Briqs and Bugs

Last Thursday, April 6, was 4H Parish Achievement Day so we were in a whirl on Wednesday to get everything ready for the Trash into Cash competition that the Santa Cruz Community Club was entering with the briquette press. The press has been complete for almost two weeks but of course everyone had to wait until the last second to actually make a briquette. This plus the fact that no one bothered to bring in any garbage for use in the press made the whole ordeal stressful. Here Jason and Khaled are pressing out the garbage slush, which consisted mainly of old newspaper, lawn scraps and fishbones. Apparently the fish bones are to make it stick, kind of like glue (according to Khaled). I thought it just made it that much stinkier. Here's your gratuitous muscle shot. You have to press pretty hard to get the briquette to solidify. We eventually managed to make one briq before it started to rain really hard, so we had to stop and hope the one would suffice for the competition. Dun - Dun nah! Here's our first briq!! Now we just have to burn it and see if we have a good recipe. Jason won the St. Elizabeth Trash to Cash top prize, so now he gets to go to National's at the end of April. We have a great idea to use the briqs to roast breadfruit and sell them to make money for the community club at Nationals. The women of the club had entered to food prep and cake baking competition at the parish level, so they are interested in roasting breadfruit to sell. This is also an excellent demonstration of how the briqs can be used as many people use charcoal in thier outdoors kitchens to roast breadfruit, so instead of chopping down trees to make charcoal the club can sell these briqs made of paper trash.
On another note, when living in a house with slatted windows and without screens, don't be surprised if something like this makes a visit to your living room in the eveling. We debated what it was, not enough legs for a spider, but it didn't fly either. Let's hope it doesn't become a repeat guest!