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…)

Fun with worms

So Dot and I are halfway through building a wormery. I say 'Dot and I' because on Friday evening, the poor little love found herself bobbling around in the Baby Bjorn in the 15 degree gloaming of a Pennsylvania winter dusk while I feverishly prodded and poked a shovel at our frozen solid compost heap, first in the pursuit of worms, and then, when unsurprisingly none revealed theselves, in a bid to transfer the rock-hard broccoli stalks and lemon skins into the new compost bin and soon-to-be wormery.

Because apparently, wormeries are the way to go for composting biodegradable nappies.

In retrospect, this was relatively apparent from the reading I did earlier in the week but I think I was choosing to ignore it because a) it all sounded terribly complicated and b) I don't know about you but I don't voluntarily get myself involved with anything that looks like this:
unless I really have to.

Well, it seems I really have to.

I started by researching the materials I'd be needing: a bin, some bedding - shredded newspaper, leaves, etc., 'food' - the compost, and about two lbs of your best redworms for the amount of waste we produce.

Warming to my subject, I was keen to get going immediately - I wanted to watch the nappies disappearing - and headed off to the local fishing (and gun) shop to enquire about the availability of redworms. The nice man behind the counter (who had a gun stuffed into his waistband) grabbed a polystyrene tray from the fridge, delved into it and withdrew his hand to reveal a fistful of squirmy red wrigglers which he proceeded to thrust under my nose.

"Er, they look just the job," I said, trying to look like someone who buys worms all the time, "I'll take two pounds."

"Ooh, you'll have to order that many," he said. "What do you want them for, anyway?"

I told him about my plans for a wormery. He suggested I wait a bit to avoid the worms freezing to death. And when I was ready, they'd set me back about $40. $40 for a few worms? Crikee.

I wasn't too sad to leave empty-handed, and headed home to check my facts. According to this website, your worms do indeed need temperatures ranging between 40 - 80 F. In cold climes such as ours, it suggested setting up in your basement, but the hubby vetoed stashing Dot's dirty nappies in the basement because he says they smell like a Dog's fart, and since I want the worms as far away from my person as possible, I didn't push the point. (What? If the chipmunks can climb stairs, who's to say the worms couldn't?) . (Oh, and $40 seems to be the going rate for 2lbs. You could find your own by digging around an exisiting compost heap (or local farmer's dung pile if you're game - which I'm not), hence my frantic prodding with Dot on board, but our sensible worms were wintering elsewhere.)

So we'll have to wait to really get going, but I decided to prepare the wormery for its future residents anyway, mainly because where else am I going to stash two months' worth of nappies?

I shredded a whole lot of newspaper I found in the log box (I'd like to point out this was old; I haven't bought a paper in months) while Dot looked on in interest. Then we bundled up, headed out, dropped the paper in the box, added some leaves and soil and finally all the compost we could and a bag of nappies. We kept it to one side; the plan is to bed the worms in on the other, then gradually move their food over so as not to overwhelm them all at once.

On the webcam today the MIL expressed skepticism about the wormery scheme.

"How will you keep the flies away?" she said.

Hm, valid point. The websites say to bury the waste and cover the bin so I will, but we'll see how it goes.

"Heh heh, good luck with clearing all that up when it doesn't work," said the hubby smugly.

You see what I'm up against here? I will learn to love my worms, and we'll show him...