Retiring the Farm

I retired the mealworm farm today. It was bittersweet. Not that I could get particularly attached to bugs. They didn't have names or personalities- not like regular pets. They were farm animals of sorts, but not like livestock. I guess they weren't much more than a project, and yet I'm sad to let them go. The pantry feels empty without them.

Yes, I'm mourning my bugs.

With classes starting this week, homework, housework, my job, the blog, feeding myself, feeding the cat, grooming and sleeping, I'm finding a need already for sifting out the frass and concentrating on only what's really important. Unfortunately that meant no time to care for more lives than my own, and the feline.

It's not that farming mealworms really takes a lot of time and effort- you add some carrots every other day, harvest some adults, occasionally pick out spent veggies and dead beetles- but it's something that can easily get overlooked in the day to day. All good things must come to an end eventually.

Of course I got in one last harvest before letting them loose, and I have about 2 cups worth of mealworms in the freezer waiting to be used for a project. So there should be at least one more mealworm post eventually.

It's a little sad. This farm was a project that was ongoing for a couple of years and now it's finished.

Bye-bye little buggies.