Aniiiisha

Earthworms and Vermicomposting!

It’s been a year knowing about these teeny-tiny worms. To be honest, ‘Earthworms are the best friends of farmers’, that was everything I used to know about them. Why so? How? These were out of the syllabus questions, which I never much cared about. But now, the more I talk the lesser it feels. So, shall I?

It may surprise all of us that earthworms were studied for the whole 39 years by Charles Darwin. Can you believe, there are about 6,000 different kinds of earthworms around the world! They live for 4-5 years. They have this amazing capacity of growing the lost parts. Do you remember Boogeyman? Oh, sure you do, the man who used to eat Earthworms in WWE. Yuck, right? Sorry, haha. The very first experience of seeing them move, slowly, squeezing and expanding their tubular soft slimy body was, with no lie, awful. However, I was forced to keep them in my palms. I knew it wouldn’t bite nor poop, but the “Wiggle-Wiggle” motion (as Bhawana says it) was enough for me to throw them high in air at once. To my surprise, Sandesh dai was putting worms in his hands and playing with them. Later on I got to know how satisfying the movement feels in the hand. Their soft cool bodies moving to and fro trying to get out from spaces between the fingers feels as if melting of butter in your hand.

The journey of Team Vermiponics (to those who are unknown about this team, it’s a start-up working in vermiculture and related fields) started with the orientation meeting. It wasn’t N0RMAL orientation program, we were given 2 hrs. of lecture on business canvas model (though the only thing that I remember about it is the term ‘elevator speech’, if you don’t know its meaning, kindly Google it!) and were taken directly to the farm to work. The first and foremost thing that we needed to do was to choose a site for the bed preparation for Earthworms. Yes, you heard it right. It’s BED preparation. It’s the house of Earthworms. I had never in my life worked as much as I worked on that very first day which later became a habit. We cleaned the farm, my black pants turned brown, Rajiv dai tore his new pants, he still complains about it.

The next day, for making up the bed, we laid a long 3*1 m2 plastic on the floor. Stacked 3 rows of bricks on top of each other and made a rectangular closed wall with the top open (this is a temporary style of bed preparation, you can make a permanently cemented bed as well). After the bed, it was the turn for the cushion to be laid. For this, chopped off 1-2 inch (that is 2.4 cm to 2.4*2 that makes 4.8cm) straw was used.

Now comes the food.

Huge banana pseudostem were cut from the horticulture farm and laid down mercilessly on the ground and cut into pieces, as thick as 2 slices of bread together. Earthworms like cattle manure the most. We went to the Gold mine (baptized by me), probably the most beautiful place at AFU, LPM practical area (to those who don’t know it, it’s a beautiful dating site too). ’Gold’ because that manure was going to be changed into black gold aka vermicompost and mine because it was actually a hole full of free* manure just like we find free* coal in the coal mine. We mixed up the pseudostem and the manure and put our heroes, particularly Eisenia Fetida, who would change this waste into valuable assets.

Earthworms require just enough water to get wet but shouldn’t be soaked. It took a whole of 3 months for the compost to be prepared. It was actually the winter period when the metabolic and physiological activity gets down and the number of worms was less, which overall increased the count of days required in forming fully prepared compost. 70-80-degree Fahrenheit that’s approx. to 20-25 degree Celsius is fit for the worms to show their full efficiency. The more the worms, the faster is the vermicomposting process! Make it a thumb rule if you are planning to keep a vermicompost bed in your house too. Harvesting them was fun. With the melodious voice of Suraj dai running on background, we, in no time separated earthworms out of the prepared compost.

Well, here comes the climax.

It was a fine sunny day in summer. Our farm was reconstructed by the university itself to carry out its pathology related research in it and we were asked to leave the spot. Our farms’ roof was replaced with a transparent plastic roof. The temperature of the room rose so dramatically that it was impossible for us to remain in the farm even for a few minutes. So, we planned to shift. The Sheldon within me cried at this point. To another farm but where? It became a problem. We reached out to the unused garage, parking spots, locked labs and even the unused toilets. Thanks to God, we found a big hall, with its height thrice as high as my height itself, with electricity supply and water source nearby. It was a shady area that earthworms would love.

The next day when we went the then farm, what I saw broke my heart into pieces. In the shallow bucket which were used to collect vermiliquor was filled with the dead worms! They couldn’t resist the raised temperature of the hall so in search of cooler place, they jumped out of tank to the under laid bucket and died because of suffocation. There were tears in Kusum’s eyes. Sandesh dai turned wordless and me who can barely my feelings in public, remained silent for the whole day. It was hard for me to dig the pit in which whole bucket full dead worms would accommodate. But I had to do it anyway. And later did I realized how close I had become to these worms and how unknowingly they had been a pleasurable part of my life. Never do they compromise, they love us with all their five hearts. Without any further delay we transferred the bed to the next farm.

So, this is how you prepare vermicompost. Sorry if it has become long. And one thing at last, I barely eat Chowmein these days, guess why?