Dewey’s a community project. He’s our resident accident-prone guy who managed to get his dad’s pickup stuck in the county’s only mud hole during a six-year drought, release 300 steers from the feedlot onto the interstate, and create about a ton of tossed salad with hot oil dressing on the on ramp. Quite a few of us have scratched our heads over helping Dewey find something he could do without causing widespread destruction.

  Last year, at Doc’s suggestion, Dewey fixed up his dad’s pickup and became what Doc later called an “entre-manure,” by taking manure from feedlots and the dairy and delivering it as fertilizer to people’s gardens. The problem is, no one needs fertilizer in their gardens in winter.

  Bert, who keeps up on these things, suggested that Dewey look into vermiculture. He explained that this was NOT a new dish at the Italian restaurant, but rather the raising of worms and the creation of compost.

  “It’s a win-win deal, Dewey,” Bert said. “You put the worms in the manure. They multiply and replenish the earth, then they leave behind rich compost. You can get more money for composted manure next spring than the raw stuff, and you’ll have worms to sell to fishermen.”

   Dewey went out the door so fast he forgot to pay for his coffee, so we got it.

   A few weeks later, Dewey was as happy as a chairman of the board of something wonderful.

    He discovered that worms don’t eat and reproduce as readily when they’re cold, so to speed up the project, he built some worm crates, filled them with worms and manure, and spread them around. As I said, he’s a community project. He has two worm bins in Steve’s spare room, three in Doc’s garage, two in his mother’s garage, and two in the basement first-grade classroom at Pastor Jeff’s Sunday school, because Sunday school just happens not to have any first graders this year.

  Haven’t seen Bert around lately. Been looking for him, too.