Hi. I have found a worm farm to have many benefits. Obviously it allows your organic by-products to stay on site and reappear as worm poo ready for use as a soil conditioner. Mostly however, it gives you cred. 

I didn’t know this before I ordered my government-subsidised wormer (some Local Councils will subsidise a worm farm). The wormer was easy to set up and use. The species of worm used likes to live in fruit and veggie scraps. It is eternal. For as long as you feed and water the worms there are worms. The farm is a small round box being a series of trays with mesh bottoms (to allow worm migration) one on top of the other. Once one tray is munched through you put another tray on top. The worms migrate up the pile leaving the poop in the bottom tray. All the info on mine, here. 

But back to the cred: I was quite amazed how in filling in one of those conversation gaps I mentioned what I thought was an innocuous topic that “I had worms”. Those 3 words carry a lot of weight. Of course you have to get past the obvious – “No, not me personally. 10,000 of the buggers are in the backyard finishing off yesterday’s banana.” There is genuine interest in worms. Nay, there is fascination. 

At the time I obtained my taxpayer-funded wormer I was a lonely guy whiling away his Saturday nights watching Hitler documentaries on the History Channel. No longer. Women love wormers. Careful, I said wormers, not worms. In fact, they hate worms. But as a wormer you are automatically tagged a caring, intelligent guy interested in the future of the Planet and the many children you are going to raise together. I didn’t know worms were such good guys. Essentially they are natural recyclers returning all sorts of material to benign state ready for the garden. But they also neutralise many harmful bacterial, limit greenhouse gas – or so my new love tells me. 

When I finally mustered the courage to ask my wormer-besotted beloved to my abode, we made a beeline for the backyard and there marvelled at my round box full of bad banana munchers. However, I went too far. I whipped off the lid and slid back newspaper seeking to reveal my worms in all their glory. My beloved paled as she saw a huge mass of squirm seemingly writhing in ecstasy as the worms gorged on a watermelon rind. She had to quickly go inside and soon to leave. A hard lesson learnt. – what sounds idyllic can be confronting. Worms have a vital role but they also contain a horror. They thrive on decay and purification. Yin and Yang.

Postscript: My beloved has returned. She is now seeing more yin than yang while I now see yang where I did not see yang before. We are all better off. 

Apple cores please.