This is the compost bin at Yurkanin Farms. It's nice and full. The problem is that it's full of pine shavings. Pine shavings are about a 300:1 carbon to nitrogen ration. The pile should ideally be at 30:1. Even with all the chicken poop and fruit and vegetable scraps, I'm nowhere near where I need to be after 6 months of piling it high. It should be a steaming chocolaty mess by now. So as much as I (and the chickens) love the pine shavings as litter in the coop, I've had to switch over to something that breaks down a heck of a lot faster.
I'm hoping that after about 60 days or so, this little worm farm will keep us perpetually in chicken-snacks.
If you don't own chickens or lizards or haven't checked the stock tickers lately, live mealworms are EX-Pensive and dried ones even more so. Growing them myself seems like a no-brainer and pretty simple. They are super high in protein and can be super high in pretty much whatever vitamin/mineral/junk that you feed them. I've added calcium to the wheat bran in addition to the fruit and veggie leftovers I stock it with. I'm hoping these mealworms will be like little 5 hour energy shots for the birds.
And we're doing some major rearranging around the house with the goal of the girls finally each getting their own room. We've had to cut out and replace some duct work before this can happen and of course we, as always, find all sorts of interesting previously unknown damage in the bilges and bowels of the house (like the rotted and moldy insulation in the walls and duct I ripped out of this today). We've got some mortaring to do in the living room too:
I'm insisting the wife take a crack at this as my history in mixing and using cement is... checkered.
And finally, it's that time of year again: science projects. Cezanne chose earthquakes this year so here is our hero in action with the seismometer we built.
Rice Hulls. I've been told they break down in days and because they're so much smaller and thinner than the shavings, the nitrogen balance ought to climb quickly. I threw some red wigglers into the compost bin just to give it a boost but if this pile starts heating up the worms won't last very long. And speaking of worms:
I'm hoping that after about 60 days or so, this little worm farm will keep us perpetually in chicken-snacks.
If you don't own chickens or lizards or haven't checked the stock tickers lately, live mealworms are EX-Pensive and dried ones even more so. Growing them myself seems like a no-brainer and pretty simple. They are super high in protein and can be super high in pretty much whatever vitamin/mineral/junk that you feed them. I've added calcium to the wheat bran in addition to the fruit and veggie leftovers I stock it with. I'm hoping these mealworms will be like little 5 hour energy shots for the birds.
And we're doing some major rearranging around the house with the goal of the girls finally each getting their own room. We've had to cut out and replace some duct work before this can happen and of course we, as always, find all sorts of interesting previously unknown damage in the bilges and bowels of the house (like the rotted and moldy insulation in the walls and duct I ripped out of this today). We've got some mortaring to do in the living room too:
I'm insisting the wife take a crack at this as my history in mixing and using cement is... checkered.
And finally, it's that time of year again: science projects. Cezanne chose earthquakes this year so here is our hero in action with the seismometer we built.
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