Gettin' Dirty

San Cristobal is a host to many active organizations and people. Yesterday we participated in a workshop put on by Jaguar de Madera, a local organization specializing in permaculture. Permaculture is a mentality of sorts based around the premise of observing nature and modifying your behavior and existence more along nature's patterns. What this means is to understand the relationship we as the human animal play on this planet. Respect must be given to all life forms great or small, and with the proper understanding these relationships can be harnessed and utilized for our benefit. The workshop focused on worms. Worms are our little unsung heroes of the dirt. Having virtually no defense mechanisms these creatures produce resources while consuming waste. Worms convert organic material into worm castings, basically its excretions, which is beneficial to plants, let alone they are useful when fed to animals such as fish and birds. Worms duplicate rapidly and only demand that the environment meets their needs. This is exactly what we learned about at Jaguar de Madera. Faith and I, along with a couple others, filled sacks with wood shavings for the frame of the worm bed we were building. We also added wood shavings to the floor of the bed with a slight incline. This is to soften the ground to not allow small rocks to poke through the plastic liner we added after and the incline is so that water can be drained. A PVC pipe is inserted at the base of the "bed frame" with a bucket on the other end to catch the valuable drippings. We then got fresh cow manure, how fresh you ask? So fresh the flies flew in our noses as we shoveled it, so fresh the top layer was cooler than the inner layers, so fresh.......enough? OK. Anyways, we shoveled, stacked, and wheelbarrowed loads of cow manure to create the bottom layer of the worm bed. Once fully spread around we added a layer of dirt, then another steaming layer of manure, and a last layer of dirt to top it off. The final part of our project was to add water to the worm bed to give it a thorough soaking. This process must be done for ten days to remove the harmful acidic material from the fresh cow manure. Once nicely rinsed the worms are introduced to their new home. Worms have the ability to double their population about every twenty days. In this perfect environment the worms will be consuming the cow manure and mixing the dirt creating nutrient rich soil. There are many different ways to work with worms and have a mutually beneficial relationship. At Jaguar de Madera there is an abundance of wood shavings so we utilized what was available. There are interesting videos on YouTube that show other neat ways you could incorporate worm composting into your house using easily accessible resources. Permaculture encourages the concept of turning waste into something useful, or finding multiple uses for what's available.

A quick update on our project: We are still working with Orquideas Moxviquil with the goal of building two sustainable latrines there. We are in the process of clearing space for the two structures, we have been shoveling, picking, and carrying away wheelbarrows full of earth that we have been removing to make the area flatter. We are still networking to get more help on this, and have a few exciting things planned...