Maggots for Mothers Day

Maggots for Mothers Day

Some Moms love to get perfume, some love breakfast in bed, and some prefer pedicures!! But not this Mom. Please give me maggots for Mothers Day!!

  Hahaha Just kidding....kind of.

I didn't literally ask for maggots, but I did ask Brent if he would build me a composting bin out of pallets for Mothers Day. Proud to say that my man delivered!

A Happy Wife is a Happy Life!!! :)

Let me Back up a moment and let you guys in on how my brain works! (Ha!) 

As Beau Saucier would say, "One of my Top 10 North Americans"~ Jennifer Gunter~ encouraged me to watch a documentary called "Sustainable".

She thought it would inspire me (And it did!)....So, I signed up for the free 30 day Netflix trial so I could watch it. 

The narrative of the film focuses on Marty Travis, a seventh-generation farmer in central Illinois who watched his land and community fall victim to the pressures of big agribusiness. Determined to create a proud legacy for his son, Marty transforms his profitless wasteland and pioneers the sustainable food movement in Chicago.

  I dragged Brent in from the fire pit one night to watch a little bit of this. It truly made me think and inspire me on recycling and helping to be a better "farmer" to our Earth and for children and our children's children.

   The main farmer in the story would grow interesting local vegetables and herbs for all the top restaurants in Chicago. He would find out what they were wanting and what would also grow best on the land he had and then provide for them all in only 160 acres. 

 I could picture us doing the same for some of our local establishments.

Wouldn't you feel better knowing your tasty Watermelon Salad with Mint and Feta was grown locally than imported from Mexico? Talk about Fresh!!


And then you cut out all the fuel used in transporting these watermelon and the length of "shelf-life" time that it is on the road.

   How many of you guys already shop at our local Farmers Markets? 

Did you see the latest pic that Paige Cash posted on Facebook??

This has to make your mouth water and go support our local farmers/growers.

   The "Sustainable" movie also talked about all the Nitrogen fertilizer that is spilled into the Gulf from all the farming going on all the way up in our northern states and down the Mississippi River. The Nitrogen runs off the land into waterways and comes channeling down the Mississippi. It spills out into the Gulf and is polluting our ocean and causing a huge oxygen deprived dead zone. Meaning....we have a huge area that aquatic life can't live in.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/22/dead-zone-gulf-of-mexico-decades-recover-study. Check this link out to read more.

This is very scary. 

So, on a small scale- I asked myself, what can we do with our current little 1 acre to help the Earth??
The most basic thing I could think of was making our own dirt, and not having a need for buying fertilizer.

The idea of using it to enrich our soil to help grow our watermelon and pumpkins makes my tree hugging spirit smile.  The world truly is a big circle going round and round that God set in motion.

He didn't mess up!

We as humans just thought we could come in and "perfect" it... Bigger. Faster. More. More. More!

So, for Mother's Day, I asked my very handy husband if he would build me a composting bin like the ones I had seen on Pinterest.

Brent grabbed some left over pallets from a couple of the new construction homes on our street. Thank you Jonathan Hill and Josh Taylor!!!!

And voila....

The goal is to fill them up one at a time with mainly chicken poop,

 wood chips, left overs that I'm not feeding the girls and even torn up pieces of junk mail we get sent everyday in the mail. Brent even put hinges on my bin so I'd have easy access.

I had actually started to compost earlier this year in a container and he moved all of that decaying material into the new Pallet bins for me.

Poor hubs- Thought he was going to gag at the site of all the maggots!!

Thankfully, according to my online research, maggots are fine and will help it all break down quicker  (although I may need more brown material added)

If this interests you at all, you can start small with a trash can with holes in it like this one to do your own composting.

There are tons of DIY posts online on how to make one of these.
What did we do before Google or Pinterest??

So, anyway, llke I was saying.... the world is a big circle. We save our left overs and feed them to the chickens....

And then we collect their eggs.... 

When Brent is cooking the kids their breakfast feast in the mornings, he saves the egg shells. They are crushed up and either given back to the chickens to munch on to strengthen their own shells or we have put them

back into the earth when planting things like Tomatoes or peppers.  http://girlonbikewrites.blogspot.com/2011/06/using-egg-shells-in-garden.html?m=1.
Check out this link to read more.  It gives the plants a nice dose of calcium.


Meanwhile, the chickens are pooping and we are collecting it for the compost. Round and Round and Round!! 

I am still very green to all of this, but my mind is open and I'm excited about how to help the Earth. I love the thought of not being quite so wasteful (except when I take a bath!! Ha) My sweet College roomie Kelly Washam used to fuss at me for my long baths using enormous amounts of water and how I was hurting the Aquifer. I'm still guilty as charged on this.

 I thank the good Lord daily for the person who invented Tankless Hot Water Heaters 😉

   Thanks for reading~ 

Love

Lissy

P.S. I gave the girls a scoop of Maggots for a treat this morning- YUM!!!  They gave me "Chicken Mom of the Year" award!!!