This past Saturday March 30th we celebrated 'Earth Hour', an environmental awareness raising event. We turned off all the lights, and I cooked dinner by candle light and contemplated my 'carbon footprint'. Racing a vintage two-stroke is not a very environmentally friendly hobby, and I'm the owner of more than the usual number of internal combustion motors, so I probably use up considerably more than my share of personal carbon credits. By looking for other ways to reduce my impact on the planet, I can enjoy my race bike without too much guilt over the environmental consequences of the occasional puff of two-stroke smoke.

So that's why I got a worm farm. I'm sure some of my racing friends are just waiting to tell me I got a worm farm 'cause slow pets make me feel fast. Worms are slow, but it's their simple efficiency that fascinates me. Worms don't have eyes or ears, but they can sense light (what we call seeing when we do it) and they can sense vibration (with our specialized ear organs we call that hearing). Worms have five hearts, which strikes me as very sensible; the heart is a smart choice if you're going to have redundant systems. We'd live longer with two never mind five.

Now my new worms aren't just any worms, they are a cousin of the earthworm, colloquially known as a Red Wriggler - Eisenia foetida is their Latin name. They forage closer to the surface than earthworms, and they eat 'fresher' compost - earthworms prefer more through decayed material, and forage deeper.

Researching vermicomposting lead me through a wide range of resources, and eventually discovered a great Canadian company, here in Ontario, that offers valuable worm composting information, kits and worms too. Cathy responded personally to my e-mailed questions, and the kit/worm shipping was very prompt too. Visit Cathy's Crawly Composters: www.cathyscomposters.com for more information. My kit arrived 'just add water' with well written instructions and lots of worm-keeping information.

I'm not sure how my worms felt about their journey through the postal system, but when I set them loose on top of their bedding, they dug down into it away from the light, and presumably settled in happily to their new home.

Andrea's Worm Habitat This is my worm composting bin from Cathy's Crawly Composters. I considered making my own worm bin, but I wanted to make sure I had a safe and healthy habitat for my worms, so I decided to buy a pre-made bin, and since I needed to order worms anyway, it seemed easiest; and it was. www.cathyscomposters.com
	Under the lid I keep a few sheets of newspaper, this helps keep the moisture in, and fruit flies out. Worms produce heat and moisture as byproducts of their process, but they also live naturally in a moist environment, so managing moisture and airflow is important. This bin is ventilated well, and so far it's been easy to maintain the moisture without leakage, and the worms don't get out.
Under the sheets of newspaper you can see the worm 'bedding' of wet shredded paper. This is what the worms live in while they work, and also what they consume. They apparently eat about equal quantities of bedding and compost each day. Shredding your documents and then running them through the digestive system of a worm should make for pretty secure document disposal I would think.
	When I pull back the top layer of bedding, you can see where I've buried my compost for the worms to eat. Red Wrigglers feed just under the surface, on newly decaying material - they don't want fresh food, but food that is starting to rot - food you don't want anyway. It's so easy to make your pet worms happy.
If you dig deeper and look more closely, you can see the worms at work. They don't like the light, and as soon as you expose them they dig themselves in under the surface. Even with weeks worth of decaying food, the worm bin isn't smelly. If you stick your nose in close, you can detect an aroma of wet earth, coffee grinds and wet paper, but once the lid is on the bin, you don't smell anything. Even after digging around in the bin, my hands don't come out smelly.
	My little worm friend here doesn't like to be exposed to the light, and he/she twitched when the flash went off. It's a small but mature worm, you can see her/his clitellum - the thick ring toward the front end - which you wouldn't if he/she were a juvenile worm. We don't really have language suitable for dealing with hermaphroditic species do we? All worms have the equipment of both genders (another useful redundant system) so one can't very well call a worm 'it' - we use that for things without gender, or with indeterminate gender - and when it comes to gender, worms have it all! Our language, however, is not well equipped to cope with the elegant simplicity of a worm of both genders.
In this photo you see my worm composter set up on a sturdy shelf. Worms are sensitive to vibration so I tried to find them a spot where the wouldn't be joggled about. They don't like light either, but the opaque lid on the worm-kit takes care of that, so I didn't have to worry to much about their comfort in that regard. I keep the bin propped up on wood so air can flow through the drainage and ventilation holes, and a tin-foil drip tray meant for the oven under the bin to catch any moisture dripping out - so far that hasn't been a problem.
Even if you don't share my fondness for worms, composting with worms is very efficient and environmentally friendly. I don't garden, and my few house-plants don't need much compost, but my vermicompost is so sought after I have two competing bidders for my first harvest, both avid gardeners. Reducing the waste you ship to municipal composting or into landfill is worth the small extra efforts involved in composing with worms. Worms may seems slow, but they devour compost pretty fast. They contribute more to the household than most pets, and ask very little in return, and mostly things I considered waste anyway. Playing with worms might not sound like your kind of dirty, but now my home is more of an ecosystem, and I find that very satisfying. Eco-Challenge to 2-stroke Racers: How do you give back to the earth? Tree-planting, re-using post-consumer packaging, or making your living space more energy efficient? Tell us how you earn back the carbon-credits you're spending racing a 2-stroke! E-mail girl@dirtygirlmotorracing.com with your environmental story.

Worm Composting Links:

The Author of the most frequently referenced worm-composting book
http://www.wormwoman.com/acatalog/wormwoman.html

Another good resource for do-it-yourself information
www.cityfarmer.org/wormcomp61.html

More Canadian worm composting information
www.peelregion.ca/pw/waste/compost/home/worm.htm
www.peelregion.ca/pw/waste/compost/home/build.htm

Resource for American worm-farm buyers
www.happydranch.com/

A non-profit magazine is dedicated to vermiculture, and composting and recycling with worms
www.wormdigest.org

Starbucks on Coffee composting
www.starbucks.com/aboutus/compost.asp

More on Worm Biology

Worm Anatomy images courtesy of www.wormpost.com