A different kind of farm south of Meeker

When Oklahoma Green To Gold Recycling LLC co-owner Darrel Armer first walked into a worm farm, he put a clothes pin on his nose, thinking that worm farms must smell awful.

He was in for a pleasant surprise.

“The worm poop, or castings, is about the purest form of dirt,” Armer said.

So, the smell was much more pleasant than he had expected.

“I’m an avid hunter and it was just like walking out into the forest, it really was a rain forest or something,” he said.

Oklahoma Green To Gold Recycling, LLC in Meeker received its Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality Solid Waste Permit in October 2020, and is currently waiting to receive its Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority permit.

At the worm farm, 2,100 feet of vats house eisena fetida worms, which will be fed marijuana waste and their castings are collected to be sold. In the meantime, they are feasting on old newspapers and discarded vegetables.

“We’re glad to get paid to pick up the waste and then sell the waste,” coowner Shawn Cowan said.

The casting “waste” that the farm will be selling is a natural form of fertilizer and pesticide that helps boost plants’ defenses.

“It’ll actually boost the sugars up in the plant,” Cowan said. “So, when a bug bites on the plant, the bug will get intoxicated and drunk and walk off, instead of just sitting there and eating on your plant.”

The worm castings work by enriching soil.

“Most people think you feed your plants,” Oklahoma Green To Gold Recycling employee Dave Cooper said. “but you’re really supposed to feed your soil, and let your soil feed plants.”

This richer soil can then lead to larger and healthier produce.

These castings are an organic alternative to commercially produced fertilizers and pesticides, since the process of worms eating plant waste and their castings then enriching the soil for new plants to grow is very similar to the cycle that normally occurs in nature.

“It’s about the purest form of organic behavior to growing plants as you can get,” Armer said. “So, if you’re looking for organic: this is obviously the best way.”

Cowan agreed. “When you do it the way God de

“When you do it the way God designed it, you can’t better it,” he said.

The owners said they plan to produce 50,000-60,000 pounds of castings per month and the Meeker farm is currently sitting on 20,000-30,000 pounds of castings already produced.

The worms produce a high volume of castings.

“They can eat their own body weight, each day,” Cowan said.

Along with co-owning the Meeker facility, Cowan also has a second location in Muldrow, OK, which received both its Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality and Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority permits in 2020.

“Each worm can produce 42 worms a month under the right conditions,” Cowan said.

“So, like at each facility we’ll be running about 2 million worms. So, when we do the math on that we should be producing about 84 million worms per month.”

One of the challenges of worm farming is that there is no one way to do it.

“You can read 20 different articles about worm farming and none of them are doing it the same way,” Armer said.

Learning through experience was needed.

“I personally like and have enjoyed the learning process of it,” Armer said.