The Worm Bin

Here's our worm bin. We built it about a month ago, and have had worms eating our garbage for the past three weeks. I have to say, I'm quite impressed at the voracious appetites these little creatures have! Do you see all the little flecks of brown below? That is worm poop! We started the bin with moistened shredded newspaper and cardboard, a few leaves, a bit of dirt, and some food scraps. More food scraps were added as we accumulated them. And I have to admit, we had no real clue what we were doing. But it looked easy enough to start, and it was.

Our journey in composting started about three years ago. We lived in a barn (yes literally) turned apartments and had a small area outside along the barn to plant and compost. We were becoming more aware of all the garbage that we produced and wanted to start to do our part in decreasing our footprint on the earth. Actually it was recycling that we started first. Though recycling seemed to become big in the 90s (at least that's when I remember it becoming big), I've been astonished by the number of communities that DON'T offer a recycling program. At least no longer offer one that allows you to put bins out with your trash to be collected. In my opinion, sadly, it's made a lot of us lazy. And I had fallen into that category as well. So we made our own bins. Nothing fancy; we just cut some holes in large Rubbermaid containers and stacked them, designating each for what we recycled (plastic, glass, tin/aluminum, and paper). We made the effort (not much effort at all) to find a local drop off for recyclables, and once they were full, we took them to the recycling center. We were amazed how even just that little bit decreased the amount of garbage that we generated. So we took it a step further and started a compost pile in a 3X3 square outside our kitchen. We had now decreased our trash production from a couple bags of garbage per week to maybe one every three weeks! I couldn't believe how much of a difference composting and recycling made! I was so proud of my compost pile that when we moved, I packed it up in a bin and took it with me.

We are still composting outside (most of which just went into the garden), but I've been wanting to start a worm bin for a couple of years now. We keep it in our kitchen so that we can put the scraps right there into the bin. It doesn't stink (I'm sure someone is wondering that). It smells like earth. And those happy little red wigglers are chomping away. This (above) is some of what was produced in just three short weeks.

There are lots of resources online for starting your own worm bin. So get at it! Even if your a city dweller, this is a great way to compost without having to own some land to put a pile outside! Happy Worm Farming!