While there’s mostly a lot of paper farming going on at this time of year, every now and then we get to do some outside work.  This afternoon I was able to turn some of the compost we’ve been making at our house.  To my surprise, I discovered a pretty healthy-looking colony of worms.  In the picture above, see how many there were in one shovelful of compost!  Yay!  Okay, that may be a bit of a geeky thing to celebrate, but it means the compost pile is healthy and working, and that’s exciting.

Pretty much all of the worms were bunched in the middle of the pile, where I suspect it was warm enough for them to wait out the winter. Much of the pile is a frozen block of ice, but where the worms were was very nice, loose compost.

A close-up of the worms shows that they are mature and probably reproducing.  That thick band in the middle of the foreground worm in the picture below means it’s able to reproduce.  I’m not sure where they came from.  Maybe someone inoculated the pile with worms. Neighbors…?

In any case, we’re looking forward to being able to spread a good quantity of compost this spring.

Cheers,

-Mike