Want to recycle more?  Consider recycling kitchen vegetable waste into compost which returns organic matter to the soil and reduces what’s going into the landfill.  This can be done both indoors and outdoors year-round, even in an apartment.

The easy way is to collect kitchen waste in a covered container by the sink.  When it fills up, once or twice a week, dig a hole, a foot deep in your garden where you would like to improve the soil.  Wet it down, then dump the vegetable waste into it, cutting it up with the shovel to break up the rinds and eggshells.  Then cover with dirt.  (This works best in a fenced part of the garden or yard where critters can’t dig it up.)  

Need help turning your vegetable peelings and food scraps into super soil?  Consider employing some flexible workers that will work for food and housing.  Inspired by a visit to Sierra Vista’s Worm Woman, Judy Goodenough, who raises fruit and grows vegetables year-round in her small yard in Hereford, using mostly worm compost as fertilizer, my husband and I decided to get serious about worms.  We’ve had a few living in one patch of the garden but they didn’t seem to be keeping up with the kitchen waste during the winter.

With some old newspapers, shredded paper, old horse manure, a long styrofoam box and a copy of the classic “Worms Eat My Garbage” by Mary Applehof, we embarked on this new recycling/gardening venture.  First you drill some holes in the bottom of the worm container for drainage.  (If you are building a worm bin, Appelhof suggests two feet wide by one foot deep and 3 feet long or six square feet to handle six pounds of food garbage per week from a family of four.)

Then you mix worm bedding (strips of newspaper, shredded paper or cardboard) with water so that it is moist but not soggy.  Add a few handfuls of soil or sand to provide some grit as well as soaked manure for other helpful micro-organisms.  (Worms have a gizzard, like birds, in which muscular contractions grind food between rocky grains.)

Lay the bedding down in the container and release your worms.  (You can buy worms on-line or from local Worm Man, Richard James, (RAJames@cox.net), a thousand or so per pound. A pound or two is sufficient.) Top the bin with a layer of black plastic smaller than the container to keep in the moisture yet allow the worms to breathe.

Now you are ready to start dumping in kitchen waste, each week placing it next to the prior week’s until the box is full.  By the time you get back to where you started the worms will have turned everything into earth-smelling potting soil. There are various strategies to separate worms from finished compost involving sifting out larger pieces that haven’t been transformed.

A couple of tips are to have a cutting board as part of the worm bin cover so you can chop up any big pieces of peel before dumping to speed up the process and to keep a spray bottle of water handy, especially in summer, to keep the top bedding and worms moist.     

 

Depending upon how fancy you want to get, via the internet you can provide your worms with a “worm bungalow”, “worm chalet” or “worm condo” or even a terracotta-colored “worm tower” that is decorative enough for the patio. However in our climate worms need to be protected from the cold in winter as well as the heat in summer.  So Judy has placed her worm house in a huge tire she painted white under a large tree so it is shaded in the summer afternoons.  Outside the worms can always migrate down into the soil if it gets too cold or hot. You can also keep worm housing in the garage if it stays above 50 degrees.

After 6 years Judy has worms all over her yard as they have migrated wherever she buries her waste, leaving their precious fertilizer and fluffy soil as they go.    

Judy is available to help schools get started with worm composting which makes a great classroom science and ecology project besides providing fertilizer for a school or community garden.   Contact her at juju12171@msn.com.

 

This Week at the SV Farmers Market

New Livestock:  Fiore di Capra reports that their goats are kidding. According to Alethea Swift, “Babies have started to arrive and so far we have 3 little girls and 4 boys.  Lots more on the way!” They plan to be at the market this week with their goat milk soaps and lotions for Valentines Day along with gourmet goat cheeses and milk.

New Products:  Fisherman Max McCarty has some new offerings at his fish market.  He’ll have petite perch from Kodiak, Alaska that are great dredged and pan fried.  Try new smoked black cod or “sable fish” bellies and smoked white king salmon collars, both ready to eat after defrosting and “divine” according to Max.  Max carries halibut fillet portions as well as wild red salmon.

New Products:  Try chips made from her corn tortillas fried in olive oil by Esperanza Arrevalo, back at the market with tamales (beef, pork, chicken, green corn), mesquite, corn and regular flour tortillas, fresh salsa and mesquite cookies.  Stop by for samples of the chips and her new “Pico de Gallo” salsa of chopped fresh tomatoes, onions, cilantro and chiles.

New Product:  Simmons Honey now makes bee pollen in capsules as well as tubs full of the grains.  Besides helping with airborne allergies, some people use it for an energy supplement for its B vitamins (no pun intended).  Other health-promoting hive products include “royal honey” or fresh, raw royal jelly mixed with honey. A spoonful a day is claimed to increase overall health and longevity as this is the substance the bees feed their queen to prolong her life.  Bee propolis is also taken in winter to boost the immune system and ward off colds.

Fresh dates (Medjool, Deglet Noor and Barhi) from a small organic farm in California as well as date sweetened fudge with walnuts (or not) will be brought to market by Jenn Vallier.  Smell the samples of her Maya teas and taste a new flavor brewed hot each week. Irish and English Breakfast as well as Casablanca Earl Gray with mint and herbal teas such as ginger peach, apricot and mango.

New Product:  The soap guys have some really lemony lemon soap to add to their spring citrus line as well as some more pumpkin spice.  Try their lip rescue balm for winter cracked and dry lips which comes in mint, citrus and pink lemonade.

Just Coffee is now available again in decaf.  This locally roasted organic fair-trade coffee is available in Robusta or Arabica as well as a combo of the two.

New Product:  Lemon marmalade made with unsprayed lemons and sweetened with agave nectar by Dragoon Marketplace who also brings baby lettuce and greenhouse tomatoes from Sunizona Farms and Planet Earth Remedies.  

Natural ginger is back at the Smith’s fruit, nut and candy emporium in time to soothe throats and stomachs, deterring coughs and aiding digestion.  Their Arizona-produced products, freshly packaged when they order them, include raw almonds, dried apples, apricots and mango.

Baked goods at the market include peanut butter, ginger cookies and biscoti, lemon squares, brownies by River Organica as well as bread made with organic emmer, an ancient healthful grain.  

Sue Thatcher’s Next Door Kitchen offers chocolate chip, peanut butter, macadamia nut, oatmeal crasin and snickerdoodle cookies as well as friendship, zucchini and other quick breads.

Produce:  From Grammie’s Garden:  Unsprayed greenhouse tomatoes, cucumbers (English & regular), green beans, red and golden bell peppers, summer and winter squash (Carnival, spaghetti, butternut and acorn), onions, grapefruit, limes and lemons, certified organic produce from Mexico including mangoes & cantaloupe and Willcox Pink Lady apples. Your choice of De Cio herbal pasta and attractive sacks of Bonita Bean Company’s pinto beans and its 9 Bean Soup Mix that contains Pinto, Pink, Small Red, Light Red Kidney, Navy, Great Northern, Canario, Maya Coba and Black Beans all locally raised.

Re-useable grocery bags will be for sale at the Information booth along with free seed catalogs and other grower information.

Recipes

 

Spicy Popcorn

(The easisest potluck dish ever! Check out www.manoymetate.com for recipes using Mano Y Metate mole (mole-lay) powders hand made in Tucson by Amy Schwemm.)

Fresh, whole popcorn

Oil, if using a pan

Melted butter

Mano Y Metate mole powder, to taste

Pop corn in a hot air popper or with oil in a pan.  Drizzle with butter and sprinkle immediately with mole powder of your choice.

 

Mexican Chorizo

For spicier chorizo, add less meat, for milder chorizo, add less mole powder

1 pound ground meat (chicken, beef, pork, turkey, goat, lamb or a combination)

or crumbled firm tofu

1 tin of Adobo mole powder

1 tsp vinegar, or more to taste

Mix all ingredients thoroughly and refrigerate overnight.  Fry in a hot skillet, with a bit of oil if necessary.  Try it mixed into scrambled eggs or fried potatoes for breakfast.  Or mix into refried beans for tostadas.