Letter to the Earthworms
»What would our lives be like if we took earthworms seriously, took the ground under our feet rather than the skies high above our heads, as the place to look, as well, eventually, as the place to be? It is as though we have been pointed in the wrong direction.«
— Adam Phillips
End of September 2017 we were given a small cardboard box. It contained about two or three hands full of garden soil, some fruit and vegetable scraps, and perhaps a dozen earthworms.
We were delighted about the gift. Josh had prepared a worm hotel for you. It is made out of four large plastic boxes which can sit inside each other. Josh drilled lots of holes into the bottoms of two boxes, large enough for you to move through easily. These two boxes are the two top floors of your new home.
Into the bottom of the third box he drilled tiny holes, so that you can’t fall through them but any liquid can drain out. The 4th box remained intact because it has to catch your precious worm tea.
We have been feeding you a healthy diet, including vegetable scraps, kale and chard from the garden, chopped up banana, melon and avocado skins, rotten tomatillos, coffee grounds, and crushed egg shells, and you are thriving on it.
We respect that you don’t like being disturbed too much, so we only feed you once a week; and look at you now: In less than five months the population in your worm hotel has exploded!
You have produced three thick layers of worm castings and at least 12 litres of worm tea. The three floors of your lodgings were getting a bit crowded, so we built an extension.
In spring we’ll harvest some of your worm eggs and dig them into the soil around our young fruit trees. Since most of you were born and bred in the comfortable and cozy wormery in our cellar, you are not that keen on the great outdoors. You might not be able to survive ‘in the wild’ without your regular supply of food.
But your offspring won’t mind all that. The next generation of earthworms will be born under the fruit trees of our quinta. They will get used to a different diet, and produce fantastic super-humus right where it is needed most. Some of your castings and eggs will move into our walled kitchen garden and help the new vegetable-season get off to a good start.
Today humans are celebrating the Day of the Earthworm. We never anticipated that we would get so excited about you — but we did.
You are our heroes! You are the chief decomposers of our kitchen waste into super-humus. You are true earth-regenerators.
Thank you so much for all the work you do. We couldn’t do it without you.
With much love and appreciation,
The Humus Project Team
First published on https://thehumusproject.org 15–02–2018
