will worms eat a futon?

Well, after 10 years of excellent service, Mr Duck Herder and I decided up upgrade our sleeping arrangements from a futon to the softest, squishiest mattress on the planet. BLISS!

So what to do with the old futon? This particular futon was made from a thin sheet of foam covered with layers of cotton or wool (I’m not sure) wadding, so in theory, the foam should be reusable and the wadding biodegradable.

Naturally, one can’t rush into these things, so the futon lay strategically placed near the front door for a few weeks until the planets aligned sufficiently to precipitate action. The mattress has a cotton cover which was held together by a long zipper. This made it very easy to recover the wadding. Revolve then happily took custody of the foam and cotton cover for resale. If we still had a dog, the foam and cover would have been great to line a kennel with, however Silke the wonder dog is long gone.

So what to do with all that wadding? The wadding looked pretty clean – as if it had been washed during production, but not bleached, with lots of veg matter spread though it. I guess it would have been low cost wadding because of the seed and plant contamination. It will be interesting to see if any seed comes up! In the mean time, it is bagged up in the carport.

Serendipitously, the bedding in the duck house needed replacing, and I was fresh out of straw. The way things cycle through our little ecosystem is that straw or hay goes into the duck and chook houses, gets pooped on, (some might call this “microbial activation and nitrogen infusion”) and then gets put in either the worm farms or used as mulch in the veggie garden or around fruit trees.

So out with the straw and in with the wadding. I must say it looked very soft and warm. I would also have to say that the ducks were not impressed AT ALL. You can see them here looking very unsure about the whole thing. Ducks, for all their clownishness, are very conservative, have a boring palate and do not like change. Needless to say it took quite a while for me to coax them into bed last night. But they seemed to have survived and despite filling their water up with wadding, hopefully will become accustomed to their new sleeping arrangements.

The next step will be to see if the worms will eat the end product. I will keep you posted.

In other news, I am slowing getting the hang of the whole blogging thing, and managed to fix up the time/date zone thing so it no longer looks like I am keeping strange hours.

Oh and for Sherd, here is yesterday's photo of Nefley the stupid white fluffy chicken, just in case you are still feeling sooky.

Happy Composting!