Saturday, October 14, 2006




Hard to post in "real-time", when temps are in the 30's and it's windy as heck.....so here's from a couple weeks ago...I had this experimental worm bin in the house for over a year. I'm quite interested in vermiculture, and even considered it as a source of income during a funky stretch of unemployment. Anyhow, I decided to release my worms during a warm stretch a couple weeks ago. I hadn't dug around in the bin lately, but I thought all was well...then...."Death Valley Days"! Poor things...I neglected to provide enough moisture, so...into the composter they go! Here's an arguement for the expensive, closed-type worm bins I guess. Oh well..."live" and learn....too bad it was at their expense. Oddly enough, I feel worse about this than I do when I fish with them....wonder why...

6 comments:

Kati said...

found you through Kim/blackswamp girl. It's not odd at all that you felt bad about the worms, and are ok with using them as bait -- we humans are not consistently cruel nor kind either :)

Anonymous said...

Isn't it funny how you get attached to the critters you care for? I accidentally killed a half dozen goldfish in my pond once when I fed them corn muffins. I felt awful. I had salmon for dinner that night, but felt terrible for killing the goldfish.

lisa said...

That's a wise observation about the inconsistency of human compassion vs. cruelty...very true!

Bob said...

Don't upset yourself too much Lisa, these things happen and at least it was an accident.

BurdockBoy said...

Wow. I always wanted to try a worm bin. The closest I got was a rabbit to whom I fed leftover lettuce and such. Of course he esaped. I saw him around for awhile, but then I'm afraid something got him. I felt pretty bad about that as well.

lisa said...

Due to my failure/"wormicide" with the open bin, I'm gonna try to make a closed-bin system for a go at worm farming this winter. I've researched a few designs, when I pick one I'll post the link so others can try if they like. I've been advised in my research that you cannot use "wild" worms, but I did before and it went well until desert conditions set in. So I'll capture some subjects before it gets too cold and see what happens....