Wormery Squirmery

Ah, what a glorious weekend. Can’t help thinking life would be even lovelier if I could spend more of it sitting in the garden in the sun watching my baby girl try to figure out what grass, stones, sticks and daffodils are. Ho hum.

Dot’s nature discoveries this weekend also included worms – 1000 of them, to be precise - about which she was rather less squeamish than I was. Yes, we finally installed the worms in the wormery. We stopped at Tom’s Bait and Tackle in Narrowsburg to pick up a ‘flat’ – that’s a large polystyrene container housing 1000 worms. At first it just looked like soil, but the owner Cliff plunged his hand in and brought out a handful of wrigglers all clumped together in a ball. He tried to get me to grab some but I hate to admit I squealed like a silly schoolgirl and leapt backwards across the store. Dot, on the other hand, encouraged by her father (who allegedly grew up eating worms) was only too keen to touch; she didn’t want to let go of her new pets and I intercepted several on their way to her mouth in the nick of time.

We took the worms home. Grady gallantly came over with a garden fork to assist. The rest of it wasn’t very dramatic; we just took handfuls (I was much bolder once I had my gardening gloves on) and placed them gently around the top of the compost bin, then covered them over with some slightly damp old leaves to keep the sun off. I checked on them today and there was no sign of them so I hope they’re doing their work down there in the compost. Being a wormery novice I am a bit worried about them – have I done it right? – but I guess we’ll know more in a couple of weeks.

While I had him, I decided to put my latest idea for Narrowsburg to Grady. The idea is to make Narrowsburg a plastic bag-free town, like Modbury in England, and to kick the commitment off on July 4th with a bag-free weekend. I’m calling the idea plasticfreefourth and the slogan is ‘this July 4th weekend declare your independence from the plastic bag’. Obviously this is partly because I hate plastic bags but also Modbury has attracted loads of press (more here too) and I’d love to see Narrowsburg do the same; could lead to a good summer for the local businesses. He's already been discussing this kind of idea with the chamber of commerce so could be up for it. Would be fab if we could pull it off; the supermarket is the tricky piece though. It’s not a big chain so if anyone has ideas as to how we could help them do it without spending $$, do let me know. (Did I mention that Modbury is about 5 miles down the road from my Granny and that I practically grew up there? So am very proud of them. It's lovely, by the way. You should go if yo uget the chance.)

As for the hybrid, I hate to tell you but it fell through. Long story involving UK drivers’ licences and car availability (they only had an SUV in the end. I couldn’t do it). So no Top Gear stylee car review from me; we may still sign up for the service but I'll keep you posted.

That’s all for now. Sunchoke risotto for dinner tonight using freshly harvested sunchokes from River Brook Farm, total food miles: 5. (Well, not counting the rice. And the drive back to Brooklyn…)