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!

5 Things to do with Shredded Paper

In an effort to combat identity theft and reduce the waste we produce in our house, we shred all of our papers with personal identifying information, most of the junk mail and many of the light cardboard food boxes and toilet paper/paper towel rolls that would otherwise end up in the trash can. This makes for quite a supply of shredded paper for which we have to find a use. Here are five ways we use our seemingly never ending supply of shredded paper:

1. Use as a compost additive. Paper has a high carbon content and us usually somewhat absorbtive so it lends itself well to mixing with high nitrogen content compost items such as grass clippings and food scraps.

2. Use as chicken coop bedding. Once every couple of weeks I add a thin layer of shredded paper to the chicken coop. Again, it's high carbon content mixes well with the high nitrogen chicken waste to produce a fairly nice compost once it is cleaned out and stacked for a while. Rather than adding it directly to the garden, we put it in the compost bin and mix it in with the other compost to make sure it cooks for a little while to kill any pathogens.

3. Use as worm bedding. Worms love paper. When starting a worm bed, I will add damp shredded paper to the bed first to give the worms a good start. I also occasionally add the shredded paper to an established worm bed to provide some additional food.

4. Use as a packing material. Cross cut shredded paper makes great packing material. It's free and it's much better for the environment than styrofoam peanuts.

5. Use it as kindling for starting a fire. Shredded paper ignites quickly and burns well, making it an excellent kindling. We use it to start our annual New Years Eve bon fire with great success.

Happy Earth Day!

Today is Earth Day! Take a little time to do something good for this wonderful, beautiful planet that supports and sustains us!

- Plant a tree
- Plant a garden
- Ride a bike
- Walk
- Drive less
- Reduce, Reuse and/or Recycle
- Compost
- Start a worm bin
- Find a way to reduce your energy consumption
- Sit outside and enjoy the fresh air and sunshine
- Think of ways to incorporate some of these things into your day, every day

Happy Earth Day, but lets not limit it to once a year!

Worm Bin Expansion

New worm bins in place. 

Today we expanded our worm family by adding this new set of worm bins. This setup was very simple to make. All that is needed to make this is a clean barrel (that didn't hold toxic chemicals in its past life), one 8' 2x4, a jig saw, a drill with 1/4" drill bit and a straight edge and Sharpie marker for marking the barrel.

I simply cut the barrel in half with a jig saw using a multi-purpose blade following the lines we marked on the barrel. Then, to make the cradle, I cut the 2x4 in half to make 2 each 4' sections. Using the barrel as a guide. I marked the 2x4's with the curved profile of the barrel, placed the 2x4s together and gang-cut the barrel profile. For this I used my band saw, but a jig saw will work, too. Finally, I put two 1/4" holes in the low end of each barrel half to allow the barrels to drain.

I added this to show the profile I cut into the 2x4's

That's all there is to it. To set it all up, I placed the 2x4's parallel on an old pallet and put the half barrels on top. After creating the bins, I added shredded paper on one end of the barrel for bedding and wet it down to the consistency of a wet sponge.

We filled the half-barrels with a wheelbarrow load of pre-composted worm food each, leaving the shredded paper uncovered. I dumped a half-tray of worm castings and worms from my Worm Factory 360 into each of the barrel halves on top of the shredded paper, and voila.... a couple of new worm bins are born!

The worms loving their home and food

Completed and filled worm bins

Now we just sit back and let the worms do the work. To help keep the temperature somewhat cool and to maintain moisture, I placed the barrels under a shed and put a waxed cardboard box over top of them.

Waxed cardboard will help keep them from drying out too fast
and help to provide the dark environment the worms love.

Pre-Composting Worm Food

I love my experiments!

We've been throwing old produce into the compost bin and layering it with alpaca manure for the past week. The intent is to pre-compost it just enough and feed it to the worms. As you can see by the thermometer (even if it is kind of hard to see), we've started to see an increase in the temperature. It hit 120° today. I expect that it will reach 130° - 140° sometime this week and then start to drop off. When the temps start to drop, I'll mix it up and let it cook again. In about two more weeks, it will be perfect worm food - soft, mushy, rotting and loaded with bacteria and fungus. Yum, Yum!

Isn't science cool?

A New Worm Bin

I had some free time today and some scrap plywood left over from a previous project so I decided to expand my worms a little.

What I made was a very simple box, about 3'x1.5'x1.5'. To increase aeration in the wormery, I cut a piece of 1" PVC pipe about 4" longer than the box and drilled holes along its length. To hold it in place and prevent worm escape (or anything else climbing in), I placed some old window screen over the end of the PVC and added a 1" coupling on each side.

Once it was done, I added some pre-composted grass and kitchen scraps from our compost bin As I cleaned out the bottom bin of my Worm Factory 360, I moved the lazy worms who had not made the pilgrimage upward to the newer bins over to my new box. I topped it all off with a large layer of dead leaves for a little bit of insulation and protection.

Worm Farming

For years, I have wanted to do a vermiculture project - grow worms to eat our kitchen waste. I attempted a worming experiment once in Oklahoma that did not end well for the poor worms. They got too hot and the box I made did not get enough air, nor did it drain well and most of the worms perished. We held a funeral for them in the back yard garden.

Last year for Christmas, Mrs Red Clay Farmer bought me a Worm Factory 360. Because of all the traveling I was doing this year, I was not able to start it until this fall. This gave me lots of time to do some research on the proper care and feeding of worms.

I will report on my worm project in later posts. In the meantime, here are a few links to the most helpful sites I found:

http://www.wormfarmingsecrets.com/ - Duncan Carver does a great little email newsletter
http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/200309/Connettts.com/ - Interesting article about a commercial grower
http://www.bae.ncsu.edu/topic/vermicomposting/vermiculture/nc.html - NC State University Links
http://www.bae.ncsu.edu/topic/vermicomposting/index.html - NC State University Links

And if I can find it again, NCSU had a great PDF file about vermiculture. Once I locate it I will post a link here.

The Red Clay Farmer