Can Worms, Sprouts & Laughter Change Your Life? with Cathy Nesbitt

Notes from the Edge

In this episode of Notes from the Edge, host Lisa Lacey interviews Cathy Nesbitt, a pioneering health and wellness advocate known for her innovative work in indoor vermicomposting, sprouting, and

Key takeaways

• Worms can transform household organic waste into nutrient-rich soil, offering a sustainable alternative to landfill dependency.
• Indoor vermicomposting is accessible, simple, and scalable—even in urban environments with limited space.

Main topics

• Indoor vermicomposting
• Waste management and sustainability

Notable quotes

You don't need to be a farmer to grow soil. You just need worms, kitchen scraps, and a little bit of love.

Conclusion

Cathy Nesbitt's story illustrates how unconventional ideas—like worms, sprouts, and laughter—can lead to profound personal and

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:04) Welcome to Notes from the Edge, where we have the conversations we should have been having all along. We talk about the things that we're not talking about. I'm your host, Lisa Lacey, writer, trauma educator, executive advisor, and author of the upcoming memoir, Notes from a Certified Madwoman. Welcome to the Edge. Speaker 2 (0:34) Hey, hey, my friends. Welcome back to another episode of Notes from the Edge. I am your host, Lisa Lacey, and this is the place we have the conversations we should have been having all along. Guess what? You ain't talking about it, so we're gonna. And today's guest is Kathy Nesbitt. And Kathy is a health and wellness advocate, environmental innovator, love that, entrepreneur, inspiring speaker, and founder of Kathy's Crawley compositors established all the way back in 2002. Known as a passionate worm advocate, Kathy teaches people how to transform household organic waste into nutrient-rich soil through indoor vermicomposting. You're going to have to help me with this, Kathy. She believes worms will play an increasingly important role in waste management, soil production, and global food security. She is also the founder of Kathy's Sprouters and Kathy's Laughter Club, bringing together what she calls simple solutions for some of today's biggest challenges, worms for healthier soil, sprouts for accessible nutrition. And laughter, I love this. You know we love to laugh and hear even about the hard stuff for greater health. After encountering criticism and negative reactions to her unconventional mission, she discovered laughter yoga. Daily laughter became an essential part of her process. Now she's an award multi-award winning entrepreneur, advent cyclist, and gardener. And she uses education, workshops, and speaking to inspire people to live more sustainably, care for themselves. and discover the power of actually laughing. Kathy, welcome to Notes from the Edge. How are you today, my friend? Speaker 1 (2:14) Hello, Lisa. I'm excited to be here. I Speaker 2 (2:17) know. we get to laugh. That's what we do in here. Everybody gets done and they're like, that was actually fun talking about art stuff. Guess what? We can do both at the same time. So I absolutely love that. So you have spent more than 20 years, even after facing some criticism. And I want to talk to you about that, how you worked through that, building what you affectionately call the worm empire. Take us back. to the beginning. So that sounds like an out of the box idea and you faced some criticism, but you kept going and it paid off for you. So take us back to the beginning of how did that happen? Speaker 1 (2:55) Well, I'm located in Canada, just north of Toronto, largest city in Canada. Speaker 2 (3:01) And in Speaker 1 (3:02) 2002, the landfill for the greater Toronto area filled up. Speaker 2 (3:06) Wow. Speaker 1 (3:07) Right? I know. It's like, oh. And they're so Speaker 2 (3:10) big. Speaker 1 (3:12) They're so big, right? I know. And I think that's the thing is it was like, oh, we could put today's trash in there. It fits. We don't have to worry about it. But then when it filled up, it's like, oh, holy cow, what do we do now? Speaker 2 (3:26) And Speaker 1 (3:26) Canada, second largest country in the world. And we couldn't find a place to site a new landfill. We started to export our garbage to the United States. Speaker 2 (3:36) Wow. Did not know any of this. Speaker 1 (3:40) Yeah. Little dirty secret. Not anymore. Speaker 2 (3:44) Yeah. We all know now. We all know now. There's a lot of people that know now, Kathy. And Speaker 1 (3:50) I had a solution, indoor composting with worms. Speaker 2 (3:54) Yeah. Okay. But why worms? What brought you to worms? Speaker 1 (3:57) Well, so it's composting. Composting is generally done outside. No special equipment, maybe a pile or a composter. You wouldn't have a pile of rotting stuff in your house. So this is the worms are in a box. He said outside the box thinking I'm like, well, it's kind of in the box. They're not free range. Speaker 2 (4:19) It's in the box, out of the box. But Speaker 1 (4:22) it's in the box. So it's it's yeah. So the worms are in a container. They require a carbon nitrogen mix, just like composting. Speaker 2 (4:34) So it's Speaker 1 (4:35) composting with worms and you can do it in the house. You can do it outside too. Speaker 2 (4:39) Sounds so simple. Speaker 1 (4:40) So simple. It is. Speaker 2 (4:42) Yeah. It sounds so simple. What, what brought you to this? You just, you saw that there was a gap and you wanted to fill it. There was a need. Speaker 1 (4:51) Well, a few things happened. Like, how did it come about? So I'm from Toronto. And in 1993, I bought a house out of the city, like I couldn't afford to buy in the city, just like today. It sounds like today's story, doesn't it? Yeah. Speaker 2 (5:04) People Speaker 1 (5:05) can't afford to buy in large cities. You can't buy a house Speaker 2 (5:07) anywhere. I can't buy it anywhere Speaker 1 (5:09) now. Yeah, that's true. So in 1993, we bought a house outside the city. And I still traveled to the city for work. I couldn't wait to start gardening and composting. Speaker 2 (5:19) Yeah. Speaker 1 (5:20) And in 1993, a teacher friend asked me to look after her worm bin for the summer. Speaker 2 (5:25) I didn't Speaker 1 (5:26) want worms in my house. And now that's my life. Because people think Speaker 2 (5:31) worms Speaker 1 (5:31) are Speaker 2 (5:31) so creepy, right? I mean, people think worms are gross, right? Speaker 1 (5:35) Right. They're creepy. They're crawly. They're icky. If you've had an experience with worms, like after a rainy day, somebody chased you around or put it in your shirt or a fishing incident, Speaker 2 (5:46) you're Speaker 1 (5:46) not looking to worms. Speaker 2 (5:47) I was fishing, yeah. Yeah. Speaker 1 (5:49) Right. And so I took on the challenge because I knew the value of the worm compost, the end product. Speaker 2 (5:56) But I didn't Speaker 1 (5:57) want to do the process. I didn't want to have worms in my house. Speaker 2 (6:00) But I said, OK, let me Speaker 1 (6:01) try. Let me let me do this. And for one summer in 93, I had worms in my house. It was awful. I was a fruit fly farmer because I would open up the lid, throw the food in. I totally didn't want to befriend the worms. Speaker 2 (6:18) Yeah. At first. Speaker 1 (6:19) At first. Speaker 2 (6:20) Yeah. So Speaker 1 (6:20) that was my experience. At the end of the summer, I kept them alive. I separated the compost. That's what I wanted, the black gold. Gave my friend back the worms. And I said, I'm never doing that again. Speaker 2 (6:33) Okay. Speaker 1 (6:34) I'll just go to a worm farm and buy some worm poo if I want worm poo. Like there's so many worm farms around. No, there isn't. Speaker 2 (6:41) There's one on every corner, girl. Right? Speaker 1 (6:46) And I got on with my life. And then I was getting my psych degree. It took me 15 years. Stay in school, folks. Speaker 2 (6:52) Congrats. Speaker 1 (6:54) Thank you. It wasn't about the paper. I just love learning. Speaker 2 (6:57) Yeah, me too. In 2000, I Speaker 1 (6:58) graduated. And I got a job at a group home. I have a psych degree. I got a job at a group home working with challenged adults. They had 10 homes and a farm. And they didn't compost. Speaker 2 (7:11) So here they have Speaker 1 (7:12) all of this food waste. Speaker 2 (7:14) Yeah. And they're paying big money. Yeah. Speaker 1 (7:17) Right. They're paying big money to get rid of this food race because food waste is the devil. Right. It smells bad. It attracts fruit flies, rodents. Like imagine a grocery store not getting rid of the rotting produce every day. Speaker 2 (7:33) Right. Speaker 1 (7:34) Right. What kind of shopping experience would that be? Fruit flies, rodents. Like it would be awful. Yeah. Smell, right? All of those. Okay, so we pay a lot. So I approached management and I said, why don't you compost? You have a farm. Speaker 2 (7:51) Yeah. Speaker 1 (7:52) You have a vocational program where the clients come. They Speaker 2 (7:56) could Speaker 1 (7:56) do it. Speaker 2 (7:56) Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 1 (7:58) And it would give them Speaker 2 (7:59) something to do and take part of and be proud of. And yeah. Speaker 1 (8:03) Right. And their response was, we don't need the fertilizer because we have cows. Wow. So it was the first time I was like, oh, my gosh, people don't connect what they do. Here they are creating all of this food waste, paying big money to ship it away when they could just turn it into soil. Like you don't need it. Sell it or or put it on the grass like it's. Yeah, it's non-toxic. It's and you Speaker 2 (8:28) called it black gold. I love that. I like that. Yes, it Speaker 1 (8:32) is. It's nutrient rich fertilizer. Well, it's grounding Speaker 2 (8:36) just to hold it in your hand. Speaker 1 (8:38) It is. So that was kind of my second introduction. Like, have you ever done something, Lisa, and you're so excited about it and then you do it and it doesn't turn out the way you thought? Speaker 2 (8:52) Always. Yeah. Happens a lot. I have a lot of big ideas. Speaker 1 (8:57) Right. And so then you go, oh, I'm not going to do that again. But then somebody says, hey, Lisa, why don't we do that thing that. you did that didn't work out and you get that feeling and you're somebody like oh no not for me that didn't work out well when that happened i was like okay i came home that day from work and i was like it's an institution they're not getting worms anytime soon they're not doing this anytime soon they got to have meetings is it a good idea do we have money oh yeah so many people have to Speaker 2 (9:25) prove it all the bureaucracy yeah right Speaker 1 (9:28) all the red tape all the stuff yeah Speaker 2 (9:29) so Speaker 1 (9:30) i came home and i was like huh I had my first introduction in 93. Here we are, 2000. And I started to Google and I was like, oh, like red wiggler worms. And I started to look at worm composting. Speaker 2 (9:44) And I Speaker 1 (9:45) found all of this material, like the worms, they're the original alchemists. They turn garbage into gold. Speaker 2 (9:55) They Speaker 1 (9:55) turn something that we find objectionable into something usable. Very Speaker 2 (10:00) usable. Speaker 1 (10:02) And I had this, wow, my fear of worms turned into awe. I was like, oh my gosh, everybody needs this. And I heard or I read that the average Canadian slash American family creates a ton of organic waste in a year and that a pound of worms and their descendants can transform a ton of waste in a year. A pound, Speaker 2 (10:26) that's it? Speaker 1 (10:27) Yeah, well, not in a little box, right? If they were given... space to grow in Speaker 2 (10:31) theory Speaker 1 (10:32) yes that could happen Speaker 2 (10:33) okay okay so Speaker 1 (10:34) I was like oh my gosh everybody needs a pound of worms and I'm just the one to put a pound of worms in every house Speaker 1 (10:44) And I said, OK, Speaker 2 (10:46) but you face some criticism. So our audience about what I'm sure because nobody likes worms and they especially don't value and appreciate them until you educate them. I just got an education. Thank you. We might be doing it. I'm looking at my backyard now. I'm like, why are we doing this? So I'm going to be checking you. We're going to be talking. We're done. But you face a lot of criticism. And those of us that have. a dream, a gnawing, a mission. We know we see it kept showing up for you, right? It kept showing up for you. And so what was that three times it showed up for you three, four times. So how did you get past the criticism? Speaker 1 (11:27) Well, I just set forth. I just was like, okay, what, okay. What happened is I got injured at work. Speaker 1 (11:36) And I came home from work and there was an ad in the paper and it said, are you a woman? Do you have a business idea? And it was a six, it was a course to write a business plan, a six month course