The Worms - Week 2

Every year plenty of us get pumpkins to cut up, paint, carve, or use in whatever your personal chosen method of Halloween or Thanksgiving craft is. As you might remember I had quite a few this year, courtesy of my one of my brother-in-laws who grew over 100 of them.

In mid-January - I still had some. In fact, a few had gotten to the point that if you picked them up, the stem would break off. One or two were mushy. Some of these got thrown onto the lawn by husband to let them fertilize the lawn natural (and just generally get the heck out of our house.) Seriously hating to feed a landfill with more waste, and now the proud owner of a VermiHut I could barely shut up about to anyone who spoke to me - I opted to compost them.

I did my best (with the aid of a hammer) to break up the pumpkins (I think there were three or four) and put them into the composter. I felt the tiniest bit guilty about it all because my worms were still supposed to be acclimating - but I really couldn't let these sit around much longer.

Obviously, the amount of pumpkins I had filled an entire tray.

It took me two or three days later to finally shred some paper waste to add to the composter along with the pumpkin.

Let's stop for a moment. I want to hold you hostage (isn't that what you came to my blog to essentially have happen to you for a short while?) just long enough to give you a little information.

Whenever I talk to mothers that ask me about cloth diapering I eventually get to the point where I warn the ones who have decided they want to go that route that, "No matter how much research you do. No matter how prepared you are. The first time your kid poops in a cloth diaper - there's a good chance you're going to freak out at least a little bit."

My experience with splitting the pumpkin guts from one tray into two, mixed with paper waste - was similar to my first time changing a poopy cloth diaper.

I knew there were worms in there. I even had more on the way. I knew what they were in there to do. I worried for a little while maybe they died but felt pretty good that they were still alive. And I had also spent significant time wondering to me how quickly they reproduce and in what time period.

YET!

When I reached in and began removing pumpkin and adding it to the other tray and looked at the worms squirming around in my organic waste - I had a moment where I freaked out. Just. A tiny. Bit. I didn't scream, squeal, or recoil - it was just a moment of, "Oh my god there are WORMS in there! . . . . I'm picking up and handling worms . . .  right now."

So my composter has gone from one tray to three trays.

A response I read online in a forum said I shouldn't be collecting quite so much leachate and that this means my composter is way too moist.

This is over 2 qts of leachate - YIKES! I shredded more paper and added that along with some of that stuff you get out of your vacuum bag.

Related reading about leachate:
Leachate vs Worm Tea
Using Worm Bin Leachate
 Leachate: Use it or Lose, Right or Wrong: You Decide!