Lucretia and the baby are asleep in bed. I stand back look and think one of the worlds cutest site and my god the baby snores like a chaff cutter. I love being a Dad.

progress is being made into the trip into insanity.
7 panels completed, 65 to go.
Thank you Paul for calculating 103000 pieces and suggesting I had OCD.

I'm having a problem with our worm farm again this year. It starting to get too hot again. The farm is an old 300 litre fridge with the guts removed and a couple of holes in the back ( now the bottom). Part of the problem is what we give the worms to eat. Its the old paper cat litter that has been composted with garden waste for several months ( I hoped by composting it first I could keep the temp manageable). The result is friable but does tend to hold the heat (all that paper). I lost most of our worms last year when it got hot and don't want to do the same again this year. The worms do a great job on our green waste it now takes us about 6 to 8 week to fill our bin so I would very much like to keep the little suckers alive over summer. Any ideas?

Yes I know 2 posts in two days. It's all Liluri fault "you have such a great Lj name use it" so a ranting I shall go. Well not quite. I read an article in Grass roots on aquaponics, this is where you grown plant in hydroponic beds and fish in a tank. The fish supply the nutrients for the plants and the plants filter the water for the fish (you know a bit like the planet does). Anyway I looking for victims to have a go at getting a system up and running. I have never been a fan of hydroponic because i always thought that the fertiliser were all petrochemical based and there was no random elements. The main problem i have with fish farming is that the main ingredient in the feed pellets is fish. This system advocates using worm and insect to supplement and hopefully replace commercial pellets.

A friend has volenteered his backyard for the initial attempt ( they are located in rivervale ). I was thinking of using old fridges as the grow beds, pea gravel as growing media and Limestone blocks as the legs. A greenhouse is recommended for growing the fish (Barramundi and trout) and the plants.

So looking for help to find Bring out your dead (for fridges), hands to put it together, people to grow the wormies and general ideas. An hopefully other back yards to build systems if it works. As don't have enough room.

I'll get the dvd on aquaponics this bloke in grass roots produces. He claims he produces 100kg of veg and 50kg of fish every 6 months in 32 square metres (8X4).

Yes I know for those of you who know me it's hard for you to imagine me ranting about anything. Krjalk post "How about planting a tree instead" Sent me off ranting along with Krjalk at the shear stupidity of earth hour. What I would like people to do is send me some practical everyday idea about what I can do to reduce global warming. I'm not going to list what we are already doing at home because that may limit suggestion and the idea behind this is not to say what a good little boy am I. It's just I got someone tell me that there was nothing that the average person could really do about global warming and it was all up to the government and big corporations. I think he came to regret that statement. Most of the wounds should have healed by now!

Went to Amarillion and PRK's Wedding yesterday had a great time and they both looked fantastic. Thank you both so much for the invite.

The working week has almost finished, look it's 5.30 pm on Sunday. Just in time to start a new one, Oh goody. God i'm looking forward to a weekend off soon. But it's not all bad as much has been achieve this weekend. The spa is now fully functional, it's huge 2.3m x 2.3m by 0.9 deep. And there was much rejoicing and champagne. The first coat is on the floor boards, we are going up in a bit to do the second. They look absolutely stunning. But I am truely sick of sanding machines as i spent about 36 hours on them in the last week. But extremely happy with how they look.

We planted a veggie garden the other week. I cheated and went and brought seedlings as it was a bit late in the season to start from seed. On saturday we got our first lot of basil, had brucetta ( too much onion but not bad). The soil all came from a worm farm we put in motion 6 months ago. I was too lazy to sort all the worms out and so had to get some more.

The aim of the worm farm was actually to get it to a size that we can deal with all the cat litter, as it made from recycle newspaper. The worms will destroy 99.98% of all pathogens. Where composting is nowhere near as effective. Still not game to plant root veggies in it though. I'm doing it properly this time and letting the worms deal with one load of food at a time rather than just filling the bin up. It will take about 3 months before it's big enough to deal with all the cat litter we produce.

The soil was incredible, had to put some stuff in potting mix as we ran out of worm castings. The difference in growth rate is huge about 1/2 that of the stuff in castings.


Basil & tomatoes


Beans

We planted peas, beans, parsley, basil, tomatoes, cucumber, eggplant and lettuce. I enojoy having a veggie garden again.

Yes I've finally been lured to the darkside and got my own blogg. The Greenie in me has been released in the form of a pyscho squirrel. The impetus of this was our recent trip to China, the holiday was fantastic, the history was great, the food was incredible and the people were really friendly. The pollution was scary, this really brought home the problem of global warming. Before we left for China we had one of the worst winters on record in WA it did start to rain until July which was 3 months late. At home you can't really see the pollution, the carbon dioxide is there but the particular matter has been removed so to most extents it's an invisible problem. In China it's not.



Here is a picture from Xi'an, it look a bit grey an bleak but the pollutions not that bad right! Well actually the grey smugs about 1/2 way the skyline is a series of mountains and they are only a max of 5km away ( black line shows part of mountain range). There were days that you couldn't see 500m down the road.

So when we got back we are attempting to go carbon neutral. The worst pollution we produce as a couple is my car, got the results off a carbon dioxide calculator. Interestingly most of these carbon calculators are attached to some organisation that wants to flogg you trees to soak up the CO2. It told me that I need to plant 22 tree a year to soak up the CO2 we produce (over 70 years mind you )
Well I put 2000 trees in down the farm 10 years ago so wasn't exactly thrill at giving someone money to plant tree in the US when i could really do with a couple of hundred more down the farm. So this year exercise will be to collect some seed & hopefully Plant some more Marri down the farm. We need to replace some that have blown over and those that the horses have ringbarked. Oh by the way we didn't do the local farmers trick and just burn the trees that had come down, most of them now grace the floor of my parents new home. They look stunning.

But still didn't feel like I had done much so after talk about it Karen & I have decide to put in a renewable energy power plant on the house ( at the expense of our spa).
Have got a final costing but estimate 1.8 Kw of combined solar and wind will cost around $13000 with $4000 rebate from the govt.
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