Welcome to May. This week we join with others to celebrate Compost Awareness week in NY with a virtual trip to our compost bins.

Enjoy watching worms in our Wild Wednesday video and see if you can spot the centipede before he scurries away at the end of this video. These are just two of the decomposers in our bins that turn organic matter such as food scraps and dead leaves into compost. Often called black gold, compost is a nutrient rich organic fertilizer which allows us to enrich the soil each season for the vegetables we grow without having to use chemicals.

Not sure what animals your seeing? Check out this id sheet for more information and pictures of the decomposers that call our compost bins home. Print out the worksheets and practice finding decomposers in the bins and keep track of what you see. If you can get outside safely take a minute to flip over a pile of leaves or a few rocks. Chances are you will see some of these same animals. Bring the worksheet out and see what you can find. Remember: when your done replace the rocks and leaves the way you found them, that’s the animals’ home. And be careful if picking up or touching the animals to be gentle, keep them in the dark by shading them with your hand, and never, ever, cut a worm in half! (They do not regenerate and it’s not a very nice thing to do.)

We hope these videos and worksheets pique your interest in what lives in our compost bins breaking down leaves and food scraps to create compost. For this we thank the worms, fungi, and healthy bacteria within our bins and celebrate the work they do for us every day.