Earthworms

When a chance college dorm meeting prompts parlay about urban ag and life's design, can a live/work partnership based on decay, and inspired by nature, be far behind?

In the everyday and enterprise of Tim Kiefer and Beth Grolmes-Kiefer, for sure YES.

These two purposeful young sustainably-focused city residents are putting their ideals to work, raising and selling the outputs of hens, and transforming vacant property from poison-ivy infestation to rich-soil productivity. How? Primarily by collecting to rot the kitchen and garden scraps of others.

Perennial City Composting is a novel subscription service, providing St. Louis City and central-county area customers with regular organic waste pickup. Their on-the-road amenity feeds abandoned lot soil toward Tim and Beth's near-term goal of NOURISHing their subscribers with veggies from the composted scraps these same folks pay them to haul away.

This Earthworms conversation spotlights the Kiefer's unique, hard-working and visionary efforts, while also enlightening Beth and Tim to options host Jean Ponzi knows from her STL work and previous shows.

Listeners: Be ready to Rot & Roll!

Music: Jingle Bells - played live at KDHX by the Civiltones

Earthworms is honored by engineering this week from Andy Coco, host of KDHX Rhythm Section and station Production Director. THANKS!

Related Earthworms Conversations:

Elaine Ingham: Soil Science Rocks Plant Health (Nov 2017)Fungus Farming for Food & Fun - McCully Heritage Project (Feb 2018)

Food Policy Coalition Grows Health & Resouces (Dec 2015)The Easy Chicken - Fowl Fun Comes to You (Dec 2016)

Alicia and Josh Davis are farmers (and both are, by training, engineers) on a plot they call Green Finned Hippy Farm, near Pocohontas, Illinois.

They started life together, and their farming ambition, aquaponically raising ("green," finned) Tilapia fish. That was 2010. Today their rural 18 acres support hens in pasture, their family of three (son Bean was born there), organic veggie beds, and herds of goats and of the endangered heirloom American Mulefoot Hog.

Resourceful and determined, Josh and Alicia are figuring out farming as they go - helped by the Internet and their family-farming heritage. Innovations like their chicken truck and egg-washing apparatus continue to sprout, making their hard work more efficient. Farm events like Goat Yoga, Sips & Snuggles Baby Goat Happy Hour, and the truly sacramental Swine and Dine are growing their network of customers and friends.

Where there are now is inspiring. Where they aspire to be in 10 years, Josh sums up: "I envision a community where we're Their Farmer, like someone is Their Doctor." Alicia adds: "Our hog program is a conservation effort. We selectively breed to produce excellent genetics. Our hope is that by humanely bringing this animal back to the table, we can remove it from the critically endangered list."

Having this Earthworms conversation - and reading Josh and Alicia's blogs - I am in awe. These beautiful humans are working so hard to preserve and restore both a species of fellow living creature, and an essential way of life. Enjoy their story - and try their food!

Music: Washboard Suzie, played live at KDHX by Zydeco Crawdaddies

THANKS to Anna Holland, Earthworms engineer

Related Earthworms Conversations: Slow Money: Woody Tasch on Investing in Food and Soil (July 2018)

Fungus Farming for Food & Fun (February 2018)

A Climatic Ode to Seed Savers (November 2016)

Alpacas of Troy: Sustainable Farming on the Hoof (July 2016)

Urban Agriculture Guide: New Tool for City Farmers (June 2016)

The Easy Chicken: Fowl Fun Comes to YOU (December 2017)

Winter weather brings out fleets of vehicles working to keep roads clear and parking lots free of icy hazards. But run-off of the salt and chemicals used will harm the life in creeks and streams.

Biologist Danelle Haake has researched options to treat slippery pavement without compromising her ecological focus, water quality. "Brining" uses conventional road salt, dissolved, in much smaller quantities. Her findings are informing local decisions with data on salt concentration in streams during icy-road treatment periods.

Her perspective can help officials and citizens alike care for aquatic critter health.

This Earthworms conversation affirms the importance of urban and suburban streams and supports transportation safety efforts.

Local presentations on this topic are open to the public. Summer is the time to consider ecological winter road maintenance..

THANKS to Anna Holland, Earthworms audio engineer.

Music: Inferno Reel, performed live at KDHX by Matt Finner

Investment pro Woody Tasch is evolving his own field.

Profoundly inspired by the nature of soil - yes, that BROWN stuff we typically march right over - his work serves its loamy muse by plowing, so to speak, "Nurture Capital" directly into the Local/Sustainable Food movement, yielding ROI of healthier soil and stronger local community economics and culture. He calls this prophet-able enterprise Slow Money.

Woody Tasch's turns of phrase and process grew an investment movement from his publication a decade ago of the now-classic Inquiries Into the Nature of Slow Money - Investing As If Food, Farms and Fertility Mattered.

Now he is structuring SOIL, Slow Opportunities for Investing Locally. He articulates how and why the transformative aim of this economic system works in his mytho-poetic and colossally detailed new book SOIL 2017 - Notes Toward the Theory and Practice of Nurture Capital.

Tasch is the bard of a new economic saga, the story of bringing our human relations with money soundly back to Earth. His work is surely, slowly meeting a "lively serious," planetary-scale human need.

Music: The Exotic Future of Money, performed live at KDHX by Kinetics THANK YOU Anna Holland, engineer for Earthworms Related Earthworms Conversations: The Genuine Progress Indicator with Dr. Eric Zencey (March 2015)

2% Solutions for the Planet, Courtney White's Super Stories of Green Innovation (Oct 2015)

Slow Food St. Louis Project Garlic (October 2015)

Grown locally and designed in-season. Using nature's diversity of shapes, textures and hues in pods and leaves as well as vivid blossoms. Keeping plastic and other material waste to a minimum.

The trend in SLOW FLOWERS embraces all of these. Gardener turned floral business owner Kate Estwing makes these ideals (and more) work, beautifully, in her St. Louis enterprise City House Country Mouse.

Floral artistry that can sustainably bedeck a wedding as easily as creating a planter box of succulents adds value to a service that everyone enjoys. And the values at work for Estwing help grow a bouquet of community resources along with her business!

Open House August 16-18 at the new City House Country Mouse studio, 2105 Marconi Avenue on The Hill in St. Louis! Retail hours there are coming soon. Yes! this is Kate Estwing of Beep Beep Boop Boop, the popular KDHX radio show; Kate has also served as Program Director for KDHX.

Music: Clavinova, performed live at KDHX by Messy Jiverson

THANKS to Anna Holland, Earthworms engineer

Related Earthworms Conversations: Urban Buds with flower farmers Mimo Davis and Miranda Duschack (February 2015)

Missourians, meet our native neighbor: Ursus americanus. And meet Laura Conlee, Furbearer Biologist and Resource Scientist with the MO Department of Conservation, a true appreciator of bears.

Photos from MDC Black Bear Research Cam - 2017

Black bears (who can be brown, ruddy and even sort of blonde) have always roamed the Show-Me State (OK, maybe only after Mastodons), but by the early 1900s their numbers had dived. Introduction of bears from northern populations through an Arkansas Game & Fish program in the 1950s and '60s reinvigorated the Missouri Ozarks with vital black bear roles in healthy forest ecosystems.

By 2010, it was time to count MO bears. The MDC Bear Project now annually evaluates black bear reproduction and survival. Note: the bears in these field work-up photos are FINE! Laura Conlee and her skilled team are taking great care with the animals they're handling.

This research collaboration - among specialists in wildlife and habitat biology, landowner relations, public education and more - is tracking multiple factors to better understand and support the animals. Bear data is one element of a new MDC Research Website, created to share this agency's expert knowledge with colleagues and with all of us! Check out MDC's new Bear Story Map to get a really cool feel for these beautiful creatures, and the research our state's conservation science teams are engaged in.

Going out hiking or camping into bear territory? Or if you're concerned about recent bear reports near our metro area borders, become BEAR AWARE with important advice from MDC advocates for healthy populations of humans AND bears!

Music: Hunter's Permit, performed live at KDHX by Mr. Sun THANKS to Anna Holland, engineering for Earthworms, and to Dan Zarlenga, communications maven for MDC.

7.6 billion and growing. Human beings on Earth, that is. But talking Population in enviro-circles is not the topic at top of mind. More like on edge of biases.

So the Population Media Center, based in VT USA., marshals Entertainment-Power in societies world-wide (local writers, actors, production companies), to educate through stories of Love, Sex, Triumph, Betrayal and all the kinds of drama-rama that WILL make an impression among our kind. PMC data shows these shows are changing values, and influencing policy. Big work from soaps!

This year PMC celebrates 20 Years of this innovative, globally-partnered service. Joe Bish, PMC Director of Issue Advocacy, returns to Earthworms with a report on how this important work is going.

#RidiculousRight?! is PMC's awareness campaign for World Population Day 2018. The international focus for WPD this year is Family Planning is a Human Right. Throughout July, this hashtag will circulate ridiculous policies and investments contrasted with the value of family planning action and education. Chime in!

Music: Big Piney Blues, performed live at KDHX by Brian Curran THANKS to Anna Holland, Earthworms engineer

Related Earthworms Conversations: DRAWDOWN: Solutions to Reverse Global Warming (March 2018)

World Population Day 2017 (July 2017)

Plans and discussions rolled around our town for years. How could we make Bike-Sharing services feasible here in The Lou?

In April, 2018 - just in time for Earth Day! - the cycle-access techno-breakthrough that is Limebike sped past barriers, onto our streets. Today, that first neon fleet of 1,500 Limebikes has multiplied. These Global Cooling Devices and humans of all kinds are moving each other around STL, safely and sustainably, at public attractions and in our city neighborhoods.

David Woronets, Lime Operations Manager, details how Lime is peddling Smart Mobility with great success, and how St. Louis is leading the pack of U.S. Lime markets.

Down the road? Lime electric scooters - and more!

Music: Deep Gap, performed live at KDHX by Marisa Anderson

THANKS to Anna Holland, Earthworms engineer

More Earthworms Conversational Cruises:

Trekking Green: Big Adventure, Tiny Footprint (August 2015) STL Metro Market: Grocery Story in a Bus (June 2015) Trailnet's New Vision (March 2016) American Solar Challenge: Local Roadracing Teams (June 2016)

Great Rivers Greenway St Louis Bike Routes (April 2015)

RideFinders: Carpooling Made E-Z (May 2018)

Brothers Jeff and Randy Vines are turning 40 (local-speak sez Farty).

Their upbeat, Ham-on-Wry style - and their business STL-Style - helps power the ultra-diverse, collaborative renewal of their city 'hood, Cherokee Street.

These sons of STL suburbia, who went into advertising, know how to put their love of City into action. Their choice of digs on Cherokee, in South St. Louis, is a perfect place to invest their prodigious love-work resources. And to hawk the "St. Louis inspired apparel, merch and curiosities" that deck their corner store.

This conversation is a valentine to City of St. Louis life, from these uber-articulate bros and City-dweller Earthworms host Jean Ponzi.

New bedazzle on Vines' place is the eye-popping swirly-hue giant mural by daughter-father artist team Liza Fishbone and Robert Fishbone. A Fartieth BD present to themselves gifts big beauty to their City too!

More Art-Related Earthworms: Enviro-Cartoonist Joe Mohr (November 2015)

Joan Lipkin: Theater Takes On Climate Change (October 2017)

Filmmaker Caitlin Zera: From The Pipeline (January 2016)

Chalk Riot: Woman-Powered Street Art (May 2018)

Music: Cherokee Nights, performed live at KDHX by Messy Jiverson

THANKS to Anna Holland, engineering Earthworms

When a material (like paper) or a container (like a bottle or a can) has served its original purpose and still has useful life remaining, that material will remain in use as ingredients in recycled-content products - if you put it in your recycling bin. But not everything should go in that bin. Bob Henkel manages Recycling On The Go for St. Louis Earth Day. He has BIN there & done that Green thang at hundreds of events, with thousand of humans. He know his recycling stuff. So does Earthworms host Jean Ponzi.

This conversation sorts through - literally! - what can and cannot be recycled, and why it's important not to use that Blue Bin as a catch-all for stuff you WISH could continue to be useful, if somebody else does something with it.

Coming up June 30, 2018: the second Recycling Extravaganza collection this year for hard-to-recycle stuff. Check it out - and remember to ONLY bring what will be accepted! Global market shifts are puttin' the squeeze on our recycling industry. We need to work together with our recycling service pros to keep this fundamental Green activity functioning, solvent and useful.

Got Sustainable Living questions? Missouri Botanical Garden's Green Resources Answer Service will give you any possible reuse and recycling options for other stuff - plus advice on more, FREE!

Music: Washboard Suzie, performed live at KDHX by Zydeco Crawdaddies

THANKS to Earthworms engineer, Ms. Anna Holland.

Related Earthworms Conversations: Life Without Plastic? (January 2018 and Barge-Based Trash Basher Chad Pregracke (March 2017)