Written by astoner on 04 January 2008
In the interest of keeping my topics driftless (random) I’m not going to post about worms today. One of my interests is photography and when I got a Nikon D80 last year I got even more interested in taking high quality pictures. This is a great camera. In the past year I’ve really been trying to improve my photography. I’ll be reviewing some of the books I’ve been using in a future post(s).
Getting more in to photography has also involved getting more equipment, or more realistically, wanting to get more equipment. Additional lighting and backdrops could easily cost more than the camera, if everything was bought commercially.
That’s where the internet comes in, and a good site for DIY projects related to photography is, what else, but DIYPhotography.net. The one project I’ve tried so far is making a backdrop. The directions can be found here and they are very easy to follow and well illustrated with photos.
The photo is my first attempt at my own backdrop and I am very pleased with the outcome. Now all I need to do it get some models in front of it.
I usually try to involve my boys in my projects as long as it can be done safely. So I had each of the boys rubber band up one of their new white t-shirts that they got for Christmas and threw them in the dye as well. Now they each have a blue tie-dyed that they made themselves.
It was a great evening project and I think I’m hooked! I’m already planning the next colors that I’m hoping to do!
Allen
Written by astoner on 02 January 2008
After setting up my four worm experiment and telling my family about it, they informed me that Shrek the Third has a bonus feature that talks about being green, not like Shrek, but Earth friendly green, by making a small worm bin out of a soda bottle. I haven’t actually seen the bonus feature, but thought it was great that it got my two boys interested in setting up their own worm bins. We didn’t have any empty soda bottles around so I helped them setup bins using some old snack good containers.
Each boy setup their own bin with my help. We tried to layer the different materials so they can see how the worms mix up the layers. The layers from bottom to top were card board, composted alpaca manure, grapefruit peel, shredded office paper, more card board, fiber egg carton and finally some more shredded paper on the top. All were nicely soaked before putting in the container. I also set up an bin for myself using the same container, but instead of the grapefruit used some chicken feed. I didn’t want to use the chicken feed in the boys as I’m not sure how the worms will do with it.
Then came the fun part, searching the existing bin for that specific worm! Actually I wasn’t too particular but the boys were, they had to be just the right ones, which usually meant the biggest they could find. This was actually an educational experience for me. We actually wound up dumping the entire bin/bucket out and sorting through it, hopefully the major disruption doesn’t set it back too far. I do think I finally found a worm cocoon and there were lots of young worms in the bin.
I did convince the boys to only include four worms in their bins, so now I have a total of four different four worm experiments going on. It will be interesting to see how these work in the smaller containers.
We did drill several holes at the top of the containers for air, but the bottom is still closed so hopefully not too much water accumulates there. I was a little disappointed to learn that the bonus feature on the Shrek movie didn’t talk about cover the 
outside of the container with anything. Worms like it dark so when using a clear container it should be covered for the comfort of the worms. Our containers worked nicely for wrapping a piece of newspaper around them to keep them dark. This will be nice because we’ll hopefully be able to monitor the progress of the bin some with a minimal amount of disturbance.
Allen
Written by astoner on 31 December 2007
I have been following Bentley’s blog on vermicomposting over at Red Worm Composting
and thought it would be interesting to try his four worm experiment. I’m not nearly as experienced as him on vermicomposting but I thought the experiment would help expand my experience with a worm bin.
My setup is very rudimentary, my first bin is just a 3 gallon bucket picked up at the local bakery. I filled it up with soaked cardboard and some fiber egg cartons and some old fruit we had around the house, I then added apx 180 red wiggler worms I bought at the bait shop. It’s now been active for several months and I have successfully had cocoons hatch because I have found the young worms, although I don’t think I’ve clearly identified any cocoons in the bedding. (As an aside note here, my wife thought I was nuts when I got excited about seeing the little baby worms.)
My four worm experiment bin is similar to my first bin, a three gallon bucket filled with soaked card board and fiber egg cartons as well as some shredded office paper I had laying around. For food I put in some potato peels and old peaches and sprinkled some crushed eggs shells in too.
It would have probably been better to let the bin age longer than the three days that it did, but I was a little impatient to get the trial going. I pulled two young worms and two larger worms to put into the new bin on 12/30/2007. Some reading I’ve done implies that this might not work because there won’t be enough worms in the bin to reproduce effectively. I think it will work, assuming I can maintain a viable bin environment, it will just take longer to reach a critical mass of worm population than starting with more worms would take.
I will try to get some pictures of my bins posted in the near future. Should be interesting to see how this experiment turns out.
Written by astoner on 27 December 2007
Since I became a father I’ve become more interested in the future and what we will be leaving for a children. I could go into a long rant here about the economic future of the USA, but that’s not what I want to focus on today. I want to focus on renewable energy from an individuals stand point.
I’ve long been interested in renewable energy. When we built our house four years ago I looked into all sorts of ideas, but due to cost constraints couldn’t utilize any actual renewable energies initially. What we did do was put a lot of conservation effort into the construction of the house. We built the house out of insulated concrete forms, use an on-demand hot water heater and dual flush toilets to save water. From checking with both our propane supplier and electric company it does seem that we are living a little more efficiently the last couple years. We have not made any drastic changes, adjusting the thermostat a degree or two saves some, switching to more compact fluorescent light bulbs to reduct electric usage. I do know we’ve added more electrical loads and have still reduced our electrical usage, but I’d like to see the reductions continue or getting bigger because I can still attribute a lot of the savings on the milder weather.
The cost of our propane has gone up every year for the past four years and our electicity will be going up for the first time this coming year. In an effort to keep our utility budget the same we’re going to need to be making some additional changes. I’m hoping that the heat grabber I referred to in my introductory post will save a couple gallons during the winter, but it will still take quite a while to save the cost of building it, but financial reasons aren’t the only reason I’m interested in doing it. Just reducing the amount of fossil fuels will be beneficial.
I’m also looking into a grid-tie wind turbine which should hopefully significantly reduce our grid electrical use.
As energy prices continue to increase it is becoming much more economical for the individual to look into generating some of their energy. This doesn’t even take into account the reduction of pollution and dependency on foreign oil.
