Moving day for worms
I’m new to vermiculture, raising worms that is. I got started last March, thanks to a friend willing to part with some of her worms, thanks Lib. At this point my bin has too many worms, so I hope to gift some soon.
This is how the bins normally look, stacked one inside the other. The top bin is for worms and fresh food, always covered, worms are shy and don't care for light.
Most of the time the middle bin is empty, but now I'm moving the top bin to the middle, worms and all. The old middle bin, now empty, moves to the top position, and gets fresh food. The top and middle bins have holes in the bottom to let the worms climb up to get the fresh food, and the holes let the worm juice flow through to the bottom bin. In a few months most of the worms will have migrated to the top bin, I'll harvest the worm castings, and the middle bin will be empty again.
The bottom bin is the sump for the worm juice.
More than five gallons of undiluted worm juice. Good job worms!
Fresh eats for the red wigglers.
Buttonhooks
Buttonhooks are handy tools. Yesterday, my old cow Gert (Gert is the brown cow in the photo below) got a piece of wire wrapped around her hoof. I’m not sure when or how this wire ended up in the pasture, but it must have been some time ago. The wire ran around her ankle twice, went under the wraps and down between her toes, under the hoof and up the back of the hoof, looping again through the wire around the ankle. I was amazed it could get that way on its own, and it was not going to come off easily. My squeeze chute is currently at its other home, so I had to crowd the cows into a pen, and get Gert locked in an alley. Of course the leg with the wire was on the inside of the alley, and I had to get down on the ground and work from under the fence boards. After she got tired of kicking each time I touched her hoof, I was able to work the wire loose, and unwrap it with the buttonhook.
Happy Winter Solstice!
I'm looking forward to longer, and warmer days. We had a low of 16 degrees inside the high tunnel this morning, but the vegetables stayed warm enough under their row covers.
Here's a warmer shot taken late last summer. Our bull Nabisco is spending some quality time with the Longhorn cows next door. I think there may be some belted Longhorns running around the pasture next spring.
