PORT ANGELES — In a way, worms are the wave of the future.
The North Olympic Peninsula Skills Center’s Culinary Arts program, where students train for hospitality industry careers, is installing a composting system that employs worms — hardworking red ones from the Kingston Worm Farm.
“I believe we’re going to get 20 pounds of them,” said Meggan Uecker, the Western Washington University intern orchestrating the composting system.
The new system will be part of the curriculum in the Culinary Arts summer school course starting June 27 at the Skills Center; for details about summer school, phone 360-565-1533.
Once the system, designed by engineer Jack Caldicott of Sequim, is operating, Culinary Arts students will feed it food scraps from the skills center kitchen, thus reducing the waste that would otherwise be shipped from Port Angeles to a dump in Oregon.
The system’s worms will then do their job — digesting the scraps — and produce “castings” to fertilize the skills center herb garden.
Health regulations prevent the use of those herbs in the Culinary Arts classes, Uecker said, but the students will be able to take them home to their own kitchens.
“We’re perusing the idea of selling the worm castings, which are a concentrated natural fertilizer,” Uecker added.
Culinary Arts instructor Denise Dahll and Dan Lieberman, the skills center’s natural resources teacher, came up with the idea for the composting system.
They wanted students to learn how to run a restaurant operation that minimizes waste and turns food scraps into garden-enriching compost.
“The culinary arts program at the skills center is a very busy class,” Dahl said. “We do catering for different meetings that take place in the Lincoln Center.
“We prepare and serve enough food that it makes sense to start this composting program.
“With the new movement of ‘going green,’ it seems important to have our students learn how this process works here,” to prepare them for composting in their workplaces and homes.
Volunteers welcome
Uecker added that the skills center can use volunteers to help run the system.
Those who are interested in seeing how it works can visit the center at 905 W. Ninth St. or phone 360-565-1533 for information.
Since she plans to work with the students on building a raised garden bed at the center, Uecker said she can use donations of garden tools, buckets, gloves and other gear.
The skills center also needs a $900 industrial shredder to break up paper and cardboard for the composting system, so cash contributions are welcome, she said.
“We’re excited about the composting, and how our kids can begin to see how it all breaks down,” added skills center Director Cindy Crumb, who uses worms in her home compost bin.
“They are amazing little eaters,” she said.
“They can really put that food away.”
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-417-3550 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.