Queenstown Primary have been doing an amazing job on tackling their food waste issues. Most of the school is into it, they understand the issues and have been working on ironing out the process of collecting and sorting the waste into the relevant streams.
We have two worm farms in the school grounds now; one of them is the epic tyre version that I wrote about a few weeks ago and another, older, and to be honest pretty decrepit wooden one that has been exposed to the elements for a few years now.
It was about time that this older one received a little love….well in fact what I really mean is, it’s about time it got replaced. Word was that Podge had another super flash brand new version of this worm farm nestled away in storage. I needed to restock the worm farm at Wastebusters so I managed to pull a few worms out of the restock to add to the QPS farm.
We had an awesome crew turn up for this afternoon activity. The sun was shinning, the term drawing to an end and this is a great way to come together and take part in a positive action outside. Mrs. Walker and Mrs. Gray brought their classes along and a few other middles and juniors came to join us too.
We knew that the space we had the old worm farm in was pretty good. Underneath a tree, close to where many of the students eat their lunch. The only problem we have, is when we go to look at the worm farm, as we often do, it is not possible for us to really gather around it. To solve this we collectively decided to move it further away from the fence, still under the tree, but with enough of a gap so that a group of us can gather around and have a good old look in side.
Making a worm farm is pretty easy. There are a stack of jobs that everyone can get involved in. It was my job to find a spade and dig a flat terrace for the farm to sit on. Then we need to make a bed for the worms, a couple of students managed to divert some of the shredded paper from the office recycling into a bucket of water to moisten it and then into the bottom of the worm farm.
Another group of students were busily chopping up the food waste they had collected from lunch time, we all now know that worms have real small mouths with no teeth so we need to help them out and make the food we put in nice and small. That way they can get on with turning it into gorgeous vermicast without having to worry about how they will manage to wrap their tongue around it.
With the food on the way, it was time to put the worms into the farm. A pretty easy job indeed. Food goes on top, a little more moist shredded paper to cover, then the polystyrene cover inside the farm and finally the wooden lid.
Job done! One regenerated worm farm and a group of very pleased and empowered students. Well done QPS!
