(Worm) Tea Time...

In the Garden

Using worm compost, vermiculture, to make worm tea can provide lots of micronutrients to your plants in your garden.  When a worm eats, the food passes through the gut and the organic matter gets broken into smaller and smaller fragments which releases the various components in it. The digestion of the food helps to release nutrients into the vermicompost.  Then, the nutrients from the vermicompost are infused into the tea and this is used as a fertilizer for plants.  You can use worm tea as a foliar spray to spray directly onto the plants which is absorbed through the leaves.  This can be effective if the foliage is showing signs of disease.  The worm tea will help the plant strengthen their defenses and fend off disease organisms.

The main reason I like to make worm tea is for that it can work as a natural pesticide.  The worm tea contains an enzyme known as various forms of chitinase to which insects have a strong aversion.  The worm castings also have the ability to activate multiplication of the chitinase-producing bacteria found naturally in plants.  Some pests that are repelled by the worm castings or tea, include a large array of insects including white fly, aphids, spider mites, fruit flies, and other nectar-sucking insects.

Here is the recipe I use.  This is taken from daringgourmet.com

Equipment Needed:

5 gallon bucket

4 gallons water (ideally use rain or well water because it has no chlorine; otherwise use city water but let it sit out for 24 hours before proceeding – chlorine is very volatile and will evaporate out on its own)

5 to 6 cups worm castings

3 tablespoons molasses (encourages the growth of healthy microorganisms)

Porous material for a compost tea bag (cheese cloth, dish towel, old t-shirt, etc).  Optional but will prevent your watering can or spray bottle from clogging when it’s time to use the tea.  Alternatively you can pour the finished tea through a fine mesh strainer into your watering can.

Process:

Fill the bucket with water.  Add the worm castings and the molasses.  Stir to combine.  (If you’re using a compost tea bag, place the worm castings in the cloth and tie to secure it shut.  Place the bag in the water.)

Let the tea steep overnight.  It will be a dark brown color.  Give it another stir.  Remove the compost bag if using (place the contents onto the soil or on your compost pile).

Pour some of the worm tea into your water can or spray bottle and dilute with water until it is a light brown color – the color of weak tea.

Use immediately for best results.  The microbes will begin dying off quickly so the sooner you use the compost tea the better while it’s most potent.

Do You Need to Aerate Worm Tea?

Both sugar (molasses) and aeration boost the microbial activity resulting in an increased microbial population.  Sugar alone will do that but adding some aeration will increase it further.

If you choose to aerate it you can use a fish tank bubbler to add oxygen while the tea is steeping.  Insert the aerator all the way to the bottom of the bucket.  Let it aerate for 48-72 hours, stirring occasionally.

Here is a video of how I make the worm tea:

Compost tea

Making compost tea is similar to worm tea.  I make it pretty much the same way I make the worm tea except I let it brew for 3 days and I only brew the worm tea for 1 day.  It works as a great fertilizer for plants but does not contain the chitinase/pesticide benefits of worm tea.  Here is a great post from Morningchores.com that describes compost tea and gives 4 recipes for making some.  I have read that compost tea can also help with disease pressure but it is more a preventative and not a cure.

So, that is it.  Short and sweet.  It took about a week but I ended up making 4 batches of worm tea and had enough to give to every single plant in my garden.  So far, so good!

Have an eggcellent day!

~ Denise

Worms...

Building a worm bin    

When we moved to the farm, there was a tub in the barn.  We set it up and put rocks and water in it.  At the time, Mark had a fascination with throwing rocks into water.  He spent many hours on the back patio throwing rocks into the tub of water.  Then, the second year that we were here, he didn't seem interested in throwing rocks into water anymore.  So, we cleaned it out and I kept thinking that some day I was going to make a worm bin out of the tub.  Finally, that day has come!  First, Logan built a frame out of wood to set the tub into.  (I know it looks a little crooked but it actually setting on uneven ground.)  I placed the tub in a shady area, if the bin gets too hot, the worms may die.

Henry was able to put in a drain so that we could catch the leachate that drips out.  A quick note about leachate.  The stuff that drips out of the worm bin is NOT worm tea!  It is called leachate and I have heard different ideas about whether or not you should use it in your garden.  Initially, I read that you should never use this.  Lately, I have heard that you can dilute it 1:2 or 1:20 but not to use it on plants that you want to eat.  The reason you do not want to use it on your vegetables is that worm bin leachate can potentially contain toxins that are harmful to people.  So, use it on your nonedible flowers, trees, bushes, or put into a hot compost bin.

After we had the frame and the drain all completed, it was time to fill it up.  I added large rocks to the bottom of the tub to help with drainage.  

Next went in a layer of wet cardboard.  Make sure to soak it really thoroughly.  This is the first layer of the bedding and it needs to be the consistency of a wrung out sponge.

On top of the cardboard, I put in some of the aged compost from the chicken barn.  This was not screened, it was just taken from the pile...again, I wet it down well...

Now, let me back up a minute.  I have had a small worm bin in the house for the past 3 1/2 years!  These worms were really needing a new place to live.  My plan is to put them into the worm tub outside during the spring, summer and fall.  Then, as temperatures start to approach freezing, I will take them out of the tub and put them back into the bin and bring them inside for the winter.  I got my initial worms from Uncle Jim's Worm Farm and they are red wigglers.

I dumped out the worm bin into the tub.  

There was a lot of good vermicompost in the tub!  Vermicompost is like black gold for your garden.  It is the compost that the worms make.  I put it out in a layer on top of all the bedding.  I am going to go back in and harvest some of this vermicompost out later to make worm tea...that blog post will be coming out in a couple weeks...

I pulled back the vermicompost and put a little food in for the worms.  They will also eat the bedding (cardboard and newspaper).  I save a tub of vegetable scraps during the week and when it gets full, I put it into the freezer.  Then, I bring it out, thaw it, and feed the worms.  It looks like they are getting carrot and celery scraps this week...

I covered up the food scraps and put a thick layer of shredded newspaper on top.  I watered down the newspaper.

Then, I just covered it with some cardboard.  I just wanted to put some type of "lid" on top to slow down any evaporation.  I regularly water the worm bin and feed them food scraps each week.

So...why go through all this trouble...what good is a worm bin?  

I have a few reasons for keeping worms:

1.  helps recycle food waste into an organic fertilizer that is rich in microbial activity

2.  makes a rich organic fertilizer that is easily taken up by plants

3.  great high protein chicken food

4.  reduces the need for pesticides (more about that in the worm tea blog)

5.  vermicompost helps with water retention in the soil and releases nutrients slowly to plants

As I mentioned earlier, I will keep the worms outside most of the year but when it starts to get cold, I will be able to harvest some worms out and feed them to the chickens.  I will then take a handful and put them back into the worm bin and bring them inside for the winter.  Of course, I will be able to take the vermicompost out of the tub and apply it to the garden.  I can use the worms from the bin to "inoculate" the worm tub the next spring.  

We are going to get a heat wave this week so I put some shade cloth over the tub and I put my compost thermometer in so I can keep an eye on the temperatures.  The worms will die if they get too hot or too cold.  If I notice that it is getting too hot, I will take some worms out and bring them back inside the house until this heat wave breaks. 

One of the most amazing things about vermicomposting is making worm tea.  I will have an entire blog post about how to make worm tea and all the great benefits of worm tea in a couple weeks...

Have an eggcellent day!

~Denise

Lovage

 In the Herb Garden

Going to keep this short and sweet because I have been busy with getting the garden planted and taking care of the meat chickens.  This week, I thought I would highlight one of my favorite new herbs...lovage!  Lovage is a perennial herb plant that tastes like celery.  I will be honest, I am not sure how or where I heard about lovage, but I just remember that once I heard about it, I just had to get one to put in my herb garden.  I found one in Spokane when Henry and I went out for a date night to watch The Biggest Little Farm movie in June 2019.  It was on the way home from this date night that we hit a deer with our minivan and it got totaled.  Then, I got my pickup!  That was a memorable evening and I can't imagine trying to take care of Mark's girls with a minivan.  Last time we picked up feed it was a half ton in the bed of the pickup...that never would have fit in the minivan.  But, I digress...

I wanted to mention that, if you live locally in Moscow, ID, I saw some lovage plants at Fiddler's Ridge Nursery.

I planted the lovage in the herb garden and it has done well.  This spring, it really came to life!  It was over 6 feet tall!  I had no idea it would get so big!  I should have taken a pic before I cut it down but I didn't think to do that at the time.  Here is a pic after I cut it back...it is still really big!

I brought it inside and picked the leaves off of the stalks.  The stalks are kind of stiff so I did not bother to try and dry them.  I placed the leaves on drying racks and let them dehydrate overnight.  This will go into the herb blend that I make to feed to the girls this winter.

You can eat the leaves, stalks, seeds, and even roots!  It can be dried or frozen to store and use in soups or stews.  As I mentioned earlier, it has a strong celery flavor so use it any recipe where you would put celery.  You can make a tea from the leaves, use it to make a flavored vinegar or flavored salt, sauté the roots to be served as a side dish, or use the stalks to make an old fashioned candy!  Recently, I added some to our vegetable lasagna and it was delicious.

Lovage has several therapeutic benefits too.  Taken from theherbalacademy.com:

Lovage has been used in infusions, tinctures, decoctions, vinegars, elixirs, lozenges, and bath and foot soaks.

All parts of the lovage plant have been used therapeutically (and culinarily). Teas of the leaf and stalk were common and used for sore throats and tonsil problems, rheumatism/arthritis, jaundice, and for digestion. Lovage is known to be a diuretic and was considered good for kidney stones and to increase the flow of urine (Wood, 2007).

The roots were used in salves for skin problems and put in bath water for aching joints or skin problems.

The seeds, collected when ripe, were chewed on for digestion and gas.

At one time boils were treated with the lovage leaves fried in oil and used as a poultice.

Lovage is in the same family as osha (Ligusticum porter) and therefore, some herbalists consider it as possible lung ailment relief (Wood, 2007).

Lovage is good for the chickens too!  It has powerful anti-inflammatory properties and can promote respiratory health.  It is also a blood detoxifier.  Lovage has been used for medicinal properties for centuries!

So, that is it...short and sweet...we are enjoying the warmer weather and out in the garden a lot lately.  Hope your garden is growing well!

~Denise

Duck eggs for sale at the Moscow Food Co-op and farm insurance...ReMARKable Eggs coming to Farmer's Market...

 On the Farm

When starting Mark's business, we wanted to make sure we had multiple avenues available for selling the eggs.  You probably already know that he has an egg delivery route.  He LOVES doing egg delivery each Wednesday!  He also sells duck eggs at a local farm store called Wingover Farm.  

As you might guess, another way to sell eggs is through a grocery store.  We decided to look into selling duck eggs at our local food co-op.  We read through all the "rules".  Mark would need to get liability insurance.  This is to protect him if someone were to purchase his eggs and get sick.  Years ago, I think it was in 2017, I had actually attended a presentation about farm liability insurance.  I can't believe that I actually found the information from that presentation but I did!  In early September 2020, I called the presenter to get help getting the liability insurance.  The lady that had done the presentation said she would get me in touch with an insurance broker that could help us.  It seemed confusing because I thought that she was the one that was going to provide us the insurance.  But, what do I know, this is all new to me.  

The insurance broker called me and I gave him the information.  Mostly, he wanted to know how many poultry we had.  He started looking around and the weeks ticked by.  At one point, he said that he found a provider but that they wanted to see our Farm Safety Plan.  I spent the better part of an afternoon putting together Mark's Farm Safety Plan.  I guess it was not convincing because they backed out.  Actually, now that I think about it more, I think they wanted us to show the past 3 years of finances. This is impossible to do because the business was less than a year old!  This came up more than once.  How do they expect a farm to grow and get business to show finances if it does not have insurance to protect itself.  Kind of a chicken and the egg situation...Finally, after about a month, the insurance broker just said he could not locate anyone that would be willing to insure Mark's business.  He is too small and too new for most insurance companies to want to deal with an egg business.

Okay, now I had to start making calls.  I just googled "farm insurance and Idaho" and started calling every listing that popped up.  Finally, after about a month, I located 2 companies that were willing to actually provide insurance!  The first quote was several hundred dollars (like close to $1000)!  I was in shock!  I was like, Mark is not even going to make that much money selling the eggs until he is in full production.  Luckily, the other company we had contacted had a much more reasonable quote.

The company is COUNTRY Financial and Mark's agent is Crystal Wendt.  Naturally, the company wanted all of our business.  This means that we had to switch our auto and home insurance over to their company.  A small price to pay for the ability to get insurance to cover Mark's egg business.  A great advantage of the COUNTRY Financial insurance is that it is actually "farm" insurance.  So, all the barns and coops are covered too!  I even added our automatic gate onto the insurance (because we just had someone back into it and it cost almost $2000 to fix!).  

Now that we had the insurance, Mark could take eggs to sell at the Moscow Food Co-op!  Yeah!!!

Here is a close up of the eggs in the cooler for sale...

This was so eggciting and such an amazing milestone!  It is a nice advantage to take a cooler full of eggs to one location, drop them off, and get paid!  It is great to serve our community this way.  I am pretty sure that Mark is the only one selling duck eggs at the Co-op.  I think people are catching on.  We brought 10 of the 6 packs last Tuesday and they were sold out by Saturday!

Crystal has been great to work with.  She came out to the farm and took inventory of everything.  She is very responsive to any and all questions that we have.  I highly recommend her services if you are looking for insurance in north Idaho.  

I want to also give a big THANK YOU to Stepping Stones.  Last fall, Mark got a grant from Stepping Stones to help cover the expense of the insurance.  If it were not for this grant, he probably would have had to wait to start selling at the Co-op but these monies made it happen!  Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

The insurance broker just called me 2 weeks ago!  He had another client that was doing something similar to Mark and wanted to know if we had ever located insurance!  Too funny!  I'm glad he called and I could give him the information to help another small farmer.

Where to buy ReMARKable Eggs

To recap, here is where you can purchase ReMARKable Eggs.

1. Off farm: just contact Denise at remarkablefarms@gmail.com and let me know what kind of eggs you want and when you want to stop by and pick them up

2. Moscow delivery route: contact Denise at remarkablefarms@gmail.com to learn more information about the delivery route.  We only serve the city limits of Moscow right now.  We may start a delivery route in Pullman at some point but not for a couple years...

3. Moscow Food Co-op: Only duck eggs are sold at the Co-op in 6 packs.  We stop in often to make sure that there is always inventory there.

4. Moscow Farmers Market: we were not going to go to the Market this year but that has changed.  We will start going about every other week starting June 5th.  We don't have enough inventory to go to the Market every week at this point...maybe next year if the chicken coop gets built and we get more chickens!  If you are interested in coming to the Market for eggs, make sure to like the Facebook page.  We will always post to FB on the Saturdays that we are going to be at the Market.

Have an eggcellent day!

~Denise

What is bugging the girls?

 In the Coop

I had noticed that a couple of the ducks just have not looked "right" lately.  I have been watching them and they seem to have lots of energy but their feathers were all matted.  I picked one up and I saw a lot of white looking dander at the base of the feathers.  I didn't actually see any lice but it seems that this may be the issue.  It was mostly in the older ducks.  I have also noticed that the older chickens seem to have patches of feathers missing.  It is not the right time of year for them to go through a molt so I am not sure why they would be losing their feathers.  The conclusion is that the girls had feather lice.

Chicken standing in wood ash dust bath

I started looking for ideas of how to treat the girls.  Dusting the girls with something like diatomaceous earth (DE) would help to kill the pests.  Food grade diatomaceous earth is useful to reduce internal and external parasites (such as worms, lice and mites).  We actually put DE on the girls food once a month so they eat some to help keep any internal parasites (worms) from becoming a problem.  DE also contains trace minerals that are beneficial to poultry.  You can use the DE to dust the outside of the birds to help kill any mites or lice.  The DE is a desiccant and will dry out and kill the little buggers.  Adding DE to a dust bath is a great way to help the chickens stay lice/mite free.

The idea of dusting each bird (we have about 120 total poultry) seemed pretty overwhelming.  So, after consulting YouTube University, I found that many people use ivermectin to treat poultry.  I went to the local farm store and bought some Ivermectin right off the shelf, no prescription needed.

As you may notice from this pic, this medication is for cattle.  They don't actually make it for poultry.  Obviously, treating poultry with ivermectin is considered an "off label" use.  I put some of the medication in a small bottle with a dropper.  Then, I took it out to the ducks in the evening.  I had all the ducks in the paddock and closed the door to the run.  Then, I ran around and picked up each duck, lifted the feathers up on the back of their necks and applied 2-4 drops of the medicine.  The medicine is meant to absorb through their skin and into the bloodstream.  After 10 days, you have to repeat the treatment.  This is to kill any eggs that may have hatched after the initial treatment that escaped.  Here is a video of me trying to catch the ducks to give them their treatment...

When giving medication to animals, there is sometimes a "withdrawal" period.  For example, after treatment, you should have a withdrawal period of 7 days and not eat any of the eggs during that time.  Since this is an off label use of this medication, there are no official guidelines for this.  I did see several sites mention the 7 day withdrawal timeline.

For over 25 years, ivermectin has been used to treat parasitic infections in mammals, with a good safety profile and is generally well tolerated.  If you, personally, got a parasitic worm infection, your doctor would prescribe ivermectin.  I find it interesting that ivermectin is being studied as a medication to be used for COVID-19 treatment.  In our home, we are not observing the withdrawal period but we contacted all our regular egg customers to let them know of the treatment so they could make their own decision.  

Where did these pests come from?  Well, they are everywhere in the environment.  Wild birds can carry them.  I have seen quail and magpie in the run on several occasions.  Providing swim water to ducks gives them the opportunity to bathe and preen themselves to keep themselves clean and avoid pests.  We always provide water for the ducks.  Even in the winter, they have smaller tubs of water that they can get in and bathe.

Chickens will dust bathe in the dirt to keep pests off them.  The chickens have lots of opportunities to dust bathe outside.  I did put a container of wood ash into their barn (see pic at top of blog).  Wood ash particles are very fine so they can get up in their feathers and suffocate the pests.  

I feel like we have been doing everything correctly.  The ducks have access to water and the chickens have plenty of areas to dust bathe.  These things just happen.  Hoping the treatment works and we can have healthy girls again!

Have an eggcellent day!

~Denise

New look coming to jams and jellies...

 In the Kitchen

A few months ago, my friend, Allison, called me and asked if I would like some jelly jars.  Well, of course I would!  She knew of a person that had some jars that he bought decades ago and was ready to get rid of them.  The story goes a little like this...  

Marv Obenauf had a business idea to sell a spread of honey with nuts in it.  He ordered some special hexagon shaped jars.  (If you didn't know, bees honeycomb are hexagon shaped so I assume that is why he wanted to use these specially shaped jars.)  Once he had the jars, Marv started working on a label.  Unfortunately, the labels were going to be SO expensive that it made the venture unrealistic.  

We can relate to this issue.  Egg cartons and labels are super expensive.  We are fortunate that a lot of our delivery customers save their egg cartons and we can re-use them a few times.  We also take back jelly jars to re-use.  Yeah for recycling!

Mr. Obenuaf then had a different idea and that was to make leather conditioner made with beeswax.  Obenauf's Your Best Leather Protection can now be found at various farm stores and Cabella's throughout the country!  I think he made a good business decision in going with the leather conditioner.  BUT he still had all those jars from the honey idea that he needed to get rid of.  So, one Sunday afternoon, we jumped into the pickup and headed to Peck, Idaho and loaded up the bed with jars!  What a generous gift and we are so grateful for the opportunity to take these jars off his hands.

Some of the jars had the honey/nut mixture in them.  I just opened them all up and scraped out the honey mixture.  I gave it to Alison and she is going to feed it back to her bees.  Alison also got some of the jars.  I think maybe she is going to make some lavender infused honey...if I remember correctly...

I did a test run with the new jars and made some raspberry jammy and they worked great!  They have special sealing lids.  I already looked and found that I could buy replacement lids and they are not too expensive.  This may be helpful because I still have not been able to find any "regular" size canning lids at the stores!

The only downside is that the jars are 4 and 6 ounces.  I usually place a label on the lid identifying the contents of the jar.  The lids are pretty small so there is not enough room to put our logo.  I want to avoid putting a label on the actual jar because it can be challenging to scrape off the sticker to re-use the jar.  On the bright side, we have several hundred jars so it will take several years to make enough jam/jelly to use all these jars up!  What an amazing gift!

Did you know...

I did make some Dandelion Jelly that is going in the farm store today!  Surprisingly, Dandelion Jelly actually tastes a lot like honey.

Have a sweet day!

~Denise

Compost! Garden gold!

In the Barn

Last August, we cleaned out the barn and stacked all the old bedding in a huge pile.  The bedding consisted of wood shavings and straw.  As you might expect, the bedding had a good amount of chicken and duck poop in it too.  We let the pile sit there all fall and winter.  Also, last fall, we built a compost sifter.  More on that below...keep reading...here is a pic of the compost pile...

I used a lot of the compost to top off my raised beds in January but there is still a good amount of "chunky" compost left.  In case you do not know about compost, here is an infographic that shows some of the benefits of compost in the garden from Biofinch Ltd...

Compost is often referred to as "black gold" for your garden.  It will add organic matter and nutrients into your garden soil to make your plants grow better.

I wanted to try and screen out the larger pieces in the compost bin.  We built a compost screener out of a concrete mixer last fall.  Here is a video of how it works:

After screening the compost, we were able to weigh out 10 pounds and put it into large ziploc type bags.  These will be for sale in the online store.

Here is a close up pic of the finished compost.  It is still a little "chunky".  This will definitely increase your soils organic matter!

I wanted to see if there would be a difference in plants that were grown in potting soil versus potting soil with compost.  I just had to use some of the plants that I had started for my garden.  There were not many plants in the garden centers yet in mid-March when I started this experiment.  The beginning pics were taken on March 14th.

Here is some lettuce starts that I planted in 3 different types of soil.  1 is just regular potting soil. 2 is 1/2 potting soil and 1/2 compost and 3 is 2/3 potting soil and 1/3 compost.  The first pic was taken on March 14...

This pic is taken April 16th, so, about a month later...

It seems the lettuce responded well to the addition of the compost and did best with 2/3 potting soil and 1/3 compost.

These are small parsley plants on March 14th...

These are parsley plants on April 16th...yes, they are reaching for the light.  I am running out of room for all my seedlings!

It seems that the parsley did best with 1/2 potting soil and 1/2 compost.

I was able to get some strawberry plants from the garden center.  Here they are on March 14th...

Here is the strawberries on April 16th...

It seems that the strawberries responded well to the compost too.  Please, understand that these are not 
"scientific" experiments but I think you can see how the compost is some benefit to the plants.  My opinion is that using 2/3 potting soil and 1/3 compost for potted plants would be the way to go!

Duck poop advantage...

One thing that I learned recently is that duck poop can be applied directly into your garden!  I found this to be very interesting.  Chicken poop is "hot" and it must be allowed to sit and mellow out for a while before you put it into your garden or it will burn and hurt your plants.  BUT duck poop can be applied directly around your garden plants. Of course, I would not put it directly onto plants that you plan on eating right away, for example, I would not put duck poop onto my lettuce that I am getting ready to harvest.  

Ducks eat a little more than chickens which means they also poop more than chickens!  Duck poop is basically like a 2.8:2.3:1.7 NPK fertilizer.  No other livestock manure has NPK ratio this high.  I plan on using some of the water from the swimming pools, that the ducks swim in (and poop in), to water trees that I planted this past spring.  One of Mark's favorite jobs is to fill the ducks swimming pools...

The best thing about compost is that you can just leave it there and it will continue to breakdown and get even better over time!  Another thing you can do with compost is to make compost tea and use that to water your plants.  I will talk about compost tea in a future blog post...

Have an eggcellent day!

~Denise