Nis wormfarmer Haberfield
Nis is a worm farmer who lives in Haberfield. With three kids time is precious but Nis finds it easy to integrate caring for her worm farm into family activities.
"I was really excited to get a worm farm for my birthday, I know it’s weird but I get excited about my worms. We’ve had them about two years now, so they are nice and big. When we got them they were tiny little skinny guys.
We rent so we are pretty economical and it just started out that I didn’t want to buy fertiliser, and our red bin was always full. Our red bin hasn’t been full in two years, I haven’t taken out the green bin, we haven’t had any green waste.
I use the worm juice on my pot plants. I love that I get to use everything, even just little things like mowing the grass and then using the grass clippings as our mulch instead of buying it.
It doesn’t smell I mean it smells a little bit when I poke it but there are no rats, no flies.
To make the compost I just looked up pile composts. It’s not as pretty, there’s no bin, I just water it, there’s air, that’s all you need right? 60% green and 40% browns. Our take was it has to be easy it has to be cheap. It’s kind of cool to watch it reduce and then you turn it and you watch it reduce again. It amazes me how nature takes care of itself.
I thought of getting a bin and putting it all the way down the side of the house but I realised if it’s not convenient for me, when I’m pottering and the kids are in the garden, I’m not going to do it. So it needed to be here, almost as an eye sore, for me to go put it in there instead of in the green bin.
When I turn the pile I sort of cut it around a bit, hose it a bit, if I remember I throw in some blood and bone. We’ve been here about nine months and in the bottom of the compost pile I’m seeing dark rich soil.
I notice I don’t have enough fruit and vegetable scraps to feed the worms and compost, with three kids you get a lot of fruit and vegies but it’s still not enough. I’m like the horrible mum, I go through the bin to find food scraps and I’m like “you guys, you’re not feeding my worms”. I swear they all think I’m crazy. "