Worm Farm Cash Cow

Contrary to some claims I have seen, raising worms at home will not be likely to make you rich, but it is an activity that can bring in a few extra dollars a month and not take a lot of time or money to do it. And, if the idea of touching those wiggly, squirming, slimy little critters is not your cup of tea, consider getting your kids interested in it to earn some extra spending money for themselves.

Because my husband and I had both gone back to college, we were still struggling financially when our two daughters, Sharon and Karen, were 8 and 10, so the summer they both decided they just had to attend Camp Cleawox, a Girl Scout Camp on the Oregon Coast, came at a bad time for us where money was concerned.

I remember trying several things to help the girls raise the money they needed for camp, including renting a table at a flea market and sitting with them all day long for a net profit of about $8. They did gain valuable knowledge about running their own business by having to subtract expenses (table rental and snacks) from their gross proceeds, but their efforts didn't bring them much closer to the required fees for camp.

Looking at the classifieds in our local paper one afternoon, I noticed an ad that read, "WILL PAY CASH FOR WORMS!" I shuddered. Worms? Why would anyone have anything to do with worms? But the word, CASH, stood out in my mind. My girls needed cash, and I had run out of ideas for them. I picked up the phone, and called the number in the ad.

To my surprise, I found that the person who had placed the ad was a local man who lived only a few miles from us, and who made his entire living from worms. He advertised now and then to get new suppliers, delivered worm boxes to them, with an explanation of how to gather worms and take care of them, and then he would pick up the worms collected at a later date, paying cash to the collector for them.

Since my girls were not in the least bothered by handling worms, I decided it was worth a try, so I talked it over with them. They were so enthusiastic that I called the number in the ad again and ordered two boxes which were dropped off that same afternoon.

The 18 x 24 inch wooden boxes were filled with a fine mulch, and had 2-inch wide strips at the top of all four sides to stop the worms from crawling out. They stood about 6 or 8 inches high. (The boxes, not the worms.)The man told the eager girls they should add things like coffee grounds and dry oatmeal to the box for the worms to eat, and to occasionally sprinkle a small amount of water over the top to keep the mixture moist but not really wet.

He also gave them a worm-catching lesson. That was the fun part, and the part I ended up getting the most involved in. Can you imagine-me, the person who couldn't stand the squirmy things to begin with, getting involved in actually catching them?

I had thought you would just take a shovel out to the garden and dig up the worms. Not so. There was a much more interesting technique. The man was interested only in a specie known as a night crawler which he said must be hunted at night, because at night they came out to lay on the grass, presumably just waiting for us to come along and pick them up. If we watered the grass earlier in the day, more of the worms would show up.

We would need a flashlight to hunt them, he said, and as soon as we spied one, we were to quickly press a finger on the part that looked as though it might be still in the ground in order to keep it from withdrawing back into its hole when we touched it.

At first a night crawler would resist being picked up, so you waited until it relaxed a bit and then pulled it gently up from the hole and put it into your collection vessel. (We used a jar with some moss in it for collecting and then transferred the worms into the wooden boxes after returning to the house.)

As I said earlier, I found all this information a bit hard to believe, but it worked---and it was fun. Of course the girls were too young to go out after dark by themselves so their Dad or I joined them as they engaged in their little business several evenings a week.

It was early summer when they started out as "wormers" as they liked to call themselves. It was warm enough to be outside late at night, and they often went barefoot on the damp grass as they tracked down their prey. Delighted cries of, "I got another one," often came from one girl or the other (and sometimes even from Mom or Dad.)

The worm farm business more than paid for both girls to go to Camp Cleawox that year, and for several years after that. The second year, the girls expanded their business by packaging worms in milk cartons filled with damp moss and selling them by the dozen from our front porch. By putting a few cartons in an ice chest with a sign that read, "Self-Service-Fishing Worms," on the porch on week-ends, they managed to attract a number of fishermen heading for the lake early in the morning. That way they didn't have to even get up to sell their worms, and never once were any of the worms or money stolen.

However, no business always runs smoothly, and the girls did end up with one catastrophe that cost them a lot of their profits. They were selling so many worms that they decided to buy extra worms from their two cousins who lived just outside of town. The cousins, both boys, bragged that they could pick far more night crawlers than any girl could pick so Sharon and Karen offered them 35 cents a dozen-a fair price at the time-for as many worms as the boys could deliver.

Unfortunately, they forgot to tell the boys how to care for the worms, and when the boys showed up with two huge coffee cans of night crawlers, most of the worms were dead. The boys hadn't put any bedding of any kind and the worms were just piled on top of each other and suffocated. The girls paid them for the worms anyway, but told the boys they wouldn't need any more worms for the rest of the summer. After that, whenever they ran short of worms, we waited until a nearby city park had watered the grass during the day and went there to collect worms that evening. Even this was a good experience for the girls. From it, they learned that they needed to be careful about taking in business partners without first training them properly.

By the time the girls reached baby-sitting age, picking worms for spending money had lost some of its attraction, and they decided to retire. The business had treated them well, providing several hundred dollars each summer for them at a time when they were too young to go out and get regular jobs.

If you are looking for something to do with your kids this summer that will not only keep them occupied during summer vacation, provide them with some extra spending money, and teach them a little bit about what it takes to run a business, why not start your own family worm farm? See the links below to find more information on different types of worms, how to care for them, how to sell them, etc. And, if you really get serious about the worm business, check out the possibility of packaging and selling worms online.

Who knows, that business that I said you wouldn't get rich on, might make you rich after all.