OK, this was definitely not one of my finer moments... hours... weeks. However, I have found that our moments of greatest uncleverness often make for the best reading for everybody else, so here we go. Grin.

( It all began when I thought that right before it snowed 15 inches would be a good time to pull both cars out of the garage and do a huge mucking-out of the garage and getting rid of all the remaining junk in there.... )

So at this point the wood rack is about half-empty, not counting the wood that was too big to burn without splitting it further first.



The back row has a lot of very small wood because we had a bunch of small trees cleared off the back lot line last spring and this is the wood left over from that. It remains to be seen if it's dry enough to be burned yet or if it needs to be cured a 2nd year. I think it probably is.



I have gotten pretty good at sorting out the leavings of the wood stove for processing. First I scoop out the ashes and sift it through a slotted cat litter scoop (not shown) into the plastic bucket. This produces a nice white or light gray ash that has few charcoal lumps in it. The lumps go into the small bucket on left.  Once finished those go back to get burned again. Meanwhile I have been pouring a gallon of water into the plastic bucket each time I add ashes. This should theoretically cause lye water to come out the spigot at the bottom.

Unfortunately the ashes seem to be very absorbant because no water has come out of the spigot yet and 3 gallons have now been poured in. At some point I will have to just keep adding water until it finally coughs some up.. or overflows. LOL

My mother told me that she could not have a Live Journal herself because it'd just end up being an endless litany of all the chores she did each day. This kinda falls into that category but I thought it was fun ;-)

The other day I spent a couple hours sorting out literally 6 years of accumulated small plastic bags into "unholey" bags which are good for cleaning the catbox, "holey" bags which are structurally sound and can be used as trash can liners in the bathroom, and then the duds that are good for nothing but recycling.



This bag holder near the catbox is where the ones with no holes are used. They're great for keeping the scoopable litter cleaned out on a day by day basis.



Here's the bagholder for the bathroom trash can liners, well-camouflaged against the wall of the broom closet upstairs.



In case I run out of a type of bag the refills are kept in the basement, labeled appropriately. Before I spent the 2 hours watching TV and sorting them out, they were mixed together in the box.



These 2 large bags were full of ones too holey to re-use or the wrong size for any of my regular uses. I took these to the grocery store and placed them in the bag recycling bin there yesterday. Woohoo!

Hello,

One of the projects I did in the last several days was that I did a "spring cleaning" of sorts on my vermicomposting farm. This is a small compost bin in which worms that eat rotting vegetable matter (red wrigglers are the breed in this case) are allowed to breed and thrive on kitchen scraps. It can be done outdoors all year round in climates that do not get below freezing, or in the basement in cold climates. My worm bin is an expandable worm tower which really isn't as scary as it sounds.



There are various different styles of bins. The idea with this type is that there are several layers, each with a mesh bottom. As the compostables in the lower layers are completely consumed, the worms migrate upward leaving pure compost in the lower bins to be harvested. Therefore the top tray is always the "working tray" and a new one is added periodically. My bin is about 1 year old and I still only have one layer on top. This is because I screwed up and underfed them at one point and they consumed all the newspaper lining the bottom of their tray, causing the finished compost to fall into the worm tea collection trough underneath. Er... don't ask about worm tea. You don't want to know. At any rate, that means my first harvest of compost came out of there instead of from an actual tray, so I opted to simply clean up the existing tray and put it back on over the emptied trough.



Here's a tray of fresh clean bedding. It lies on top of a layer of newspaper as mentioned above. The bedding itself consists mainly of fiber (shredded paper in this case but it can also be coir fiber, coconut husk shreds or whatever is cheap and available). Mixed in with the shreds is some black soil or other grit for their digestion (and to contribute needed microorganisms). It has to be exactly the right level of dampness. I use a pump sprayer to add water evenly, then mix it and feel it with my hand to make sure it's perfect.



I keep this cookie jar of pre-prepared dirt. It is used potting soil mixed with crushed dead leaves and some dryer lint. The lint is to provide fiber because I also include this mixture when I feed the worms their dead vegetables.



There is also a smaller jar of lint that is just the spare lint for making more dirt mix later.



On the new bedding I place some nice black soil containing my worms. Then when I feed them I scoop a hole in the dirt and bury about a handful of rotten or wilted veggies at a time. There is no odor really, though part of that is being clever about what kind of veggies go in. Broccoli is not suggested! After a few weeks the dirt will have expanded to hide a lot of the bedding. Once the dirt has filled the tray, but before the worms have resorted to eating the newspaper underneath it, I place another new tray on top for them to migrate to and stop putting food in the lower tray. This is the part where I messed up this last time... have to add new tray a lot more quickly next time. LOL



This was my first black dirt harvest... my worms made this and it is incredibly fertile, good for spooning into house plants or indoor grown vegetables. The mixing bowls shown are about medium size.



Here's what one of the trays looks like after the dirt is harvested out of it. It's ready for a good scrubbing with a stiff brush in the utility sink.



All done for now!

I finally found out some really solid information about recycling plastic bags. I had noticed the local Wal-Mart and also a local grocery store had a public bin available for plastic bag recycling but there was no information as to what was considered recyclable for those. I had assumed only their own bags, but then I learned about this great website, http://www.plasticbagrecycling.org/.

If you click on "Consumer" they'll let you put in your zip code to see the names of businesses with plastic bag recycling bins in your area. Then they have another page with really explicit information on exactly what bags can be recycled. Wow, it's way more extensive than I had feared! For example, zip loc bags can be recycled if you cut off the hard part of the plastic. So can the plastic bags from inside cereal boxes. Excellent!

I already re-use most retail type plastic sacks. The standard sized ones without any holes are for catbox cleaning, and the ones with holes but basically in one piece are for lining the bathroom trash can. Anything bigger becomes a 13-gallon trash can liner in the kitchen. Happily the recyclables list includes many kinds I've never had a use for, including store bags that are very small or ripped to shreds.

I'm taking bets on how long it'll be before I first succeed in remembering to bring my recyclables to Wal-mart ;-) I have an old compact fluorescent bulb that has gone dim that needs to go there for recycling too.

Last night I posted on Craigslist that I had a free half-bag each of Iams adult cat and dog food and by this morning I had 3-4 emailed responses from Ashland-area folks wanting it. So I phoned them back in order and within a half-hour someone had agreed to come pick it up, which they did. For stuff like that, Craigslist just works!