Holly Crap!

OK, OK,
I know, I just posted a few minutes ago, But I was playing around with the other options at Blogger and found the "STATS" option.

I sometimes get the felling that I"m writing this Blog and not a whole lot are out there reading it! The only way I have of telling is if I get a comment on a post.

But the "STATS" are telling me that people from all over the world are at least reading this thing! Here is a list of the numbers:
U.S 672
Russia 47
Germany 28
The Netherlands 16
Canada 13
France 10
U.K. 7
Latvia 7
Cadatia 6
Iran 6

Like I said "HOLLY CRAP!"

If you are new to my Blog, Please feel free to leave a comment, Even if it's just to say Hi. And I hope that you will come back to see how the worms are doing!

Tom

Where did they come from?

 Hey everyone,

The day after Thanksgiving. I decided to dump the compost tumblers and add the compost to the garden area. I have been working on layering material on the garden area in the hopes that I can plant through the material next spring (Lasagna gardening). My son Gerry had come out for Thanksgiving and and had stayed the night. And he was helping to move the compost.

If you are a regular reader, you know that I built two compost tumblers sometime ago  using a couple of 50 gallon drums. I load them up with all kinds of organic material and manure to "COOK" for a few weeks, turning the barrels every few days.

I had gotten 6 bales of rotting hay near the end of this past summer and when I got them back to the homestead, just dumped them on the ground near the worm beds. Using them as bedding in the beds. Its also a good sorce of carbin in compost making and it adds a loose material that allows for good air flow.

I place a tarp under the barrel and just dump the whole thing over and load it into a wheel barrow and then to the garden.

I do not put Worms in there, The tumbling action would kill most of them. But as the compost came out of the barrel, I saw 100's of worms in the mix! "WHERE DID THEY COME FROM"? The only thing I can think of is, as the hay lay on the ground, Worms from the surrounding area moved in and set up house! I picked a few out to make sure that they were "RED WIGGLERS" and found that most of them were adult breeders! A few were joined together (Making BABIES!) and I could see a lot of eggs! So this load of compost went into one of the Worm beds! As my friend Susan (e-i-e-i-omg.blogspot.com) said, "FREE RANGE WORMS"!!!
The invirorment must have been to their liking and the population exploded! They are in the Worm bed now.

On another note. As I said before, I dropped my camera and it stopped working. I went out and got a cheep one and I have been playing around with it some. (Ya get what you pat for!). Not a very good camera, But I hope to be able to get to the point where I can at least down some pictures in the future!

So that's all for this post.
Take to you later!
TOM

I'm the one who's stuffed!

Sorry it's been so long. But without a camera, and no pictures to post....Well!

Yesterday was a day of Family and Friends and......Lots of food!

We had 11 people for dinner and plenty of food. At the end of the meal, We were all ready for a nap!
We ate around 1300 and by 1600, most everyone had left and we cleaned up and put away the leftovers.
My son was the only one who stayed ( he spent the night) and we played cards and snaked on leftovers. But we all went to bed pretty early.

Today will be spent simmering the turkey bones down into stock. And I will have one of my favorite sandwiches (May 2 or 3!), Turkey on farm house white bread with lots of mayo and cranberry sauce! Is there a better sandwich? I think not! The day after Thanksgiving (and Christmas too!) is as good or better as the day of!

I hope everyone had a great day and that you were able to connect with those people that you do not see except for the Holidays!

I know that is not much of a post, but this will have to do for now.
Talk to you later
Tom

Score!

it was another long week-end at work! Saturday was 12 hrs, Sunday 13 and Monday,14 and with a 1 1/2 hour drive on top of that, time enough to get home, eat, sleep and do it all over again! But I was able to score a few things!
The manager/chef of the cafe at work, well he raises rabbits and he borough me two totes of rabbit manure! One 20 gallon and a 40 gallon one (It took the both of us to get that one in the back of my truck!). That's a lot of   Sh--! This is a great worm food, It can be placed into the beds right from the source! Because it does not produce heat as it breaks down. So it will not over heat the worms and they will move right in and start to PARTY!
Each day on my way to work, I drive past this house where they have been selling Pumpkins and Winter Squash. The fruit that does not sell and goes bad, they toss across the road for the deer to clean up. Well on my way home Monday, I stopped and picked up about 15 Winter Squash. This is also a good food source for the worms!
They really love this time of year, Apple/Pumpkin and Winter Squash harvest time! It all breaks down pretty quick and they can get into it pretty fast.
And the best part is......IT'S ALL FREE!!!!!
I will also be saving seed from the squash and will plant a big area of the back 40 next spring. If I'm lucky the deer will hit this area and leave my main garden alone!?
Well that's the story of the score I got this week.
Still no camera, so no pictures (Did you really want to see the rabbit manure?.....Didn't think so!).
So until next time, See ya.
Tom

I broke my camera!

Last Thursday was my my day to cook at Terri's and I was all set to try two new recipes ( "Apple bake pancakes w/bacon" and a new desert "Sugar cream pie". And as I got ready to take the first picture of putting the pie together, I DROP THE CAMERA!!! And it will no longer work! And it will probably cost more to fix it that to just go out and get a new one! Either way, Its not in the cards for anytime soon! DAM!
Anyway, the Pancake was great and the pie was pretty good too (Al tho, Next time I will add something like coconut or chocolate to it to give it a different dimension.
So this is a long week-end at work again! Overtime both Saturday and Sunday. So this is a short post. Sorry! And with no photo's, It will not be the last! DOUBLE DAM!!
Tom

Harvest - Worm casts

A few weeks ago one of my Blogging friends, Leigh over at "5 acres and a Dream" asked me to give a step - by -  step on how I harvest worm casts. I made this the day to do that. As you can see from the above photo, the fog was pretty heavy this morning! But by 10 am or so the sun had burned off the fog and the worms were calling.

 The way I do this is, I stop feeding the worms at one end of the bed and I do not add any water there. I stop feeding a few weeks before I want to harvest and I also do not add very much bedding to that end of the bed.

In this photo you can see I have pulled the bedding back from the compost that nearly fills the bed. By placing food at the other end of the bed and adding a lot more bedding, the worms move  to where the food and bedding are. This takes a few weeks. And the compost at this end is pretty dry and viable. All I had to do then was shovel the casts into a wheel barrow and take it to the garden!

I placed the apple peels and cores from when I made apple sauce in there and the worms moved right in. They love this time of year, Apple and Pumpkin harvest! The above photo shows the remains of the Apple peels. You can see a few worms, But the major numbers are right down in the mess! Here let me pull some of that out of the way so you can see the little guys at work!

There they are! Just doing their wormy thing (making babies and producing CASTS!). As I got down near the bottom of the bed, I started to see some worms (it was wetter down near the bottom) and there were a lot of wire worms in there. That's the young guys and gals eating and growing until they too will start to lay eggs!

After I get the compost out, I put new food and bedding back into this end of the bed! And bedding is the one thing that you can not have too much of! BEDDING IS OUR FRIEND!!! I used a couple bales of rotten hay that I picked up at curb side in town a couple months ago. Its been sitting out by the bed's and has continued to break down. The advantage to this is that being on the ground and getting rained on, it has attracted other worms and thoes I found went into the beds with the rest.

Here is a hand full from the second bed. Sorry the photo is not very good (To close). Here, let me out them down and try for a better shot!

That's better! I placed them on a paving stone that I put on top of the bed cover to keep the wind from blowing it off!  there are a lot of them! I know that a lot of you out there name all of your animals, But there is no way I could keep all the name straight!

And this garden bed has been top dressed with worm casts and the holes you see are the garlic I planted today. Covered them up and tomorrow Mother Nature will water them in for me. Rain in the forecast!

And this is the second garden bed that I top dressed. As you can see there is one lone plant in there. Its a lettuce plant that decided to Wait until now to germinate . Do not know if it will make it or not. The night time temps are getting pretty low.

So Leigh, That's how I do It! What do you think? Not to hard!
Tom