We've got WORMS!!! Happy Mother's Day to me!!!

This has been a long time coming! I've been thinking of making this purchase for over a year now. Previously, questions and thoughts like "is this ridiculous?", "maybe this is just a step too far," and "am I really going to buy a pound of red wigglers?" have held me back. But this year, it all came together. Single parenthood due to a week long work trip + golf trip + Mother's Day = vermicomposter!!! That was all the justification I needed!

So, currently, in my garage, in a small plastic get up, lives over 1000 red wiggler worms. They have the job of eating all of our organic waste and producing what is supposed to be incredible compost to take our veggie garden to a whole new level! Wahoo! The package arrived sans worms and we started to assemble the trays. Everyday, we checked for the wiggly tenants in the mail. Finally, they arrived and the move-in party began. Popcicles, Blue Moon, RedBridge and a visit from our friend, Jen turned this into quite the backyard event.

I roped Steve into leading the set up. It is a Mother's Day present after all. Anyway, the steps were somewhat complicated and required someone capable of concentrating, aka someone not as excited about the wormies. Enter Steve.

regretting you married me? naaahh.

We followed the instructions for setting up the bedding, a combination of soaked coir, good soil, and shredded newpaper. We added the worms, food waste, and topped it off with damp newspaper and tada.....vermicomposting!

Why compost with worms? According to the 16 pg instruction manual, it is a really efficient way to transform our food and junkmail trash into garden gold!!! Yep, they eat junk mail too! Everyone always asks about the smell. And so far, it has been odor free. Except for when we had them outside. I thought that we had found a good spot for them. They were not so happy about that random 90 degree day, so now they live in the garage and are odor free! I've heard legend of people even keeping their vermicomposters in their kitchen. Ours are definitely not making their way inside, though.

So, welcome to our new wormies. Get to work!!!!