My Name is Marla Christiansen, I am the new co-owner of Eco Friendly Living. My business partner Heather is more than a business partner, she is my daughter and the mother of two of my grand kids. Being part of the Eco Friendly Living website has got me thinking of when eco friendly living wasn't a movement but a way of life and how I can reclaim a former way of life.
I was raised in an Iowa community back in the day where composting was the norm and it was done without fanfare. My uncles and grandparents owned farms and and I spent plenty of time working alongside my cousins doing whatever needed to be done to keep the farms running.
We all had big gardens and composted with garden cuttings, chicken, cow and horse manure.
I could shovel it with the best of them!
After years of being away from the farm lifestyle and living in the city and suburbs I have found that I have slacked off and have gotten lazy. The garbage disposal grinds up most of my kitchen waste and what doesn't go down the disposal ends up in the city compost bins. Yard waste is dumped into the city compost bins as well. I haven't had a vegetable garden since my daughters were little.
Well, I have turned over a new leaf, so to say. As a grandmother to some pretty sweet little ones it is my responsibility to teach them what I learned as a child and to instill the love of our planet in each one of them.
I have begun to work with my granddaughter Liana (who is now 3) in the garden. She knows the difference between good plants that we tend and weeds that we pull.
She has helped me 'plant' lady bugs in the garden when I found aphids on some of my bushes. She absolutely loved being involved and giggled as lady bugs crawled up her arms. I then sent her home with a partial bag of lady bugs for her roses and she taught her mom and dad how to add them to the plants. Next year her little brother Jackson will be old enough to to be right next to her having lady bug giggles too.
Our current project is vermicomposting. Vermicomposting is the use of worms in composting that results in worm castings (droppings) that are considered black gold by gardeners. Used in with garden soil or top dressed it is a wonderful natural fertilizer. Because of all the good bacteria in the castings it will actually fight off some garden diseases and pests. That is a good thing!
Well, I ordered my worm composting bin and 1lb of worms from All things Organic and Liana and I waited anxiously for our worms to arrive. The bins arrived about 3 days before the worms did. It gave us a chance to prepare for the arrival of the worms.
On the day they arrived, I am not sure which one of us was more excited. Liana was so excited to be able to hold a wriggling handfull of red wiggler worms. Their name fits them to a T. We gently placed them in the prepared bed and covered them with the bedding material and shredded junk mail (no plastic) so that they could begin their jobs.
Each day that Liana comes to visit, she checks on the worms and shows everyone how to find them. They are fat and wiggly and have begun to do their job and I have begun to do mine.
Marla Christiansen
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