Our worms eat better than we do

I'm a woman who likes to see results. Don't get me wrong I'm also infinitely patient, but if I can finagle a way to get good, quality rewards from a process in less time...why not, right? Don't get me wrong (pt. 2), I'm pretty darn frugal so I don't jump at every convenience item or gadget I see either...probably because I get this gut-wrenching pain every time I have to buy something "new"...so I try to avoid that too. What I'm trying to say is who doesn't appreciate a good shortcut every once in a while when you're living a life (by choice) mostly in the slow (yet scenic) lane?!?!
Case in point: Our friendly little Casa de Wormies

These guys are voracious, let me tell ya...but by no fault of their own, it does take a while for them to get through an apple core, carrot head, or any of a number of other veggie material. I figured the most logical answer would be to make the food smaller..a LOT smaller. The Handy blender to the rescue!

Step 1: Gather past-prime and trimmings from fridge. In this case our menu consists of some slightly stinky rice and beans, loose and limp rainbow chard, somewhat soggy mache lettuce, and usually unusable corn husks and silks.


Step 2: Chop all your ingredients to blender size pieces. Throw about handful size amounts in blender at a time w/ enough water to make ingredients actually blend.


Step 3: Pour your soup into freezable container, drain off extra water (which I throw right onto outdoor compost heap), and marvel at the quickness you've just made some delicious veggie pate for your wormies!


My first batch from this method had SUCH awesome results that I think I'll definitely stick with it. The key is, when placing a dollop of our goo into the bin, make a little taco pocket for it out of damp newspaper. That way, the excess moisture in the mix doesn't drown any baby worms, adults can eat the mix from the outside in, creating little safe pockets for more baby worms!

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Yesterday was kind of a rough one for me at the ole' HSSV, so I treated myself to some new reading material after work. Its RARE that I splurge on new stuff (see above) but it made me feel much better after a day of seeing one terribly taken care of animal after another...
I got..

and..

and...finally...


I almost finished the compost one last night....and I'm full of ideas!!

Down on the corner

So I realized that I've never shared what the outside of our little urban compound looks like. Here we are, hidden in plain sight, at the end of that drive, sharing space in what used to be dry storage for Dole.

Oh the possibilities I wake up with on a daily basis! There are literally 10,000 things we could be doing with the amount of space we have...
The building is situated right between the rapid high-density development of Japan town (which can be seen in the right background) and the older, somewhat decaying neighborhoods of East San Jose. Living in this area is quite a trip..
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I finally finished this book..


The author lives in Berkeley, (not far from us), so I gained a new perspective on the availability of local food sources in our area. The winding stories of the way each of the four meals come together is well-written and easily digestable..not to mention funny, sad, and eye-opening at the same time! I've been reading about food, food chains, and everything related pretty consistently for the past 6 years (thank you Fast Food Nation), and found this book to be one of the better selections. I'd recommend it to a first-time American food-system detective anyday!

Revamping a deadscape

I'm trying to make this expansive space a little more home-y. I also am trying to get into gardening and eventually growing a lot of our own food.
First, I started with trying to clear out a lot of the shit that was piled up outside of our front door. Believe me, when I say a LOT I mean it. There are two vehicles that are owned by various tenants, that are currently not running and being used as storage units. Outside of them, there is a rusted barbeque apparatus, a city garbage bin, an oil drum (full!), a dismantled gumball machine, various outdoor chairs in varying stages of disintegration, an empty stereo cabinet, flooring, marble slabs, pallets, half a palm tree stump, and piles of trash and empty cans. Whew!! The previous tenant had left a lot of planting containers and potting soil, so I snatched those up pretty quickly!
The first step is to shovel out all the trash and set up the container garden area, barbeque area, sitting area, and clear out the corner where our compost pile is going to be!




Some of the plants that were left over are pretty sad. I know cacti are pretty resilient, so I'll try to get them kickin again.


I thought we'd get to keep these awesome succulents, which are obviously thriving, but we were informed a couple days later they belonged to another tenant and he'd "be needing to move them back into the driveway soon". Bah...


We salvaged some of the snap-together flooring and pallets to build the frame for our compost pile. I'm hoping to cut down on the amount of trash this four-person, two-animal compound produces. The worms are doing an awesome job at eating our raw food trash, but with this pile, we can effectively get rid of all of the other organic-type matter in a useful way as well!


I had been aerating the left over soil in some of the pots and adding new material and water for a few days, to build up the sponginess of the soil before planting anything. As an experiment, I threw a handful of flax seeds onto one pot...and in just a couple days....We've got sprouts!


As long as I can remember to keep up on these things...I'm sure I'll have a pleasant wall of greenery in no time!
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Pickle and I spent some time at the park the other day. He's definitely a high-strung, undersocialized little dude, so taking the time to have him in a public area is helpful. I had a pack of treats, a book, and a blanket, so he was free to sniff around, roll on the grass, and explore. Every time someone walked by, or a bike rode past, or (and this was the scariest for him) an ice-cream vendor rolled by, I'd give him a treat. He eventually calmed down and layed on the blanket next to me.



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Barrett got somethin new...


And can you tell who is who?

if you give a mouse a cookie...

So, so, so, what have we been up to? The fourth of July has come and gone...that fabulous American celebration day where we all gather in groups to burn meat (or in our case fake meat) over a flame, fill our bellies with booze and then play with matches and explosives...Ah, America! Land of the free, home of the eyebrow-less...

I met a couple of Barrett's skate buddies
Walter

Mike


Walter hosted a pretty quiet little get together in the backyard of his Oakland home. The crowd was interesting...it was pretty fun actually! Barrett rode a fixed gear bike and didn't eat shit! I got to try out a pesto recipe, with almonds, and everybody loved it. We drove home right before dark, and got to see the different fire works shows in every city on the way. Syrus had some sparklers and little fireworks when we got home so we promptly lit them...





Nobody was harmed..
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We started our worm bin! Doesn't look like much but the little guys are going crazy for our veggie trimmings. I read an article that equated composting 1/5 of your trash to taking your car off the road for more than a year! And, just think what the benefits of the compost will be once the container gardens get planted..
It's pretty much just a plastic bin with air holes cut into it, packed with the right amount of wet paper, worms, and food.



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The Santa Cruz farmer's market has been treating us so very right...


This lovely meal was prepared by Barrett, with ingredients from the SC Market..Portobello steak sandwiches with grilled onions and asparagus!

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When all else fails....sack out.

Where?house remodel molasses

Some updates on the slooow progress we're making! I realize its been since March that this blog has seen heads of tails of us, but between the dog, the house, and work, I can't even contemplate how I had the time to relax at all!

So, during the pull-up-everything and start from scratch period, we had to do a bit of makeshift room assembing so we could do things like...cook...sit...you know, luxuries.
Here's the livin room furni set up in the big space. That huge pile of junk in the background is what I've turned into my work space.


We had to make due with setting up a temp kitchen in the big space too. The drawers are the island we pulled out of there so that we could tear out the spraypainted carpet (!) paint over the spraypainted walls, reposition it, and lay new flooring. You can see in the windows behind the island that lovely neon orange artwork on the walls. We were also treated to an image of the Incredible Hulk in golfing gear on the opposite wall.


Once the carpets were pulled we had the daunting task of getting the decades old glue up off the concrete. We bought push-strippers, chisels, hammers, everything short of chemicals. Then decided we might as well give in and rent an electric floor stripper for a day.

A couple of passes with that and we were in a much better place. We were able to prime the walls, and bolt the island back down to the floor about 2 more feet from where it was.
Hmmm...the team decides on our next move.




Since the kitchen is such a gigantic space, I wanted to paint the walls with a color that was going to make things feel a big cozier. We decided on a chocolate brown, with red as our accents.




We also found some pretty cheap relatively nice laminate flooring that you pretty much just snap together. Its coming along, here's the start.

Since these pictures, We've put of floating red shelves over the island and space between it and the sink, painted the underside of the island red, knocked out and framed a window between kitchen and front room, and gotten about half the flooring down. However, my phone (my meager camara) has decided it doesn't want to charge anymore so I've got to see if I can get it fixed or get another one tomorrow :(

As for the other rooms in the place.. MUCH has been done to make them more liveable as well! Our bedrooms and the bathroom have all gotten complete makeovers. When those pictures resurface..I'll be sure to post before and afters!
Dan needs a break.


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As most everyone knows, there are currently hundreds of fires burning in California. Last count I had heard was reaching 1,000. The Santa Cruz mountains have definitely been hit hard. A few weeks ago, we were called out to help with the evacuation of residents and their animals in Watsonville, south of Santa Cruz. I went with a team of about ten other HSSV employees, to help construct temporary kennels at the animal services shelter, transport their adoptable dogs to our shelter so they could be free to house evacuated dogs, and assist in keeping the huge number of evactuated horses in order and fed.






The ever-present danger.


On a good note, we were able to get a few of the dogs adopted into forever homes before SC was ready to take them back!
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One of my recent fill-ups....bad.


Having access to fabulous farmer's markets...good! What could be better than local, organic, farmer-sold food?!?!

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I picked-up this awesome book at a used (and some new) bookstore in Santa Cruz

It's pretty much the guide to living sustainably and supporting and feeding yourself while living in an urban environment. More to come on our efforts to move in that direction...
The blog of the authors is at