They arrived in a square box, a few days early. I had their house ready: Two plastic bins with lots of holes drilled and space in between created by an object. I had read up on what they like to eat and written a list of their favorite foods. But I couldn’t find the list, today, and a slight panic overcame me. Sometimes I can’t understand instructions without reading them several times, so I asked Doug to read me the worm transfer instructions, which he did.
Anxious, I put the soil in before the cardboard and then I was “spinning” which means being unsure of how to do things in the right order. The instructions said they would be “lethargic” for 1-2 days but would come to life after that, to make sure the soil was wet-sponge-level moist and to give them foods (listed.)
I was quasi-frantically asking Doug to tear up The Epoch Times but not the sections I would want to read, which turned out to be all of them (it’s a good newspaper) so we located some local newspapers that I definitely did not need to hoard.
They were packed in peet moss, and when the bin was ready, and I’d put in some food scraps, cabbage, apple, etc, I released them and sprayed them as directed, and they did come to life as promised. I placed cardboard pieces around the box so it would be dark.
I insisted Doug listen to YouTube videos about their favorite foods, and he immediately found the best one on the internet. As soon as I heard they love watermelon and cantelope, I drove to the grocery store and got some.
Carmel Wakefield called—one of my close friends who I laugh with a lot but somehow I failed to tell her I was shopping for fruit for my worms.
There are 100 of them, by the way.
Before I went to the store, I bought a grinder on Amazon to grind garbanzo beans for them. (And I already have a 30 lb bag of garbanzo beans, but this is also for us, if the Green Famine starts anytime soon; I know, not funny at all.)
I also ordered a 5 lb bag of oyster shell powder, and got some organic wheat flour at the store.
I came home and gave them the watermelon and sprinkled some of the flour on top. I immediately worried I had asphyxiated them. I peeked inside the bin. “Doug, they’re not moving,” I said. Then I saw one move. Phew.
Doug’s idea was that we did a hole in the ground for them when it gets warm. And I thought: “Why exactly do we buy worms on Amazon when they are already in the ground?” I’m sure they have better lives in the ground. Then I wondered if I knew what I was doing. I’m trying to become somebody who can create compost but I may not be cut out for it, we’ll see.
I’ve also grown sprouts, like Mike Adams said we should, to deal with Dioxin poisoning. The sprouts worked out well. I keep saying we should learn how to make things and do things ourselves.
But now I have a book coming out, and I’m worrying about 100 worms.
I’m already very attached to them.
I’ve always been fond of worms, and what they do.
What are their names?
Celia, when I lived in an apartment I made and kept a worm box for a few years to make fertilizer for my house plants. In 1995 we bought a house with a garden out back and we made a compost bin so I dumped the worms in it. We’ve kept it up since then. Whenever I move the top layer of vegetable matter and look deeper down there are so many worms that it looks like a solid mass of moving ground meat. The variety of worms I have is Red Wigglers, which are very pink and quite thin and not very long, maybe 2-2.5 inches. They’re different from the regular earthworms which are much thicker, longer, and more grayish in color. They’ve been there 28 years now and there must be millions of them.