Ew! A worm!-me

Yay! A worm!-also me

Dear worms,

I know, in the past I would make a face and recoil from you.  I admit that I am still bothered by the palad look of you dead on wet sidewalks and the smell that accompanies such an event.  

When fishing, I make someone else put you on the hook but it is because I feel awful for what is being done to you.  Seeing you (really half of you) dangling, wet with a hook through you seems sadistic at best.  If it makes you feel better, I hate touching the fish, too.

And the not having legs and the crawling on your belly, well…it wigs me out.

 I’m honestly not sure I’ve ever touched one of you.  You see, this aversion goes way back.

But I love Gary Larson’s book There’s a Hair in my Dirt and I have read the posts on The Barefoot Budget about her adventures in vermiculture.  

One day, early in our gardening life, we noticed the fire ants on our new land would eat worms.  Then we learned you don’t like our acid soil anyway.  It was sad and, as a gardener, disheartening.  Then we discovered a worm farm and went to get some castings.  We have been adding the garden gold you excrete to as much as we can ever since.  You’re poop is magical.  

And so, despite decades of trying to avoid you, the time has come to start our own worm farm and break our dependency on our outside source.

How nice that we have children now who don’t mind touching you.

Here’s to new beginnings,

The dirty biped staring at you

If you grow, worms are invaluable.  If you are blessed to live in an area with rich soil, they have probably had a hand in it.  They feed on things, alive and dead, in the soil, leave behind their rich castings to feed plants and aerate the soil while they are at it.  

There are two ways to get worm castings if you have poor soil, bereft of these little powerhouses:  you can buy the castings, usually in a bag from a garden supply center, or you can build a worm farm.  

It is a much smaller endeavor than it sounds, to create a worm farm.  There are instructions all over the internet and I have enjoyed reading about such adventures on The Barefoot Budget.  Since I do not know if our attempt is going to work, I will not bore you with how we are going about it but you know it isn’t Pinterest worthy.

I’ll keep you posted.

I’d love to hear your vermiculture stories.  

Chew on this

University of Southern Denmark on the effects of pesticides on earthworms

Love from the farm

Happy eating, Katy