This demonstration workshop teaches the importance of having a soil-building program on your farm or backyard garden to make nutrient reserves in the soil available to your plants and to cycle nutrients, while also diverting food scrapes, cardboard and newspaper from our local waste facility. During this demonstration, we’ll walk participants through the process of installing and maintaining an in-ground ‘worm farm’. This system provides around 50 lbs of fertilizer, inoculation from a diversity of indigenous soil microbe, and aeration and ‘tilling’ services from both compost and earth worms. The design results in a vermicast product while also attracting more native worms from your growing area, expanding the diversity and quantity of the worm colony in your vermicast system. For larger scale operations, this system should be accompanied by more traditional vermicast system, intended to provide enough vermicast to fertilize your nursery and field plants, while also providing enough vermicast for your nursery operation.