little better. Most companies that sell bee packages are sold out until late spring. I finally settled on a bee company that could provide a package of bees on 10 May. I'll miss the orchard blooms this year.  Coosawhatchie Honey Farms sold me a deep 5 frame nuc (short for nucleus) that contains 5-6 pounds of bees, three frames of bee brood and two frames of honey. I'll have to drive a couple of hours to pick them up, but that's no problem.

That's where we stand right now. The majority of the hive is now built and ready to move to its permanent location. I'll keep you updates on this experiment as it progresses.

The SC Organic Growing Conference

Earlier this month I attended the SC Organic Growing Conference in Greenville, SC. The one-day conference was sponsored by the South Carolina Organization for Organic Living (SCOOL) and covered a wide variety of subjects. I wanted to attend all of the classes, but sadly, I could only choose four.

I attended the Vermiculture class, a Beginning Bee-Keeping class, a Black Soldier Fly (BSF) Larvae class and a Aquaponics class. All were very informative and instructional. I am now motivated to jump into some new experiments and make some adjustments to some old ones!

Vermiculture Class - Paul Coleman of EarlyBird Farm in Hodges, SC gave a great class on vermiculture (vermiculture being the raising of worms. Not to be confused with vermicomposting; the use of worms to produce worm castings). He covered the basics of worm farming and showed pictures of his vermiculture operations. He also showed the class how to make a home-made worm bin out of a rubbermaid tote and filled it with a half pound of Belgian Red Worms. He then drew names to take the bin and worms home. I was the lucky winner - Wooo Hooo!

The beginning bee-keeping class was very informational. The lady who gave that class was working towards earning her Master Bee Keeper's certification. I learned a lot about bee keeping in that 90 minutes but I'm sure we only scratched the surface. Just a week prior to this class I had just ordered a beginning bee keeping kit. This class got me excited to get going on the bees. More to follow on that in a later post.

Black Soldier Fly Larvae Class - OK. Maggots can be just plain gross, but these guys are amazing. Watch this 22 hour time-lapse video. The black soldier fly is an insect that is prevalent across the US but especially in the Southeast. They spend the bulk of their life cycle in their larval form and are voracious eaters as they grow. When they're ready to turn into the black soldier fly they lose their digestive system and crawl off to find a quiet area to pupate. As an adult fly, their sole purpose in life is to mate and they die shortly thereafter. Black soldier fly larvae convert food waste into usable protein that can be fed to chickens or fish as a food supplement.

Aquaponics - This class was focused on how to build and operate an aquaponics operations. I learned that I was doing somethings improperly with the IBC system I set up last year so this year I will make some tweaks that will hopefully give us better results.

The organic growing conference was a great opportunity to learn and meet people. Best part of it was learning that I was not the only crazy person in the world interested in this stuff. There are a bunch of us out there!

Wine Making

Our first vintage; a sweet white muscadine wine

In 2012 we had a GREAT crop of muscadine grapes so I tried my hand at wine making. The result was a pretty good (if I must say so, myself) muscadine sweet white wine. After 9 months of fermenting and racking, we put up 16 bottles of wine, one of which I am sipping on this evening.

We were not so lucky in 2013. Once again, we had a great crop of muscadines. Unfortunately this time, some critter ate them all before we could pick them. There were muscadine hulls under the grape vines, the pear trees and the apple trees. It was very frustrating and happened so quickly! I managed to harvest about 10 grapes last year - not quite enough to make a batch of wine.

In fact, 2013 was not a good year for any home-grown fruit. Our peach tree died, the pear trees didn't produce any pears. The apples were pathetic, the plums were sparse and you know the story of the grapes.

A small sampling of our 2012 grapes.

Since we didn't have any good fruit this year, I wanted to try my hand at making mead. Mead is a wine made from honey. After a little research, I decided I wanted to make a melomel. Melomel is a mead with fruit added to the mix.

I had a little free time this evening, so I decided to start a batch of melomel. It sounded much more tasty than just plain old honey wine. I could not find one recipe I liked so I decided to take the best of the ones I saw. I decided on a raspberry and honey combo. It sounded good.

So, after an evening of cleaning, boiling, and mixing, we have a bucket of raspberry melomel must sitting under the kitchen table fermenting for the next few weeks. In 3-5 weeks the primary fermentation will be complete and I will transfer it from the current bucket into a 3 gal carboy to sit for another 5 months or so.

More to follow as we progress in the process....

Here is the recipe I used to make the brew. It's pretty basic:

140 oz Honey - about 9 pounds - (note: All the recipes I saw said to use the best honey available - preferably orange blossom honey. This being an experimental batch, and fresh honey being quite pricey, I decided to go budget with Food Lion brand honey. I don't even know if I like mead, but it sounded interesting.
2 Bags of Frozen raspberries
1 pkg Red Star Montrachet Yeast
3t yeast nutrient

Some recipes call for the addition of orange and/or lemon juice, which sounded good, but I didn't have any on hand.

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.