Iowa Worm Farm

06/22/2026

A lawn is not just a lawn.

That’s the thought behind this week’s Field Note.

For gardeners, worm castings usually make sense pretty quickly. If you grow tomatoes, peppers, flowers, or houseplants, it’s not much of a stretch to understand why healthy biology matters.

But not everyone has a garden.

That has been one of the bigger challenges in sharing the work of Iowa Worm Farm.

A lot of people like the idea of reducing waste, improving soil health, and working with biology instead of constantly working against nature.

But then comes the practical question:

Where does that fit into my life?

For many people, the answer may be right outside their front door.

Their lawn.
Their landscaping.
The places they already mow, water, treat, pay for, and look at every day.

This side of Iowa Worm Farm is becoming a major part of our future. We are using worm castings to create liquid biological amendments for lawns and landscapes, with the goal of improving the health of the soil beneath the grass.

Not just quick color.

Health.

Biology.

Organic matter.

Life beneath the surface.

You can read the full Field Note here:

https://iowawormfarm.com/blogs/field-notes/a-lawn-is-not-just-a-lawn

A lawn is more than grass. Iowa Worm Farm is using worm casting extracts and biological amendments to help improve soil health in urban lawns and landscapes.

06/20/2026

This is either soil biology, kitchen science, or the weirdest smoothie I’ve ever made.

This bucket is full of weeds.

Or, as I’m trying to teach myself to call them, “other plants.”

Yesterday, I pulled plant material from a customer’s lawn and landscape beds and packed it into this food-grade 5-gallon bucket. Then I added dechlorinated water, worm castings, leaf mold from the same property, EM-1, and a homemade lactic acid bacteria culture made with locally sourced whole milk.

That sounds way more complicated than it is.

Basically, I put plants in a bucket with microbes and I’m letting them do their thing.

Over the next month, this will ferment into a plant extract that I’ll strain and use as part of the next liquid biological application on this same property.

The idea is pretty simple: instead of removing all that plant material from the property in a yard waste container, I’m trying to return some of it back to the soil where it grew.

I don’t know that nature is giving us a full lab report, but I do think it’s giving us clues.

The plants that show up in a lawn or landscape bed often tell us something about the conditions they’re growing in. Soil compaction. Moisture. Disturbance. Nutrient availability. Biology. Something created an opportunity for those plants to grow there.

So rather than only seeing them as a problem, I’m trying to ask a better question:

What can these plants teach us?

And maybe more importantly:

What value can we return to the soil instead of hauling it away?

This isn’t magic. It’s not a miracle cure. And I’m still learning.

But the bigger idea matters to me.

Use what’s already on-site. Support the soil biology. Speed up a natural decomposition process. Return the biology and nutrients back to the place they came from.

Around here, even the weeds might get a second job.

06/17/2026

Some mornings remind me exactly why Iowa Worm Farm exists.

Earlier this week we got to spend time at Children's Garden in North Liberty, helping the kids with the four worm farms they keep in their garden area.

We sifted castings.
We restocked worms.
We talked about food scraps, soil, gardens, and the tiny little wigglers doing big important work.

Last year, I helped the school get these worm farms started for their summer explorer program. Now the kids help care for them, food waste from the school gets turned into worm castings, and those castings go right back into the garden they help grow.

That’s the whole circle.

Food scraps become worm food.
Worms make castings.
Castings feed the garden.
The kids get to see it happen with their own hands.

This one is extra special for our family because Jett and Leo both went to Montessori Children’s Garden. Walking back in and seeing the same teachers, the same kindness, and the same curiosity in a new group of kids felt pretty amazing.

And getting to sit on a 5-gallon bucket next to Leo, talking worms to a group of kids?

That’s a pretty good workday.

Huge thank you to Montessori Children’s Garden for continuing to care about kids, curiosity, gardens, and doing small things that make a big difference.

The worms were excellent teachers today.
A little squirmy. But excellent.

06/15/2026

I had a plan.

A pretty detailed plan, actually.

On our family vacation last week, I had each day mapped out. Drive times. Activities. Tickets. Even restaurants were researched the night before so we could reduce the chances of someone being tired, hungry, disappointed, or frustrated.

I planned for the trip to go well.

What I did not fully plan for was the part where things didn’t go according to plan.

One of the big reasons for the trip was that Leo wanted to see a platypus. I thought the platypus was at the zoo. Tickets were purchased. The day was planned.

Then, at about 9 p.m. the night before, we discovered the platypus was not at the zoo.

It was at the Safari Park.

Wrong park.
Wrong tickets.
Wrong plan.

The old version of me would have handled that moment differently.

This time, my family showed me grace. We adjusted. We moved forward.

And somehow, that mistake became the clearest lesson of the whole trip.

It also reminded me of something I see all the time through Iowa Worm Farm:

The soil does not care how confident I was when I started.

The full post is about plans, mistakes, shame, learning, and what happens when reality doesn’t follow the itinerary.

https://iowawormfarm.com/blogs/field-notes/the-plan-was-wrong-the-lesson-was-right

A reflective Iowa Worm Farm Field Notes post about plans, mistakes, shame, curiosity, and what living systems can teach us when reality doesn’t follow the plan.

06/12/2026

This cabbage weighs 6.5 pounds.

It is sitting on a 12-inch dinner plate.

Which feels less like gardening and more like my parents accidentally grew a small green medicine ball.

The beet leaves are just as impressive — deep green, vivid, and full of those purple-red veins that make you stop and stare for a second.

This is why I keep talking about soil health.

The part we see is the plant.

The real story starts underground.

Roots. Microbes. Organic matter. Nutrient cycling. Soil structure. Biology doing what biology does.

Worm castings are not magic, but they are alive. The DNA testing we had done on our castings identified 3,130 living organisms.

I may be biased.

Actually, I am definitely biased.

But I believe better plant health often begins with better soil health.

And every once in a while, the garden gives you a 6.5-pound cabbage to make the point for you.

06/10/2026

New tool. New experiment.

I recently bought a water structuring device from Nu-Force Water Technologies, LLC Nu-Force Water Technologies in Orange City, Iowa.

I’ve been curious about structured water and “fourth phase” water for a long time, but I’ve also been hesitant. Not because I’m not interested — I am — but because I haven’t found a simple, practical way to test the output of a device like this and say, “Yep, that’s definitely different.”

Then I found out these were being made here in Iowa.

So I called and talked with Kevin.

And for some reason, knowing it was made by someone in Iowa made me comfortable enough to finally try one.

That may not be the most scientific purchasing process ever.

But it is a very Adam purchasing process.

The plan is to use this water in future lawn treatments, fermentation projects, and composting work at the farm. I’m especially curious to see if changing the structure of the water has any noticeable effect on microbial activity, fermentation quality, plant response, or overall process consistency.

I’m not posting this as proof.

I’m posting it as the beginning of another experiment.

Because that’s really what Iowa Worm Farm is becoming: one part worm farm, one part soil health business, and one part “what happens if we try this?”

Made in Iowa.
Tested on the worm farm.

We’ll see what happens.

06/08/2026

My first Indigenous Microorganism collection of the year failed after five days.

The second attempt worked.

But not because everything went perfectly.

One of the three collection boxes was moved and partially emptied by a raccoon.

I know it was a raccoon because it left behind what I am choosing to interpret as a strongly worded message.

The good news? The new box held up.

The better news? I had two other boxes sitting nearby, undisturbed.

That was the real lesson.

The second attempt succeeded because I stopped depending on one perfect outcome. I moved deeper into the forest, found a cooler location, and used three smaller boxes instead of one large box.

I could not control the temperature.

I could not control the exact speed of microbial growth.

I definitely could not control a raccoon with strong opinions about cooked rice.

But I could create a better system around the uncertainty.

That feels like a pretty good lesson from the worm farm.

Don’t bet on one box.

Read the full Field Notes post here: https://iowawormfarm.com/blogs/field-notes/don-t-bet-on-one-box

A failed IMO collection, a cooler forest location, three smaller collection boxes, and one frustrated raccoon led to a simple lesson about building systems that can handle uncertainty.

06/05/2026

Another totally normal Iowa Worm Farm errand.

This time, the truck came home with two cone-bottom fermentation tanks and several 55-gallon food-grade barrels that were previously used for pickles.

Because apparently my business model is slowly becoming:

1. Find useful things other people are done with.
2. Put way too many of them in my truck.
3. Bring them back to the shop.
4. Figure out how to turn them into something that helps soil.

These tanks and barrels will hopefully be repurposed for fermenting biofertilizers and testing new ways to increase beneficial microbe populations.

The bigger goal is simple:

Use more local materials.
Create more of our own products.
Reduce the need to ship things across the country.
Rely less on petroleum-based inputs.
Turn “waste” into something valuable.

It’s not fancy yet.

It’s pickle barrels in the back of a Chevy Colorado.

But it’s one more step toward building a local soil health system that makes sense here, with the resources we already have around us.

Also, if you see my truck driving around loaded like this… no you didn’t.

06/02/2026

Indigenous microbes: 1
Adam: 0

This was my first IMO collection attempt of the year… and it failed.

IMO stands for Indigenous Microorganisms. The idea is to place cooked rice in a healthy natural area and collect some of the local biology that already lives there.

When it works, it can become a useful tool for composting and soil health.

When it doesn’t work, it becomes a colorful little mold museum.

I checked this after 5 days, and my best guess is that I let it sit a day or two too long. So I’m resetting, trying again, and checking earlier next time.

That’s part of the point of Iowa Worm Farm. I want to show the process — not just the pretty finished results.

Attempt #1 failed.

Attempt #2 is already underway.

May this one rest in moldy peace.

06/01/2026

What are we voting for?

Not politically.

With our money.

With our habits.

With the things we keep choosing, even when we say we want something different.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. My family has an ongoing conversation about our local McDonald’s. The service is inconsistent enough that even my kids notice it.

My response to them has been simple:

Until we stop giving them our money, they have no reason to change.

Of course, they still want the fries.

And honestly, I still want the fries too.

That’s the uncomfortable part.

Because this isn’t really about McDonald’s. It’s about all the things we keep choosing because they are easy, familiar, convenient, or comfortable.

It’s easy to talk about what other people should change.

Farmers should change.
Companies should change.
Stores should change.
Neighbors should change.

Maybe they should.

But what am I still voting for?

That’s the question I’m sitting with this week.

Full post here:
https://iowawormfarm.com/blogs/field-notes/what-are-we-voting-for

Every purchase is a vote. A reflective Iowa Worm Farm post about convenience, chemicals, food choices, and asking better questions about what we choose to support.