Contra Costa Times Monster Worms Article

Worms Doing Antioch Company's 'dirty work'
By Janis Mara
Staff Writer
Posted: 05/04/2009 03:17:33 PM PDT
Updated: 05/05/2009 06:06:51 AM PDT


 

  ANTIOCH — In the garage of an immaculate home here on a cul-de-sac, surrounded by gray plastic bins, entrepreneur Dave Anderson plunges both arms into a pile of black loam and triumphantly extracts a handful of worms.

"These are hardworking worms that eat everything," Anderson said. "My slogan is, 'Let our worms do your dirty work.'"

There's plenty of wiggle room for the definition of success in Anderson's home-based business. His company, Monster Worms, supplies African night crawlers, Alabama jumpers, red wrigglers and other varieties for use as bait or compost. Experts say the business has a good chance of crawling to the top of the heap despite the current economic downturn.

The stay-at-home dad and his wife, United Airlines pilot Beth Tibbits, spent a year digging into the subject before purchasing the thousands of worms now industriously consuming coffee grounds from the nearby Panama Bay coffeehouse and vegetable scraps from Applebee's. The company launched last month.

The business is a natural extension of the family's way of life, Anderson said.

"We don't use pesticides or chemicals at our house. We make our own cleaning supplies, compost our scraps and use a solar roof. It was important to us to start a green business."

The company's offerings can be purchased at www.monsterworms.com or over the phone. Red wigglers are around $21 a pound, the larger European night crawlers around $27. Both are bait worms. The mighty Alabama jumper, monarch of compost, fetches some $72 a pound. There's a discount for volume.

"I'm a farmer at heart. I enjoy getting into the dirt," said Anderson as he ran his hands through a three-foot-deep pile of castings.

Inside the gray bins, the worms are difficult to find even when Anderson sifts through the layers of material. A gleam of light against the worms' smooth skin is the tipoff, drawing the eye to the supple circles they make against the rough black castings.

The jumpers eat garbage that might otherwise end up in the landfill, producing the castings that look like black dirt and act as a nutrient-rich organic fertilizer and soil conditioner. One way to facilitate this is to purchase bins like the ones in Anderson's garage, line them with torn-up newspaper, pitch in wet newspapers, eggshells and other detritus, and let the worms do that voodoo that they do so well.

Actually, it's not true that worms eat everything. "Worms can be finicky sometimes. You put your coffee grounds at one end, your manure at the other end" to cater to the invertebrates' sensitive palates, Anderson said.

In using the term "your," Anderson was speaking colloquially; worms prefer horse manure. The human variety is not recommended.

The jumpers are compost eaters and the wrigglers and crawlers are bait worms.

"The desirable characteristics of a fishing worm: Fresh, alive and kicking," said Rob Southwick, president of Southwick Associates, a Florida firm specializing in the economics of fishing, hunting and outdoor recreation.

"You want worms that are strong, not soft and weak and barely moving," Southwick said. Asked if Anderson had a good chance of success, Southwick said, "Yes, if he is a smart businessman, he'll do well."

Customer Ken Venturino, of Oakley, gave the company's product the thumbs- (or perhaps hook) up. The worms performed admirably on a recent trip, said Venturino, who spent much of his childhood fishing on the Delta.

The night crawlers were "active and lively," helping Venturino, his wife Lisa and daughters Hannah and Haidyn bring in four catfish, he said.

"We didn't have to refrigerate them (the worms)," Venturino said. "My wife appreciated that. For some reason she's squeamish about worms in the refrigerator."

Reach Janis Mara at 925-952-2671 or jmara@bayareanewsgroup.com.