The Dad who worked with a bunch of Fairies - post 3

Hello - are you there?

We have got to the bit where Dad and his Fairies are mixing tiny bits of food waste together in towering tanks and heating it to clean out the bacteria and you might be wondering why they do this or how they do this?   When I was wondering how it looked a picture came to mind which I have drawn here for you.   It is completly untrue, it doesn't look like this at all.    They use special machinery to do this which needs power to turn the wheels and cogs, to heat the gloopy mixture, very sophisticated machinery invented by extremely clever scientists.     


There is a bit that I can tell you that is true though.   This is super, mega important - I think so because there is a quiet problem bubbling away in this world.   You might have heard of it?   It is called Climate Change or sometimes Global Warming which are both terms used to describe what is happening.   Oh, have you already learned about this at school?   So you know that we human beings are using all sorts of  non-renewable resources in our lovely world that can never be replaced just to do the things that are essential now like turn on lights,  ride in a train, plane, car or ship?   Things to keep our houses warm and clean - all pretty essential things.   

But what happens when the coal, oil, water and other resources are finished?   What happens when the climate is changed so much by too much carbon being increased into the atmosphere too quickly that animals and plants begin to die?    When the plants can't live in our climate any longer what will happen to all the things that depend on those plants for food?   They will die and become extinct - even people will suffer -and that is why Dad and his Fairies are doing such a very important job.

Let me see if I can explain.   The loads of rank, smelly gloop that is delivered to the AD Plant  are processed and three really good things happen.

First of all the mixture gives off a gas called methane.   Too much methane in the atmosphere is considered not A-Good-Thing.  Here is something funny you might not know...methane is found in lots of things , mostly we think about it as the gas given off by rotting garbage but it is also in the burps of sheep and has been of some concern to some scientists.  Some scientists have linked the possibility of too many sheep burping to an increase of methane into the atmosphere.  

The methane given off in the AD Plant is used to make electricity to drive the AD Plant machinery so they are not using up precious coal or oil to do this.  AND...and the methane is NOT being released into the atmosphere as it would in a dump.   It is being used - clever stuff.

Secondly  all that horrible stuff you threw away is turned into fertiliser for farmers to use to grow more crops of yummy things to eat.   Yes - believe it or not your rubbish is good enough grub for crops and vegetables to eat, yum yum.   Full of good-for-you nutrients.

Thirdly, instead of your waste food all going into a huge, big, smelly rubbish dump or land-fill site somewhere every single bit is being recycled to make something good without waste.   A little bit like a Phoenix rising from the ashes in a funny sort of way.

Oh dear, look at the time again!  JP wants me to take him for a walk it is a lovely spring day out there.  He wants to go down Moor Lane and hunt for squirrels...he never catches them.   I want to go and put some fertiliser on my plants so they grow into lovely salads and vegetables in a few weeks.   Next time, I promise you, I'll be back with something very scary .....oh yes, all this good, happy stuff is going to take a dark turn.   Well, it wouldn't be fun without a villian.    Ummm - let me think...maybe one of you would like to guess who the villian will be, or maybe you would like to suggest one or send me a picture?   If you have an idea just send me an email by clicking on the little envelope under this blog post.   It would be fun to see who guesses correctly, or sends me a picture, of who you think the villian will be that I chose for this completly untue story with more than a grain of truth.  I'm off to find a suitable villian....JP thinks it could be the squirrels.

The Dad who worked with a bunch of Fairies - blog post 2.

Hello again.                                                                                                                                                                           Do you remember where we were when we left this story last time?   Yes, that's right, we had got to the bit about how all your yukky bits of left-over food can be turned into something good just like magic.

Have you thought about what you threw in your food-waste bin this week?   That half-eaten cereal the other morning, more sandwich crusts, a sweet you spat out because it tasted horrid and some of the cat food Kodi wouldn't eat - even though Puppy thought he should have it.  Oh yes, hundreds of tea bags too and (I'll whisper this bit so Mum doesn't hear) those vegetables you really didn't want and hid so you could have pudding...well they went in too didn't they?   Now can you imagine all the people in the village putting the same sorts of leftovers in their food bins too?    It all adds up to

 loads

      and loads

             and LOADS of leftover food.

All that food gets put into the back of the dustbin lorry.   Do you remember last summer when the weather was damp and humid how many maggots were in the bin too?   Loads of food and sometimes loads of maggots go into the lorry and off it goes.   Now that doesn't sound much like magic does it but it is the beginning.

What happens next?

The dustbin men work hard all day picking up all the waste food bins and when they have emptied all of them they trundle off to deliver the whole slimy, greasy unappetising lot, liberally sprinkled with fat maggots in maggot season to an Anaerobic Digestion Plant or AD Plant as we now call this busy place.   No, not one that grows as big as a tree not that sort of plant at all.   The use of the word 'plant' here describes an industrial building though I did wonder why a growing plant and a building should share the same name so I looked through my dictionaries and books for an explanation and couldn't find one;  then I looked online and click here to see how it all happened...otherwise, if you are not curious as to why, just read on but take it from me that the picture I've drawn you is certainly not the sort of plant where the lorries took their loads of smelly rotting waste, that is completely untrue but I thought it would be fun to imagine a rubbish-guzzling tree - a bit like  a super enormous Venus Flytrap.   No this AD Plant  is where you will see a place full of huge enormous tank-type buildings ...and this is where the magic really begins to work.   The dustbin men are joined by hundreds of other lorries that have been all over the place, not just to people's homes but to places such as the supermarkets that also throw out piles of waste food every day, and restaurants, hotels, hospitals, schools, dairies, oh every sort of place that deals with  food and has leftovers.

All these are taken to the plant where Dad and his bunch of fairies mix it together and shred it into little bits in a giant mixer and then heat it till they are very hot (more than 70C)  to kill most of the bacteria - so pretty much like cooking on a giant scale - with truly disgusting ingredients.   To tell you what I think - well, I think these guys have got much worse things in their good magic generally speaking than those Macbeth Witches of yore had in their dubious cauldron of evil.

So that is the start of the magic but more happens.   No, I can't stop to tell you about it now because it is time to go and feed the hens, they are all sitting in the rain waiting for their afternoon titbits, left over cabbage, a rotten apple and some stale bread...which I could have put in the food waste bin or the composter, but which are also very good 'tea' for my 6 hungry hens and their rooster.  I'll be back next time to tell you more.

The Dad who worked with a bunch of Fairies

Most children LOVE to hear stories about their Mums and Dads.   Usually Grannies and Grandpas are good at telling stories about the Mums and Dads and you have probably noticed that Mum or Dad usually protests and tells the kids the story is


"Completely untrue..."


Well, be that as it may - I have pre-empted their protest haven't I?   My stories are completely untrue but just have a grain of truth and it is up to the reader to decide which bit that is.


This story is about a Dad who works away with the fairies lots of the time.   Grown-ups will read a completely different meaning into that sentence but anyway, however you think of it let's continue.

If you click on these pictures they will get bigger - oh, I forgot, you knew that!


The Dad I am writing about worked with a bunch of fairies who certainly don't look like our preconceived ideas of fairies, or elves - some might look a bit like goblins - but here's another cliché, you can't judge a person on how they look any more than you can a book by its cover. Same is true for fairies...yes, probably angels too now you come to mention it.


Well, working with fairies must mean that the work involves magic at least some of the time.   This is exactly what happens when this particular Dad goes to work.   Magic.

This Fairy on a mushroom is just here to show you what pretend fairies look like - you can always tell - they have pink hair, it's a dead give-away.




It is quite old-fashioned, I think, to have the idea that magic spells have to be concocted in a steaming cauldron like the Macbeth witches brewed their nasty potion.   Anyway, this story and this Dad are involved with a magic of a different kind and it is all good, though I have to admit the ingredients for the spell are not much better than those the nasty old witches threw into their cauldron.


According to the Shakespearian verse that cauldron contained the guts of a toad, the leg of a lizard, the gall of a goat and the nose of a Turk, and lots of much more horrible things.   Good grief, if we wrote things like that now we would be in a lot of trouble for being politically incorrect and scaring children.   But Shakespeare is dead so he's got away with it.   Anyway, it is one of the most gruesome recipes I've ever read and lots of the things in it are not only disgusting but also very poisonous.  

This story is beginning to get lost.   Sorry, and on with the story about the Dad who works with a bunch of fairies to make magic - good magic.   Now, here is an interesting thing - although the magic is good lots of the ingredients are almost as vile as those in the Witches potion.   The reason they got it all wrong and very evil is their intent was not honourable and this Dad is an honourable man and his intent is good and kind and helpful.       


Oh goodness - look at the time I am going to have to finish this story another time but just before I go I will tell you about some of the things that go into this Dad's magic.   Old soggy teabags, the brussel sprouts that you didn't eat with your dinner, that bit of smelly cheese that Mum found in the back of the fridge that had been there since last Christmas and a wilted stick of celery.   There are also all those bread crusts you never ate and left in your school lunch-box for 5 days over half-term...mmmm, loads of tasty things.   What?   You don't think so, well wait till you find out how much lovely magic they make.