A Day in the Life: Emeryville Children's House: It doesn't smell pretty, but the plants are going to love it!

We have discovered why Bokashi composting bran is so expensive: the process of making your own is cheap and fairly easy, but it takes a whole month, and is really, really smelly. Imagine leaving an open container of yogurt out on the counter for a few days... that's why we did this work outside.

Two weeks ago, we mixed a quarter-cup of rice with a cup of water, shook it until the water was completely cloudy, strained the water, and put it in a sealed jar under our sink for a week.
One week ago, we strained that rice-water through a filter and mixed it with ten cups of whole milk, poured the mixture back into the sealed jar, and put it back under the sink for another week.

Today, we brought it out and put on our aprons.

The first step was to strain the milk/ricewater into a large bowl. A large quantity of curd had formed in the jar.

(...it's probably best that you can't smell this...)

The residue was this yellow liquid.

We mixed a teaspoon of blackstrap molasses into it. Now we had achieved Bokashi "serum". Then we mixed some more molasses into three cups of water, and added some of the yellow serum...

... and poured it over a tub full of wheat bran

.

The remaining serum went back into the jar, sealed tightly and then bagged in an airtight plastic bag in the refrigerator. This will enable us to quickly make additional Bokashi bran mix throughout a calendar year!

The label reads: "Bokashi Serum for Gardening, good through Feb. 2015. Yes, it is supposed to smell bad."

After we had mixed the serum and water with the wheat bran, we sealed it into an airtight bag, inside a second airtight bag, inside a sealed utility bucket, with a label that says it will be ready for use on March 5th. Then we mixed that stinky mass of curd with some water and topsoil and used it to prep the vacant gardening bed where we will soon transplant our seedlings!

Tools. There is nothing quite as fun as working in the sunshine with gardening tools.

Although it has been time-consuming and stinky work, we are excited to incorporate the fruits of our labor into our composting ritual!