As an amateur vermi-composter – who has been raising worms for his own personal consumption for several years (that doesn’t sound quite right), I have recently been inspired to take my worm works operation to a new level. Heretofore I have been content with a simple, blue plastic tub, drilled with air holes and partially filled with red wiggler worms, selected food scraps, and newspaper. Shown here are the worms enjoying a print advertisement promoting the Ernest Hemingway PBS documentary. Given the novelist’s fear of death, my worms appreciate the taste of irony, as much as avocado and melon rinds.
My renewed commitment began while I was browsing in the section of R.J. Ruppenthal’s Fresh Food from Small Places (2008), where he gives easy-to-follow instructions on how to build a simple worm operation for the home. Ruppenthal also does a shoutout for Amy Stewart’s The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms (2005), which he describes as “not a ‘how-to book’, but a reflection and synthesis of wisdom on the achievements of earthworms and their importance to human civilization.” Intrigued, I obtained a copy and started reading.
The Earth Moved
Stewart begins her book with a chapter on Charles Darwin, who studied worms with the same diligence exhibited during the naturalist’s famous voyage on the Beagle, which eventually led to his providing additional evidence to the theories of evolution. Just before his death in 1882, Darwin captured this fascination with earthworms and their effects on enriching soil in his The Formation of Vegetable Mould, Through the Actions of Worms.
Stewart goes on to explain how earthworms including the red wigglers or Eisenia fetida (as I now call them) work their magic on nematodes, coffee grounds, manure, bacteria, and fungi. Along the way I was able to glean tips on doing a better job with my bin full of critters.
Folded in throughout the book are interviews with researchers and “field trips” to places such an experimental sewage treatment plant in Pacifica, California where earthworms are part of the process of turning human waste into usable biosolids for agriculture. Along the way, Stewart never loses her light-hearted anecdotal style that makes the book such a pleasure. For example, in this passage she explains why she has not gone into the Big Worm business.
For one thing, I’d run into the same problem selling worm castings that I would if I were to go into the business selling chocolate or tawny port; I’d keep all the inventory for myself. I buy compost by the truckload for my annual mulching of the flower beds. I have to buy it because my worms only produce a few cubic feet of castings each season. If I had enough worms to generate truckloads of castings, my farm would still have only one customer: me.
I will take heed of Stewart's advice to limit my own personal consumption.
Worm Connoisseurs
Providing some additional inspiration and reflection on our natural world is Deborah Warren's short book of poems, Connoisseurs of Worms (2021). In her sixty-five poems Warren seamlessly mixes references to Greek mythology, classical paintings, as well as modern life (one poem is even entitled "PETscan"). She deeps dives into all creatures great and small, ranging from zebras, "Titian-haired" orangutans, to moles and a worm dietary favorite - nematodes. A good example of how she can work these seemingly disparate themes into one poem is demonstrated in "Mosquito in the Heart."
Mosquito in the Heart
There's nothing viable on the EKG.
So says the cardiologist.
Wrong. Clearly he missed
some small anomaly:
With an incessant and insistent hiss
under my left ribs—a falsetto whine,
whetting its proboscis,
it flits and ricochets around my heart.
The doctor's diagnosis?
He'd call it a feint of heart—if he had the wit:
He doesn't. He's just content to be smart,
and here's his opinion: It's anxiety.
It isn't in your heart—it's in your mind.
There's medication; often meditation
helps with tension. And he won't admit
that coronary insects do exist.
Just paranoia? I'm not buying it:
He'll give me white lies but—when I insist—
refer me to Cardioentomology.
You don't have to be a vermi-composter to appreciate her wit and small wisdoms. Just someone who can take time out to examine life all around us, including what is beneath our feet.
Comments