Eve's Page

The COLD has started to set in for the winter and i thought it was time for a heater update.

To remind you all, i have the FT bin with the heating tubes running around the outside of the barrel - heated with an aquarium heater.

The average daytime highs is around 17F (-8C) now and the low's are -10F (-12C). There has been a lot of power outages in the last two weeks that have tested my system. One of them 8 hours long but the FT in my unheated garage has made it through OK. The heat inside the… Continue

That Dar... ah, sweet lovable kitty

Today we had the first good snow storm of the season. There have been others but they didn't amount to anything.

When i got home the power was out. And, The kitten had turned over my five gallon tote of finished compost. I had put it in the house to keep warm. There was compost all over the living room and kitchen floors. He apparently had a ball dive bombing through it all day. The compost was almost dry so at least it was easy to sweep up. But i was surpri… Continue

I checked out the bin today expecting to have to bail out a sea of mud and was surprised. The whole thing is drying out a lot faster than i would have expected. And i had gotten the new tote and screen all ready to filter the water out too.

But it does look as thou it got wetter before things started getting dryer. The hole i made and the extra cardboard up top did make a remarkable difference.

First i put 4 layers of cardboard on top of the cardboard that was already there. To try to keep mor… Continue

I had to chuckle when i reread one of my own comments on my last blog. "So i added water to the catchment area, i don't plan to harvest again until spring, so extra water down there won't hurt anything"

That has to be one of the worst predictions i have ever made. As you may recall I put a coil of heating hose in the catchment area. With so little air movement everything is very wet. Steam? rises up through the compost wetting everything in the FT.

The whole thing is wetter then any tote i hav… Continue

Despite all my planning for cold weather i wasn't expecting it to hit quit so fast. Just 3 days ago the weather was in the low 80'sF (25C). Two nights ago it snowed in the higher mountains. This morning i had to scrapping ice off the car windows.

It only got to 60 (15C) today. I was unpleasantly surprised to find my worm bin even colder when i got home this evening, 48F (9C). I still haven't bought the sheet insulation for the bin so i was forced to improvise. I wrapped the bin and the bucket o… Continue