Gross. Don't read before dinner.

Don't worry, I didn't take photos. Sometimes this urban farming stuff can really suck. This week I made an unplanned and unwelcome foray into maggot farming. To understand how upsetting this is for me, you need to know that there are really only two things that gross me out: leeches and maggots. When I was 19 I tried to get over my fear of the former, by ordering leeches from a biological supply company and keeping them as pets. (Imagine the looks of the fedex employees and other customers when I opened my box to make sure everything was okay.) I can tolerate seeing leeches now in a contained aquarium, but you can be sure I don't go for soaks in stagnant water. To this day I haven't been able to assuage my extreme disgust of maggots.

Here is a long story short: Lots of lettuce/green scraps go into an insufficiently aerated or balanced compost pile. A few days later I open and find thousands of maggots squirming and pulsating and not just the little tiny kinds, there were a bunch over an inch long that seem to come from some giant fly beetle thing I've never seen until this week. I had rotting avocados beating like hearts from maggot excitement. I'll stop with the descriptions. I shoveled a bunch out into a bucket to give to the chickens who obviously have a completely different viewpoint on this subject. Yuck. That's enough about this.

Chickens heart maggots, I do not.