In 2001, I called Mary Appelhof and told her that I wanted to write a natural history of earthworms. “At first I wasn’t sure anyone would want to read a book about worms,” I said, “but I’m finding out that everybody has an earthworm story.”

“Oh, they do!” she said, and proceeded to tell me hers. She built her first worm bin in 1972, and published a brochure about worm composting a year later. “I sold it to anyone who would send a quarter and a self-addressed, stamped envelope,” she said.

“Did it sell?” I asked.

“It was a hit!” she said. “I did a survey back then on people’s attitudes towards using worms for home garbage disposal. Only 25% of the people who responded to the survey said they couldn’t stand the idea. I figured that meant 75% were willing to consider it.”

That was Mary: the eternal optimist, the tireless evangelist. Anytime she saw an opportunity to promote earthworms, she took it. She taught classes at any school or nursery that would have her, she spoke at conferences, produced educational videos, and began answering to the name “Worm Woman.”

She published Worms Eat My Garbage in 1982, when self-publishing a book meant stacking thousands of copies in the garage and peddling them out of the trunk of the car. It was the only book about worm composting on the market at the time, and remains the best: it’s thorough, well-researched, and entertaining. To everyone’s astonishment but Mary’s, the book sold 100,000 copies — but not overnight.

“It only took me twenty years!” she said. “When I started, I envisioned huge piles of garbage and huge quantities of worms. I didn’t have the wherewithal to make that happen, but I did know how to get worm composting going one household at a time. So that’s what I did.”

The book you hold in your hands is nothing less than Mary Appelhof’s prescription for saving the world — in your own backyard. It’s now been twenty years since I started my first worm bin. In that time they’ve proven to be surprisingly good pets: clean, industrious, self-sufficient, and always up for the job of devouring compost and enriching the soil.

If you’re embarking on your first adventure with earthworms, I congratulate you on your decision and promise that before long, you’re going to have your own earthworm story to tell.