Goin' On A Worm Hunt

Last week, the two oldest kids felt like they were on a grand adventure when Daddy got them out of bed at midnight, helped them get dressed and head out for a hunt.  A friend of ours had driven over to join them, and the four of them spent almost three hours out in the middle of the night, looking for worms.  Whenever we have a good rain, one question gets asked repeatedly at our house. " Daddy are we going hunting for nightcrawlers?".  I'm sure that of all the things we do that are weird, this one might be near the weirdest end of the scale, haha!

Around here, we have a large variety of nightcralwers that are excellent for fishing with.  When they come out during a good rain, our kids look forward to Daddy taking them for a walk.  They splash in puddles, get soaked and pick up all the nightcrawlers they can find along the way.  It's a big adventure for them.  The girls love to go too ( no squeamish sallys around here!) and Lily with her small two year old fingers tends to be the fastest worm picker-upper.

We put them in a large container, with dirt and miscellaneous stuffs, then keep them cool and use them throughout the year.  I've been doing some research on how to keep a "worm farm" with nightcrawlers instead of the usual red worms that one might use for a composter.  While we've always done this "just for fun", the kids think that it would be a fun "school" project to study the worms, and maybe even sell some of them.  Why not?  So... feeding the worms is now an item on our chores list... hahahahah!

This is completely free, and takes no real effort, but it's a fun little family activity.  I have kinda thought that we might be the only people who do this, but lately I have heard so many people telling stories about worm hunting when they were kids.  It's such a fond memory for so many people!  One friend tells of it being one of the funnest memories of being with his dad, another talked about how fun it was to sell the worms to local fishermen.  For some unexplainable reason, picking up these slimy little creatures is a very memorable childhood experience.  Remember that middle of the night adventure?  While they were out walking around, there were others out too!  One elderly gentleman they ran into talked about childhood memories of his own worm hunts and thought it was neat to see these guys taking the kids out. Talk about memories! One day they'll be sitting around laughing about the time Daddy took them worm hunting in the middle of the night and the ended up talking with some old guy!

It might be fun to try a worm farm of your own!  Why not?  If you're interested, here's a great link
Nightcrawler Worm Farm Info   from e-how.