Bumpkins Come to Grips with Worms

We like worms as much as the next guy, which is probably not all that much.  But it depends on what kind of worms are under discussion.  Intestinal worms, for example, are something we'd rather not mention.  But we're talking about the sort of worms that you have in a worm farm, which by the way, in case you don't know, are not the same as the earthworms in your garden.  If you ever get totally fed up with your worm farm (and we won't be surprised if you do), don't even consider throwing the worms in the garden, thinking they'll help break up the soil like earthworms do.  They won't.  Given half a chance they'll just eat all your veggies.

Which begs the question, what do you do with an unwanted worm farm? But we'll leave that for you to figure out.

Most of the time, worm farm worms are no trouble at all.  They're incredibly quiet and so well-behaved, you can easily forget they exist.  So you have to remind yourself to feed them some kitchen scraps now and then, and in return they give you all their excrement, both liquid and solid, which is just great for making the veggie garden grow.  Getting the liquid is no problem, it just drains out the bottom of the worm farm, and you don't have to use too many brain cells, energy or time putting a bucket underneath to collect it.

The solids are known as 'worm castings' - how quaint.  Why don't we call our own droppings 'people castings', we wonder.  Anyway, collecting the solids can be an altogether more taxing experience than putting a bucket somewhere.  Mind you, the people who make and sell worm farms will tell you until they're blue in the face that it's no trouble whatsover - all you do is put a tray of fresh bedding and food on top of the existing one, and wait for the worms to crawl, slither, slide, creep or whatever it is that worms do, up into the new tray to get to the food (if you're a worm farm novice, please note - the trays have holes in the bottom).  Soon you'll be left with a bottom tray full of worm castings minus worms, which you can then use in your garden.  Sounds easy.

But it isn't.  About two months ago we gave the worms a nice new tray to move into, with some tasty bits of banana peel, egg shells and spinach on top.  We made sure the castings in the bottom tray were touching the bottom of the top tray, so the worms had a clear run through the holes and up to the food.  But our worms must have been too comfy where they were, or maybe just incredibly lazy or stupid - how can you tell with worms? - because they chose not to move.  After about a month, there were only about three worms in the top tray, having a good old feast.  The other 997 worms were still hanging around in the bottom tray.  Another month went by, and still most of the worms had refused to budge, and we were worried they'd all be starving to death.  And anyway, we wanted those worm castings!

So we decided we'd have to evict the stubborn tenants by hand - yes, literally by hand.  This meant dumping the contents of the bottom tray on a table, and gradually sifting through all that worm poo, throwing all the worms we could find into one bucket and the sifted poo into another, and another, and another (those worms make a lot of castings).  So that was a merry afternoon's entertainment for us, hunched over a table full of worm poo, in the bitter cold of winter, without even a drop of brandy to sustain us.

The really sad thing is that after a little while, we both started enjoying the worm hunt, getting unreasonably excited every time we found a particularly large worm, or even better, a little swarm of tiny baby worms!  This boring winter really has gone on too long.