What a beautiful day we had today.  It was a bright sunny day, though it started out as a somewhat cloudy and over cast morning.  It was very wet in the morning, but dried out enough later in the day for us to have lots of fun outside.  I was so happy to see the daffodils had bloomed today too.  They look like sunshine!

We ate a picnic lunch at the lake watching the ducks, geese, and sea gulls on the water. 

It had rained heavy last night, so we ate in our van where we could stay dry but with the windows down, and still enjoyed watching the birds, the water on the lake, and just relaxing.  The lake is actually a reservoir and provides water for the city of Richmond, IN.

Then we headed over to our local 4H office.  We met with Debbie who handles all the 4H business and she helped us with some paperwork.  

Next we headed home to work in the yard.  We raked up dead leaves, and dead plants from the flower beds.  We transplanted a few flowers and vegetables in the flower beds too.

When dad got home from work, he helped us out with a major task. He used a ladder and climbed on the roof to remove a storm window that had broken.  

There were several pieces of broken glass on the roof, several pieces that had fallen into our flower bed, and some pieces still stuck in the frame of the window too.  He got all the broken glass removed for us and no one got cut. 

Then we made a worm farm.  We collected about 100 worms from working in the flower beds, and put them into a tote.  We actually have three matching totes, and was originally just going to use to of them, but later decided we would go ahead and add the third tote tomorrow. The totes will become a worm farm where worms can eat kitchen scraps and turn it into rich soil.  I am very excited about this project.  

The kids helped dad measure and mark places to drill into the totes. They drilled holes into the bottom for drainage and for the worms to travel up through from one tote to the next.  They also drilled holes in the upper sides and lid of the tote for air flow. 

This is a great recycling project.  We read that worms can eat their own weight in scraps each day.  So 1 lb of worms could eat 1 lb of food scraps and turn it into rich composted soil ready to use in the garden or flower beds.  You lay the food scraps on top each day and the worms crawl up to it and eat it.

Into the bins, we placed some of the dead leaves we raked today from the flower beds.  We also added some shredded news paper, pieces of cardboard, and some soil.  I had the kids spray water on everything to keep it moist.  Tomorrow we will drill the last tote and add the third bin into the farm, and collect more worms, and add more layers of paper and leaves, but it got to late to finish it all today. But whether you use two bins or three, it is still a great worm farm. 

 

We saved a lot of money by making our own homemade worm farm.  To buy a pre-made worm farm with 4 trays costs a $100 to $200.    Our farm cost us $0 because I already had the totes on hand.  But if I had to buy them, our worm farm would have cost us about $15 to make. We also gathered our own worms so that cost us $0, but if we had to buy a pound of worms (400 to 500 worms = 1 lb) it would have cost us $25 to $40.   So everything we used to make our worm farm cost $0.  That is an amazing savings!

 

I was really happy with all we accomplished today.  The kids did an awesome job helping me clean up in the flower beds.  And they had a lot of fun making their worm farm. 

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