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Started with  0.5 ounces of worms now he earn over USD $10000/month.
Mr. Tarmin, a humble farmer from Sragen, Central Java, telling his story to boboy.net how to become a successful worm farmer.

The story begins in mid-2005, When he with 20 other farmers were invited to city of Sragen by the mayor, he represent his village as a farmer who develop fertilizer from cow fesses. Returned from the meeting,  his group was given a kilogram of Lumbricus Rubellus worms, after the divided evenly between 20 people, he got 5 grams of worms, which he then put in the bucket. While the other 19 groups of farmers did not look after the worms and them them die, his worms are well looked after and breeding in numbers.

Now, started from ½ ounce of  worm Mr. Tarmin has 10 pool of worms which is pool measures 1.5 meters x 25 meters, which can produce three tons casting per day. When talking to us,  he said now he now a permanent supplier of a large of organic fertilizer manufacturer.

From building laborer to a successful worm farmer

He was once before trying his luck in Jakarta as building material laborer, with dirt cheap wages. Do not want be to a forever labor, Mr. Tarmin came back home and start making tiles learning from his experience in Jakarta. This effort was successful until then demand dropped with the invention of tiles, the ceramic tiles. the business was bad.

Then he try to breed chickens as an other source of income, leghorn chickens. He realized that chicken produce lots of feces which he want to make a good use of it by making them organic fertilizer. His effort to produce organic fertilizer was gradually developing with innovations until then he creates a form of organic fertilizer in granules. Farmers prefer granules than conventional sand like fertilizer because it is more practical to apply and doesn’t blown away by the wind in rice field. Mr. Tarmin started experiments on how to make granules, at first using a cement mixer, to then as the business grows he was able to invest in granular machines. According to Mr. Tarmin he was at that time still producing organic fertilizer from cow feces while he breeds the worms.

Start Worms Business

Once his worms already produce quite alot casting, he no longer use the cow feces but using worm casting instead, after seeing the fact that the worms are very productive in producing casting that are best organic fertilizers.

If cow feces takes days of fermentation to become compost, the worms are very greedy, only takes a day to process the feces into casting. The food for the worms are usually cow feces, or sometimes given rotten vegetables and other organic waste local market.

“Well let the worms work for us, as long as you don’t give salty, sour or spicy material, any other organic waste can be fed.” Mr. Tarmin said..

Currently Mr. Tarmin has two assistant  to prepare 3 tons of cow dirt per day which equivalent to three tons for worms he has for the feed.

To harvest casting, he apply open close system, meaning the 10 pools or worms each day are given cow feces up to three months. After three months, the worms would have bred and concentrate in the pool would have reached full. How to harvest them are quite easy, he just need to separate about 10 cm from top, where the worms and the eggs laid, to be transferred to an empty pool. A part of that first top 10 cm to the bottom are casting. Logically the worms will always move to the top to find the source of their food and leave castings.

He hopes can break the dependency of farmers on using and buying chemical fertilizer and make themselves their own organic fertilizer to grow better crops and reduce cost.

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