The beginning

Hello,

I decided to try a few new things to try to keep me focused for a few years...lets see how it works. First, I decided I would start a blog. This is to try to motivate me to keep up on my second thing, starting a worm farm. All the while I will be going to school to be a high school math teacher. This blog and my worm farm should occupy most of my free time (between full time work, school, and being a newly wed), they should also keep my expenses at a minimum. Which is important because I have a habit of getting into expensive projects (ex:project cars, sail boat, etc.)

For those of you who don't know what a worm farm is let me give you a brief overview:

Earthworms (red wrigglers in particular), do two things very well: 1)Eat, 2)Make more worms.  This is good for several different reasons. My big reason for starting worm composting was to reduce my waste output of my home, along with making nutritious soil for my garden.

Red worms eat pretty much anything that comes out of the ground (or anything made from things that come out of the ground). This ability to consume a large variety of waste makes them great for around-the-house composters. Many people, including myself, keep worm bins right in their kitchen. They don't smell, unless you add certain items, they allow you to actively recycle, they are low maintenance, and best of all they give you compost!

Earthworm poop (ie: vermicompost or castings) has a lot of nutritional value. In fact the nutrients in castings greatly exceed the nutrients of most man made fertilizer; making it a great organic fertilizer.

These worms in their worm bins not only eat and poo, but they get busy too. Worm bins have potential to grow exponentially because the worms have both male and female organs and can therefore can increase their population twice as fast. This makes them a great investment. I have started with about 1000 worms in April 2013 and so far (1 month) they have chewed through 3 inches of shredded paper in a standard file bin, along with some added food scraps and card board. After the one month I cleared out the bin of all the castings and placed the castings in my garden. In the castings there were already dozens of cocoons (worm eggs, each contains 3-12 worm babies). I left some of the cocoons with the worms in the bin, but I also threw some into my garden to hopefully add to the oomph of my garden.

Another great use for worms is fishing bait. Once you get enough worms in one place you can bet that they will reproduce just as fast as you can sell them.

Some of the larger companies have 3 sources of income from these worms. First they make money from a recycling stand point. People pay so they can dump their trash ant they just feed the trash to the worms. Then they sell the castings for people to use in their gardens. Lastly the worms are sold as live bait.

This eventually is the goal. I am working on breeding my worms to the point where I can accept recycling product from others, sell compost and sell worms. It will be a sole process, but that is ok because as I said earlier I need a cheap hobby.

I just, 5/15/13, filled up the bin with about 3 inches of leaves and dead grass that I raked out of my yard  and  threw in a few handfuls of clay/dirt from my garden to try to convert more dirt into soil.

Over the next few months and years I will keep updating this blog with: statuses on my ongoing project, breakthroughs in the worm world, different tequniches, tips and more; as well as answer any questions I can, and also asking some questions.  

Well that is all for now, I will talk to you all again soon!   Let me know if you have any questions, or answers for me!

Our Garden!