A month ago we brought home a box of worms. I'll be honest — I expected it to be a chore I'd quietly end up doing alone. Instead it's become the thing the kids check first thing every morning. Here's how our first month went, lumps and all.
Why We Chose a Worm Farm
We wanted a "first homestead project" that was cheap, fit our small yard, and gave the kids something living to care for daily. A worm farm ticked every box: it costs very little, lives happily on a balcony or in a shady corner, turns our kitchen scraps into premium plant food, and is basically a window into decomposition — one of the most important (and least visible) processes in nature.
Week One: Setting Up
We started with a simple stacked worm farm in a shady spot by the back door (shade matters — composting worms hate heat). The kids laid down damp shredded newspaper for bedding, tipped in the worms, and then... we left them alone for a day to settle, which felt counterintuitive to an excited five-year-old.
First lesson, learnt immediately: these are special composting worms (tiger worms / reds), not the earthworms from the garden bed. A good thing to know before you go digging. We bought ours from a produce store; a friend with an established farm could have given us a handful too.
Weeks Two and Three: Finding the Rhythm
We started small with the feeding — a handful of veggie scraps buried under the bedding every couple of days. Our early mistake was enthusiasm: we overfed, it got a bit smelly, and we learnt the golden rule the honest way — if it stinks, you're feeding too much. We backed off, added more dry paper, and it settled right down.
The kids took over the "yes and no" list taped to the lid:
- Yes: fruit and veg scraps, crushed eggshell, tea leaves, damp cardboard.
- Go easy / no: citrus, onion, dairy, meat, anything oily or salty.
The Science the Kids Soaked Up
Without it ever feeling like a lesson, they learnt that worms:
- breathe through their skin, so the bedding has to stay damp;
- have no eyes but hate light, which is why they dive when you lift the cover;
- are hermaphrodites (every worm can lay eggs — cue much fascination);
- eat up to their own body weight in scraps a day when conditions are right.
Best of all, they now understand decomposition as a real thing they manage — that "rubbish" is just food for something else, and that nutrients cycle round rather than disappear.
Troubleshooting (the Bits No One Warns You About)
In one month we hit most of the classic snags, so here's our cheat sheet:
- Smelly / soggy: overfeeding or too wet → stop feeding, add dry shredded paper.
- Vinegar flies: food left uncovered → always bury scraps, keep the cover on.
- Ants marching in: the farm's too dry → moisten it, and stand the legs in trays of water as a moat.
- Worms climbing the lid: conditions are off (often too wet or too acidic) → ease off the citrus and check the moisture.
Week Four: The First Harvest (Sort Of)
We're not at full castings yet, but we drained our first little batch of "worm wee," watered it down to weak-tea colour, and the kids fed it to the seedlings on the windowsill. Watching them connect our scraps → worms → plant food → food we grow was the whole reason we did this.
What We'd Do Differently
- Feed less, sooner. Trust the "feed to their appetite" rule from day one.
- Set up the kids' jobs early — one on scraps, one on the moisture check, one on the weekly weigh-in (which doubles as a maths lesson and a graph).
- Keep a worm diary. We started one in week three and wished we'd begun on day one; the early changes are the most interesting.
Would I Recommend It?
Wholeheartedly — especially for apartment and small-yard families, because it fits on a balcony and needs almost no space. It's a living science lab, a daily responsibility, and a genuinely satisfying way to shrink the bin.
We wrote up everything we wish we'd known in our free guide: how to start a worm farm with kids. Want the kids to record the journey? Our Printable Nature Journal has pages made for exactly this.