A short exercise for growers who want to know what their system actually produces.

Most growers reach a point where the questions stop being only about the worms. Before you add capacity, promise supply, or estimate income, you need a baseline of what your current system actually produces and how reliably it produces it.

Roughly how much material goes into each bin, and how often.

Why it matters: Input is the front end of everything. If you do not know what goes in, you cannot tell whether a slow bin is a feeding problem, a capacity problem, or a seasonal one — and you cannot estimate what more bins would need.

How to record it: A rough volume or weight per feeding, and the date. “Two gallons of scraps, Tuesday” is enough. Consistency matters more than precision.

How long it takes before material looks ready to harvest.

Why it matters: This is the clock your whole operation runs on. It determines how often you can supply anyone, how much product you can promise, and whether another bin would actually shorten anything or just give you more material waiting on the same clock.

How to record it: Write down the date you last harvested the bin and the date it looks ready again. Do this for at least two cycles before you trust the number.

How much usable product you get from a harvest.

Why it matters: This is the number every revenue question depends on. Gallons or buckets per harvest, multiplied by the number of harvests you can realistically make, gives you a production baseline. Until you have it, “Could I sell castings?” is mostly guesswork.

How to record it: Count the containers, or weigh one container and multiply. Record the amount after screening, not before — unscreened material is not what you would actually sell.

Roughly how much worm stock you have once the worms are separated out.

Why it matters: Worms are both your production capacity and, potentially, a product. If you are thinking about selling worms, or stocking a new bin without buying stock, this is the number that tells you whether you can.

How to record it: Weight is easier than counting. A rough weight per bin, recorded the same way each time, is enough to see whether the population is growing, holding, or shrinking.

Write them down for a few weeks. One notebook page or one spreadsheet tab. Nothing more.

Then you can answer questions that were unanswerable before:

• How much can I produce in a season?
• How often could I supply someone, and how much?
• Would another bin add capacity, or just add material?
• Is my worm population growing or holding steady?
• What would I actually be selling, and how much of it?

You may also find that the answer is smaller than you expected. That is worth knowing before you promise anything to a customer.

They will not tell you what to charge. That takes a separate calculation, including your own labor.

They will not tell you whether anyone wants to buy. Production and demand are different questions.

They will not tell you whether a product is profitable. Output is not profit.

They will tell you what you have to work with. Everything else builds on that.

Set up these six columns in a notebook or a spreadsheet tab:

Date · Bin · Fed (amount) · Harvested (Y/N) · Output · Worms

One row per bin, each time you feed or harvest.

The hardest part of this is not the measuring. It is resisting the urge to change something while you measure.

If you add a bin, switch feedstock, and change your harvest method all in the same month, your numbers will describe a system that no longer exists. Get a baseline of how things run now. Then change one thing and watch what happens.

Once you have your numbers, your next questions will be about the worms or about the business. One book for the worms. One for the business.