Wow! What a great idea! Earthworms are quiet and easy to care for, and you can tend them at night while you do your other job. Plus there's not a lot of initial capital outlay.
Fishermen always need worms, and organic gardeners LOVE them! What could go wrong? Nothing! This is sure to be an exploding market for a bright, energetic young person.
Plus, take a look at that address. The Carter Worm Farm in Plains, Georgia. That's got to be President Jimmy Carter's family! You can't go wrong with an American President's family standing behind the operation!
For the record, this is not a current ad, but one from the July 1955 edition of Popular Science magazine.
Look for more exciting cash-generating ideas from the world of wildlife as the weeks progress. Let's make 2008 the year we all get mad-money rich!
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My falconry sponsor and I used to hunt rabbits in Plains every weekend when I was in high school. Summertime, we'd fish.
ReplyDeleteWe passed the President's house on the way in and got an RC and a moonpie at the little country store in town on the way back---not Billy's store, I don't think, but maybe.
Good memories. Carter is great IMO. Plains is (at least was) a perfect small Georgia town.
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ReplyDeleteI like Jimmy Carter quite a lot. Roslyn too, let me say.
I think this ad predates the worm farm scams of that popped up about 15 years later, but it might be the forefather of them all for all I know. The Carter here is an uncle of Jimmy who ran a bait shop in Plains. Of course no one had heard of Jimmy Carter or Plains Georgia in 1955 when this ad first appeared.
The "worm farm scam" (which this is not necessarily a part of) is a long-running pyramid scam. See >> http://www.topline-2000.com/care10.html for more information on how they worked (and are still working). Apparently the worm farm scam is now running riot in China where pyramid scams are doing very well.
For the record, the "red wigglers" sold in bait shops and used for kitchen composting by the dedicated few cannot live in your garden. Release them "to the wild" and they will be dead in a week or less. Anyone selling worms to an organic gardener is a scammer.
Patrick
Hey! Watch what you say about worms! I have two boxes and I take care of them as well as you take care of your dogs (ok, I don't have to stitch them up as often, but I make sure they have everything they need -- can I help it a red wriggler doesn't have the high-activity needs of a working terrier? ;-))
ReplyDeleteI got into red wrigglers 10 years ago because the community garden was moving to a place that I felt would be "less forgiving" of composting mistakes -- and none of the gardeners had terriers as a "second defense" on vermin.
I LOVE my worms! They turn my kitchen scraps and old newspapers into useful compost that actually gets seedlings to grow faster, I never have to buy fertilizer (even organic soil amendments, which ain't cheap!) and my neighbor is getting top awards in miniature gardens at the Philadelphia Flower Show using *my castings*!
The Canadians have the best, most practical vermiculture sites -- since large swaths of Canada can't compost outside, the government actually invested in "how can this be done right so that people will actually do it?
BTW, organic growers have found that red wigglers actually can live in your outside soil if you have enough organic matter. The eggs actually overwinter. Growers such as myself started finding red wigglers when we pulled up our leeks in the fall (which organically are grown in trenches filled with manure) and in the soil area the following spring.
More study showed that this was true around the country, but you have to have the soil organic matter for this to happen -- just adding worms won't help.
Earthworms are a lot more forgiving - you could add them to your garden, but you should give them something to munch on or they will just leave (nightcrawlers can chug along for amazing distances when motivated.)
Dorene (one of the MANY, rather than "dedicated few" worm caretakers in sustainable ag!)