Compost, Permaculture and Chickens

Compost

Our composting worms are doing quite well, thank you!  We still have a lot to learn and eventually I want to graduate them to a commercial bin rather than the plastic, vented bin that we have now.  It's just a regular large storage bin with holes cut out and vents put in the sides and top.  The commercial bins allow for compost to be in three stages with the oldest at the bottom and the newest at the top.  The worms naturally migrate up the layers as their food source runs out.  Then the bottom layer can be used in the garden and placed on top with new food and bedding in it.

I do not think that our worms have begun to reproduce and I will be very excited when they do.  They came to us as such small worms that I think it may take them a while to grow larger and then copulate and lay egg cases.

When we first got the bin, I was amazed at how moist the bin was.  We hadn't put food in yet and the moistness on the sides of the bin was causing the worms to crawl up in search of food.  I didn't know they were searching for food at the time because the instructions with the worms said not to put food in for the first little while so that the worms could become acclimated to their new environment.   Once I realized they wanted food, I put a bunch in and we haven't had many more problems with worm "escapes."

It can be tricky to keep the bin from turning aerobic.  If the conditions go aerobic, that's when it gets smelly.  I think the best thing to do in a case like that is to use the trowel and give everything a good turning over.

I'm still learning, but I'm glad to be throwing my compostable items either in my worm bin or my outside compost bin.

The outside compost bin is another story entirely.  I started that bin to cover for the items that we can't put in the bin inside.  The book I read about wormeries said not to give the worms citrus, onion, starches (and of course nothing fatty or meaty; those have to be kept out of the outside bin as well).  I wanted a place to put those things.  I also wanted to be able to use some of our mowed lawn and other vegetative matter in that bin.  I read Rodale's Book of Composting, and feel I have a very basic understanding of composting.  I'm planning on taking Michigan's Master Composter class in the fall to become a really qualified composter.

I had been layering the outdoors compost bin with leaf mulch from leaves we'd been dumping on our property behind our fence, grass clippings, some food items (mostly moldy fruit and orange halves that had been eaten out by the birds), and dirt.  It's also been fun to include egg shells into our compost knowing that we are adding calcium to the system.  The other day, I decided to turn the compost.  It's really best to have a system of two or three bins for the same reasons as with the worm bin.  We only have one though, so I just shoveled out the contents onto the lawn.  There was a healthy population of isopods, or pill bugs.  There were some pupa of some kind of gross fly, probably.  There were some brown cricket-like insects and at the bottom there were a few earthworms.

The compost had gotten too wet.  We had a huge rain storm and the lid had been left open.  So, the soil I had added, full of clay as our soil is, had done a pretty good job of clumping things together.  But, the really cool part is that there were only a few orange rinds in sight.  The hair I had put in (a very good source of nitrogen) had not broken down at all, making me wonder if I should have shredded it in some way.  There was very little else that was recognizable, meaning that something really is happening in there!

Compost works best with a source of manure, which I don't have right now.  Alternates are blood meal and bone meal available at feed stores.  I think I'll try that soon.

Permaculture

I do not have very much experience with the word permaculture and only the vaguest idea of what it means.  Just yesterday Earth Tipi posted about a 40 hour permaculture class that can be viewed as videos online.  I'm going to listen to all forty hours, I think.  Permaculture is going to be a goal for my yard.  I think Nathan will listen with me.

Chickens

Somehow this fits into the idea of permaculture to me.  I've heard of movable chicken coups.  About once a year, you move the coup and use the amazing soil underneath to grow new veggies or plants.  My friend Angie got chickens lately and I believe she said that her ordinances didn't allow it.  I was figuring our ordinances were the same, but hooray, we can have up to five chickens.  We probably won't get any until 2015 since we'll be gone most of next summer, but I'm determined to have chickens.  Too bad I can't have a goat too!