Down to Earth

by Rhonda Hetzel

  Carbon is dry waste like straw, newspaper, cardboard and dried leaves. These items should also be as small as possible.

  Aeration is simply moving the nitrogen and carbon materials around to introduce air into the mix. You could do this by turning the compost over with a pitchfork, by using a tumbler that spins the compost around or by building your compost heap around a wide plumber’s pipe that would allow air to go deep within the heap. Generally, it’s best to turn the compost with a fork every week or two. The more air you get into the mix, the faster you’ll make compost.

  Of course, you could also enlist the help of your chickens. If you have an enclosed space for them – a yard that is fenced or surrounded with chicken wire – throw all your lawn clippings, straw, vegetable peelings and scraps, shredded paper, garden waste and old vegetables from the garden in there. The chickens will eat some of it but they’ll also walk on it, scratch it around the yard, and leave their valuable manure on it. In about six weeks’ time, you’ll have a healthy compost.

  Here are the steps to make good compost:

  You’ll need 25 per cent wet/green nitrogen waste such as lawn clippings or vegetable scraps, and 75 per cent dry carbon waste like straw, dried leaves or shredded newspaper.

  Add the ingredients in layers – two layers of carbon then one layer of nitrogen – and mix it together.

  Add some manure or comfrey/yarrow leaves.

  Wet this with some water.

  Mix.

  Shape into a neat pile and leave it.

  Add to the pile as often as you can, making sure you always have more dry than wet waste.

  Keep the heap moist, not wet, and turn it as often as possible.

  Compost troubleshooting

  If the compost has a terrible smell, you’ve got too much green wet waste (nitrogen) in there. Add a handful of lime and some shredded newspaper, straw or other dry carbon waste and mix it in.

  If the compost looks dry and isn’t decomposing, add more wet/green waste, or a sprinkling of water from the hose, and mix. A half-bucket of comfrey tea or some animal manure will help a compost heap activate and start decomposing.

  If you have a lot of wet weather, cover your compost heap with a tarp or plastic to keep some of the rain out. It should always be moist, but not dripping wet.

  Worm farming is another way to compost your kitchen scraps, cut down the amount of food waste you send to the local landfill dump, and increase the fertility of your garden soil. Compost worms produce castings (waste products), and from these worm castings you can make worm tea, which is a great fertiliser. You can also mix the castings into your topsoil, which will help to make your soil fertile and alive with beneficial microbes. A worm farm is a container with bedding made up of either straw, coconut coir, shredded paper, or a mixture of all of them. The worms live in the bedding, and feed on food scraps and various microbes that also live in the bedding, helping to decompose the scraps.

  You can buy ready-made worm farms at a plant nursery or large hardware stores if you prefer not to make your own. They’re a system of black plastic boxes and trays and come with complete instructions and, often, a bag of worms. We built our own worm farm in an old bathtub.

  Where to put your worm farm

  I live in a fairly dry and sometimes hot environment but when it rains, it can be torrential. If you live in a moderate climate, you’ll be able to keep your covered worm farm under a tree. If you’re in a cold place, it will have to go somewhere protected from the cold. If it’s really hot where you live, your worm farm will need to be in the coolest place. The idea is to provide a fairly stable temperature, with moist conditions. If the temperature is too hot or too cold, the worms will either die or they’ll escape to find a better home. When you start your worm farm, monitor it to make sure the worms are okay and like where you’ve put them.

  Making your own worm farm

  When I first got my compost worms, I kept them in a couple of polystyrene boxes. They were happy enough but then they started reproducing and I realised they needed more room. So we bought an old bathtub from the local recycle shop for $20.

  If you can’t find a bathtub, any large plastic tub would be fine. In addition to your bathtub or large container, you’ll need:

  a plastic tap you can screw into the container to allow the liquid to pour out

  an adapter and elbow to attach the tap to the tub

  about two buckets of road gravel

  a sheet of microfilter, weed mat or tightly woven shade cloth

  lots of compost or good garden soil

  aged animal manure

  shredded computer paper, newspaper or cardboard, straw or hay

  coverings like hessian bags, thick wads of newspaper or cardboard

  covering for the tub to keep the rodents and rain out (such as a corrugated roofing sheet) kitchen scraps

  our old friend, the compost worm: about 2000–10 000 reds, tigers or blues (not earthworms).

  ACTION PLAN: Making a worm farm

  * Fill a wheelbarrow with water, add two tablespoons of molasses and mix well. This will help feed the beneficial bacteria that will live in the bedding with the worms. Place the dry materials like the shredded paper and straw in it to soak while you prepare the container.

  * If you’re using a bathtub, locate the old tub outlet and screw in the plastic tap attachment and elbow. Then screw the tap onto the attachment and make sure the tap opens easily. If you’re not using a bathtub, make a hole in the side of the container and screw the tap in.

  * Using an angle grinder, cut slits in the bathtub about 5 cm from the base, to allow air in. If you’re using a plastic container, cut holes with a sharp knife on the lower sides, 5 cm from the base. Although the worms will be living in the bedding, it needs to have air in it or they will die. When you’ve added the slits, place the container where it will sit permanently. Make sure the tap is in a convenient place and that you can put a bucket or watering can underneath to collect the worm liquid.

  * When the tap is in place, add the gravel. The gravel provides good drainage so that the bottom of the bathtub doesn’t fill with water and drown some of the worms. When the gravel is in, cover it with the filter sheet or weed mat to prevent the worm castings mixing into the gravel.

  * Now you’re ready to start placing the bedding. You need to make a nice organic bed for your worms, one they’ll happily eat, reproduce and live in. The better the conditions you give them, the faster they’ll reproduce and the more castings you’ll have for your garden. Wring out the paper/straw/hay bedding and put it into the container. Empty what is left of the molasses water onto your compost heap. Top the bedding with lots of compost and manure and mix it all together. Place a container under the open tap to catch the liquid as it drains out.

  * The bedding should be about 40 per cent water. A good test is to wring out a handful of bedding material. If you can only get a couple of drops of water, that’s great. If water drips out, that’s too much and you’ll need to drain the bedding to remove some of the water before placing the worms in there.

  * When you’ve got the bedding in place and it’s mixed well with just enough water, place some finely chopped food, such as stale bread or kitchen scraps, on the bedding and mix it in. Now put the worms on top of the bedding, and they’ll burrow in themselves. Worms need a dark environment, so cover the bed with moist hessian or cardboard/paper, and place a rain-proof cover over the worm farm.

  BE CAREFUL

  If you’re going to add animal manure, like cow or horse manure, to your worm farm, ask if the animals have recently been wormed when you’re buying it. If the manure is contaminated with worm medication, it will kill your worms.

  Feeding the worms

  Feed the worms about once a week. Whatever you give your worms to eat needs to be finely cut or processed in the food processor. The faster they feed, the bigger they grow, and the more they reproduce – and the more worms and castings you’ll have. Check how much food is in the
bedding and feed accordingly – you don’t want the feed sitting in the worm farm too long. Remember, worms eat the food you give them, the microbes you can’t see that live in the bedding, and the bedding itself. Worms and the microbes will eat anything that was once alive, so give them your kitchen scraps, old dishcloths, hair, worn-out cotton or wool, tea leaves or tea bags, coffee grounds, old bread, eggs, finely crushed eggshells, shredded wet paper or wet cardboard. Do not give them too many citrus peels or onions, although they can take a small amount. As with the compost, avoid meat, fish and dairy products. Feed a variety of food to get the best possible worm castings. When you feed the worms, dig the food into the bedding so it’s not available to wandering rats, mice or cockroaches.

  WORM REPRODUCTION

  When they’re mating, worms will produce about twelve babies per adult per week. You’ll know that they’re mating when you see little worm capsules in the bedding. Each capsule contains around four babies. The babies hatch after about thirty days and are ready to breed about two months later.

  Worm farm maintenance

  The worms must remain moist, because if they dry out they’ll escape or die. Check the moisture level by poking your finger into the worm farm every few days. If it feels dry, add some water. Make sure the drainage holes at the bottom of the container remain open so that water can freely drain out.

  If the worm farm starts to smell a little, you’re feeding them too much. Cut back the food and sprinkle a little lime over the worm farm. That should sweeten it up again. With a fork or a little claw rake, fluff up the bedding once a month to make sure there’s enough air. Worms hate to be disturbed and they don’t like light. Apart from this maintenance and feeding, leave them alone to do their thing.

  Harvesting the castings

  Worm castings are worm manure. They contains microbes, bacteria and nutrients in a water-soluble form that is easily taken up by plants. It is a very gentle and beneficial fertiliser. As you feed the worms they’ll excrete the castings into the bedding. After a few months the bedding and everything else you added in the beginning will be eaten and you’ll be left with a bed of dark-brown castings. They don’t smell and they look like little balls of fine soil.

  About two weeks before harvesting, start feeding the worms on one side of the farm only. They will all move to that side to feed. After a couple of weeks, look through the castings on the non-feeding side with the aid of your trowel to make sure there are no worms in there, then fill a container with the castings. When you have all the castings out, refill that side of the worm farm with bedding. When the worms have settled down again, start feeding on the new bedding side and harvest the remaining castings on the other side.

  Worm liquid and worm tea

  Liquid is released from the food you add to the worm farm and when you water down the bedding to keep the worms moist, that water filters down through the castings and animal manure and drains out into the bucket you put under the container. Dilute that worm liquid in water to the colour of weak black tea and apply to your seedlings, or undiluted to your garden plants.

  To make worm tea from castings, scrape about a quarter of a bucket of castings from the top of the farm, or from the container you harvested, and soak them in water for a few hours. Dilute this with water to the colour of weak black tea. The microbes in the tea will stay active for about fifteen hours, so apply it within that time.

  I love rain. I love knowing it’s watering our vegetables, being harvested from the roof and stored in our water tanks. Setting up a rain-harvesting system can be as simple or sophisticated as you like, but if you’re growing your own vegetables and fruit and you want it to be a sustainable system, you should think about storing a substantial amount of water. Water is precious and your efforts at harvesting it will allow you to keep your plants going for a while longer if there is no rain, before you have to rely on town water or the plants die.

  If you have stockpile cupboards inside that will see your family through a crisis, water barrels containing harvested water will fit right in with that way of thinking. Just like your stockpile, your rainwater can be used throughout the year, but that water will also be there to use more sparingly in a crisis.

  We installed our first water tank – a 5000-litre steel tank – as soon as we moved into our house fourteen years ago. A few years ago, when our government decided to encourage all of us to save water, rebates came in and we bought a 10 000-litre poly tank. Those two tanks have not been empty at the same time since we installed the second one. We only use the water in our tanks for the garden, the animals and outside cleaning.

  It will cost some money to buy the materials, but over time you’ll recoup that cost because you won’t use as much tap water. It’s also an environmentally sound practice. Instead of wasting the water that would go down the storm-water drainage system, or into a creek or river, you’ll capture that water and use it when there is no rain.

  Water tanks come in all shapes and sizes. There are poly tanks and steel tanks, all with food-grade lining, that can fit into just about any space. They’re usually round but some are oval, and some are like a wine-cask bladder that will sit, out of sight, under decks. You’d be well advised to buy the largest tank you can afford, depending on the rainfall in your area.

  I can’t give general guidelines about water tanks or barrels because climate differences really do affect how and where you install your system. For instance, where we live, there are torrential downpours in summer, which means we must have our overflow going to an area running directly into our creek. We don’t have to empty our barrels in winter to avoid the water freezing and cracking the barrels. Climate plays a big part not only in the size of the tanks but also in how you hook up your system. The store you buy your tank from will have instructions for that particular type of tank and you should be guided by that. No matter what you choose, you must make sure your tank or barrel cannot be accessed by children or animals.

  You don’t have to spend a lot of money to harvest rainwater. Suitable second-hand containers will do very nicely as your tanks/barrels, and all you’ll have to do is connect them to the downpipe with some plumbing pipes – you might already have these on hand. Don’t think that it’s not worth doing unless you can have a brand-new, state-of-the- art system. Water harvesting is a big part of any self-reliance strategy and, as such, made from scratch with second-hand materials will do just fine.

  We know that food keeps us alive and healthy, but real food is more than just nutrition; it’s an important part of our culture and who we are as people. Food brings us together. Many of us have memories of Christmas or celebration dinners around the kitchen table with everyone laughing and catching up with the family news. Out in the kitchen the important work of the day was being taken care of with Mum, Grandma and a couple of aunties cooking a feast that would be talked about for days. This one room, the kitchen, will be a place where you make your memories, offer hospitality to family and friends, sit and talk, or sit and think with a cup in your hand. It’s where you’ll prepare and cook food and come together as a family for daily meals, as well as for special celebrations.

  Your kitchen is the heart of your home and it will beat to your rhythm. A good kitchen table will not just hold plates, glasses, flowers and candles; it is your meeting place and it has the potential to be as profound or as simple as you need it to be.

  Of course, food is something we all deal with every day of our lives. Many of the most practical of life skills centre around food – not only cooking and sharing it but also growing, selecting and storing it. Some of us produce a portion of our own food, or store food in stockpiles, jars and freezers, and almost all of us buy food at supermarkets, farmers’ markets, butchers, greengrocers and small specialist stores. All of us eat.

  Real food versus convenience

  There are few products that take advantage of our love of convenience more than food. Whether it’s takeaway chicken or hamburgers, precooked food in tins, cooked frozen m
eals on an aluminium tray, pizzas delivered to your door, soup in cans and plastic bowls, pre-washed salad greens, or pre-prepared vegetable and fruit salads, it’s all made by someone else (or even by machines), all provided in polystyrene, plastic or paper packaging, and much of it contains preservatives, artificial colourings and flavours.

  How do you find a balance between convenience and healthy food? And how do you know if you’re providing your family with good nutrition or a ticking time bomb when so many claims are made about the health benefits of food and then proven totally false a few years later? Nourishment is a big part of a simple life, and without being obsessive about it, it requires that you think carefully about your choices and make a commitment to fresh, organic if possible, local food. If you can’t hit your targets every time, aim to be as close as possible. Food is an excellent entry point to your simple-living journey. It’s something you have every day so you see the changes straight away.

  Food waste

  According to a recent Australia Institute survey, Australian households throw out $1.1 billion worth of fruit and vegetables every year. A similar figure is wasted on restaurant and takeaway meals – the leftovers of ordered meals not eaten and thrown in the bin. We shame ourselves with statistics like that. There should be no, or very little, food waste in your bin at the end of the week. This is something we can all work on – I know I am guilty of leaving food too long in the fridge.

  Of course, the best way is to plan well. Often food doesn’t even get to the cooking or leftover stage – it sits neglected in the fridge for weeks and is then thrown in the bin. Planning needs to be done before the buying stage, assisted by meal plans, freezer and stockpile lists.