10/10/2023 0 Comments Golden earthworm farm shop![]() Credit: Carolina Sanchez for Chicago Reader ![]() Despite its appearance, Bauer’s compost smells neutral unless it becomes imbalanced. “The microbes just love that stuff.” The worms, however, don’t, so those are added in moderation. “That stuff sets the bins on fire,” he says. He saw parallels between his old, unhealthy plants and the diseases and general weakening that afflict humans as they age. And he developed a preoccupation with healthy, living soil. He used his time off to go fishing and teach himself to grow cannabis again. Occasionally he adds amendments from his neighbors’ dumpsters: coffee grounds from Standing Passengers and spent brewers’ grains from Forbidden Root.īauer opened Flour Power in the summer of 2020, but the restaurant closed the following year for a mid-pandemic break and reset. To this he adds pulverized egg shells weathered and shredded, untreated cardboard boxes and paper flour sacks left to soak in the rain in the alley behind the restaurant. It all gets tossed into two large Amazon courier totes Bauer stores just to the right of his toilet. ![]() ![]() He incinerated them into biochar, which doesn’t do much for the worms themselves but contributes necessary carbon to the matrix.įor more than a year, Flour Power has produced almost no food waste. “That’s what the worms really seem to like.” The red wigglers and Indian blues that live in Bauer’s apartment bathroom got a taste of the oxtails too. ![]() The freeze-thaw process breaks down the plant matter’s cell walls, which gives it a particularly attractive quality. Once a week, Bauer throws an icy lump of this organic slurry into his stand mixer and beats it to a pulp. When Bauer finished prepping this pasta last spring, the excess vegetable scraps and bits of dough that never escaped his extruder joined an ever-growing collection in the freezer at Flour Power, his Ukrainian Village pasta joint. Best of Chicago 2022: Music & Nightlifeįlour Power campanelle.Best of Chicago 2022: Sports & Recreation. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |