Worm bin update

Circle of life

So our compost mixer has attracted flies (mostly our fault, since we didn't have a good ratio of greens to browns, about to be rectified now that we have borrowed my parents' paper shredder and all my old bank statements are about to be composted). With flies come maggots. Neither are really all that bad, I mean the bin is outside so the flies aren't a real problem and the maggots do help the food stuff decompose faster. The bigger problem is that there are so many maggots they fall out of the bin by the dozens every time we turn it. Gross, I know. So I set a sheet of cardboard with a large aluminum tray underneath the bin and now the maggots fall into that. But the best part is every hour or so the tray starts rustling and it turns out the birds have figured out that the tray contains free food. So the birds are eating the worms that are eating out garbage that is being tuned into compost. The circle of life indeed.

The update

Wow has time gotten away from me! I really didn't mean to go this long without any new posts. I guess right now I'll do some quick updates, and hopefully soon write some more thought-provoking posts.

Our compost bin(s) are up and running. The worms seem to be doing well and our mixer is filling up. I think soon we'll have to stop adding new items and leave it alone for a few weeks to really get cooking. We talked about what we'll do during that time and I think we'll try to save our compostables and make weekly trips to a local compost pile to dispose of them. What we discovered the last few weeks is that the majority of our waste is compostable, and since we've started these bins we've reduced our garbage output to about two bags a week, sometimes even less, down from a bag every other day or so, and actually daily during the weekend, when I cook more.

In other news, I've been very good about not accepting plastic bags at stores. I think I've only taken three in the last month: one when I bought a can of Raid (not very eco-friendly, I know, but that was before I discovered how effective peppermint castille soap is at killing ants) and wanted to separate it from my other food shopping, the other two times accidental by only realizing after I left the store that I didn't leave the bag. But I still carry my own shopping bag with me everywhere I go and a member of my synagogue sent out this link, which is something I have been looking for and am very excited about getting.

Let's see, what else. Oh, the gardening is moving along. The tomato and cucumber seeds have sprouted very nicely and it's time to repot them. The swiss chard seeds I tried never sprouted which is very disappointing since I really adore chard, but I am trying again. Our lemon tree is growing nicely though it has been infested with ants a couple of times. Some peppermint spray and a water moat around the base of the planter seem to have taken care of that (though they have since moved into our kitchen, yuck!)

Eating local has been going fairly well. It's really not hard once you get used to it. We do make exceptions, like if we want something that just is not grown/produced locally at all (like coconut milk). But overall it has kept us healthier I think since a large proportion of imported items are highly processed (like macaroni and cheese). We did cheat the other day and bought a box of Snyders sourdough pretzels. What can I say, no one's perfect.

That's about it for now. More to come!

Hot stuff

Thanks to our food scraps plus a pile of dead straw from someone's curbside and several generous handfuls of grass from the yard, the new composter is filling up nicely and now it needs to get cooking. It does seem to be getting warmer in there though it could just be that it's a black barrel on a hot day in a sunny porch. But hopefully it'll start steaming soon and then I'll know something is really happening.

I know the cycle will be starting over continuously as we add more waste, since we have no intention of getting another mixer and alternating, bit seeing as the compost itself isn't the whole goal then it really doesn't matter. As the material breaks down we can take out handfuls of compost, sifting through for whatever needs more time and using what we get, as we get it, on the plants.

Speaking of which, it's looking like some of my sprouts are ready for re-potting. I think it;s the chard though ti may possibly be the cucumber, and the tomatoes sprouts are on their way.

I love looking out the window and seeing the colorful cloth diapers hanging in the warm sun like Tibetan flags, the composter making fertilizer, the amaryllises nearly blooming, al with the backdrop of the city's main industrial zone. We're really our own little urban paradise here. At least, we;re on our way.

Happy birthday to you

I finally got my birthday present...er, five and a half months late.

Today my husband gave me this!

Updates to follow!

Little green bag

I recently swore off plastic bags. I've often carried my own bag around, and have a collection of cloth bags that we use for large shopping trips. But now I'm off plastic bags for good. I have a cute little fold-up bag I keep in my purse at all times for those unexpected shopping trips and if it's not enough, I just buy a cloth bag from the supermarket rather than take plastic.

Today, for example, I made two unplanned stops. In the first store I declined their bag and stuffed everything in my purse and whatever didn't fit I just carried. In the second I bought their green bag (literally, it's green) for my groceries. We have a growing collection of them at home but they get used for everything; just this morning I emptied the laundry into one when I couldn't find an available basket.

Plastic bags really frustrate me. Now that I'm making a point never to accept them in stores I've started to realize how little thought the average consumer puts into them. And it's not even just at checkout; you use plastic in the produce aisle (do you really need to bag your cucumbers?), every time you buy individual serving sizes (is it really that hard to spoon out your yogurt from a larger tub?), and each time you buy pre-packaged (why get your chicken all wrapped in plastic in a styrofoam tray instead of having the butcher give you the fresher, prepackaged cuts?)

Just some food for thought.

Baby got back

Today I want to talk a bit about cloth diapers. I've been thinking a lot lately about shopping and the excessive usage of plastic bags, and do want to talk about that, but I'll save that for the next post. Right now though I want to share a bit on how my husband and I choose to diaper our daughters.

I was cloth diapered as a baby, simply because that is what was done in those days. But now there are plenty of other options and most people don't even consider CD. When I was pregnant I did a bit of research, mostly (initially, at least) motivated by the fact that we were expecting twins and I was searching for a way to keep our expenses down. I discovered modern day cloth, and how different the diapers are today from how they were back when I was a kid. Now you don;t just have flats with pins and plastic pants; now there are prefolds with PUL covers, snappis, pockets, all-in-ones, fitteds, doublers, wool longsies, etc. It's a whole new world. It's a far more user-friendly world, that's for sure.

We settled on a stash of prefolds with covers and, mostly, pockets, of which BG 3.0 make up the bulk. We do use disposables at times, like when we're out and about. With two babies there's a limit to how many soiled cloth diapers I want to carry around town with me. Do I feel bad I don't CD all the time? Yes. But mostly I feel better about all the time I do CD, and the landfill space I am saving every time I reach for a brightly colored cloth diaper instead of a disposable.

There are other choices I make that are in line with my eco-friendly philosophies. I don't use Pampers or Huggies or other imported diaper brands and instead choose to use the local Tiltulim brand. They work just as well as any other diaper and are usually far cheaper than any other brand. It's the same reason why I don't use compostable diapers. They sound great, but aren't made locally, so the fuel used to ship all those diapers across the ocean isn't worth it to me.

Remember, every time you make a purchase, you are condoning now that item reached the supermarket shelf. Did it come on a truck from another factory? Was it manufactured in another country, trucked to an airport, flown cargo halfway across the world? Trucked to a storage facility, then trucked to the supermarket shelf?

Similarly, think about what happens when it leaves that shelf. Do you stick it in your car and drive it home? Do you walk it home? Do you take public transportation? Every single one of these choices has an impact, yet they are things most people never even consider.

We are fortunate enough to live a stones throw away from a supermarket, making our purchases very easy. But even when we lived further we still walked home, or would take public transportation home (while loaded with a granny cart and hiking backpack full of our purchases.) These decisions do have an impact. You do have the power to make a change with every single choice you make. Don't fall for colorful labeling, encouraging you to buy the imported item over the equal local one. Don't be afraid of spending an extra few minutes doing something slightly more complicated but that benefits the planet immensely (because really, CD does only take an extra two minutes a day, total. If even that. Certainly time saved from not having to schlep out all that diaper garbage every day!)

It's not for everyone, there is an ick factor. But what parent hasn't been spit up on, peed on, and pooped on already? It actually is possible to do this without dirtying your hands one bit. Plus, they're so darn cute!!

Edit: my mother corrected me, "we when [sic] had you, some people used cloth diapers, but not many. We were pretty counter culture in what we did then."