Red Wigglers

"Dad, I think the worms are worth immensely more than the compost", said Reed our high school freshman.

We had an amazing amount of Red Wrigglers in the compost pile this spring. As we were making our potting mix we would sort out hand fulls and hand fulls of red worms.

We don't do much fishing so what to do with our abundance?

A Farm For The Child In All of Us

We talked about it and decided that we could sell 1/2 pound of worms in an insulated styrofoam cup with a little compost based worm bedding.

We sold dozens of these worm farm kits at our local farmers market. We priced them just slightly less than what you could buy red wrigglers for on the internet.

We also sold compost mixed with some peat as a worm bedding.

Moms and dads bought worm farms for their children.

I think most of them were bought by adults to use in composting their kitchen scraps. Red worms will eat their body weight in organic matter every day and reproduce themselves in 30 to 60 days. So they are great at turning scraps into concentrated worm castings. Worm casting are a great fertilizer.

We sold worms until we ran out. I could have sold more but they go dormant in the heat of the summer.

Reed was right we could sell the worms in the compost for 5 times the price of the compost.