Global Greenie

My handmade wood worm bin rotted through fairly quickly, so I’ve reverted to a plastic bin system again. And now I’ve become a vermiculture model. Yes, those are my legs, hands, and worms in five of the photos. My buddy and neighbor, Will, is the founder of Grow and Make.

I hope you got a chance to do something for Earth Day. My employer had a number of cool activities going on, but I opted for the tour of the vermiculture program. Eventually the worm bins will process about 50 pounds of scraps from the cafeteria per day!

This is just one of the bins. Josh and his team have already built several from recycled wood. He thinks they’ll switch to plastic, though. Our climate is not suited for wood bins (as I recently found with my own, which I’ll describe in a future post).

Another cool thing at my campus is that these bins are located within the Learning Garden and any group can apply for a plot or get involved in some way. I’m a librarian and trying to think of a library-themed spot or some way to get the library involved. Do you have any ideas?

There’s a new layer on the worm bin.  I built it in about 1/2 hour from recycled fence posts.

I had to add a “third story” because the worms slow down in winter and our food scraps were building up faster than the worms could consume.

And I hate to admit it, but my bin has mice living inside.  They’re cute, but somehow I feel like they don’t really belong.  Are they eating the worms or do they just roll around in the scraps harmlessly?

It looks like Coca-Cola going to expand in Oregon and start bottling filtered water from the Willamette.  Does anyone besides me think it’s a little odd to bottle a river which is partly a Superfund Site?

No one who’s “green” should be drinking bottled water anyway.  Thankfully, Oregon’s added water bottles to the existing Bottle Bill, so beginning in January, there will be a five cent deposit on each one.  According to the Oregon DEQ, this will, “reduce the roughly 125 million water bottles reaching state landfills.”

I located a FAQ page for the Oregon Bottle Bill and the changes coming within the next two months.  Besides the addition of water bottles, I’m happy to see that stores will be required to take back all cans and bottles, regardless of place purchased.  It’s always frustrating to try to recycle your microbrews at . . . say . . . the Safeway four blocks away, and their machine rejects them because they were purchased at Fred Meyer.

But back to Dasani, and other bottled waters: Maybe you’d like to join me and take the pledge.  Don’t buy bottled water.

Via Lelo.

Note: I have been a pescetarian for more than a decade and would never consider eating some of the things I once consumed. I’ve italicized the ones I’ve tried.

1. Venison (My college friend killed the deer and made hamburger patties.  I found it pretty gross.)
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros (among my favorites)
4. Steak tartare (French class, high school)
5. Crocodile (no, but we served alligator at our rehearsal dinner)
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue (as recently as a week and a half ago)
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush (even make it)
11. Calamari (love it)
12. Pho
13. Peanut butter and jelly sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle (white? yes.)
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns (was expecting a dessert — yuck)
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries (I “pick” them with my mouth because K likes to see me eat like a bear.)
23. Foie gras (bless me Goosey, for I have sinned)
24. Rice and beans (so many ways)
25. Brawn or head cheese (again, ick)
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper (my tolerance is HIGH)
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda (I will eat this now that I know about it)
31. Wasabi peas (Curse you Trader Joes for discontinuing the peanuts)
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi (mango lassi and sweet lassi)
34. Sauerkraut (love)
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly
39. Gumbo (make it)
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu (but I’ve seen light fixtures made from them)
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut (I’m from the South.  We sold them to raise money for the prom.)
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal (so incredibly gross on so many levels)
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV (as in — only one?)
59. Poutine (I was afraid to google this).
60. Carob chips (disappointing)
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads (ew)
63. Kaolin (rocks?)
64. Currywurst
65. Durian (on my list)
66. Frogs’ legs (I’ve heard it tastes like . . . )
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake (all of the above, including a crab beignet)
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain (I am an expert cooking these)
70. Chitterlings or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini (overrated)
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill (one of my colleagues in NC brought in a possum dish, dyed green for St. Patrick’s.  I passed.)
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky (my favorite is Man Pocky!)
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam (also my Halloween costume one year)
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish (I like my catfish like I like . . . )
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake
101. Pie at the Portland Pie-Off (oh okay, Lelo added this one, but it should be on the list — I’ll be there!)

On Saturday I lifted the top section off of my worm bin.  I’d been placing food scraps, some leaves, paper, and cardboard in that section for several weeks and noticed worms had indeed moved from the bottom section to the top.  Sadly, not all of them moved.  There must have been some nutrients worth eating in the bottom section because the majority of the worms stayed.  But the top was almost full, and I didn’t have the time to build a third section of this stackable system.

I emptied the castings (along with the worms) into a large bucket, walked around the yard, and placed a scoopfull of poop and worms at the base of each of our plants.  I didn’t know if these kinds of worms could survive in the earth instead of our compost, but didn’t have the patience to hand-pick tens of thousands of worms out of their rich, dark byproduct.

Soon I got my answer.  The robins practically swarmed the place this weekend.  Every bird loaded up beakfuls of worms.  It looked like a spaghetti feed.  Small birds, affectionately called LBJ (little brown jobs) also partook.  Every avian was exhibiting chicken behavior, scratching the lumps, breaking them apart, and finding the goodies.

I never intended for the worms to become a meal, but that’s nature, I suppose.  Now let’s see what the vermicompost does for the plants.

Meanwhile, I dumped all of the newer compost from the top section into the bottom of the bin.  The cycle starts again.  There were enough worms in the top section that I have no worries that they’ll proliferate in the bottom.

I feel ashamed to admit that I subscribe to our local paper. It seems incredibly wasteful, especially since I follow the news online pretty closely. And I felt double-guilty this year on Earth Day when our paper arrived in this “product-pushing” plastic bag.

Brawny had the nerve to package a single paper towel in tons of plastic and include it with newspaper delivery on Earth Day.

Although I’ve had worms (I mean vermicomposted) for about a year, I’ve been wanting to build a wooden home for them since before Tony G., my friend and fellow librarian, gave me the worms already living in their Tupperware container.  Tony warned me that mice sneaked into the plastic bin when it was in his house.  Needless to say, I kept the Tupperware outside and the mice away.

I had no idea that I could build the worms’ new home in just a few hours, but I did, roughly based on this plan.  Here’s a photo of me dumping the little guys into their stackable condo.  In a few days I’ll post a few pictures of the finished bin.