My Journey into Mini-Worm Farming|Part 1🐛

I decided to do this post in 3 parts, its way too long to do in just one. The first part is the background story about my inspiration into worm farming. Some people think it's a relatively new idea, but my Uncle Zeke in Texas was doing this at least 40 years ago.

So here is the story...

My uncle Zeke was one of seven kids, 5 brothers and 1 sister. After many years of being a horse trainer and bronc rider he decided to quit the rodeo circuit. His body had taken too many blows and falls throughout the years. He had one eye that a bulls horn had nicked just above the eyebrow, so it pointed in a upward direction. It was really hard to tell if he was looking straight at you.

Courtesy of Pexzels.com this is not Uncle Zeke, but is representative of him Bronc riding in his rodeo days. I only have old slides of the actual events taken by my father. I inherited almost 2000 slides housed in Kodak carousels that hold 110 in each one. It is our family history viewed through my fathers eyes.

My Aunt Wayne told me when I was a teenager about his beginning venture and his success as a worm farmer. In those days I spent a lot of time with my cousin during visits to the storm cellar where his night crawlers were bedded. We had contests seeing who could pull out the longest worm, squealing with glee at the winner. We both had been fishing since we were little children so worms were no big deal to us!

Uncle Zeke used to tell me his secrets to growing big night crawlers. He had rows and rows of worm beds that were shaped into long mounds. The earthworms were in raised beds with the bottoms covered in black plastic so they could not escape into the dirt floor of the cellar. I was of course quite fascinated.

As you can imagine, it was a little eerie in the storm cellar. Opening the wooden hinged door we carefully walked down the steps in the darkness all the while fumbling to find the string on the bare bulb light. Pulling the string we could see the mounds that looked a bit like newly covered graves. But there was life in those mounds-thousands of earthworms. It smelled earthy and clean!

Uncle Zeke sold them to bait stores throughout the area and made a good living selling them by the container or by the pound. As he changed or rotated the bedding he sold the castings made by the worms to farmers in the area by request. The castings and worm dirt made a fine fertilizer for their vegetable gardens.

In the next part I am going to discuss the simplest way to get started with raising worms, it's not fancy or complicated. Its not as big of a operation as Uncle Zeke's worm farm, but it works. I suppose one could get complex with it, but why is the question. 🐓