If you give a Brooke or a Caleb an earthworm....

It all started with a walk in which Brooke cried because she counted 62 dead earthworms on the sidewalk.  The tears drove us to look for living earthworms which of course ended up with us keeping earthworms in the old lady bug habitat.  Little did we know at the time that earth worms are very quick at procreating.  A couple weeks later, we had baby earthworms. 

Baby earthworms of course created space concerns.  We learned that earthworms are hermaphrodites which when they mate produce up to five new earthworms each.  This means that our four original earthworms could now have produced up to 20 babies.  And all those earth worms in such an enclosed space cannot be a good thing.  "They might die."

So what should we do with our new earthworm colony.  It was decided that we should put them to work.  And so began our search for a compost bin.  A trip to Lowe's proved to be unfruitful.  Compost bins it seems are very expensive. So we moved our search to our old friend Google.  How to make your own worm compost bin.  Eureka.  A couple of 10 gallon totes, a drill, some newspapers, and we have ourselves a compost pile.

No project in this family is without its share of artwork.  Brooke wouldn't have it  So I purchased Sharpies in 24 colors and Brooke and Caleb decorated their bins.

Coloring completed, we must begin drilling holes.

Now we must create the bedding for our earthworms.  Tear the newspaper into one inch strips until your container is pretty full.

 Now we must get the newspaper wet, but not too wet...

 Mix in some food scraps.  Banana peels, rice, some card board, etc.  Then just add worms:) 

Now we have ourselves a compost bin. 

 I chose clear so we could really start seeing what our earthworms were doing.  We will see how it works out.  The plans we used were at http://whatcom.wsu.edu/ag/compost/easywormbin.htm. 

So if you give a Brooke or a Caleb an earthworm, you just might end up with a compost bin.