Rainy and Mushy Day 2

Who can't resist a splash in a puddle?

Well it's day 2 into our rainy mushy weekend.  What do you always see on the sidewalk when it rains a lot?  Worms...lots and lots of worms squirming for high ground.  So this morning we went on a worm hunt.  Armed with buckets and raincoats, OK one of us used an umbrella, we headed down the rural road with acres of farm land around us.  Prime spot for herds or flocks, or whatever worms are called when the group up, to come up on the road.  Now many may be wondering why we want worms, it's too chilly to go fishing, well our girls, the chickens, have also been penned up in the rain so they haven't been able to get into the garden and dig them up themselves.  Let me tell you, they go crazy for worms, like crack I suppose.

Piper and her "cup-o-worms"

The hunt didn't start off too promising, many were already squished, and even though they'll still eat a freshly dead worm, a squished one is just too hard to pick out the pavement.  But as we walked we did see some, then some more, after we got to the end of the road, we had collected about a full cup full, now that may not seem like much but those little buggers really get small when you touch them.  I figure we probably had close to 50 or so, and to a chicken where one worm is like a dessert, 10 a piece would be like the all you can eat buffet at the "House of just Filet Mignon" for us.  Ok maybe not all you can eat for them, when we were turning over the garden this year they were right under foot the whole time eating any and all bugs, worms, grubs, pepples that came up.  The can really stuff that crop full, looking all lopsided in the front.

 Anyway even though it was raining, they came running to the fence when we called them, then once they realized it was worms we were giving away, they went batty. Did you know a chicken has a vertical leap greater than Michael Jordan, proportionately of course.  They'll leap at least 1.5 feet straight up with no running or flapping., not bad for a foot tall chicken.  So now Erin's gears are turning in that noggin and she wants to build a worm bin to raise worms.  If you get the right kind they do a great job of composting too, double duty...everything on a good homestead should serve at least 2 functions, just like Alton Brown says for his kitchen tools.