Couple farms worms for profit, poop
Enlarge Image
By Adam Cairns/ThisWeek
Jeremy Gedert shows off a pound of worms from his 18-square-foot wood compost bin in his garage workshop. Three years ago, Gedert and his wife, Kellie, started the "One 20 Farm" to raise worms and sell custom-made compost bins.
Jeremy Gedert knows the value of worms.
He and his wife, Kellie, maintain a small urban worm farm at their Northland home. They call it "One 20 Farm," which is derived from a verse in the Book of Romans in the Bible:
"For since the creation of the world God's invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature, have been understood and observed by what he made, so that people are without excuse."
The Web site for their enterprise - now in its third season and with roughly 5,000 red wigglers on hand - describes the couple as a "culinary chef and an artist who have fallen in love with God's green earth."
They prove this by engaging in what is called "vermicomposting," which allows worms to eat food scraps and produce brown stuff that lets people who grow things in the green earth have even greener thumbs. It's called "worm castings," but that's just a nice name for what it actually is: worm poop.
"One 20 is the result of a marriage between a sustainably minded woman with some old-school hippy influences and a chef-'food nerd' weary of tales about contaminated vegetables," the Gederts state on their Web site, which is maintained by Kellie, who handles marketing and public relations. "We began with a tiny backyard garden inside a dog kennel - couldn't keep the dogs in it, so might as well use it to keep them out - and grew over a couple of years into multiple small plots. The garden became not just our personal produce department but also a classroom for us and our kids, an environment to teach about the importance of natural food as well as God's complex creativity.
"Vermiculture was introduced to us by our friends at Little Square Farm and it just seemed like the natural evolution of our project, 'Loving Food from Birth to Earth.'"
Jeremy Gedert first attended Mifflin High School before switching to the Fort Hayes Arts and Academic program, after which he entered the chef apprentice program at Columbus State Community College. "So, from art to food to worms," he said.
He now works as a chef for two catering companies, along with ranching his worms.
Kellie Gedert has a bachelor of fine arts degree from Ohio State University.
The route to worm farmer for Jeremy Gedert began in the restaurant industry. Really.
Working in that business, Gedert said, led him to become increasingly concerned about the quality and even safety of the food that reaches the tables of Americans, at home or in restaurants. He said notices go out on a frighteningly frequent basis regarding tainted produce.
"We definitely heard about it more often than what the mass media found out," Gedert said.
That led the Gederts to be concerned about what they were feeding their two children, Casandra, 9, and 5-year-old Milo.
In talking about their concerns with friends from Little Square Farm, a sustainable food operation and rain-barrel business in Grove City, the Gederts had the concept of worm composting brought to their attention.
After a good deal of research, they decided to give it a try.
It's very similar to ordinary composting, in which decaying organic material is turned into a form of fertilizer to improve soil structure, but the worms hasten the process and produce even richer fertilizer in the form of their castings, Jeremy Gedert said. They also add calcium to the material that passes through their systems.
"Anyone who's grown tomatoes knows calcium's important to plants," he said.
The Northland couple initially sold many of the worms they purchased online from a supplier in Pennsylvania, along with worm bins and, of course, those castings. But at first the demand for the worms, not their byproducts or the bins, practically outstripped the Gederts' ability to keep enough of a breeding stock on hand, so now they mostly market the castings.
The castings, which Gedert said look like slightly coarser potting soil, can be mixed in small quantities in dirt to improve the soil and help keep in moisture. It also can be mixed with water to create what is called "worm tea."
"Which sounds delicious," Gedert said, jokingly.
This can be sprayed onto crops or plants, and helps cast the castings over a wider area.
The last major harvest of castings, which involved picking up about four months of their "output," produced roughly 13 gallons of the material, Gedert said.
"It's been nice, because we would normally do composting, but this has helped us do some more," he said.
He and his wife, Kellie, maintain a small urban worm farm at their Northland home. They call it "One 20 Farm," which is derived from a verse in the Book of Romans in the Bible:
"For since the creation of the world God's invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature, have been understood and observed by what he made, so that people are without excuse."
The Web site for their enterprise - now in its third season and with roughly 5,000 red wigglers on hand - describes the couple as a "culinary chef and an artist who have fallen in love with God's green earth."
They prove this by engaging in what is called "vermicomposting," which allows worms to eat food scraps and produce brown stuff that lets people who grow things in the green earth have even greener thumbs. It's called "worm castings," but that's just a nice name for what it actually is: worm poop.
"One 20 is the result of a marriage between a sustainably minded woman with some old-school hippy influences and a chef-'food nerd' weary of tales about contaminated vegetables," the Gederts state on their Web site, which is maintained by Kellie, who handles marketing and public relations. "We began with a tiny backyard garden inside a dog kennel - couldn't keep the dogs in it, so might as well use it to keep them out - and grew over a couple of years into multiple small plots. The garden became not just our personal produce department but also a classroom for us and our kids, an environment to teach about the importance of natural food as well as God's complex creativity.
"Vermiculture was introduced to us by our friends at Little Square Farm and it just seemed like the natural evolution of our project, 'Loving Food from Birth to Earth.'"
Jeremy Gedert first attended Mifflin High School before switching to the Fort Hayes Arts and Academic program, after which he entered the chef apprentice program at Columbus State Community College. "So, from art to food to worms," he said.
He now works as a chef for two catering companies, along with ranching his worms.
Kellie Gedert has a bachelor of fine arts degree from Ohio State University.
The route to worm farmer for Jeremy Gedert began in the restaurant industry. Really.
Working in that business, Gedert said, led him to become increasingly concerned about the quality and even safety of the food that reaches the tables of Americans, at home or in restaurants. He said notices go out on a frighteningly frequent basis regarding tainted produce.
"We definitely heard about it more often than what the mass media found out," Gedert said.
That led the Gederts to be concerned about what they were feeding their two children, Casandra, 9, and 5-year-old Milo.
In talking about their concerns with friends from Little Square Farm, a sustainable food operation and rain-barrel business in Grove City, the Gederts had the concept of worm composting brought to their attention.
After a good deal of research, they decided to give it a try.
It's very similar to ordinary composting, in which decaying organic material is turned into a form of fertilizer to improve soil structure, but the worms hasten the process and produce even richer fertilizer in the form of their castings, Jeremy Gedert said. They also add calcium to the material that passes through their systems.
"Anyone who's grown tomatoes knows calcium's important to plants," he said.
The Northland couple initially sold many of the worms they purchased online from a supplier in Pennsylvania, along with worm bins and, of course, those castings. But at first the demand for the worms, not their byproducts or the bins, practically outstripped the Gederts' ability to keep enough of a breeding stock on hand, so now they mostly market the castings.
The castings, which Gedert said look like slightly coarser potting soil, can be mixed in small quantities in dirt to improve the soil and help keep in moisture. It also can be mixed with water to create what is called "worm tea."
"Which sounds delicious," Gedert said, jokingly.
This can be sprayed onto crops or plants, and helps cast the castings over a wider area.
The last major harvest of castings, which involved picking up about four months of their "output," produced roughly 13 gallons of the material, Gedert said.
"It's been nice, because we would normally do composting, but this has helped us do some more," he said.
Comments
