I started raising worms to eat my household waste and then produce castings to nourish plants, a practice known as vermicomposting. I wanted to reduce my carbon footprint. I liked the idea of converting personal garbage, kitchen scraps and waste-paper, to a usable product. This was in June, 2013. I spent fifteen months after acquiring my first 500 Red Wigglers and my first worm-bin at painstaking trial-and-error, to arrive at the best habitat, the best setting, the best feeding practices, the best maintenance schedule, and so on, for my worms to consume and produce the most.
By fall, 2014, I'd hit a stride. I estimated about 30-40% of my household waste was going to my worms. I'd bought the worm-bin; I was buying nothing more for my worms. They were using no energy beyond that my household already used. In turn, my indoor worm-colony was reliably producing a pint or more of good-quality worm castings each week, which I generally gave away at social gatherings (it made me very popular) or else used on house-plants, or at the community garden nearby. I wrote diaries about my experience.
Life happened. I connected with my significant other. One of our "date" activities was to spend time each weekend sitting on my couch, shredding waste-paper for worm-bedding, for the worm-bin in my bathroom. He moved in. I became outrageously busy, going to school and working. He had his life, too. Our vermicomposting lapsed. We moved to an apartment in a neighboring community in summer, 2016. We took the fallow worm-bin with us, assuring ourselves we'd "get back into it." But it had taken us a minimum of an hour each week to maintain the worm-bin, preparing food-waste and paper-waste for the worms. With our schedules, that was too much. Our community has better-than-average recycling service, too. We wanted the space in our small home back. Together, we recently made the wrenching decision to get rid of the worm bin we hadn't used in over one year.
This diary is partly practical. I am gauging interest in my physical vermicomposting set-up--quite a good one--thinking to give it to somebody who would use it. I'm sweetening the offer with my availability in coming months for free consultation via email to help you set up your household worm-bin. (In nearly three years of an active vermicomposting practice, believe me, I learned quite a few things they don't tell you; I could perhaps spare a beginning vermicomposter wrong-turns and grief.) This diary is also personal. It's my good-bye to my worm-bin--a worm-bin requiem. It is also political.
I could get defensive about giving up vermicomposting. I could scramble to justify the importance of what is keeping me so busy that I can't go out of my way to reduce garbage, when the planet is arguably choking in it. I'll say here I'm needing to displace vermicomposting in my tight schedule because of conflicting personal priorities. I have a right to those. Asserting that right, I refuse to patronize the shame industry.
We hear constantly these days about the perils of "bad" decisions, from people with a stake in our believing that we are innately depraved, and couldn't possibly be left to decide anything important without their constant scolding. We don't hear the end of it from right-wing chatterers, about personal matters like sexuality and procreation, about personal virtues such as industry and thrift,--if we're poor--about "sacrifice,"--if we're female--about "staying put," if we're brown-skinned. There's fire-and-brimstone preaching on the political left, too, and we find it in full flower in the area of ecology. Most people who enjoy some modicum of means and leisure, who "should know better," don't install solar panels, because most people are "lazy," "self-centered," and "hooked on instant gratification." This, and more, is all part of the shame industry. I am calling that out here.
I am promoting instead the radical notion that peoples’ individual consciences suffice to meet personal and societal challenges. We don't need moralistic brow-beating. Given information and other basic resources, we decide well for ourselves and for future generations. We buy well, we vote well, we talk to others, and we could open up the way for many more of us to be doing those things. That's it.
Out of earshot of the well-heeled and well-oiled shame industry--the machine that turns the wheels of this whole toxic culture--I'm giving away a worm-bin that I hope somebody will enjoy. I believe numbers of people adopting vermicomposting, of itself, will cause many changes in society--all of them very good.
My “Classified Ad”
Free The Worm Inn-brand worm-bin in good condition (whitish discoloration due to stains from moisture). It’s more convenient than practically any other vermicomposting system, and I’ve tried a few. Synthetic canvas sleeve supported on a PVC frame that measures 21" X 21" X 39" and fits in any room, or on the porch. You put waste-paper and food scraps in the top and regularly harvest castings through the draw-string opening on the bottom. Frame partly disassembles for easy transport. Vermicomposting is a great activity for kids, fun for the whole family. You pick up from Berkeley, across the Bay from San Francisco. For Kossacks only: If you pick up the worm-bin, I'm available by email to address newbie questions and concerns about vermiculture--a great value. PM me if you're interested.
P.S.: Also included with the worm-bin is this starter-kit, containing worm-eggs, worm-bedding, and worm-food! Just add water.