Why in the world would anyone want to start a worm farm, growing worms or farming worms?
Just listen to this response I got from my grandpa one I told him I was thinking about raising worms for living. Boy did you fall down and bump your head? Your fool uncle tried that in the eighties he was goanna get rich selling bate worms and did nothing but loses butt.
Now, today’s worm farmers are not overly interested in the sale of the worms themselves, their more interested in what the worms produce when fed. This final product is called castings, and while it's technically warm-poo it's also a great fertilizer or amendment for garden soil or potted plants. Just think about this, organic foods are becoming more popular and have entered the mainstream. You can't hardly go into a grocery store today and not find organic vegetables in the Produce aisle. Now, how do you raise organic vegetables without organic fertilizer? (More on this later)
The technical term for using worms to process compost and create castings is 'vermicomposting', and the finished product is called vermicompost or vermicast. To get high quality castings from an earthworm farm, it's necessary to start with the proper type of worms.
Now let me worn you a head of time, you probably can't just go out to your garden and start digging up whatever kind of worms you find there, After all you're not looking for bate-worms. You're looking for compost-worms so you can actually make some money at doing this!
THE WORMS
There are certain types of worms that adapt well to living in a container and processing organic waste. The wrong type of worm may burrow down while not processing as much of the food into castings, so if you're just starting out, you'd probably want to buy your worms from an experienced vermicomposting supplier. After you get some experience, you may be able to identify your local worms and whether or not they'd be good candidates for populating your farm.
When you're a beginner, trying to make the right decisions concerning the purchase of your worm breeding stock is like jumping into the great unknown. Do I buy local or out of state over the Internet? Do I take the word of the seller; the worms are in good health? What does a healthy worm look like? These are some of the difficult questions that enter the mind of any thoughtful buyer. These are the questions that made me dizzy when I started to think about them, and couldn't find any simple answers. All of your decisions have to be made by considering the individual circumstances surrounding the purchase you wish to make. Any of the above scenarios are acceptable under the right circumstances, and each individual situation must be considered on its own merit.
