Canada: Oak Bay worm farmer gathers gourds to feed her brood all winter
Roughly 170 donated pumpkins put to good use making compost
By Christine van Reeuwyk
Sooke News Mirror
Nov 11, 2023
Excerpt:
Settled into its winter home, Gilligan bursts at the seams with 10,000 worms feasting on donated pumpkins.
Gilligan started life as a paddling pool, explains Sandra Birrell. The plastic turtle with lid could have been a sandbox, but they used it as a kiddie pool for the granddaughter.
At three, she was completely willing to alternate her pool use, with a worm farm. By a couple years in, she was too big for the pool and loved the worms anyway so Gilligan became a full-time farm.
“He’s now a 12-month-out-of-the-year worm farm. Because we live in Victoria worms can stay alive year-round in the soil, but I want these worms to stay productive year-round so we do put a seed heating mat underneath him that keeps the material at a minimum of 16 degrees and that’ll keep the worms happy and eating and not just alive,” she says.
Birrell keeps the worm farm – full of eisenia fetida (commonly called red wigglers) and the larger arctiostrotus vancouverensis that moved in with a load of Sooke manure – going with food scraps from the house.
