Young Violet (2) returned to the field, sans siblings. She seemed to have fun on her first garden visit, on a sunny afternoon—today’s cool, cloudy, wet conditions didn’t faze her in the least. Interacting with earthworms occupied a good hour…
While Libby and Lynn dug carrots, Violet helpfully and with great interest relocated disturbed worms. A hands-on biology lesson, an early pre-school start… (Looking back, for the most part, I’d have much rather grown up in a field than in a classroom!)
yikes bikes! look at those gloves!
speaking of worms…. do you do any vermicomposting?
L.Bo Marie: Unfortunately, no vermicomposting so far. It’s something I’ve wanted to do from the beginning, but I haven’t figured out how to scale it. That’s the thing with tiny farming: 2 acres like I’m on is a REALLY big garden, and things like composting, rainwater collection and so forth have to be done on quite a big scale to be of use to a significant part of the garden. For example, to produce enough compost to spread an inch or two over the entire garden would take something like another acre or more of compost windrows (I did the calculations a while back). Many improvements are pretty big projects, as far as labor, cost and then an ongoing maintenance commitment. So, you add things carefully as you go… (I’m always thinking that I could do more, but at the same time, I don’t get too worked up about it!)
@ mike: yeah, it would be hard to do a large scale esp. in your climate- the winter wouldn’t provide the same large amount of OM (organic matter) that you’d have to process in the summer months… let alone the cost of insulating. There’s a guy in the area who does trenches of vermicompost alongside his plantings- I don’t know how well that would translate to a larger scale (it’s just his kitchen garden) But he’s had some neat results with it. We only do small scale (a few tupperware bins in the basement) to process our kitchen scraps- we don’t bother with the garden stuff (yet… baby steps!)
@L.Bo Marie: As I have read Worm Farming is also called vermicomposting. You can check this site for more tips: Worm Farm