Maintaining a Worm Bin

...to find food scraps, though, I’d stop and let the bin rest some more.) Any fruit stones or avocado pits or sticks, things that will never break down go into a smaller bucket for later disposal in some remote corner of the yard. The process actually goes pretty fast. I harvested 5 gallons of castings in less than an hour. You could go through a plastic tote-type bin much faster. Making a New Working Side After harvest you’ll have empty space–and th...

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Cat Litter Compost, Installment #3

...efore you spread it. And then spread it around non-edible plants, or under fruit trees. The fruit trees won’t uptake anything nasty. It’s totally do-able and I’d do it again. But I’d rather do it again in a larger yard, where I could have a big, accessible compost bin. So now I’m doing something new. The New Paradigm I heard about a new kind of litter tray made specifically to work with pine pellets. I hate to be advertising–I get nothing out of t...

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Stern Sprouted Wheat Vegan Cookie or Health Bar Type Things

...I’ve put sprouting instructions at bottom of post) Raisins (or other dried fruit): 75 g/1 cup Whole raw almonds (or other nut): 75 g / 3/4 cup Salt: 1 g/generous pinch Tools: Some kind of device which can grind all this stuff up into a mush: a crank grinder or a food processor or a coarse metate and lots of patience or… ??? Cookie sheet Baking parchment (helpful) Rolling pin (optional) • Preheat your oven to 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Mix together al...

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Master Tinkerer Ray Narkevicius

...ins that he gets from the brewery feed the poultry. Poultry manure nourish fruit trees and the duck water waste hosts crayfish. All the water gets pumped around to a series of raised beds that grow herbs, dragon fruit and strawberries. His small yard overflows with the most delicious citrus you’ve ever had. And he’s a generous and kind neighbor who is always willing to lend a helping hand. Thankfully, the folks at Fair Companies, including friend...

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Damned Figs!

...r of . . . Styrofoam packing materials. We tried everything from drying to making jam with these accursed figs but never got satisfactory results. During the day flies laid their larvae in the fruits yielding gooey masses that would drop to the ground to provide rotting fig feasts to visiting rats and possums. We replaced the fig tree with the Valencia orange tree in the photo above. One of the most important lessons we’ve learned in our ten years...

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