Wood Worm Farms

Here is a simple solution how to avoid unnecessary mess, and let peacefully coexist to worms and young children in the same home.
Use a ratchet strap.
I've never seen kids under 10, who can open a tightened ratchet strap on their own. (But I've seen some adults above 18, who can't open it as well.) Though it's very easy- just press both springs simultaneously.
The same holds for pets as well.

Ratchet straps are very strong, so you also can lift bins using them, that is much easier, then to hold them on the lowest tray. It's my usual way to take a functional worm bin for next demonstration. Worms are quite tolerant to those travels.

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Here is a small slideshow on how I compost in winter. Most of the action is happening in my basement.
The cycle itself is very simple:
1. Collect the food scrap
2. Freeze it
3. Defrost
4. Damp to worm bin
5. Mix with bedding
6. Add soil and sand
Return to 1.

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It seems like the Worms in a flower pot experiment came to its end.
The lily in the pot is growing very good. It even gave a nice flower a month ago.
The worms, unfortunately, disappeared.
It proves, that compost worms need constant supply of organic material and can't eat live plants.

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Nice movie. A little bit too emotional, and I would say masochistic, but the main questions are good.
The most ipmortant of them, I think, is about using technology in food industry.
More generally, the question is: are we allowed to manipulate complex biological systems without understanding them properly? Is this OK, to remove "extra" levels in ecosystems, change live conditions, food habits and genetics of living things?
Movie brings many examples: genetically modified chickens, grown in
dark and dirty places, cows fed by corn, the corn itself, soya bins, etc.
It seems like most of them are negative, that actually makes some sence.
As by an old programmers' joke "if it works - don't touch it", there is a risk in any such manipulation. The nature was working four billion years to create those chickens and cows.
It seems, that we are not quite ready to understand its ways.
If so, the sure way is to follow the nature's path.
The only more or less sustainable human sosiety, until now, were the hunter-gatherers, with all the problems of hard life in the wild. Current "sustainable" farming projects are not sustanable in reality. They ruin natural ecosystems, pollute, cause soil erosion.
The both systems in any case can't feed world's population of 6*10exp(9) humans. Hence there is no way back, nor to primitive farming nether to hunting-gathering.
But what to do? The movie has no answer (otherwise they could go straight away to collect their Nobel prize.)
As it seems to me, the solution will come from the next level of technology development, with better understanding of ecology and life. And there are many early examples of these technologies now.(Growing Power, aquaponics, vermicompost...).

So may be our problems are only developmental diseases? Let's hope we'll survive...

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It's really easy to grow water cress at home. Just make an aquaponic system, and plant seeds. The nature takes care for the rest. Water cress in an aquaponic system grows fast, better then other plants. It doesn't need much light or any fertilizers.
On the picture above is the water cress after I collected three large, grocery-store-size bunches for a delicious soup I never tasted before. All the family enjoyed it. It took 4 months to get the first harvest of this healthy herb. I think the next one will come much sooner.
Here is a full system view
.

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