This is a super late post. My sincere apologies to Malissa.

You may have already come across this, but Composting 101 gives a great overview
of compost bins, the 411, and of course the do's and don'ts.

Above are some other great books to consider.

Last weekend I took my bike to run a small errand to the grocery store. It was fun and it encouraged me to not buy so much because I had to fit all of my items in the baskets on the bike and in my backpack. It was also some nice exercise and it made for an enjoyable and leisurely tour through the neighborhood. Usually when I take my car I am in a hurry and don't really appreciate my surroundings. We also made it to the farmer's market around closing time and were able to get a great deal on some items that the vendors wanted to get rid of before packing up.

I had a fun weekend at my bridal shower and did my best to "live lighter" that day. The eating part was out the window since I had a meats galore meal. However, I did save all the drink bottles and wrapping paper from my gifts--took them home & recycled them. Parties generate so much waste! I'd have no problem if people gave me gifts wrapped in newspaper. One friend who is very environmentally conscious bought me gifts that were only sustainable and fair trade. I stayed over in a nice hotel and was pleased that their toiletry packaging was made from cornstarch. I even kept to the 5 minute shower rule! I was also able to carpool with friends for a short distance. Better than nothing, right?

grass fed beef

This is my dinner for today! a hamburger made of grass fed beef from Niman Ranch.

I didn't know about Niman Ranch until my teacher (Phil) mentioned it in class. It is run by family farmers and a practitioner of sustainable agriculture. I think it is located somewhere in Marin county too, so it's local as well!

I know you can't see it very well, but that's about 500 worms wiggling around in the middle of my food scraps. Woohooo! I've got worms!

Hurray!!! I've got worms!

Okay, the title sounds kinda gross, but it's true. I finally got my composting worms in the mail yesterday and quickly put the little buggers to work. I think I followed what most of the vermiculture do-it-yourself websites suggest pretty well. I lined the bottom of my compost bucket with damp shredded paper, dumped my food scraps in with a handful of potting soil, placed the worms in the mix and covered them with more damp shredded paper. So all good right?

Wrong! These little wigglers did not want to stay put. After about 15 minutes I had oodles of worms working their way up and out of the little holes I drilled for ventilation. 20 minutes of worm wrangling later I tried covering my newly acquired bird bait up again with a little more potting soil and wet paper...and waited. No surprise, they still weren't settled. So, I tried what I should have done in the first place (and what I recomend for anyone else who tries this). One site suggested just covering the pile with a whole sheet of dampened newspaper and placing a light directly overhead. The light encourages the worms to burrough deeper into the compost pile, in theory at least. I didn't want to bring the bin inside so I just made do with the patio light outside. By now it was about 12:30am so I decided to pull it in for the night and hope that $30 worth of worms would stay put overnight. Hell, I'd be happy if I only kept $10 bucks worth at that point.

After a somewhat anxcious day at work wondering if I just blew $30 buck, I came home and quickly checked my compost pile...and wah da ya know...I still have worms. I'm not sure how many really, but they seemed to have finally settled. I did have to round up a couple stagglers, but for the most part I think the last technique worked. Now I just hope they're hungry enough to eat all our food scraps.

Mr. McCloud

Hello Everyone,

It appears that Nancy is our only participant who submitted their entry in on time. After much discussion with Evelyn, we would like to extend the due date to the end of the 21 days. We also understand that some of our participants have other things going on. Our project is only successful with group participation, so we're highly encouraging everyone to submit an entry. However, we understand that this is not fair to Nancy, so we will give her a movie ticket for her dedication and diligence. We hope to receive a submission from each and every one of you. ;)

Denise & Evelyn