About 5-6 weeks ago I was diagnosed with cancer. My local doctor wanted me to go to a hospital in a different town three hours away for surgery, which has been a logistical nightmare. Another issue is that I was warned from the beginning that I would be under physical restrictions after surgery so I have been scrambling the entire time to get things set up around home and farm so that things can keep running during my recuperation- expected to be 6-8 weeks.
The "bright spot", for me anyway, is that my crack dealer- I mean, my worm dealer- is located near the hospital so I had the bright idea to have my husband go pick up another 5 pounds of worms for me while he was waiting to pick me up after surgery. In anticipation of that I set up 5 new bins in my basement. I was running behind because I had 47 things that I absolutely HAD to get done- I was moving so fast I felt like I was spinning in circles and in the end only got about 11 of those things done. sigh. So I did not finish setting up the new bins until Tuesday night, and had to leave at 5am the next morning. I had dug some old compost out of an outdoor compost bin and planned to use that for feed/bedding. Well, I ALWAYS test out new material if it is anything other than paper/cardboard/kitchen scraps but because I was running behind I almost skipped that step. At the last minute on Tuesday I decided that I had better do a test just in case. Phew, so glad I did because, sure enough, when we got home yesterday I checked and one of the three test worms was dead and the other two looked to be on their last legs. No idea why and I haven't had a chance to try to figure it out yet.
So instead of putting the worms in the new bins I had my husband add them to existing bins which were full of leaves and food and other good stuff- I had just set those bins up a few days ago so I figured they could accommodate some extra worms for a few days. Ugh...... okay, so I was still under the influence of anesthesia and I really messed up- I realized right after the fourth pound was installed that I had directed hubby to put them in European Nightcrawler bins- and the new worms are red wrigglers. AAAAARGHHHHHHH. He quickly tried to scoop up the red wrigglers and move them to the proper bins but by that time I was barely standing and had to go to bed. I have not made it back to the basement to check on them yet this morning but I have a sinking feeling that I am going to spend the next 6 months trying to separate my worms. I should add that I have been absolutely rigid and meticulous about keeping my worms separate to avoid having mixed bins. I keep them in different rooms or at least, different parts of a room, I have multiples of tools so as to avoid contamination, and the tools that are shared between species are washed in between working with different species- and even with same species that came from different suppliers. This is a potential huge setback for me. sigh. But, at least I didn't put the new worms in the new bins with the compost and kill them in the process- that would have been devastating.
Note to others- if you are not regularly testing small batches of new food/bedding for your worms, it might behoove you to start doing so. It only take one mistake to kill a whole bunch of worms!
So now I know- NO decision making for me, and no heavy equipment operation, lol, until I am back to normal. ugh.