Interview: Worms in permaculture and other sundry topics
This is part 3 of my interview with Forest. You can find part 1, where Forest discusses a large scale vermicomposting system he worked with in Hawaii, and part 2, where he discusses his more recent failed attempt at keeping worms in the kitchen.
Here we finish up and discuss a wide range of topics, including:
- Forest’s view of worms in permaculture
- the new curbside composting program here in Boulder
- whether he intends to work with worms in the future
- what blueworms are good for
- worms and human manure
- keeping redworms warm through the winter
- and anti-depressants in Manhattan’s drinking supply.
Dan: I really love the fact that you were part of a real business [the worm farm in Hawaii]. Do you know, did you look at any numbers from that?
Forest: No, we never sat down and did figures around it. We just were more interested in the systems than we were in the finances around it. And there wasn’t a lot of expenses involved. I constantly questioned using fossil fuels to pick up compost and bring it back. Because some days it made sense because we were going in to town anyways but some days we only went into town just to get compost to bring back and I definitely did question it. I didn’t sit down and run the figures though.
D: Well and the labor. I assume you were all living there with free room and board
F: Yeah, some of us were being paid. Some of us weren’t. Most of use were work-trade. So we worked a certain amount of hours a day to be there, to be able to eat there.
D: I mean the one huge cost that comes right to mind, aside from fossil fuels, in terms of driving is labor, in terms of picking stuff up and dropping stuff off.
F: I mean luckily since it is Hawaii it’s really easy to get people to live there for cheap. What the owner did was he bought people’s plane tickets and then had them work it off, plus work a certain amount of hours per day to be there, and to be able to eat. So pretty much paid people didn’t have to come up with any capital on their part
D: What’s the place called?
F: And he got cheap labor.
D: Sure.
F: What did they name the farm? I don’t remember what they called it.
D: Are you planning to continue your experience with worms? Or like right now, in your current situation?
F: In my current situation, I’m not. If I had some property, yeah for sure, I mean worms are an important part of the ecosystem. We’re only taking red worms here. But in the tropics they have a blue worm, which we were working with also. Blue worms eat compost quicker. They’re more aggressive. Like if you go at them, they’ll jump at you, they’ll actually throw themselves at you.
D: Same kind of size?
F: They’re larger, they’re kind of blue grey. They’re tough little ones. What we did is we create a syste munderneath the chickens where they roosted at night so all of the their crap fell on top of the worms and then we’d put shredded paper on top of that and then kept it covered with chicken wire in so the chickens couldn’t get access and they processed all the chicken poop. So it was fresh and hot and they ate it all.
D: Really?
F: Yeah. They’re intense little worms but they’re only really suited to the tropics.
D: Cause they’ll get cold?
F: Yeah they’re really sensitive to cold. The red worms you can bring into the Tropics or here. I know there’s on the east coast the red worms have escaped to natural environments and actually caused a lot of issues because they eat things too quickly in certain ecosystems so I know that’s one thing to watch out for but it’s not an issue here in Colorado.
D: Are you sure?
F: I mean, from what I’ve heard.
D: I’ve been thinking about calling the extension office.
F: You should do that. From what I’ve heard Its too cold in the winter and not enough plant material in the wild to support them. It was on the east coast with a lot of leaf matter.
D: Sure.
F: They were able to go through that really quickly, consume it too quickly? I don’t know exactly all the ecology around it.
D: I actually found a website, or I was on a mailing list that sent a website out about that in the Great Lakes region, in Minnesota or Wisconsin. They actually have a website saying don’t release your red worms to the wild because it really does change the nature of the forest.
F: It can. It depends where.
D: This is of course an advocacy website centered in that region. They said, you know be aware of this.
F: Yeah yeah.
D: Not sure about Colorado. What are you doing with your food waste now?
F: Now I am putting them into a 5 gallon bucket and when that’s full I’m bringing em to where I work at and just throw them on that compost, which is a little more management, you know hauling it around but I don’t really have any other options.
D: Sure sure. Are you excited about the Eco-Cycle composting that’s going to come in? [note: I was wrong, it's not an Eco-Cycle program--it's a city of Boulder program]
F: Somewhat. I wish that they would introduce, I wish they would give, they would do more teaching people how to do more composting. Rather than just being a consumer of compost, giving people one more trash receptacle to throw everything, I’d rather see people have compost in their backyards because, pretty much unless you live in an apartment building you can have a compost. I could probably have one actually if I wanted to invest in one of those big black ones I could find a corner in my apartment building. Something like that. But I’m not too excited about it but I’m glad they’re trying to get that out of the waste stream also.
D: Sure.
F: So I’m alright with that.
D: Yeah. Cool! Well do you have any other things? We’ve got a good amount of time. Do you have any other parting thoughts, anything else you would say about worms?
F: They’re an important part of permaculture. They’re really important in order to manage waste effectively. The combination of the chickens and the worms was just incredible.
D: In terms of destroying large amounts of food waste?
F: Yeah. Transforming that very quickly and efficiently. You know I mean literally you can take all your waste, throw it into, just your plant based waste, into your chickens and right then you’re getting eggs and meat back and then it goes throughout your worms and then you’re getting the nice rich source of your compost too. So it’s nice because the chicken shit, if I can say that, gets mixed up into the compost also, and that gets put into the worm system too and that’s one way to handle that waste too. It worked well, it worked well. There’s some management in it, management of temperature, humidity, and I’ve never found a nice composting system, like already pre-manufactured. Oh, no, I used to own one of those black ones, they have multiple trays.
D: Ok.
F: ‘Worm hole bin’ or something they call them, or ‘bin o’ worms’? I had that five years ago. I didn’t manage it very well. I got fruit flies also, but it does take some management and some tweaking to figure out a good system. And I’m kind of now more in the lines of not necessarily having to give them their special spot but actually incorporating them into the compost. Because what I’ve learned about them is if they’re in your compost and there is nothing to eat they’ll come out and they’ll start looking for other sources of food actually.
D: Red worms will?
F: Yeah. Also, red worms you know compost outside. Cause one of the problems with most bins is they’re too small to hold heat in the winter. So they get killed in the winter. If your normal compost pile is a good size, it’ll keep heat all winter and actually they’ll go into the center and live there.
D: That’s actually been my experience because I have a 3×3 black plastic compost bin and I had a 2×2 wood worm bin where they actually lasted, this was 2 years ago or 3 years ago, they actually lasted almost through winter except when we had like a week of really cold temps, they all froze and died but, last winter, these guys in the compost bin were a-ok. I mean I’ve looked at [another classmate's] worms and her kind of special worm bin, and they’re much happier than my worms. I still have plenty of worms. And so maybe mine isn’t the optimal environment but it’s very low maintenance.
F: That’s nice. Yeah its definitely something to think about, is the level of management involved in it.
D: I don’t know about you but like when I first got worms I was checking on em, you know, every day. I was really interested in how they’re doing and then now, I’m just really glad that they do their job.
[laughing]
F: Yeah yeah, now in Hawaii, there were some people experimenting that we had talked to, and I never saw any of their systems, with composting all their human waste with it, also. So they collected their own waste into 5 gallon buckets, that they went in and layered it with sawdust and then they put that into special bins and they had worms and they let the worms work that for a year and they were then using that on their plants.
D: I assume … Everything I’ve ever read about human manure is you put the resulting compost on fruit trees or you know, not on leafy vegetables.
F: I know people who do it on leafy vegetables. Because the problem is… that’s a good rule of thumb, to only do it on fruit trees. It’s just playing it safe. But as long as you reach the proper temps or a certain length of time it’s totally alright. It’ll break down into just soil. It’s the E. Coli is why they don’t want you to do it onto leafy vegetables. There is a threat of it spreading. As long as its properly decomposed it’s not an issue. The Humanure book? I don’t know if you read it?
D: I think I browsed through it at class.
F: I’ve read that book all the way through and they do put it on their whole vegetable garden. The authors. But they let it sit for two years and properly break down. They layer their compost properly, they have it on there and leave it alone for two years and then they use it. But by then there’s nothing in it that would cause problems. It’s the length of time, it’s the temperature.
D: From what I’ve read is people use their municipal sludge on farms too. So yeah.
F: It’s legal. That doesn’t make sense to me. To me, part of it’s the chemicals that people flush down the drains, that what always concerns me.
D: Sure sure.
F: You know in Manhattan’s water supply they found anti depressants?
D: In the tap water?
F: It’s detectable in Manhattan tap water because they recycle the water from the waste stream and that stuff doesn’t break down. The chemical structure doesn’t break down and so by the time its processed and chlorinated and all this stuff, it’s still detectable in the water supply. It’s scary, isn’t it?
D: That’s really scary. I’d love a further conversation with you about just general systems, natural systems and what we gain out of them because it’s something I’ve really been interested in learning more about but not tonight. Well thank you very much, Forest.
F: Thank you.
Add comment January 28th, 2009
