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Dear Friends
Welcome to The Urban Worm newsletter, and thank you so much for joining us, for believing in the humble but mighty worm!
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Our newsletter content is 100% human-generated, and always will be!
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Here is December's New Worm Order News, the final edition for 2025 as we say goodbye to another year of deep learning, revelations, transformation and growth. It’s been a rollercoaster ride for sure, but every challenge is here to help us reach our highest selves- apparently! We want to thank you for sticking around and being a friend to the humble but mighty Worm.
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Learn With The Worm
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Empowering a culture of worm farming across all industries and sectors is and always has been the underlying philosophy of The Urban Worm. Whilst we love to travel to you, and will continue to deliver workshops throughout the UK and beyond, we are now offering the opportunity for one-to-one and group workshops at Worm HQ in Nottinghamshire. We are proud of what we do and the knowledge we have accumulated over the past 13 years. It has been a wonderful journey, sometimes painful, and not always a smooth ride, with moments of deep learning (aka failures!) and aha! moments. We want to share this with you.
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Transparency in the production of our Magic Manure is central to our ethos - why not come and see how we do what we do, and how you can do it too - with our Vermicomposting, Hot Composting and Dual Composting workshops.
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So, if you are looking for a unique gift this Christmas what could be better than a visit to a worm farm?!
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Pulp Friction
We had some very special guests from Pulp Friction visit us last week to help lend a hand harvesting our Continous Flow Through (CFT) system. The Detroit-designed, Newark-on-Trent-built system is running beautifully, and next year’s growing season is in for a treat with our artisan Magic Manure.
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Pulp Friction is a charity based in Nottingham dedicated to supporting adults with autism and additional learning needs to develop independence, social development, and life and work skills. We have worked with Pulp Friction since 2015, and are proud to say the team are seasoned worm farmers and are certainly flying the flag for the worms.
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Above: Anna with Elliot, Issie, Marcus & Gill of the Pulp Friction garden crew; Below: Elliot gets to grips with the CFT winch to harvest Magic Manure
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Worm Wise in Wales
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The worm farming community in the UK could certainly be classified as bijou, and it is always exciting to hear of new vermicomposting enterprises taking shape. A few years back we had the pleasure of delivering a session for a farm cluster in the Brecon Beacons for Black Mountain College. Samantha Evans and Emma Lilley were part of the audience and we are delighted they have begun their own journey as ‘Worm Wise’.
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We look forward to hosting the ladies at the farm early next year to hear all about their journey and compare notes. Worm Wise have adopted the Wedge System which we have only seen in practice in the USA at Arizona Worm Farm. It is wonderful to see this design being harnessed on home soil. Vermicomposting in the UK is blossoming!
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Samantha & Emma sent us some pics of their latest vermitea batch made for use on the no-dig beds at Troed Yr Harn, Black Mountains College’s farm campus - made from local food waste and then aerated for 48 hours in 25 litres of bore-hole water (one ‘cup’ of vermicast for every 5 litres) before being diluted (1:10) and spread on the land.
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One trial they ran this summer looked at the effects of vermitea on the root development of turnip plants - in the photo below, the pot on the left contains compost with added vermitea (20% by volume); the one on the right a regular commercial compost.
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The Lost Garden of Everton
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The Urban Worm’s mission has always been to bring the magic of worms to the people, and there is nothing we love to hear more than worm farmers sharing this knowledge within their communities - thank you to Sue Hughes from the Lost Garden of Everton for this story about a visit from her local school:
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Class 2 at Everton Primary School came into The Lost Garden of Everton last week to learn first hand about invertebrates. They handled worms from my worm farm and learned such a lot about them. The next day some of the worms visited Class 1 in school. A fantastic learning experience. One of the Trick or Treaters last night said “0h, you’re the worm farmer!”
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My worms are thriving really well. Thank you for starting me off. ~ Sue Hughes
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WormTube: Video of the Month
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All hail the mighty worm! – we love this time lapse video by Andis Vigh at the A-Vworms channel on YouTube, which shows a 3-chamber carbon-only worm bin 100-day time-lapse in under five minutes - it's totally fascinating.
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That’s us for 2025, wormiful friends. We wish you and your worms a magical midwinter season, whatever your religious or spiritual alignment, if any. A huge thank you as always for following and supporting our journey, and for loving the mighty worm. We hope you know how much we appreciate you all. Catch you on the other side.
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Anna & The Urban Worm team
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