more worms

We decided we didn't have enough worms in our bin to eat the amount of waste we have, so we ordered another 1000. We'll see where that gets us. We may still need more since most of our food waste can now go in here...

Here's the bucket moments before we started adding more worms. It has all kinds of funky mushrooms growing in there. As it's a learning experience for us, we are assuming that they are ok since they help in the breakdown process... The mix is really hot and the worms that were already in there seem to have multiplied and gotten fatter in the last couple weeks...

Since India missed out on putting the first worms in, she was ready to put the second batch of worms in. We ordered these from Uncle Jim's Worm Farm after doing some research on the web, I discovered that even with shipping it was cheaper to order them than to go buy them locally. They are supposed to multiply really fast, so assuming that we've got things right, we won't have to buy more and we'll be over run with worms.

What does one do with too many worms? Put them outside and share them with friends who also want to make black gold in their kitchens...

mmmm worms... eat my garbage.

India helping them get settled into the compost...

worms eat my garbage

A very long time ago we heard the term VERMICULTURE and we fell in love... It is raising worms. We bought the book Worms Eat My Garbage and since we have been dreaming of starting worm composting in our home. What a great homeschooling experiment of raising worms. So, we have finally taken that plunge and we now have worms in our kitchen - on purpose! We built the bin out of a 10 gallon rubbermaid container. Jason cut holes in the sides for ventilation, but he put screens over the holes so that flies can't get in and the worms (in theory) can't get out. We've already had a few escapees, but we figure we just haven't created the perfect environment for our little red wigglers yet and that it will take time for us to get it right. It was the same with the compost outside. It took a while for us to learn how to keep it making compost and stay hot and when to add what and so forth, so the worm bin will be a whole new experiment to get right. As we venture into this and in the spring we are getting chickens (hoping to start on a chicken coop in the next couple of weeks) almost all of our food waste will either be fed to worms, chickens, or dogs and hopefully we will produce even less waste in the trash can than we already do. Well, anyhow, here are some pictures of Jason and I putting the stuff into the bin to kick off feeding the worms! (the kids weren't here, but they were plenty excited when they got home to check out the worms) Wish us luck and offer any advice you might have on raising worms and worm composting for those of you who are experienced in vermiculture. For those of you who are totally grossed out, sorry...

The Bin

adding the shredded paper

getting the paper wet

adding the worms

watching them wiggle down

Lastly, the food scraps... we buried the food and put on the lid and the worms are good to eat our garbage!