On Lonely Worms and Everyone

People sometimes call to see if we have worms. It’s not surprising, seeing as we call ourselves Lonely Worm Farm, but no, we have no worms for sale. Just this name, inspired by a specific worm Jason and I met several years ago.

It was 2020. We had just purchased the land and were testing the soil in fields that I hoped to convert to a wheelchair accessible orchard and vegetable, flower, and herb garden. Soil tests involve digging 10-15 holes per acre, about 8 inches deep, collecting samples from the bottoms of each, and sending the accumulated dirt to the Cooperative Extension for a chemical analysis. It was a hot August day, in the middle of a drought, and though the goldenrod and purple loosestrife burst with life, the land was parched and hard packed. Shoveling down eight inches had me sweating buckets. Worse, the holes I dug yielded little but a desiccated powder of soil and a lot of rocks. Not one worm did I find. Finally, a couple of hours in, in hole number 34, Jason discovered a worm. A lone dusty creature who wiggled in alarm at the sudden light–and perhaps also at the two humans squatting above, whooping as if his-her-their existence was our victory. 

They may be the most apt pronoun for the earthworm. Not only do they have five hearts, they are also hermaphroditic, each one possessing male and female sexual organs along with a slightly plumper whitish ring you may have noticed–the clitellum.¹

As pleased as Jason and I were to have found this singular worm, the situation was grim. Farmers love earthworms because they are geniuses at breaking down vegetable matter, bacteria, fungi and composting them into rich soil. Plus they aerate the structure of this soil with their tunnels. And these are just two of the many things they do to bring fertility to the land. An acre of healthy soil is often home to millions of worms. Not, as in our case, one.  And the poor worm.  They are known for enjoying their solitude, yes, but they also like their moments of union. Who knew if our worm would ever find another in this desolate landscape?

It was Jason who suggested naming the farm in honor of this solitary creature. How could I resist? The name recalled Richard Scarry's Lowly Worm, which Jason and I both loved as kids, and it was a call to action. We would revive the soil and get this worm some friends! The first year, Jason drove buckets of worms up from his beloved Brooklyn compost heap. Then Jess came along and folded mountains of compost and mulch into the field, hooked up an irrigation system, planted a diverse assortment of annuals, perennials and baby trees, eschewed synthetic sprays and fertilizers that can harm worms and other forms of life, and tilled only when necessary.² Four years in, I am happy to report that our worm is no longer lonely. Most every time I putter around in the garden, I’ll find a fat one–or more likely, five or six–glistening about in the beds. 

Wait a second. I am being glib. How should I know if our namesake worm is no longer lonely? Or for that matter, if it ever was? As a child, I swam in a great sea of loneliness in spite of the people all around me. Indeed, it was the people who gave rise to this loneliness. The sun-warmed roots of a tree, the glossy black ants, the dizzying, infinite sky–these were my people. Or non people. They gave me a sense of belonging, an intuitive understanding that I as much as they were a part of this earth. How funny it was, later in life, to realize that not everyone likes this feeling–that a kind of atomized imperviousness can be preferred!

Let me just say: I hope our original worm enjoys the many other of his kin who now tunnel through the land. And yes, that worm from the drought of 2020 may still be around. Earthworms can live up to seven years.

I’ve been thinking about our name quite a bit recently–the worm, the accuracy of loneliness, the very idea of a farm. On tax and insurance forms, after ticking off Farm in the Type of Business section, I am supposed to select a subtype. Soybean? Corn? Wheat? Legumes? Cut flowers? Livestock? There are dozens of options, but none for vegetables + herbs + flowers + berries + fruit trees + nut trees + goats + chickens + honeybees. It’s as if the old fashioned family farm does not exist, at least not on official paperwork. Screw you, bureaucracy. I like our name. It is staying even if our worm is not and never was lonely and the bureaucrats of the world have erased traditional farming.³ 

And yet, I admit, the casual visitor–or even a fellow farmer–might not immediately think “farm” when viewing the sloped three acre field where most of our agricultural work takes place. Yes, there are vegetable, flower and garlic rows that look somewhat conventional. But there’s much that doesn’t. Hidden amidst the tall grasses are the beginnings of a permaculture food forest: fruit, nut and shade trees planted round with comfrey and potatoes. Queen Anne’s Lace and Sweet Annie grow amidst the camomile and mint on my hugulkultur beds—raised mounds of compost and dirt piled on moldering wood, that also serve as homes for snakes and voles. There’s a fountain, a frogpond, a wheelchair path lined with blackberries, raspberries, strawberries and dozens of waist high planters, overflowing at this time of year with tomato vines and chard. There’s a stand of hickories, a dying oak, a patch of elderberry and marshmallow, a picnic area, a labyrinth above which lines of ribbons blow in the breeze. There is the buzz of bees and frequent glimpses of white tailed bunnies, butterflies, and blue birds.

Jess, weaving flowers into the entrance to the labyrinth.

“Maybe we should call this part of the farm The Healing Garden,” I suggested to Jess, the main mastermind behind the field. We were giving a tour to Jay, a carefarmer from Oregon who was interested in our project. I was thinking about the medicinal herbs, the unsprayed produce, the labyrinth–a walk in which was prescribed by the Ancients for calming anxiety–and the benches we had built to accommodate visitors who have a hard time walking, but which also encourage the sure-of-foot to stop for a moment and take in the beauty surrounding them. A diplomatic look passed between Jess and Jay. 

They liked the word garden, but healing? They had both studied ecopsychology and ecopsychology takes a dim view of the way that word is tossed about, particularly, I gathered, when attributed to nature. I get it. I often come across people talking about “nature” as if it is a benign, Disneyish sort of side dish, instead of the churning stew of life and death, growth and decay that we live within and that lives within us. Even in our wheelchair accessible field, dedicated to cultivating the more harmonious aspects of nature, it can still be hazardous. If you are allergic to bee stings. If you are struck by lightning. If you pick poke instead of lettuce. 

My inner editor agreed: Healing is overused and somewhat redundant–aren’t all gardens healing? 

A couple of days later, another idea suggested itself: “What about The Everyone Garden?” This time, Jess brightened. Everyone. Every living creature. A shorthand for the sort of holistic farming he practices, which honors the myriad and interconnected forms of life that move between earth, air and water. In this approach to agriculture, the birds eat the insects; the insects pollinate the plants and eat each other; the mycelium and earthworms work their magic on the soil. It is not a people first approach. The voles dart out to snatch strawberries and whole strawberry plants. But the rat snakes keep the voles in check, and there are enough strawberries to share. Abundance is the key. Grow enough and bunnies, slugs, and people will all be fed.

Jason raises a skeptical eyebrow. Everyone? Including poison ivy and Japanese beetles? These are his pet scourges. He treks out from Brooklyn every weekend and patiently does battle with them, uprooting poison ivy and tossing it into toxic piles of blackening leaves and tendrils, shaking Japanese beetles off the primroses and feeding them to the chickens. 

Yes, I say. A garden for Japanese beetles and their biggest predator–you. Truth be told, I’m not particularly fond of Japanese beetles either. And when I catch squash beetles swarming over a pumpkin, a frenzy takes over. I can’t help it. In that moment, I find myself aligned with the pumpkin, mercilessly stomping the hordes that prey upon it.⁴

Japanese beetle sculpting negative space out of a leaf.

 An everyone garden would have to make room for Jason and me and our bug fighting tendencies and Jess’s “let the patterns of nature find their equilibrium” approach. Maybe an everyone garden is a place for trying to figure out how to live together–all of us, even people. An intricate practice to be sure, but also how we learn to be our best selves. And a natural response to loneliness.

Visitors from the Anderson Center, posing in front of the labyrinth.

1. Trigger warning for those who are triggered by worms, or worm sex:  Worm sex is basically a juicy sort of frottage. A couple of worms slither along each other from opposite ends, their clitella meeting and lubricating. Apparently this is an enjoyable practice as the meeting can go on for as long as an hour. When they are finished, the worms go their separate ways. Now comes the nifty part. The clitella loosen and the worms wriggle out. As the clitellum is shed, it gathers sperm and eggs and turns into a cocoon which can carry anywhere from 3-60 wormlets! Talk about an egalitarian arrangement: each worm deposits their own cocoon. But you need two to do the deed

2.  Tilling disturbs the soil and kills worms. This year, spurred on by a USDA grant, we went officially no till.

3. Happily, we do qualify as a farm under the USDA’s guidelines: a place that produces and sells at least $1,000 worth of agricultural goods per year.

4. Of course, my alignment with the pumpkin, though in the moment true, will eventually be overturned. In a month, provided the pumpkin survives, I will rip it from its vine and carve it into a jack-o’-lantern. Alignments shift. Nature is kind and cruel.