Until last year, I used to garden for my mother-in-law when I visited (2-3 times a year) and you could go to a pick-up place in one of the county parks (?) and take all the compost you wanted for free. I think you were supposed to be a resident, but no one was there to check. While I wasn't a resident, she was, so I felt ok about it. Over the years, I did it many times. I never had a truck, just my m-i-l's very fancy car, but I just saved the bags from when I bought other amendments or potting soil for her, and reused those and other assorted containers. Anyhow, I am not suggesting that you go to a different county to scam free compost, but that you look at other sources if you aren't happy with the compost from WF. BTW, compost from yard waste is perfectly fine to use. It heats to a much, much higher temp than home-made compost and is very, very unlikely to contain any weed seeds or pathogens. Aphids won't survive even home composting. Heck, they won't survive a blast of water from the hose. You can compost them yourself quite safely. "Some kind of mulch" is a whole 'nother story. Whatever that is, could, indeed, have brought in oak root fungus or some other disease. This would be especially true if the mulch was un-composted oak bark chips or something like that. But oak root fungus is so widespread in your region, your friend could have gotten in any number of ways. It often is dormant for many years before it starts showing symtoms, so it would be impossible to say it was "brought" in by any one item. If you can't get compost in your county for free, go to the nearest nursery or Home Depot and buy it. I would bet you nearly anything it would be cheaper than WF.

You're right that it probably doesn't matter. The OSCR Jr. is an excellent design! I've got a similar set up but not nearly as nicely built. I've found that my worms don't get anywhere near eating the suggested 'half their body weight per day'. I do the 'wait until it's almost done' to add more and I actually just split the bin in half, not 4 or 6 quadrants and spread the food thinly about half way down the bedding. I work different days of the week (inc. weekends) each week, so I don't have a schedule like 'feeding them on Sundays'. I guess I feed them about every 5 days, but I don't measure the weight. I don't know if that's helpful, but that's what I do. I'd estimate I have about a pound of worms in each of the bins and give them a pound of food every 5-6 days, but that's a very rough estimate. I certainly can't give 3 1/2 pounds a week as some suggest they should be able to do. Maybe one of these days I'll get a scale and keep better records. It seems like a lot of work for a hobby one can ignore so easily and still get good results!

I will hunt down Deliver and recommend it to dad's nurse. Hopefully she knows all about it since she is an experienced hospice caregiver. The most current info from the team of doctors working on him was that dad could recover to the point of being strong enough to care for himself but will be bed ridden and homebound for most of the day - that he will never be strong enough to walk great distances or take care of my mother (who has her own monumental health issues). But in order to achieve this level he must eat more and drink more and exercise every day - all of which he isn't doing! He is not in any pain, nor is he mentally impaired or even depressed. For some reason he just can't grasp how serious the situation is and that he doesn't have a choice about the eating and exercising demands - it's a 'do it or die' situation. I could understand his actions if he had recently injured himself but he got hurt in October of '05 and the year he spent in the hospital he wasn't in a coma. How can a person experience all that, the surgeries, the invasive tests, and not think they needed to follow the doctors orders? The entire time he has been in the various hospitals and now that he is home - one of us kids has been there with him. For the first 5 months we even stayed with him 24 hours a day because he often panicked when he slept (he kept thinking he was falling). Only my older brother lives in that state and he had to go to work during the day so my little sister and I (on leave from my job) took the day shifts and let my brother sit with him at night. In the past 14 months I have traveled back home 5 times, often for three weeks each visit. Needless to say this has really hurt my paycheck (since it is all leave without pay). We thought he was improving after he came home but he caught some sort of bug (digestive) and went downhill. So we changed our plan of attack and hired a live-in nurse who will stay with him until he either dies or gets sent to a nursing home (against his wishes) or improves to the point that he only needs a daytime caregiver. My other sister is there now and we have this rule that no ones gets to make demands unless they are there doing the work. So whatever she decides to do is what will happen, because I'm not going back for a while. After the dad crisis settles a bit we will all have to focus on mom who is also in need of major medical work. If this sounds like a classic old person situation, I am only in my 40's and my folks are in their 70's. If you had met my father before he broke his neck & back you would've thought he was in his early 60's. Now you'd think he was close to 100. We used to call him 'dynamo grandpa' because he was so healthy and athletic for his age. I've come to terms with all of this. Anything can happen now, it is beyond my control. In the end I will get to say that my dad died after falling through the roof and breaking his neck. The sad truth is that he really died after catching a bug while recuperating in the hospital.

I assumed you had central air conditioning. If you are going to have a window unit in the kitchen, then that effectively is a separate zone. You should be fine in the summer assuming the window unit can keep up with the heat gain of the kitchen. One window unit in such a large space may not be able to keep the temperature even throughout the whole kitchen when the sun is beating down on the windows. Think about two smaller units installed at opposite ends of the room. It is difficult to say if kitchen will have the same temperature as the rest of the house during the winter. It is better insulated, but it has a lot of windows and a high ceiling. It will be probably fine during the day, but may be cold during the night. How many feet of baseboard will be installed? To what temperature do you set the thermostat during the day and night? If you don't want to spend the money now, then I suggest install the new plumbing for the baseboard so that it will be easy to zone in the future in case you are not happy with the temperature of the kitchen. I would also run the wires for the thermostat now in order to make it easier in the future. Thermostat wiring is inexpensive and simple to install when the studs are exposed.