Products from our basement vermiculture operation, the Urban Worm, are now available for sale at North End Organic Nursery and, during the spring planting season, at the Saturday Market!

If you drop by the restaurant, you can purchase castings, supplies, or merchandise. Unfortunately, our worms are currently in a breeding cycle, and we are unable to remove any for retail sale until further notice.

Like us on facebook if you haven’t yet; that’s the best way to keep up on what we’re doing!

Looking to get a tour? Forrest, our worm manager, is in-house on Tuesday and Wednesday from 11-4, or set up an appointment for another time here.

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About Urban Worm: We installed our two vermiculture bins, which are home to 200,000 red wigglers (and a host of other organisms) at peak population, in 2006 as part of our ongoing mission to eliminate landfill waste. Separating foodscraps and other compostable waste (including all of our menus, which are printed on 100% recycled paper with soy ink) has become second-nature to our employees. During prep and service, compostable products are collected in designated buckets and are then transferred to pre-composting bins in our alley for 1-2 weeks. After decomposition has begun, and most of the heat that will be expelled is gone, the pre-composted materials are transferred to the worm bins. Worms eat about half their body weight in scraps per week, and will double in population (when temperature and moisture conditions are perfect) in a month. We’ll spare you the mathematics in 3 dimensions and just say: that’s a lot of trash abatement!

As new scraps are added to the bins, the worms continue to eat their way up and expel castings, which settle to the bottom of the bins where they eventually fall through the fine grate that serves as their home’s floor. We sweep up the castings, sift through them with a compost roller, return any worms to the bin, and package the nutrient rich castings for sale or to offer in trade to our local farmers. At this point, the literal circle of life is complete!

Our business is focused on keeping resources in our local economy, and buying local in coordination with Urban Worm’s waste management skills is a big part of our success to date.

For more information about Urban Worm or our other sustainability initiatives, contact Kevin Kelpe, Managing Partner, at kevin [at] BCRFL [dot] com, or Forrest Hall, our Worm Manager, at worms [at] BCRFL [dot] com.