…you’re the only person you know who gets excited about rotting produce.
…any time you try to type the words “world”, “warm”, “word” or “work” you end up with “worm”.
…you have a worm bin that doubles as a piece of furniture.
…you’ve attempted to name all your worms at least once.
…your heart skips a beat walking down the plastic bin aisle in department stores.
…you start seeing EVERY container as a potential worm bin.
…you are shocked when your friends tell you they spent $200 on new “bedding”.
…your worms get more respect that your cats/dogs.
…on warm, rainy days you walk along the sidewalk on tippy toes, looking down constantly.
…the phrase “they’re only worms!” deeply offends you.
…you love the smell of a worm bin in the morning.
…you welcome guests into your home by saying “hey, wanna go see my worms?”.
…you’d be a millionaire if you received a dime for every fruit fly and fungus gnat hatched in your home.
…you include ‘vermicomposting’ as part of your skill-set on resumes.
…you start eyeing produce (with an evil glint in your eye) in your fridge well before it’s past its prime.
…the picture above makes you smile.
🙂
C’mon everyone – join in the fun! Help me build the list!
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Your 2-year-old has his own pretend “worm bin”.
You stand in line at Starbucks for the free grounds instead of the double mocha latte with a boost.
: You have watched the Dirty Jobs show about worm farming and you ask yourself “Where’s the dirty part of the job?”
:You count egg capsules and start naming potential hatchlings.
:In your war against commercial chemical fertilizers, you want to play TAPPS and have a 21 gun salute when a fellow soldier(worm) dies.
:Your a disabled man, but you dig another 6X3X3 pit on your hands and knees to expand your squirm.
:When you name your first two kids Wiggley and Squiggley.
:When you think about starting a vacuum bag recycling program to feed your worms.
:When you look around your neighborhood for piles of leaves and cut grass to use as bedding for your worms.
:When you frequent the local stores to ask for aged vegetables for your wormy friends to eat.
When the young children visit, they step over the dogs to visit the worms
A poem from my wife:
Recipe for a wormhead
A wormhead has alot of passion
To make this happen you gotta ration
To make a combo of compost into soil
You need leaves, garbage but please hold the oil
You make this barrel so you can churn
And add a windwhirl so it can turn
In the process this begins to get hot
Lets throw in some egg shells, coffee and grass in the pot
As it rots in this barrel and goes through it’s phase
The wormhead has this look of amaze
Then juices start flowing and we’ll call it teas
He hands it to me as food for my trees
He’s getting it all ready and here comes the worms
He’s gaining anxiety for all that he’s learned
Now here comes the good part that all has been done
He’s prospering well for all he’s begun
Dirty Jobs did a vermicomposting segment? Sweet!
I love living a life where saying “I have to go water my worms” actually makes sense…
You go out to eat, eye other peoples leftovers that would make great worm food and you sneak some into your pocket to bring home…of course your pocket has a baggie for just such occasions.
You asked your friends and family to save worm food for you.
Your Christmas card has a picture with you and your worms. You realize later, only when someone points it out, that your spouse and kids were not in the photo.
When touching poop is not a scary thing anymore.
You keep a zip lock bag in your car just in case you find something you can feed your worms laying on the ground.
You have stopped your car by the side of the road to pick up a banana peel someone dropped while crossing the street.
You shred every piece of paper you toss out, not just the paper with confidential information on it.
When your shredder gets full, you keep the contents.
When you shred the envelopes from the power company, you cut the plastic windows out first.
Your friends give you wilted produce as gifts.
😆 😆
Thanks, everyone! Not only were those really funny, but it was a little scary realizing just how similar we all are once we get the worm bug!
My personal fav:
“When you name your first two kids Wiggley and Squiggley.”
Too funny, Vermiman!
😆
So MANY of these fit me. I drool walking into a store, looking at the storage bins.
–Ask the produce worker if you can have his “leavings” when he cleans up the produce.
–Decide if you want to keep the leftovers for yourself or feed to the worms.
…when you tell people you have worms and your smiling.
…when your spouse knows your a little off but saves scrapes anyway, or is that love?
….when you lay awake at night and wonder about your worms.
….when you go to check on them and the moving mass of diving reds just makes your heart warm.
…when all you ask for for Christmas has to do with worms.
Ah yes….I live in the UK but all this sounds sooo familiar! I, too, find myself regarding the past their sell by date veg and other food as potential worm food-When I’m at a Pub, or Restaurant, I eye the left overs with a glint in my eye, summoning up the courage to ask for a “doggy bag” to take home (or should that be a wormy bag? On courses, where we share lunch, I am the only one taking home other people’s leftovers! Not forgetting Freecycle as a source of wormy accessories and homes. I’ve been known to go up the garden to cover my wormery with extra fleece/bubble wrap in my pyjamas on cold nights! I’ve ceased worrying what the neighbours think! Worms make me smile….I talk to mine! How about you?
(W)hen
(O)ur
(R)elatives
(M)urmur
(S)ecretly
When you make RED WORM COMPOSTING your home page.
When you put on rubber glove so the worms won’t get anything from off your hands.( even though you washed them twice ).
I love those comments… and got the funniest looks when I asked the church ladies that came over for tea if thy wanted to see my woyms…. I shoulda had my camera…. but guess what? Two of them said Yes… they are gardeners, so were quite interested.. and I am going to help one of them get started in vermiculture this spring..
I have gotten to the point where I ask the local produce manager for wilted lettuce, etc.. and he gives it to me.. wooo hooo
When you worry about how your worms are while away on vacation…
When you start to worry if you’re too excited about poop…
When you can sit for hours watching your worm bin…
All of the other comments are sooooo true! Its very reassuring!
you show mating worms to your son and don’t understand why he isn’t as excited as you are even though you exclaim, “But you don’t understand how exciting this is!”
your boss gets you a kitchen composter for Christmas! (thanx, John!)
lose count of how many cocoons there are when you’re harvesting.
when your proper and dignified mother proudly gives you a bag of carrot peelings she saved for your worms.
Also, when your mother buys a Worm Inn in support of your project, but then does nothing with it. bless her heart…
you keep your worms in the living room for fear they will get too cold (in the winter) and too hot (in the summer-I live in south FL).
Man oh man – this is like the neverending thread! I love it!
“When you make RED WORM COMPOSTING your home page.”
Yeah!! Nice one Scott!
8)
How about these:
…when you are buried in an avalanche of toilet paper rolls, egg cartons and brown paper bags every time you open a closet
…when you ask for boxes at the grocery store over plastic bags NOT because you are trying to be eco-friendly
…when you spend time day dreaming about the ultimate grinding machine that doubles as a worm harvester
…when you have one small tree and a few shrubs on your property yet you are still pricing chippers
…when you close your eyes and all you see are worms
…when quality time with your spouse involves watching movies while hand-shredding cardboard
…when you’re seriously considering having your ashes poured onto your wormbin (is that sick or what?)
just thought of another one…….when the thought of feeding some of your worms to your baby finches breaks your heart.
When you prepare new worm beds months before harvesting.
When you know your ABCs:
Amazing Bin Crawlers!@!
hi,
i just found your website this evening. i enjoyed your stories. i just started vermicomposting last month, i guess it is going okay.
i am writing about your excess compost materials. i have a small orchard (about 70 trees). i have been placing an approximate 4-foot wide strip of straw along the rows (i get the straw from a farmer who i let plant corn in one of my fields). this straw acts as a mulch as well as keeping down the grass to give the tree roots a place they can grow with minimal competition.
anyway, the point of the story, is that i throw excess kitchen scraps into the rows and cover them with straw. that way the scraps still degrade, but the straw makes it asthetically acceptable to my wife.
hope this helps — i enjoyed your site,
stewart
You start a worm bin because you are too cheap to keep buying them, but once you get it going, you won’t let your fishing buddies anywhere near your babies.
…you visit Redwormcomposting.com multiple times per day.
…you tell your friends that no newspaper or cardboard boxes are safe in your house.
…you stet up your own neighborhood recycling center for cardboard boxes, old newspapers, vegetable scrapes, coffee grounds/filters, and tea bags.
… your friends think you are weird because you take home all the pizza boxes from the pizza party.
… your friends, instead of going to the recycling center, just give you all their cardboard boxes.
… your teacher wants you to write a report on any pet of your choice and tell how to take care of it, you write one about your worms.
you’ve just read through all the archived posts on redwormcomposting.com in case you missed something cool. you did.
Haha!
Someone else recently emailed me to suggest that I start up a new “you know you are a worm head when” post for 2010. Sounds like a plan
8)
I know I’m a true worm head when,
I go to cook at my Long Term, Nursing and rehab facility, and my co-workers ask me if I want the watermelon rines.
“…when quality time with your spouse involves watching movies while hand-shredding cardboard”
awesome. This happened yesterday. she doesn’t even complain about the ripping noise anymore; she just smiles when she sees me bring in my pile of cardboard.
When all of your self-help advice to your friends starts with “do you know about red worms?”
When you get sunburnt sorting through your worm bin even though you’re wearing 55 spf sunscreen. (Seriously, there must be a time warp every time I start to play in my worm bin. Hours can pass in no time at all.)
Your idea of quality time with your kids includes sorting worms from VC on the kitchen floor (and a requisite bath afterwards, of course!)
A: You offer your guests some worm tea, and you chuckle silently because they think it’s a drink!
B: You get up in the middle of the night just to see how they are doing
C: Your worms eat better than you do (mine LOVE grits and oatmeal, cheap foods available at Aldi).
D: You buy a water barrel just for worm water that doesn’t have any chemicals in it
E: If you were from a different culture, your “juiciest” worms look as if they would be an exceptionally desirable snack!
F: The kids next door decided to call every extra-wriggly worm “Frank” (when they help me harvest the worms, they try to keep all their “Franks” together in a jar to see who found the most).
G: You can’t get enough wild hare poop in your yard (which becomes worm food), and the kids next door get paid quite well if they can fill up a plastic tub with hare poop.
H: I’m PROUDER of being a worm farmer than an architect!
I: You can put “Worm Midwife” on your CV now (I helped some worms “detach” while mating when one in the pair was being pinched so hard, it was going to lose its body, and I have “popped” some cocoons that were very dry when the babies were ready to come out.
J: You substitute the word “worms” for “ants” when I sing “The Ants Come Marching Out Again, Hurrah! Hurrah!” during a cocoon hatching!
K: Even though I am retired for the most part, and don’t go out much, many people in my large town/small city say they have heard of me, and that they didn’t know there was such a thing as a worm farm.
L. People willing listen to me at the grocery store or the doctor’s office when I tell them fun facts about worms.
M. I always seem to keep one HUMONGOUS worm I found in a tub as a pet in the house.
N. The neighbors won’t borrow my plastic kiddie pool (used for harvesting worms) because it’s so dirty and they are afraid there will be worms in the dirt.
O. The plastic kiddie pool used for harvesting flies all over the block whenever there is a big wind storm, despite my putting bricks in it.
P. You get asked by the local Master Gardeners group to give a seminar on vermiculture (and the price of your worms and castings can be raised quite a lot AFTER the talk! You can even sell bagged leaves that have been hanging around under the deck for bedding, instead of raking them to the curb for the city vacuum them up, without making a dime for your efforts.
Q. You always keep some heavy-duty yard waste bags in your car, just in case you pass something that might be good worm food (i.e. sawdust from stump grinders, a big oak tree that puts out huge acorns. . .)
R: Your hamstrings are well-stretched because you spend so much time bent over, just watching your worms.
and finally,
S: YOU’RE A WOMAN, AND FINDING GOOD WORM EQUIPMENT AT DOLLAR STORES AND THE DOLLAR AISLE AT TARGET IS MORE EXCITING THAN BUYING SHOES!
When worms arrivve in the mail cold and still and you take the electric blanket off the bed to worm the bin before putting in the worms.
Any your husband has to find extra bedding for the two of you.