careful, they'll worm their way into your life!

Sustainability is really about reducing consumption, but we have to consume, so we need to reduce our waste and make it as easy as possible for the earth to take it back. The more waste we stuff down our drains, the more taxing it is to our water municipal water systems.

My wonderful wife gave me a worm farm for my birthday. It's perfect for city dwellers that don't have room for a compost pile. Now we discard almost no kitchen waste. We bought ours from WormsWrangler. The GUSANITO Factory of Worms™ is a self contained system that houses up to 12,000 worms. If done right, there is no odor whatsoever. And you can harvest the best compost possible. We started with 1,000 red wigglers. They'll eat about a pound per thousand per day.

This particular farm has the added feature of a spigot to drain the liquid compost tea that is a bi-product of such a moisture rich environment. You can then use the tea for feeding plants.

All we do is put all our veggie scraps during the week into a container in the fridge. At the end of the week, we chop it up in the food processor. This helps the worms devour everything faster. In a day or so, it's all turned into black gold!

Reclaiming History One Piece at a Time

I built this bookcase completely from reclaimed wood. The body and shelves of the cabinet are broad leaf pine that came from floor joists. The redwood panels came out of the old Schmidt's brewery where they were use as treads for catwalks. Notice the center backboards, they were book matched to show off the holes that were drilled to run the electric wires throughout the house.

Why use reclaimed wood?

• We only have so much new wood available-the more it's used the less there is


• You're rescuing wood otherwise destined for the landfill


• Reclaimed wood is old growth wood with tight grain and beautiful color


• It can be book matched for really interesting grain effect


• It has blemishes, yes, but that adds to the sense of history (which we too often forget)

When I use new hardwoods, it's always FSC certified. Check out the Adam Rung Woodworks web site for more reclaimed pieces among many others.