For Today :)

PROTOTYPE :)

Today, we haven't done much because we haven't met in class, but we are in the process of getting the okay from Mr. Hutchison for him to take care of our lovely worm bin after we leave here. I e-mailed him yesterday so hopefully he will be able to contact us soon. Tomorrow we are going to be fixing up the barrel so that the clasps and hinges will be secured on the barrel. The drill holes are too small for the screws and nuts so the holes are going to be re-drilled and the clasps and hinges will be re-attached. We also need to waterproof the base with our spray can of paint and implement the barrel. Noah and Micah will probably work on the barrel and Leilani and I will probably do the base and work on the write up. We have been working on the visual presentation for the symposium and have quite a few slides that are under construction. We are also going to make nifty wood guards for the barrel that will prevent it from rolling off the wheels. Hopefully tomorrow we will have the finished product by the time class ends and be able to implement it by next week!

For Yesterday

So, Leilani couldn't post yesterday because of the internet went out (life of a boarder) so I have the post she wrote for us right here:
Today Micah and Noah brought up our worm bin. It's pretty much awesome. Besides having the wrong sized bolts and nuts there are only a few minor detail adjustments that we need to make. Noah and Micah are figuring out a way to use the left over wood we have to keep the barrel on the wheels and on track so that it doesn't fall off the base. Tomorrow after school Mama Fuj is going to take me down to middle school to get worms and dirt from Mr. Omo. I am really excited because Mama said that he is really knowledgeable about worm composting and will have many tips/know-how/educational facts to pass on. Here is a picture of our rotating composting worm bin.

Long Term Plans

What will you do with your worm bin after this project/school year is done? How will you feed the worms? How do you feel about murdering all of these innocent worms via starvation and neglect? These are some frequently asked questions by Mr. Blake and I am proud to say that we now have a definite answer to all of them. When this project is completed our initial plan was to donate our rotating composting worm bin to Mr. Grach to use for his aquaponics garden that he plans to have next year, but we found out that Mr. Grach will not be here all summer and without being fed the worms will eventually starve to death. I have asked my dorm adviser, Mrs. Frohardt, if she would like to use/take care of our rotating worm bin during the summer and she said she would be delighted to! I have been updating Mrs. Frohardt about our project since we started so she already knew what we were doing and only needed a quick explanation about how our model works, how often to rotate it, and what kinds of food to put in it. The rotating worm bin will be kept by the garden show in the previous blog post. Because of its prime location being close to several different dorms Mrs. Frohardt suggested that the other dorm advisers put their green waste in there too. That's a great idea! As of right now our group awaits a response from Mr. Grach seeing if he would like to have our rotating composting worm bin for the next school year. I hope he says yes! This is a picture of my dorm advisers, Mrs. Frohardt is the head dorm adviser of Kapi'olani Nui and she is in the middle.

3 Days Till Blast Off

Only three days left till we release our rotating composting worm bin into the wild:) Noah was absent today so the nuts and bolt will hopefully be here tomorrow. If you are sick Noah we hope you get better. We discussed our method of how we would keep track of our projects progress. Mama Fuj said that we should weight the dirt and worms before we put it into the barrel. Then also weight it at the end of our project. Thats a really good idea and we will go with that, also i think it would be interesting to weigh how much food we put in every night.
My dorm adviser has been absent for a while because she is very sick so I haven't been able to ask her about using the worm bin over the summer to keep her garden fertilized, but this is a picture of the little garden behind our dorm and im sure it would love some wonderfully rich and nutrient filled soil to eat:)

Up and Coming

We are almost done with the construction of our worm bin. Leilani and I have discussed what we are going to do after the project is done and Micah and Noah should be done on the due date after they get some nuts and bolts for the clasps. We haven't really done anything over the weekend because we're pretty much set for project implementation. However, the next time we meet we should talk about data collection for Leilani and how we can measure and analyze after collecting. I think there will be some issues in data collecting and such because it's hard to say how much was composted and how fast, but we can see how efficient the worm bin really is. I think overall we are doing okay, but we are close to falling behind so we need to get back on track and keep our eyes on the prize. Things are going swell, but we're supposed to be done in 2 days so we're kind of pushing it. Hopefully, next post we'll be able to post a picture of our project for the blog. We're going to keep our thinking caps on and move on along.

An example of how we could keep track of data.