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The world is a confusing place. The packaging for food appears to be there for the sole purpose of confusing you and trying to make you paranoid.

Take the ‘use by’ and ‘best before’ dates printed on stuff, for example. The government’s own website says of ‘use by’:

You shouldn’t use any food or drink after the end of the ‘use by’ date shown on the label. Even if it looks and smells fine, using it after this date could put your health at risk and cause food poisoning.

It says of ‘best before’:

‘Best before’ dates are usually used on foods that last longer, such as frozen, dried or canned foods. It should be safe to eat food after the ‘best before’ date, but the food will no longer be at its best. After this date, the food might begin to lose its flavour and texture. However, you shouldn’t eat eggs after the ‘best before’ date. This is because eggs can contain salmonella bacteria, which could start to multiply after this date.

So, why on earth aren’t eggs marked with ‘use-by’ dates? Not that is matters for me, because our chickens don’t have built-in printers so I have no idea of the best before dates for our eggs.
It’s not like I take much notice of these labels anyway, whatever our beloved government says. It amused me a month or so back when I bought some half-prices beansprouts in a local grocers. The lady behind the counter said,

“They’re out of date, which is why they’re cheap”.

I said I was aware of that, and she said. “Yes, I don’t take much notice of those dates either. I just sniff it and if it smells ok, I’ll use it. I’ve used stuff nearly 4 days after the printed date.”

4 days!? I’ve used stuff 4 years after the printed date! Admittedly, it was canned, but still. I sniff it, give it an eye-balling to see if its furry, and if it’s not, it gets cooked or eaten. My stomach could do with a bit of hardening after all the chemicals its had going through it.

It horrifies me when I see people throwing out perfectly good food only hours after the use-by, best-before or which-ever date has passed. My Mum used to try to make me feel guilty by laying the “children in Africa dieing” line on me, but now I just think of all the energy, time and money that went into getting the food from some far flung country, to a local monster supermarket then into the kitchen of the fussy eater who is about to throw it away.

I hate throwing food away. It means I’ve bought too much, wasted my money and my effort in carrying it home. I usually end up with some floppy veg that came with our veg-box that never got around to being cooked, and it’s usually ok to put it on the compost, but some things you can’t; for example, I know there’s half a tub of unused greek yogurt in the fridge which is around about now developing self-awareness and will probably soon declare war on the vegetables in the lower tray.

So, the way around it is to make sure one uses all the stuff one has. I bought some low-fat (of course, I’m on a diet) cheese the other day to make some spinach and cheese ravioli. I opened it to use some in another recipe, so I have to use it soon otherwise it will join forces with the hairy greek army and there’ll be nothing left. So, it’s ravioli tonight. Except for the fact that the flour has been sitting around rather a long time and now houses a nicely flourishing colony of weevils. Sigh.

Oh, so that’s what you think of me is it? No, not those worms! I’ve got composting worms! They arrived in the post today.

For my birthday, last week, I got a wormery. This is a set of tightly fitting round tubs with perforated bottoms in which worms will happily live. You can chuck your waste food in there (around 250-500g a week) and they will turn it into both a regular compost and a liquid plant food. All for free (well, the initial outlay of the wormery, of course). Because I got it for my birthday, the worms were not included and I had to send off for them. They arrived in the post today, so I put it all together!

The wormery came with a small block, about the size of a brick, that was the initial bedding to get the worms settled in. This had to be soaked for a couple of hours in water to make it expand to the size of the bottom tray.

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Soaking the bedding

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The empty composter ready for filling

After a couple of hours I had a whole tub full of wet compost that I had to wring out and put into the wormery. It was a messy job, but didn’t take too long.

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The composter with the bottom tray full of bedding

Then I could open the worms. They were packed in a box in a bag that was almost impossible to open. However, open it I did and I let the guys out into their new home.
Happy House Warming!

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Some of my new pets

The worms were all initially on the top of the tray, so to make them burrow into the bedding I left the lid off for an hour or so. Most of them (the ones that were awake) had gone by then, so I put the contents of our organic waste bin from the kitchen on top and covered with the provided cover which keeps the heat in and put the lid on.

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The factory starts working

I’m looking forward to a few months time when I should be able to harvest my first compost. Every so often, I have to give the wormery a handful of worm treats and lime mix to keep the worms healthy and the soil at the right acidic level. You can see the bags of those things in the last photo.

My wormery came from WigglyWigglers who are perhaps the best place to get something like this in the UK. They have a good website too.

Nooo.. not me! The chickens. We moved their house around to face the sun today. It all started with a normal cleaning out of their excrement from the bottom of their house, replacing the carpet (of wood chippings) and replacing their duvet covers (of hay). However, it was stinking a bit, due to a longer than usual period since their last clear out. So we decided to give it a proper wash – water, detergent – the lot.

It’s lucky we started early and that the weather was pretty good, because it needs to dry before we could replace all the bits and bobs and the chickens can go back in. It gets dark just after 4pm now, so we knew it had to dry quickly, so we turned it so that the door was facing the sun. It had luckily dried by just gone 3pm, so we could make their beds while it was still light.

We even had time for Daisy and Vicious to have a cuddle, much to Vicious’ disgruntlement.

I’ve also completely emptied the kitchen cupboard, cleaned it down and refilled it neatly, which took a few hours, and Daisy is starting a cottage pie for dinner. Yum diddle.