Anthrax and Botulism are both caused by soil-born organisms. They are probably in every garden on the planet. Has your child had chickenpox yet? That's a Herpes virus that attacks the nervous system and remains alive in your nerve tissue for life. Look forward to the neurological conditions it can cause forever, especially if your immune system is depressed by excess worrying. The fact that there are millions of other species in the soil, taking up most of the space, eating the microbes that make humans sick, is the safety factor. Getting an assortment of harmless germs on your hands and breathing normally, I argue, is safer than walking around a hospital or working in a crowded office. That's where there are high concentrations human-specific pathogens. Sanitizing everything in those areas also eliminates most of the competition that keeps the bad germs in check. Your garden is your happy place, not your mortuary. I have a worm bin. A large one. I'm worried about inhaling the powdered lime and the rock dust that I put in it and on the garden, but my only negative reaction to my worms is the 'gross' factor. I regularly harvest buckets of liquid that drains from my worm bin so that I can water plants with it. Pouring it from the bucket into my little watering can normally results in getting some on me and everywhere. Not dead yet. My dog drinks the worm juice when I'm not looking. The only days she acts sluggish or sick are after she gets her shots at the vet. After playing fetch with her for a while, I sometimes rinse the slobber off of my hands in the bucket of worm juice. (I do rinse them in the sink once I get back in the house though) I think the last time I got sick was in 2002. I was in Army basic training, under a lot of stress, sleep deprived, and sharing space with people from all around the country. People carry disease-causing germs in concentrations that can cause disease in healthy people, healthy soil does not. The stress of worrying about disease is arguably more harmful to your health than dirt. Humans have been farming by hand for something like 10,000 years or so before the queen of England declared she takes a bath once a week and thus made wash tubs common household items. Germ hysteria has probably done more to harm human health than guard it. Here is a link that might be useful: Chicken Pox

Brand new customer. Ordered a worm factory and it came missing parts. Waiting for their email reply back. I'm wondering if anyone else has ordered from them, and what their experience is.

Here are some Texas worm suppliers: Dirty Dozen Worm Farm Elkhart, Texas 75839 Early Bird Worm Co. Pilot Point (Dallas), Texas 76258 Texas Wild West Wigglers (Red that is) Wichita Falls, Texas 76305 Amarillo Worm Farm Down To Earth Farm Gatesville, TX 76528 www.hallswormery.com Blackwell Texas 79506-3016 If any of them are near you check out this link. It's got lots of info. Here is a link that might be useful: Worm Suppliers

Jerilynn I only have posted on the other site a few times. They seemed to already have enough Peters there and I would be a re-pete! I lurk on vermicomposters.com and redwormcomposting.com as well as here. Lots of good info on those sites. I started composting and vermicomposting around the same time. I would post on the GW "soil, compost, and mulch forum". When the winter rains came and got my compost piles wet, they filled up with native red-wigglers. I posted about this and comments came in about my compost being too wet. I asked if vermicompost was not superior to regular compost, and got no answers. So I switched forums and have stuck around here ever since. This forum seemed to be lacking any regular posters with outdoor systems, so here I am sharing what I have learned and trying to encourage vermicomposting, especially outdoors. This post was edited by mendopete on Fri, Dec 28, 12 at 0:16