[quirky music]
They're right under the surface.
They're just right under,
they're waiting for their next meal.
They're pretty sophisticated
animals and they have five heart along the length of their body,
All it does is does this push fo from one end to the other.
Their population keeps multiplying, they go about
double every three months if everything is optimal.
I'm the guy that does most of the work here, except
I get help from my friend.
We feed them, we grow them here, in containers.
We have one great big tank,
Some smaller containers.
They poop out castings and then we bag that up and we sell it.
Worms basically excrete castings, it's worm poop.
And that's the product that we sell is worm castings.
Here, is ten cups of worm castings.
It went from being small scale, just a little potted plants
to full scale garden that I have here now.
And it's the greatest thing I could ask for. (Voiceover) do
Some pineapples over there,
pomegranate. It's
more than what I could ask for.
So I started collecting worms,
started the small worm bin in a little five by three...
Tote from Wal-Mart.
I started making my own worm castings.
Well, the difference that you see in them is
its next day result.
You give it to them tonight.
You'll see it tomorrow. It makes your plants
dance. Literally makes your plants dance.
They treat the soil
and they treat the roots of plants to make them
more able to absorb
nutrients from the soil and from fertilizers.
They also help prevent pests and bad bacterial infestations.
They make plants yield faster and bigger and better.
So they're kind of like the universal food
supply for plants and for soil.
I was a tennis pro for 40 years.
I had courts made out of soil,
so I knew something about absorption
and about runoff and certain things like that.
But I had to learn kind of on the fly
what the optimum scenario would be for worms.
They can't chew, so they have to have
grit with their food to help grind up food,
and they have all these enzymes that process it.
I suffered a seizure.
I wasn't supposed to
be left home alone because I was going to be prone to seizures.
So my lovely neighbor across the street
was going to be home every day
and told me I could come over and spend the day with her
when I was alone.
So I would come over here and I found out she had this garden
And from there, I fell in love with it.
I went in just with the intention to buy some worms
and just talking to them about how to make compost tea.
From there, his wife was just intrigued
with what I was talking about.
Somebody my age was doing this rather than what
somebody my age normally does.
They go hang out with their friends all day
and don't want a garden or do anything progressive.
They just wanted to interview me and learn
more about me, and after that, they offered me a job.
We harvest the material below, which is castings,
We take it dry it somewhat,
and we have a couple of machines here that we screen with.
[Machine starting]
I do just whatever they need help with,
so if we need to clean up worms that are going rogue.
so the rogues they get
out of the bins all the time, they run around.
I learned that geometric pressure because of storms
causes worms to freak out.
So I received a call from Michael and he told me
all the worms broke out.
I spent the day picking up worms, finding worms
coming out of the walls.
[dark ambient music]
[quirky music]
I haven't named them all yet.
But no, I actually haven't named any of them yet.
I don't have pet ones, but I'm always stunned at what they do.
So I appreciate them and I do,
actually, I do have some affinity for them.