I started this with no idea what I was doing. It's all been trial and error. And now I know things that I never thought I'd know. Granted, that's a statement that everyone can make, so I know I'm not special in that respect. But here are a few special-to-me lessons:
It is incredibly humbling to be outmaneuvered by a nocturnal animal, but then again I have other things I need to take care of, such as paying bills and grocery shopping and running errands and working. If all I had to think about was how to pillage a compost pile every night, I’d outsmart me too. And I know I’d be pretty smug about it. I can’t speak to this mystery nighttime animal, but it’s probably completely full of itself. No amount of pallets reinforced with metal fencing both along the walls and along the exterior foundation hindered its destruction. It lulled me into a sense of accomplishment after a couple days of no issues only for it to return to put me in my place again. The lesson: Successes are temporary.
Sweeping larvae off the floor gets wearisome
I recently had to reshoot a quick video because while I was recording, I discovered prepupae had started crawling across the floor, and I promptly cursed. When the conditions in the room get too hot and too humid, mass escape can occur. It’s a sobering moment (and somewhat maniacal) to walk into the room and discover larvae on the floors, the wall, even the ceiling. But the lesson, though minor, is bring the dustpan to the pile of larvae and not the larvae to the dustpan.
Things I never thought I’d say:
“Can you help me with a possum?”
An old barn has a lot of access points for various critters. I didn’t think a possum would have been one of those critters, but it apparently had been doing a nightly round of scoping out the area for the cat food I had been leaving out for a litter of kittens. It got trapped under my dewatering screen which is a heavy wooden frame with a metal mesh bottom. It had fallen perfectly on the possum without injuring it and with the help of my uncle, we were able to maneuver the frame over a tarp I keep on the floor and we wrapped it up, walked it out and released it back into the wild.
“Is that a finger or a baby carrot?”
Before everything went into a grinder to reduce surface area and release excess water, I would throw whole vegetables into the larvae bins. Baby carrots, after a certain amount of time, will take on a finger-like appearance.
“Ah, a hand.”
The occasional food prep glove makes its way into a bucket and to experiment on the effects of the larval environment on the glove material, I threw one in. And forgot about it. Because I am a terrible scientist. What happens is the larvae will fill the glove nearly perfectly. Some larvae will puncture the nitrile and hang out of a few holes when the glove is lifted out. It’s perfectly morbid.
“Pouring living things is weird.”
I don’t know how many larvae I’m tending to at this point — enough to devour 200 pounds of food a day. Thousands. Millions? A lot. The bins that they are contained in occasionally need to be changed, so they get dumped. It’s not like dumping dirt or sawdust. They create their own spill rate by churning en masse. It’s a very strange feeling.
Sounds that I’ve gotten much too familiar with:
The slow, heavy raindrop sounds of larvae/prepupae hitting the concrete as the jerks escape from bins.
Followed up by: The snapping sounds of larvae under a boot.
These are all the superficial lessons, the minutiae of the grander scheme. The bigger picture (lesson) is how much others have thrown their support behind me. And I know 2020 has been a vastly garbage year, but it has delivered some nuggets of decency and -- dare I say -- success. I got my DEP permit in June, and I'm closing in on 4 tons of food wastes diverted in the next week. I've designed a T-shirt which some trusting folks have decided to purchase sight unseen. That means there is a belief and confidence in me that I struggle to see at times. I've seat-belted buckets in the back seat of my car because my trunk already has 7. My life revolves around the acquiring, carrying, weighing, emptying and washing of buckets. And during one of those bucket transactions, sometimes I'm thinking, "what the hell am I doing?" I've had several moments of outright tears of frustration due to the sheer overwhelming feeling of where I am versus where I wish I was. (Again, not a feeling unique to me.)
I say the following with conviction. Anyone who has entertained my idea, brainstormed with me, acquired/carried/emptied/washed buckets for/with me: I thank you.
And with that, I'll go back to my little moments of larvae minutiae in hopes of more quirky anecdotes in the future.
Comments
Post a Comment