In our last blog titled, Worm Hotel Vermicomposting... Composting with Worms I gave several reasons why a gardener would want to have a vermicomposter. The bucket style, or as I call, the 'Worm Hotel' is perfect for the typical backyard gardener that is wanting to create worm castings and make compost tea for their garden.

In this video we take it a whole other level by converting a 55 gallon barrel into a worm trough. I decided this was a better route for a few reasons, 1) this year we plan to really develop our farm. We live on an acre and are only using a small portion of it so far. We could really use a lot more worm compost tea and casting. 2) as we scale up and build out our farm we will begin doing a lot more tours, demonstrations, and classes. With those events happening we will be able to sell worm castings, Worm Hotels,  and compost tea kits.

​To learn more about the power of vermicomposting read this blog.

Not only have we proven Straw Bale Gardening is an absolutely awesome gardening system that you should incorporate into your garden, farm or homestead, it also creates an additional output besides growing your groceries. After the season is over the cardboard under the bales and the straw them selves decomposes into some amazingly rich and biodiverse mulch that you can amend into your soils, put into your compost, or apply as a mulch in your garden beds. We created about 40 gallons worth of mulch after using about 12 bales at the beginning of the growing season the previous year. We did wait all the way to this spring to collect the mulch. Had we collected it in the fall we would have almost double the amount. We are not only very happy with the SBG but also the mulch it produces.

Coe's Comfrey: http://coescomfrey.com/comfrey.html

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Mayfield Family Farm
North Dallas Area - Denton, TX

Part of our commitment to self-reliance is we look for multiple outputs for each single input on our farm as a rule to decide if an input is worth our time and commitment. Rabbits not only serve us and our community on the dinner table but their dropping serve as incredible cold manure for excellent fertilizer. ​