About WormMainea

How It Started

I have been interested in composting since graduate school. At that time we lived in an apartment, and I had a compost pile in the center of the common parking circle. It was not my property, so I kept it simple — a small pile on the ground that I would add food scraps to by digging into the pile. My wife called it the dead pig, because it resembled just that: a burial site for a pig.

WormMainea began in 1998 when I convinced my wife that we had to start composting indoors. In Maine you really cannot compost outdoors year round without heating your pile (either with hot manure or insulation — neither were options for me). So I ordered a pound of worms from a grower in Connecticut and built my own worm bin.

I decided that I didn't have to buy an expensive worm bin. My composting experience told me that it didn't have to be anything fancy — just a container to keep the worms in and the flies out. My first bin was a tiered storage bin system with holes in the bottom for drainage and a screen to keep the worms inside. I followed Mary Applehof's book and they were fed regularly.

After the first year I split them into a second bin, then a third, and so on until we had a basement with many worm bins. Over time I experimented with other bin designs and communicated with other vermicomposters. In many cases the changes to my bin design were made to solve problems or based on problems others were having. I eventually learned that a simple bin design will work.

I also experimented with different beddings, food types, and additives. Lots of lessons learned there, too. I gave worms to friends and gave demonstrations to schools and scouts and enjoyed my interactions with other vermicomposters via the Internet.

In September 2005 I was surprised to see that the Common Ground Fair didn't have someone advocating for vermicomposting. That was the spark that started WormMainea. In the spring of 2006 we decided to sell worms and start putting information on vermicomposting on a web site.