For weeks now I've been thinking of creating a new blog. Something which feels relevant to my day to day. Something to record the small events and a-ha moments that keep me going. And yet the thought of casting aside this space to create something else doesn't work. I have already done that twice and as with so many other things, it points to a larger pattern in my life. I've been stuck with changing direction and clean breaks have usually worked for me in the past, but clean

All my life I have spent time with animals: dogs, cats, goats, donkeys, rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, lovebirds, budgies, chickens, ducks, lizards, frogs, fish. But I have never really been in the position to spend time as I do now, and it has been so rewarding. With pets we take on the responsibility of feeding, cleaning, caring. We do chores around them, we pet them, we interact with them. We are predators making predatory gestures and actions in their environment. While

Last Saturday I added 4 new chickens to the flock: 2 brahmas and 2 silkies. I had initially thought of having only brahmas as they are a dual purpose breed and beautiful birds, actually really it's because they are large, quiet, docile creatures who aren't flighty. But well, silkies are just fun. And they're bantams so really it's 2 birds for the space of 1. Poor reasoning I know, but there you have it. I don't have good pictures of them yet: they are always in motion. They a

So I re-did the bins. The plastic bins were good enough, and I'm still using a scaled down version of the most simple, but I felt I was ready to go 'large'. We built this bin with plans from Northwest Worms, and while I don't think the plywood will last a long time, it's a good prototype to work from. What we use in the bins is just too wet I think and will eventually rot the plywood out. But I like the design, and so far it's working well. We put about 3 inches of coconut fi

After 3 weeks away I've returned to find everything fine. Which is nice. A little slow perhaps, but nothing disappeared or died. The soldiers are eating and seem to be doing well, though I'm really puzzled by the small number of pupas I'm able to harvest. It seems that I have loads of 'gusanos' in all stages of development, I have adult flies showing interest and I have a good food source and, I believe, set up. Yet I'm harvesting hardly any mature grubs. There's a wonderful

The soldiers have been here for 3 weeks today. And it's quite something how far we've come. Three weeks ago I caught two of the females who come every time we grind roasted cacao, and put them in a bucket along with some mango and banana peels and coffee grounds. Today I found two cascaras - the empty pupae skins. This I don't quite understand: according to my research it takes about 4 days for the eggs to hatch, two weeks for the larvae to grow - under ideal conditions, and