Cang and Kimberly's Poop; Chuck's Poop with Worms

The purple-lidded Glad container, I think that's 4 cups, went to Cang. The gallon Ziploc went to Kimberly. The 4-gallon container Cang and Kimberly's portions are sitting on went to Chuck. Chuck's portion was about two gallons of clean poop plus the majority of the worms in the poop-batch. I say majority because it's impossible to collect every thread.

Once The Offspring's poop was transferred into a 4-gallon container, the poop-drying container, it was allowed to air-dry with the lid off, 060811.

Another 4-gallon container was placed next to The Offspring's poop-drying container. As I had time, while talking on the phone or listening to the radio, I sifted through the poop pulling out chunks of paper, pistachio shells and seed husks, piling them on the lid of one of the containers. Pieces of plastic, stickers, twist-ties and rubber bands were placed on the lid of the second container.

As I worked through the poop, the clean poop was transferred to the second container, the one on the right, below. Worms were separated into an 8-cup Glad container for Chuck along with some poop.

This is what a full batch of cleaned poop looks like.

And usually, this is where I snap the lid on and call it ready to deliver. This time though I divied it up into Cang's Glad and Kimberly's Ziploc containers leaving the rest in the container.

This pile is the edibles left from the worm poop. I'd dumped the pile of plastics into the garbage but this edible pile wound up in one of the worm bins, Number 5, I think. I could've left this stuff in the poop, but for presentation purposes, particularly when delivering it to a first-time recipient, especially when that person will be using it in their houseplants, I prefer the poop to be as clean as possible.

As I said, the worms were separated out and placed in an 8-cup Glad container. I'd put a melon cube in with them and topped them off with paper.

Chuck's worms were pretty spindly as they are all immature. I've noticed over time that the worm poop is sort of a worm nursery. Baby worms, threads, hatch from the casings and go about their worm business growing up to be little toddler worms, all pink and cute. Chuck's worms, while young and spindly, were thriving worms.

Before delivery, as I'd assumed Chuck was going to spread the wormy-poop over a grape-plant or two, I removed the paper from the 8-cup container and dumped the worms into the white-lidded 4-gallon container.

Post poop-delivery, it sounds that Chuck is planning to raise the worms in my poop-drying container. It'll work, but Chuck will have to particularly attentive to worm light levels, water/humidity levels and paper-food-poop ratios.

I met Kimberly for lunch Tuesday to deliver her poop and she had a big (as in shopping) bag of straight-cut phone book paper for me. I wound up giving that paper to Chuck Wednesday as he was suffering over-analysis paralysis of suitable paper. I hope The Offspring's babies are doing ok.

Maybe I should build Chuck a worm bin and deliver that, asking him to dump the worms and poop in there. My intention was never that the juveniles would be raised in primarily mama and papa poop. Besides, I need my poop-drying container back.

While Number 5's poop has been on deck for cleaning, I've got another batch drying out in it's first story (Number 4's I think) and it should be transferred soon to a smaller container for sorting or the babies in there will die a slow drying death.

That's it, new worm parents should be required to fill out a form so I am completely clear in how the worms should be delivered.

Oh my, what have I done to my those babies?

Wait, Chuck's an engineer, paying particular attention to humidity levels etc. He's been asking me many questions about worm-keeping.

WTF? Doesn't Chuck have a link to this freakin' blog?

Kimberly's Phone Books Made a Second Story for The Offspring

Back in September, I talked about the food offerings Kimberly made and mentioned that Kimberly's phone book offerings would require another post. Now's the time to button down what seems to be the hardest button to button as it's taken me so long to get to it.

Of course, I was reminded of this by the fact that sometime a couple weeks ago Kimberly gave me a bag of shredded paper from her straight-cut paper shredder. Thanks Kimberly!

I love Kimberly's paper as it's so, so fluffy, and not at all compacting when wet. When I tell her so, Kimberly reminds me that the shredded paper I love comes from a shredder from WalMart, which causes my sphincter to constrict just slightly*.

Here's the stack of two phone books, right there with Kimberly's Post-It declaring them worm food. Thanks again, Kimberly!


I peeled the front and back covers as well as glossy middles from the meaty paper sections of the phone books so I could take those glossies to OCC for recyling.


And so you'd be absolutely clear, here's some of the phone book meat, complete with Kimberly's Post-It attached.


When I got down to the last bit of meaty phone book middle, I chopped the Post-It up with it, yielding a 10-gallon bin full of shredded newspaper. Now you know it takes two large phone books and a 3x3" Post-It to yield a 10-gallon bin of shredded paper.


Then Spooky climbed inside the bin to pack the paper down because we work as a team. Spook's like a mama cat, lookin' out for a nice nest, but with him it's all about...well, him, and his personal comfort. Spooky likes paper.


Over the next couple days, Kimberly's phone book shreds were marinated in tap water, drained, and made into a second story for The Offspring September 12th, 2010. It's like a born-on date but better than Budweiser. That might be because I don't drink beer.


Just so you know, I had supplied The Offspring's second story with leftovers from an Ethiopian recipe (primarily cabbage and potatoes) I had tried as well as melon rinds and old pineapple bits, about 5 cups. I didn't bother looking for dirt.  There's enough in the unwashed vegetable peels I feed the worms anyway.


Since I began harvesting The Offspring's first story December 12th, those worms are now operating primarily on Kimberly's phone books, with additions from other sources as necessary, including part of the new batch of Kimberly's paper!

I now wonder if I should get a kitchen balance to measure the mass of food I actually feed a worm bin. So far, I've been doing it by volume, even though it's said worms eat their mass in X amount of time. That'd be one way of deducing my worm poundage per bin too. Hmm...

*I'll save you the grief of reading the deluge of reasons why I don't shop at WalMart. I'll just say,

• When Kimberly's shredder dies, I will personally go out and buy her a new straight-cut shredder from another vendor.  Note To Self: Get some ads up on this blog for funding.
• WalMart: The High Cost of Low Prices

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In other news:

• I fed the worms all of Bill's doobs over the weekend;
• The original Bill's Banana Peel's bag and bag of Tony's rice are long gone now;
• I'm enrolled in Korean 2 and it still sucks being the slow kid. The other kids laugh when I answer in English, but I don't do it to make a joke. I figure an answer in English is better than none at all. It's a weird thing, but I have serious difficulty when it comes to speaking in Korean, like I'm doing something wrong and Mrs. Sorenson won't give me a smiley-face hand stamp if I speak Hanguk
• Compels me to provide a grant to my elementary school with a specific clause that the money can only go toward minority or half-breed kids and those with a primary language other than English cannot be brainwashed into speaking English-only with Chutes and Ladders and smiley-face stamps in SPEECH THERAPY. Yes, I realize I need to hone that a bit.
• Ali's liquid diet lemon halves are way long gone by now, but I'll give you a visual on that
• Tony's squash plants grown impromtu from poop have suffered a drowning death with all the rain in December. Please, let's take a moment and bow our heads.
• Tony has sprinkled some of his latest poop in various areas of his giant outdoor domain; I'll be bugging him and Clare for photos
• And yes, I WILL get Clare's previous photos up one of these days

My Crew Gets Fed Grape Bits

So I had about 10 pounds of grape husks and stems to feed the worms. The bag sat in my fridge until the weekend, which is feeding time for the crew. I could be feeding them twice a week, but I don't. I'm working up to it. But then again, it's getting on to winter, so they'll be eating more slowly unless I figure out a way to keep them warmer. It'd probably help if I turned on the heater, but I don't know how to work it and thus, haven't used it once in the three years I've lived here. That's a boring story for the future if I'm desperate for blogging material. Not likely.

Check out my crew! The first string are the bins on the floor: Adam, Eve, and The Offspring. Guess which came first!

Note that each worm bin has breathing holes on the sides and the lids; and that each one is sitting in a catch bin. I'm not CraYZzeEE! Leakage-onto-the-floor-prevention is always a good idea.

Everyone, meet Adam.


You can tell Adam from the others because he's got 12, 3, 6 and 9 written on him in Sharpie. That's from back in the beginning when I was a newbie and tried feeding one location one day and another location another day per the recommendation from a website written by someone who doesn't have much to do but keep track of what clock area was last fed. You can also tell it's Adam because he's the Big Cheese. His cardboard paper-covering even says so.

This is what Adam looks like under his moisture-retention-Big-Cheese-cardboard layer.

The bin level is a couple inches below the lower breathing holes, though it's hard to determine that from this view. You just gotta trust.

When I feed my worms, I essentially dig up the left (12:00) side right down to the bottom, piling whatever paper and castings on the right (6:00) side, making a big poopy paper mountain. And yes, it sometimes spills over if I'm hasty. That's why I don't keep or feed the worms in my carpeted living area.

Once the left side is essentially aerated and a "hole" dug, I scoop worm food into it. In this case, I grabbed the food with tongs and tossed it in, tongful by tongful. Grape stems are difficult to scoop.


Once the food is in, a good pound or so, I spread the mountain of bedding over it, then proceed to dig up the right side, making sure to dig up the center of the bin too. It has a tendency to get compacted. Then I dump food in the right side too, another generous pound or so.

At this point, I started picking out the grape stems and throwing them in the garbage. There were a lot and while the worms will eat them eventually, it takes a while. The stems wind up being more of a nuisance for me as they get stuck in my little three-pronged gardening trowel.

Once both sides of Adam were fed, I simply spread the bedding over the entire bin. If the level is still low relative to the smaller, lower, breathing holes, I'll top the bin off with more shredded paper and depending on the weather/season will mist it from my handy-dandy water bottle.

This time, I didn't bother topping off with paper. The level is nice and high, just below the lower set of small breathing holes. Additional water wasn't really necessary as everything was still damp like a sponge and there was still quite a bit of juice in the grape husks.


And that's it, Adam's fed, good to go for a few days or a month. After returning the Big Cheese cardboard and snapping the blue lid back on, I simply shoved Adam back into his corner. He doesn't care if I get pushy.

A majority of the grape bits were fed to Adam, Eve, and The Offspring. That left me with about 1/5-2/5th's of the grape bits I'd started with.

Chuck, the worms thank you for the chow.

Next up: what's left of the grape bits at next feeding.
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In real-time news:

1. I've continued on with my "I'll kick Korean language class ass" and didn't drop last week, though honestly I was seriously considering it.
2. Ken jovially accused me of being a "cruncher", or what I'd call "a dirty hippy", because I'm saving fruit cast-offs in a baggie in one of the kitchen freezers. I must say now that I still bathe regularly and do not, and have never, owned a pair of Birkenstocks. If I wasn't so against toe-exposure by all, I might consider those 'stocks.
3. As for Bill, he's been slacking when it comes to putting his banana peels into the baggie. Loser.
4. Two of my friends at work have been on a Master Cleanse "lemonade/maple syrup diet". While they might be sick in the head for doing the diet, I did receive a plastic grocery bag FULL of lemon-half cast-offs today. There was still enough juice in the previously-squoze halves that while double-grocery-bagged, the halves leaked juice onto the floor of my cubicle. The worms are gonna love it! And they'll be lemony-fresh too. I always like a lemon-scented worm bin.
5. I ran into Kimberly and she asked me what "her" worms need. I told her I'd like some of her shredded paper (shredded being key, I like her shredded paper as it's not cross-cut and doesn't tend to mat). I'm behind on shredded paper anyway, but am much more so what with the sudden influx of lemon halves.

Kimberly's Worm Food Offerings

I mentioned Kimberly earlier and figured her worm donations were worthy a dedicated post. Of all poop recipients, I believe it is only Kimberly who regularly donates worm food/bedding.

Kimberly received a "sampler" of poop in a gallon Ziploc a while ago. And though I never heard how her plants were after she sprinkled worm pooh on them, I can only imagine it went well due to her subsequent donations.

Kimberly has become a worm "co-owner" in a way as she'd begun looking out for my worms as if they were her own. And I have to say, Girl's got the ratio down right!

The Kimberly-Worm relationship began when she started giving me shredded paper in plastic grocery bags.


And soon, Kimberly was giving me just-too-ripe bananas with pink Post-Its on them saying "worm food" as well as sandwich cookies with the innards chawed out of them, both of which wound up in a container of worm food. (Yes, worms can have dessert foods as long as they are not dairy laiden -- I wouldn't give them a whole cannoli. I take that back, I would give them a cannoli, but not a creme brulee).

Kimberly's banana is there in the bottom-left corner all black and yucky; the pink Post-It is there toward the bottom-center, and the now-soggy cookies, pale yellow circles in the bottom right-hand corner.

Here's Kimberly's worm food (the cookies and Post-It are most easily discernable; the banana is buried) under her shredded paper, fed to the worms.


Once the bananas and cookies were buried, additional Kimberly paper was added to the top of the bin and misted with water.


A week later, this is what Kimberly's banana looked like. The Post-It and cookies were long gone by this point.


Later on, a week or ten days later, I looked for banana remnants, but those were gone too.

And then Kimberly started donating phone books.


That's an entirely new post.