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By Mom Unplugged, June 17, 2009 10:09 pm

We have just added a new weapon to our arsenal against the heavy clay soil of Northern Arizona: our very own worm bin! In case you wonder what I am talking about, worm poop (more politically correctly known as “worm castings”) makes wonderful compost for the garden.

I didn’t pick the theme slippery with the worm bin in mind, but it occurred to me later that since worms are a bit slippery, this project fit the theme!

One option is to buy a commercially constructed worm bin such as this one, but I opted to go homemade (I guess this could have fit last week’s homemade theme too). Worm bins can be made out of wood or plastic containers. They can be one simple box or multilevel. I followed these online instructions for a two story, Cheap and Easy Worm Bin.

You’ll need two 8 to 10 gallon plastic storage boxes with lids (dark plastic, not transparent), a drill with a 1/4″ and a 1/16″ drill bit, some newspaper and a piece of cardboard.

First drill about 20 large (1/4″) holes in the bottoms of both boxes. Space them approximately evenly to allow for even airflow and easy worm travel.

Next drill small (1/16″) holes all around the top edge of the boxes, about 1 to 1.5″ apart. I did two rows for maximum ventilation.

Also drill small holes (about 30) in ONE lid. The other lid will be the base to collect any draining liquid, so don’t put holes in that one.

Fill a bucket or other plastic container with water. Tear the newspaper into long strips, approximately 1″ wide and toss them into the water to soak. This will be your worm bedding and you’ll want about 3 to 4″ of it in the bottom of the box. For us, it took one whole newspaper.

Take the newspaper strips out one handful at a time and squeeze them out well. They need to be nicely damp, not sopping (don’t forget that worms breathe through their skin so don’t drown them!).

Toss them in one of the boxes and fluff them up.

Once you have your 3 to 4″ of fluffed up bedding, you’ll need to mix in a bit of dirt. Since we still have a giant sand pile in the back yard, we put in a bit of sand too. Worms have gizzards and need to eat some of this rough material (dirt/sand) in order to digest their food (by grinding it in their gizzards - no teeth!).

Finally, soak a piece of cardboard just big enough to cover your bedding and place it on top of the bedding. The worms will be put underneath this cardboard and it will also become a tasty treat for them.

Now it’s time to set up your worm hotel. Place the solid lid upside down on the ground as a tray to catch any draining liquid from the decomposition process (known as “worm tea,” your garden will love this!). Place some bricks or blocks on the upside down lid as a base for the boxes (this allows for drainage). Next goes the empty box on top of the blocks, with the full box nested inside it. The lid with the air holes goes on top. Keep in a cool dark place.

When the worms move in, place their food in a corner and bury it under the newspaper to avoid odors and fruit flies. Bury new food in a different part of the bin each time you feed them. They will follow it around the bin.

Voilà! The finished worm bin! Now all we need are the residents. I ordered a 2 lb bag of Red Wigglers online and they should be arriving soon. At least their new home will be ready for them.

NOTE: Worms like: vegetables, fruit, tea bags, coffee filters and grounds, eggshells, bread, cereal, grains. Do NOT feed: meat, dairy, oil, fat, feces.

For more complete feeding information, as well as how to harvest your worm castings, please be sure to read the Cheap and Easy Worm Bin article!

LINKS:

Cheap and Easy Worm Bin

Worm Anatomy

Worm Composting (Vermicomposting) How-To

Vermicomposting

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FOLLOW-UP: Be sure to check out the arrival of the resident worms in this post: Worm Bin Update - NO VACANCY

ALSO: Read about our first harvest (only 8 weeks later)

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Comments (3)

By Mom Unplugged, June 15, 2009 7:51 pm

The theme for this week’s Unplugged Project is slippery.

We have a project to do that loosely fits the slippery theme and we’ll probably get to it tomorrow, or maybe Wednesday. I’ll be sure to put my link in Mr. Linky here when I have the post up.

Meanwhile, if you did a slippery Unplugged Project this week, please put your link in Mr. Linky below (and in a comment in case there is a problem with Mr. Linky). If you didn’t do a slippery project but are interested in learning about how to join us in the future, then please do not link, but read more about how to join in here.

The theme for next week’s Unplugged Project will be:

Mechanical

Have fun!

PS. Sorry this post is a bit late, but a busy schedule combined with blog technical difficulties made it a difficult week to get it up on time!

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Comments (15)

By Mom Unplugged, June 8, 2009 12:03 pm

The theme for this week’s Unplugged Project was homemade.

My children had been asking me recently about saltwater taffy, wanting to know what it was. I decided we should try to make some homemade taffy and have a taffy pull!

Well, as the title of my post suggests, this was not a tremendous success, but I am not giving up! I think I know what went wrong and am planning on trying again one of these days, so stay tuned for the post: “Taffy Part 2 - Perfect Taffy!”

I found a basic taffy recipe here, at this wonderful website: Science of Cooking. The recipe is under the category, Science of Candy.

The ingredients are sugar, cornstarch, butter, salt, light corn syrup, water, and optionally: flavoring (we used vanilla extract) and food coloring. The recipe also gives the option of adding glycerin which will make it softer and creamier, but we left that out.

First we mixed together the sugar and cornstarch.

Next we stirred in the corn syrup, water, salt, and butter.

The whole mixture goes on medium heat. Constant stirring is required until the sugar dissolves, then continue stirring until the mixture boils. This step takes a while and the children grew a bit impatient, but from previous candy making experience, I know it is important to leave it on medium heat and not “cheat” by raising the temperature of the stove to hurry things along.

Once it boils, add a candy thermometer and stop stirring.

Why must you stop stirring? Here’s part of the science of this process:

“At this point, you have dissolved the crystal structure of the sugar. Stirring or other agitation is one of the many factors that can encourage the fructose and glucose molecules in your syrup to rejoin and form sucrose—crystals of table sugar.”

While the mixture boils, it is important to wash down the sides of the pan with warm water and a pastry brush. This prevents any crystallization on the side of the pan from falling back into the mixture and becoming a seed crystal which could also cause unwanted recrystallization of the sugar mixture.

OUR ERROR NUMBER 1: On the first attempt we forgot to wash down the sides of the pan which probably contributed to our rock hard result!

The recipe says to allow the mixture to heat to a temperature of 270 degrees Farenheit (the “soft-crack” stage). At this point you will notice that the bubbles are smaller, thicker and closer together. Here is what it looks like:

At this point quickly stir in your flavor and color should you choose to add any, then dump the very hot liquid onto a greased cookie sheet, or marble slab. I just buttered our granite countertop and that worked nicely. Warn the children that it is VERY HOT.

Have the children butter their hands (they loved this step), and when it is cool enough to handle, begin the pulling process. Have the children stretch it between them (warning - DO NOT DO THIS ABOVE A DOG. Our dog jumped up and bit some off!).

Once it is stretched, then they should fold it in half (like folding a sheet), turn it and stretch again.

Here is where it all began to go wrong for us on our second taffy attempt. Normally the taffy should become harder and harder to pull, but keep on going until it is “light in color and has a satiny gloss” (about 10 to 20 minutes according to the recipe). Ours got stiff and nearly rock hard in less than 5 minutes.

RESULT NUMBER 1 - An interesting geological specimen:

RESULT NUMBER 2 - A little softer, but still capable of killing an intruder with a single blow:

Oh well. At least it tasted good (like butterscotch!).

Here is where I’ll stop my narrative since we got no farther. The recipe continues on to explain how to cut it into pieces and wrap it (we would have needed a power saw).

OUR ERROR NUMBER 2: On the first try, we heated to 270 degrees, but it took me a minute or two to get the food coloring and flavor in there, so it might have gone a bit above (the temperature rises very quickly when it gets that hot). Result: Rock hard lump, like a giant hard candy rock!

On the second try, I only heated to 260 degrees and worked much more quickly with the color and flavor. Result: Pliable at first (we thought it was going to work), but as the kids pulled, it got harder and harder until it was unworkable and was only slightly softer than the first try - still a hard lump.

My realization: We live at an elevation of about 8,000 feet above sea level. I had not taken this into consideration when determining the temperature at which to stop the cooking! In order to avoid over-cooking, we probably need to heat to only about 240 degrees.

WHAT WE LEARNED: Altitude affects cooking time because water boils at a lower temperature here than it does at sea level (due to lower air pressure up high). Pasta always takes about 3 minutes longer to cook here than the maximum time given on the box. The candy was boiling earlier (at a lower temperature) so it boiled much longer than it should have by the time it reached 270 degrees. The molecular change was farther advanced at that temperature than it would have been at sea level, making for harder candy (more like “hard-crack”). Any other high altitude cooks out there might be interested in this link that I discovered about adjusting candy temperatures for altitude: Candy Making Tips (scroll down to the very last paragraph for the high-altitude conversion).

As I said before, I want to try this again and I think we’ll have better luck. I’ll be sure to post a photo of our “perfect taffy!”

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Did you do a homemade Unplugged Project this week? If so, then please put a link to your post in the Mr. Linky below. You had also better leave one in a comment too, since Mr. Linky has been acting up lately. If you did not do a homemade project, then please do not link, but read more here about how to join in. We’d love to have you!

Next week’s Unplugged Project theme will be:

Slippery

Enjoy!

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Comments (1)

By Mom Unplugged, June 5, 2009 9:08 am

“What’s up with all the old Unplugged Project linkies?”

In case you lie awake at night pondering this question, the sad news is that poor Mr. Linky has become a victim of his own success and is doing a major overhaul of his systems. For more information, you can visit Mr. Linky’s Blog. Good luck Mr. Linky! We love you!

In the meantime, that has left all my old Unplugged Project linkies obsolete and invisible. I have upgraded my Mr. Linky membership however, which allows me to make a small code change to bring them all back again. Unfortunately I must make the change to each individual post, so it is going to take me quite a while. I’ll try and do a few each day starting with the most recent posts until they are all back again.

I know these Unplugged Project links are a useful resource for many people, and I hope to have them all back up again as soon as I can. Thanks for your patience!

Comments (4)

By Mom Unplugged, June 2, 2009 2:18 pm

The theme for this week’s Unplugged Project was petal. We planted flowers this week…unimaginative perhaps, but at least our front porch is looking pretty!

Between golf lessons, art camp, and homeschool French we haven’t had time this week for a more formal project. Perhaps next week (golf and art will be over).

If you did a petal Unplugged Project this week then please leave a link to your project post in Mr. Linky below, and a comment with the link too. If you didn’t do a petal project, but would like to join us in future Weekly Unplugged Projects then you can read more about how it works here.

NOTE: Mr. Linky appears to be up right now, but there have been a lot of problems lately, so please also leave your link in a comment in case the Linky fails again. We want to always be able to find your project post!

The theme for next week’s Unplugged Project will be:

Homemade

Have fun and be creative!