A New Venture

Today marks the beginning of L's Worm Farm--Grade A #1 Earthworms. Ha ha! What an enterprise!

Why have I started a worm farm? I like to fish. I love sitting by the water, casting, reeling in, watching all the critters in the environment, and generally enjoying nature and being away from the house. Unfortunately, I am not a very good catcher of fish. I am a real amateur and enjoy just being there as much as I enjoy catching anything. On those few occasions that I do actually catch something, most of the time it is a catch-and-release situation, anyway. I don't have much luck with live bait--the fish manage to nibble most of it right off the hook, right in front of my eyes. Oh, I didn't mention that my preferred live bait is nightcrawlers and redworms. I just don't like to bait the hook with crickets or other insects. If I use minnows, I have to go through all that bucket thing and, well...I just find worms easier to use. Trouble is, the little fishies just come and nibble little bits of worm off the hook. Because of this, I have tried using lures for about half of my fishing life. I don't have much success with lures, either. Although I've tried, I am not very successful at using the casting and reeling techniques that all those delightful and lovely gadgets require, which to use for the different kinds of fish, or which fish like which lures under various circumstances or times of day. I do love to go to bait stores and the sporting goods sections of the various "marts" and look and look and dream and buy things that catch my fancy. However, I am just not very successful at catching fish. I just like being out by the water enjoying things. I would probably drive a die-hard fisher person crazy.

My yard has lots of places where earthworms like to live, but I don't usually plan to go out and harvest them for fishing. Most of the time, I decide to go fishing on the spur of the moment and just head out to one of my favorite spots (I usually have my rod and reel and tackle box in the back of the van just in case the urge to fish strikes). I sometimes buy nightcrawlers at a bait shop, but lots of times I just try my luck with lures. What luck?? The other day I bought worms and didn't use all of them because I didn't have a lot of time to spend at the lake. I took the remaining worms home and put the little blue container in the garage and forgot about them. When I finally thought of them today, I was delighted to find that they were all still merrily crawling around in the worm stuff in the container. While I was trying to figure out where to put them for storage for my next fishing trip, my husband suggested I use a plastic dishpan and add some of the backyard worms to it. There are lots of hiding places for worms around the wood pile and in some of the flower beds. Hey, a worm farm!

I dumped the store bought worms in the pan, added nice, moist, rich soil and additional worms, and covered it with large pieces of bark that I found lots of the backyard worms under near the wood pile. Then I took a permanent marker and labeled it "L's Worm Farm" so that no one would dump out the contents. Then I decided I needed to add "est. 5/3/08" and "Grade A #1 Earthworms." We'll see how things progress.

I wonder if the purchased worms will get along with the local guys?