Backyard businesses

I think we have all thought of starting a business in our own backyards. Believe me, I was one of them. My hair brained scheme was worm farming. It really made sense at the time. I was in my early 20's and still living at home with my parents. I worked full time and even in those days I yearned to have my own business. We had a decent backyard in suburbia and no one was using it for anything in particular so I decided I would utilize it.

I liked gardening and dad was a fisherman so worm farming was a logical choice for a simple business. I learned everything I could about worms. In those days you had to visit the library for information as the internet was just a bunch of loosely strung together bulletin boards and BBS's.

So I built a worm farm stack and got a batch of worms from the local hardware store that sold them for fishing. My first attempt was awful. The location was too wet and cold. I then moved the location to another area of the backyard. There the worms thrived for about a month when it got too hot. I was finding out that these little worms were not as easy to raise as I thought. 3 months into the venture I gave up. Everything I seemed to do was wrong. I am kinda glad I gave up on that one since I had never even thought about where I was going to sell them if they did multiply like the books said. Talk about lack of business planning.

I think it might have worked out better if I lived closer to a fishing area but our closest fishing hole was over 2 hours away. I don't want to discourage you if you want to try worm farming, it was just that it didn't work out for me. Here is a link to an ebook if you want to learn more about it. Worm Farming