Jay and Joanne Mertz have about 2 million head of livestock on their 15-acre central Texas farm. The couple and a staff of three full-time employees feed and water the animals daily, check for signs of health or disease, and harvest and package what the animals produce. The product is manure and the livestock is about three quarters of a ton of earth worms.
A unique line of work, vermiculture was an especially unusual place for these former commercial interior designers to land after half a lifetime in the city. Jay and Joanne were tired of being on the road all the time designing trim for supermarkets and overseeing the manufacture and installation of the material. They wanted to be in the countryside and had the vague idea they’d like to raise organic vegetables to sell at the farmers’ market. So they bought land an hour south of Dallas .
Meanwhile, their youngest son, a high school student at the time, had embarked on a Future Farmers of America (FFA) project raising rabbits. Experimenting with the rabbits’ rich manure, the family put worms beneath the cages to eat the droppings, multiply and be sold as fish bait. As they made acquaintance with the littlest residents on their land, Jay and Joanne began to hear a call in the wind for organic compost and fertilizer.
Radio talk shows and local publications were extolling the virtues of organic gardening, homeowners and consumers were running with the information and supporting the organic market, and nurseries sought supply of organic soil inputs. Joanne and Jay were quick to respond and began selling bags of worm castings and vegetable and herb seedlings to their first nursery.
That was in 1991. By 2004, the couple had developed 24 special formulas, including potting mixes and soil amendments for pastures and flower and vegetable gardens. They mix the worm castings in varying proportions with other natural ingredients such as fish, bone, alfalfa, soybean and cottonseed meals. Each formula reaches desired levels of potassium, nitrogen and phosphorus, depending on the needs of the plant it’s designed for. Rock powders sourced from nearby quarries are added to ensure all mixes contain rations of the trace minerals essential for healthy growth of all plant and animals.
Focusing now exclusively on 2,000 square feet of worm beds, Jay and Joanne discontinued the plant starters, and are down to less than a dozen rabbits. Since they still use rabbit manure for fertilizer, they buy it from a neighbor. They sell worms by the pound and ship 200,000 pounds of compost a year.
Jay loves his work, boasting his family makes the highest quality organic plant food on the market and sells it in more than local 50 nurseries, and to several dozen landscaping companies and grass-fed beef ranchers. Worms don’t make them rich, he admits, but the couple lives comfortably with no off-farm income. And the market is so hot for their product Jay even turns down a handful of new accounts each year. He and Joanne are satisfied, he says, with their family-scale level of production.
Waxing scientific about microorganisms, humates, basalt and the effect of paramagnetic energy on plant growth, Jay sounds like a man who’s been in soils all his life. But he simply claims to be well-read and well-practiced in the art of compost. “I’m not a horticulturalist, I’m not a biologist, I’m a manure shoveler,” he laughs.
Actually, Jay is a farmer, and faced with all the problem-solving opportunities of any farmer. He feeds the highest quality material, including peanut hulls, oak leaves, hay, cardboard and molasses, to ensure the worms’ health and the richness of the castings. And he moderates their water intake and makes sure they have enough air.
“It’s just like [caring for] cattle and sheep,” he explains. “You just don’t pile a bunch of material and turn some worms loose in it and think they’re going to do their thing.”
The worms themselves have been instructive as Jay learns vermiculture management. One time, he served the worms a nice dinner of mushroom compost, expecting they’d like it. But in a clear demonstration of their menu preference, the worms left the mushroom compost untouched and migrated over to an adjacent heap of oak leaves.
Jay also looks out for predators, such as armadillos, a small, hard-shelled animal that hibernates in the winter and prowls for worms on summer nights. About 10 or so each year pay a visit to Rabbit Hill Farm for an all-you-can eat midnight buffet and leave without paying the $24 tab for a pound of worms a la carte. Frogs, rats and mites are also a problem. Jay keeps a fence around the worm beds in good repair to minimize the damage.
A nature lover, he enjoys leaving seed out for birds and squirrels, and watching crows play leapfrog with his pet guinea hens.
“We feel like we’re leaving the planet a better place than we found it,” Jay says, explaining that extensive topsoil erosion from agriculture over the past few centuries has thwarted the land’s ability to support life. Pound by pound, as each customer digs Rabbit Hill Farm dirt into their own plot of Texas earth, Jay and Joanne are helping replace what has been lost.
Organization
Rabbit Hill Farm
Contact – First Name
Jay and Joanne
Contact – Last Name
Mertz
Mailing Address
288 SW County Road 20
Mailing Address 2
City
Corsicana, Texas
State
Country
ZIP
75110
Phone
903-872-4289
Fax
Notes