Vermicompost Videos

QuickTime vPIP Last summer we had the opportunity to document the PostSecret Community Picnic. PostSecret is an online art project started by Frank Warren. Hundreds of thousands of people have mailed him postcards with secrets emblazed upon them. Every Sunday he posts a handful on his blog. These powerful messages have connected with so many people, a community has formed around the project. The PostSecret Picnic was their first face to face meeting, and we had the pleasure of participating. Enjoy! Check out Frank s beautiful books on Amazon: The new book, PostSecret: Confessions on Life, Death, and God, is coming out in the fall.

QuickTime vPIP BTW: This video is safe for work and all ages, totally PG. Have no fear, there is nothing graphic in this video. Also we ve received requests for DVD copies of this video. Please email us for details, hello@ryanishungry.com. We first met Katherine and Todd through LocalHarvest.org as our closest Community Supported Agriculture provider. We quickly became interested in their story as small farmers trying to make a living growing food and selling it locally. Needless to say we started documenting work on their farm the week after we signed up for their CSA share. A month into taping, Katherine said I hope this doesn t affect the story, but I m three months pregnant . As you can see, it didn t just affect the story, it helped us go deeper into it, focusing on the fact that they were planning a home birth. Simply put, their labor and birth would be an assisted, at home process attended by Certified Professional Midwife Peggy Franklin and two assistants Aimee and Desiree, with no unnecessary interventions including pitocin, epidural, C-section, etc. CPMs and their assistants are highly trained to watch for danger signs before, during and after birth so they can swiftly assess if the mother and baby need to go to the hospital for any reason. Luckily, a large majority of healthy, low risk women giving birth naturally at home, with the assistance of midwives, have no reason to be transported to a hospital. If you live in the United States, your choices for how, where and who can attend your birth, depending on your state of residence, may be very limited. Some states are still struggling to get certain Midwifery certifications to be legally recognized. See this state by state guide of legal status and resources on Citizens for Midwifery. Here is another chart on Midwives Alliance of North America. However, the American Medical Association claims that the safest setting for labor, delivery, and the immediate post-partum period is in the hospital, or a birthing center within a hospital complex . As you might imagine, not everyone agrees with that statement. Especially since the World Health Organization says a healthy Caesarean rate should be between 5-10% and no more than 15%. The average rate in The United States has, since the 1960 s, creeped from below 5% to currently 30%. While birthing centers within hospital complexes are often champions for uninterrupted labor and vaginal birth, in many places, including our rural part of Virginia, there are no birthing centers available. So the choices are limited to hospital or home. The Direct Entry Midwife credentials (midwives allowed to attend births outside a hospital like CPMs) are legally recognized in Virginia so home is openly an option, but for several states in the US, they are not. With the recent premiere of Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein s documentary The Business of Being Born, home birth and the practice of midwifery have been gaining more attention and popularity. We highly recommend this film as well as Ina May Gaskin s books Spiritual Midwifery and Ina May s Guide to Childbirth as good starting resources for learning about home birth. Also check out Child Birth Connection, International Cesarean Awareness Network and Pushed Birth Blog. Big thanks to Katherine and Todd for letting us document and share their most intimate life moments. Also to Bekah Havens, Aimee Fairman and Kate Dimbleby and Rupert Howe for sharing their stories. Runtime - 17:18 Technorati Tags: Cesarean section, child birth, home birth, midwife, midwifery, natural birth, thebusinessofbeingborn, ryanishungry, Virginia

QuickTime vPIP We recently had the privledge to make a video about Rainforest Action Network, the non-profit envrionmental change maker. We first met Julie Wolk, RAN Grassroots Organizer, at the Bioneers Conference. Julie explained that RAN works to hold corporations accountable for their environmental practices through an inside-outside approach to activism. Having protesters outside a store or shareholders meeting helps to put the pressure on, having a contact meeting directly with CEOs on the inside helps get the demands met, both creating space for each action to make real change. We were super impressed and moved by the passion and dedication that everyone we interviewed in the organization has. They ve made incredible changes and continue to train and empower the next generation of environmental activists to get engaged and tell corporations that business as usual is just not OK . We ve been working on this for a few months, going through their extensive video archive, gathering interviews and trying to bring 20 years of RAN s work into the spotlight. All media in the video (music, photos and original interview footage) is Creative Commons licensed. Thanks to everyone at RAN for letting us come in and document your work!

QuickTime vPIP I ve been meaning to make this video for weeks. Check out our place and our gardens. We re gardening using the Grow Biointensive methods we learned in Willits, CA from John Jeavons and Carol Cox. All hand tilled baby. Everything is growing wonderfully. Inspired by our tour, Wendy Tremayne, of the infamous Wendy and Mikey, made a tour video too. Click on the picture below to go to their Vimeo page. If you make one, link to it in the comments, I d love to see what other people are doing.

As you might remember, we made a new worm bin after our original bin failed. This new one is doing great! The drainage holes in the bottom have helped keep it moist but not too wet, the shallow shape allows the worms to get to everything faster and the blending of food scraps allows the worms to eat right away. Today we harvest all the rich vermicompost (soil) and sprinkle it into one of our garden beds. Potted plants also LOVE this stuff. I ve brought back to life more than one of our failing ferns with a scoop of nutrient rich vermicompost. Why buy chemically fertilizer when you can use worm poop?

We were saddened by the death of our first worm bin because of some imbalance of moisture, acidity or bad paper products. We re super determined to continue the worm composting process with a homemade bin. We took the tray from our old bin (a big kitty litter pan) and gathered some scrap wood from our communal backyard at the San Mateo Eco-Village and got the process going again. The basic set up for a healthy, homemade bin is plenty of ventilation, damp paper bedding, food scraps, green plant stuffs, red wiggler worms and some shredded dry paper topping. We ll keep monitoring our bin to see how it s going and hopefully, cross your fingers, our worms survive and make us rich worm castings for our plants. If you make your own bin, let us know how it s going and what your secrets are! Music: Santigo (Stuttering Breaks Mix) by DJ Rkod

QuickTime vPIP On our way across the country to Virginia (our new home!), we stopped by Erik Nelson s place in Vermont to help tear down a barn. He s salvaging the wood to build a house on his land. Very exciting and a lot of hard work. Check out the video Jay made and the Wreck and Salvage post to see how they actually tore the structure down. We ll be more settled soon, so there will be more posts I promise! P.S. Check out our new post office!

QuickTime vPIP We had the privilege of attending a very hands on greywater workshop courtesy of The Greywater Guerillas, a local Bay Area crew of experts who are passionate about teaching folks to use their water (twice) wisely. Greywater is water that has been used once in your home and only contains a little soap, dirt (from laundry or skin) or kitchen particles like food or grease. Unlike blackwater, which is water that has touched excrement, like toilet water, greywater is safe to use in watering your garden. As Laura Allen, co-editor of the book Dam Nation: Dispatches from the Water Underground, and our amazing instructor points out in this video: You don t want to put the greywater onto the part of the plant that you re going to eat if you get the water going into the ground, there are no more health risks than would be [if you are] going out and eating dirt from your garden. So you want to get the greywater into the ground soaking down to irrigate the roots of your plants. We were able to do just this in home owner Tara Hui s backyard. We replaced her kitchen sink pipe with a 3 way valve giving her the choice to send her sink water back to the sewer or out to the greywater system of pipes and mulch basins surrounding four fruit trees. The system was relatively simple and inexpensive. Total price was $200 for all new pipes which included a $60 top of the line 3 way valve, a bunch of 2 way splitters and under a hundred feet of piping. If you live close to a salvage yard or are savvy on Freecycle or Craigslist you can get these materials for way cheaper or even free. Laura touches on some of the legality of systems like this: California has a greywater code so greywater theoretically is legal some states have no code so greywater is not legal. In California, you have the potential to do greywater that said, the code that s written down for greywater is very, very wasteful, it s very bad, most people don t follow it. In California most people have unpermitted systems which are technically illegal, just as building anything unpermitted is technically illegal. There are a few states, like Arizona, that encourage safe and resourceful greywater systems like the one we built here. So find out what your state allows before cutting into your pipes. But if you re like these Californians and your state codes are no good, you ll want to find some greywater experts to consult and keep in touch with to help change the codes for better. Runtime- 5:10 Technorati Tags: graywater, green, greywater guerillas, greywayter, ryanishungry, san francisco

QuickTime vPIP Jamais Cascio is all about solutions. He considers himself an ethical futurist- one who designs and executes resilient and sustainable solutions that will not adversely effect present and future generations. On his blog, OpenTheFuture.com, Jamais writes about three cornerstone issues that will make or break this planet: Global Warming, Global Poverty and Nanotechnology. As he explains in this video All of these are intrinsically connected. If you are to succeed in any one of them, you have to deal with the others everything is connected. Fortunately, the solutions are connected as well As these concepts become more commonplace, what happens is they disappear into the woodwork. They really become expectations. By Co-Founding the site WorldChanging.com (also check out the beautiful World Changing Book), Jamais is helping to make these solutions part of the planetary problem solving vocabulary. Big Thanks to Lisa Rein for connecting us and letting us take over her apartment for the interview! Runtime- 7:21

QuickTime vPIP Yep, it s true. We re moving back across the country to the mountains of Virginia. You might remember our video about recycled paper insulation that we were installing at Jay s dad s garage in Virginia well, that s the place! We re excited to continue to learn more about living a sustainable life and we plan to keep documenting this process on Ryan Is Hungry. We also plan to take our mini-documentaries of other folks hacking the sustainable lifestyle to another level. Thanks for the year of total awesomeness. We ve learned so much from all of you, thanks for following us and contributing back to the conversation!

QuickTime vPIP As Jay and I prepare for a big move back to the East Coast (Rural Virginia/DC area to be exact-we re officially bi-coastal now!), we re dispersing most of our possessions back into the world via Craigslist, Freecycle and Etsy. Yep, we re moving again. We still love the SF Bay area and the San Mateo Eco-Village very much, but we re feeling the need to start building something of our own. Jay s dad has land in Virginia that is the perfect spot to put to use what we ve learned this past year about gardening and sustainable building (thanks to all of you and this here blog!). What a perfect time to re-visit the Swap-O-Rama-Rama video! More to come about the move You might recognize Wendy Tremayne from our Green Acre Series here on RyanIsHungry. Wendy founded Swap-O-Rama-Rama as a way to break out the consumer cycle of shopping for clothes. Utilizing the abundance that just a few people s closets can bare, adding a little creativity with fancy sewing machines and silkscreen artists for custom modifications, Swap-O-Rama-Rama makes recycling clothes fun and social. This particular swap was part of Maker Faire, an event to celebrate makers of all kinds from robot artists to crafters to computer hackers. As Wendy says here: There is no creativity in consumerism makers don t make good consumers. The less you know, the less you can make, the more you re going to buy. Want to produce a Swap-O-Rama-Rama where you live? You can! Because it s Creative Commons licensed! Contact Wendy through the site and she ll get you started! Runtime- 4:53 Technorati Tags: swaporamarama, wndy tremayne, clothing swap, recycle clothes, recycling, green, sustainable, gift economy, maker faire, san francisco, ryanishungry

QuickTime Share by: vPIP Embed (copy s good! Inspired by this conversation, she started a Vermicomposting E-mail list for fellow apartment composters to trade advice and success stories. So join up and let s share our worm secrets! Side Note- we just recently got to hang out with Beth in Brighton during our Europe trip, check out the video on RyanEdit. Cheers! Technorati Tags: compost, apartment compost, vermicompost, gardening

QuickTime vPIP Right now, Jay and I are touring Europe- basically we re couch hopping at videobloggers houses! We took a short detour and stayed in a hostel in Edinburgh, Scotland. One of the cool things about this hostel was its energy conserving light systems (besides these LEDs, they had motion sensor hallway lights that were only on when you walked through!). This LED halogen replacement was super cool. LEDs have very low wattage, so they use a ton less electricity than even fluorescents- compare .5-2w to the average 13-20w fluorescents or 40-100w incandescents. They also are said to have an almost infinite life span. I think we re going to be seeing a lot more of these in the future. Philips, one of the major light bulb manufacturers, just recently bought some LED technologies for future(istic) integration. The only issues are that LEDs are super focused, meaning they don t spread light like other bulbs; they keep light kind of funneled and focused like a spot light. The other issue is that they tend be a more cold, blue color, rather than the pleasant warm glow of incandescents and the newer fluorescents. Hopefully LEDs will start to evolve into warmer hues and eventually replace the energy sucking lights we have now. I was really excited to see this light in use as a little reading light! Runtime- 1:04 Technorati Tags: LED, halogen, scotland, energy, green, ryanishungry