Worm Farm Update
More than a year ago, we bought a worm farm for our composting needs. How's that going?
PROS
- The worms have eaten the food scraps they were fed with no problems.
- The worm farm does not smell.
- We have a nice bucket full of soil infused with worm poop for M to use on her plans this spring.
- The worms survived long stints without being fed during our 37 days on our sabbatical road trip and our 43 day Hilton Head Hilton residency.
CONS
- The worms don't eat enough kinds of food. They're mostly limited to fruit and vegetable scraps, and not all kinds of those. Any other kind of food waste has to get pitched.
- The worms don't eat enough to keep up with our food scraps. The worm farm stated that it should be able to handle the weekly permissible food scraps from a family of two adults. Apparently the typical family of two adults eats barely any produce, because every week we've been throwing away a lot of food scraps so that we don't overwhelm the worms. We'd probably need two more worm farms this size to handle the normal scraps for a week.
- No matter which direction we turn the spigot, liquid still drains regularly from the worm farm. Easily solved by putting a container under it, but still.
On balance, I'm not unhappy we got the worm farm, and I don't think we're going to stop. However, if the goal is to reduce food scraps going into landfill, we may be better off signing up for a service like Rust Belt Riders that will pick up virtually any kind of food scrap, or doing an outdoor composting bin that will at least handle all our fruit and vegetable scraps.
As it happens, my sister has a service she uses. The fee is nominal, and she writes it up as a small philanthropic contribution toward making the world a better (or at least less wasteful) place. I suspect we'll end up with that approach once we're in a position to do so.
PROS
- The worms have eaten the food scraps they were fed with no problems.
- The worm farm does not smell.
- We have a nice bucket full of soil infused with worm poop for M to use on her plans this spring.
- The worms survived long stints without being fed during our 37 days on our sabbatical road trip and our 43 day Hilton Head Hilton residency.
CONS
- The worms don't eat enough kinds of food. They're mostly limited to fruit and vegetable scraps, and not all kinds of those. Any other kind of food waste has to get pitched.
- The worms don't eat enough to keep up with our food scraps. The worm farm stated that it should be able to handle the weekly permissible food scraps from a family of two adults. Apparently the typical family of two adults eats barely any produce, because every week we've been throwing away a lot of food scraps so that we don't overwhelm the worms. We'd probably need two more worm farms this size to handle the normal scraps for a week.
- No matter which direction we turn the spigot, liquid still drains regularly from the worm farm. Easily solved by putting a container under it, but still.
On balance, I'm not unhappy we got the worm farm, and I don't think we're going to stop. However, if the goal is to reduce food scraps going into landfill, we may be better off signing up for a service like Rust Belt Riders that will pick up virtually any kind of food scrap, or doing an outdoor composting bin that will at least handle all our fruit and vegetable scraps.
As it happens, my sister has a service she uses. The fee is nominal, and she writes it up as a small philanthropic contribution toward making the world a better (or at least less wasteful) place. I suspect we'll end up with that approach once we're in a position to do so.