Clearwater Beach Worm Emporium

bycosmicradio

5.9K followers

9 years ago

I lived in Clearwater Beach, Florida, for many years, about two short blocks from the sparkling Gulf Of Mexico.

I can remember when a buddy of mine lived in a shack, right on the sand. What I mean by that is when he took a step outside of his door, he was standing on beach sand, not far from the water.

That type of living situation may still exist on some Caribbean Island like Jamaica, or the Bahamas, but it doesn't exist on Clearwater Beach any more. His old property is now home to a high-rise Holiday Inn!

He probably retired on what Holiday Inn paid him for his property!

There are no more shacks right on the beach, these days, at least not in Clearwater Beach.

But back then, my good friend, Jon, and I were both living in small cottages on the beach, and spending a lot of time swimming and body surfing in the Gulf, walking and/or running on the beach, and chatting up the ladies in the evenings, when we weren't working.

We were always looking for some ingenious way to get rich quick.

One day, we thought we had found a great idea. We heard about the "King of Earthworms," who created an empire from a simple worm farm.

Incredibly, the fellow lived in Florida, only a couple of hours away from where we lived! We decided to make the drive, and see if we could talk to him.

We actually ended up finding the guy, knocking on his door, and he was gracious enough to invite us in to talk about his brainchild "worm business" for an hour or so.

I believe he was actually flattered that somebody knew about him, and took the trouble to find him.

Of course, as kids in our twenties, we were not hard to impress, and we ended up being convinced this was the key to our entrepreneurial future, going right to a worm farm the guy directed us to, and buying thousands of nightcrawlers and earthworm breeding supplies.

We didn't really consider the fact that most saltwater fishermen were using shrimp, fish, or artificial lures to catch their fish. When this occurred to us later, we reasoned that there were still plenty of fresh water lakes and rivers in Florida, where worms would be the bait of choice.

I had a small backyard behind my cottage, and with some used wood we scrounged up, we built a structure to house our new "worm farm." We filled it up with bags of dirt, dumped in the worms, and we were in business!

A couple hours later, I went out and sprinkled cornmeal on the dirt, watching as the surface of the soil came alive with earthworms.

We were worming our way to profits!

We put up a sign that said CLEARWATER BEACH WORM EMPORIUM.

I fed the worms every day, watching as they wiggled to the top of their dirt bed to dine on scrumptious corn meal.

Jon went back to Boston for a two week vacation. I remember he sent a postcard, inquiring about our "18,000 employees."

Everything seemed to be going well...

Then one day, I went out to feed the worms, and they did not respond to the corn meal. I began sifting through the soil, to see why they were not eating...

Guess what? All 18,000 Nightcrawlers were gone!

I couldn't find ONE worm!!

I'm still not sure to this day if it was the hot temperature at the beach (We had built the structure in as shady a place as possible), or if my landlord had seen the worm farm and taken a dislike to it, absconding with our worms! (He denied any knowledge of our worm farm, although he did have a look of disdain on his face, as we described our dilemma)

All I know is that all the worms were gone, and our worm business was over as quickly as it had begun!

At 18 worms for a dollar, that was a lot of money down the drain, at least for two twenty-something beach bums!

I later learned that professional worm farms use coolers, with thermostats set at 33 or 34 degrees; cool enough to keep the worms burrowed beneath the surface.

Certainly cooler than our soil was that July in Central Florida!

I learned also that Nightcrawlers are farmed commercially in North Carolina, Idaho, Ohio, Canada, and Oregon, and that south of North Carolina, the soil and climate is too hot and dry!

Live and learn.

So, a couple of things we took away from this...

One, if a potential investment situation arises, make sure you do everything possible to check it out before leaping in with both feet!

We assumed the "King Of Earthworms" had told us all we needed to know about worm farming, but obviously, that was not the case. (Maybe he did it up north, then retired to Florida!)

The fact is, we were probably doomed to failure in Florida without coolers for our "little buddies!"

Two, worm farming was probably much too labor intensive, if we had stopped to think about it...

Somebody's got to get styrofoam cups, fill them with dirt, count out 18 Nightcrawlers for each cup, put on the lids, take them to bait stores, and, well, you get the idea!

I think I'm much better off sticking with Wealthy Affiliate!

But, part of me still wants to believe that somewhere, right now, on a remote part of Clearwater Beach, there's 18,000 Nightcrawlers, wearing microscopic Ray Ban Aviators and miniscule Speedos; sunning themselves on tiny redwood chaise lounges, and listening to the sounds of the surf and the Beach Boys singing "Good Vibrations!"

Yeah-It could happen!