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A Lucy Ricardo Moment
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I thought you all would love this one. It started out with a postage stamp from Afghanistan. It has a silkworm caterpillar and moth on it. We thought, that’s neat, why did they do that? A little checking and we find that there is an effort to bring back this art along the silk road that passes through Afghanistan. A little more checking and we find that we can do a project with growing silkworms. The culmination of this is that I *thought* I was purchasing 25 silkworms and a bag of food. What I really purchased (clicked the wrong button, I suppose:)) was 100 silkworms and *no* food. So, now I have told my husband he is in the ‘sericulture’ business. Fortunately, they came with some food in their cups and I’ve order more. This is becoming an investment….I mentioned that we might just find someone with an iguana, but that did not go over very well with the children…
Oh, lol! Sounds like something I’d do! This spring, I thought I ordered plant sleeves to put over milkweed plants, and instead I got 1000 milkweed seeds, and some mylar “fun mirrors”. 🙂
We have a gecko, if that’ll help! LOL
You could grow a lot of milkweed with 1000 seeds!
Just curious . . . why do you want to put plant sleeves over milkweed plants? We’ve grown milkweed in our yard for years and have never heard of putting plant sleeves over the plants. What is the purpose of the sleeves?
Oh, Cindy, your post gave me such a good laugh today! My oldest daughter has started spinning (as in, with a spinning wheel) and she recently researched what it would take to keep silk worms and feed them and all. It sounds like quite the undertaking. So when I read your post, I could really identify with 100 of those worms! 🙂
By the way, my daughter says that if you want someplace to send the silk, she would be happy to take it off your hands. Her spinning blog is Maiden Yarn.
Oh Cindy!! Thank you so much for the laugh.
Sonya, Does you daughter sell her yarn?
Michelle, 1000 milkweeds?? Oh my!!!
Well, here’s the thing Sonya. The way that silkworm farmers get the silk is that they pop the cocoons in hot water so that the threads separate and then they unwind it. It’s all one thread! If the silkworm moth is allowed to hatch out of the cocoon it ruins the cocoon because God put in it a substance that it spits out of its mouth that puts a hole in the cocoon. Somehow that small detail missed my children i.e., the moth needs to die in order to harvest the silk. I think with time they will get over it and so I will certainly keep your daughter in mind. Fortunately, silkworm moths can’t fly so we won’t exactly be swarmed over here.
So, Michelle, what’re the mylar mirrors for?
Blessings,
Cindy
Yep, Cindy. My daughter explained it to me that you have to “C-section” the cocoons to get the silk. 🙂
Shanna, she wants to eventually sell it. Right now she’s working on refining her technique.
Karen, we often raise monarch caterpillars here–the kids are really good at finding them. But we then either have to miss “the big moment” if the monarchs come out of pupa when we are not watching, or we have to transfer them into our butterfly pavilion, which means we have to bring in fresh leaves every day. The sleeve is designed to go over a plant containing a caterpillar, and then it will be protected and won’t fly away if it emerges when we aren’t looking. The children really like to “free” the butterflies themselves.
So I got no sleeves, but I did plant a lot of milkweed, but the flooding did a number on it and almost none of it actually grew! So when my kids started bringing home caterpillars, we had to put them in the pavilion and then keep bringing in fresh leaves.
I don’t know what the mylar mirrors are for. Apparently the company that sells the monarch products also sells fun mirrors. This seems like an odd business combination to me, but what do I know. At least I don’t have to do c-sections on 100 silkworms!
Thanks for explaining the plant sleeves. We always bring in the eggs/caterpillars we find. Since the milkweed grows in our yard it isn’t a big deal to bring in new leaves when they are needed.
If any of your seeds remained in your yard after the flooding, you should get milkweed next year. After that you should never have to plant it again. It is a perennial, besides the fact that if you let it go to seed it will spread seeds all over your neighborhood. 🙂
For those interested in Monarch Butterflies, we have an article in our Hours in the Out of Doors links and tips pages about raising monarch butterflies.
The photos on that page are from the caterpillars we’ve brought in from our yard. We’ve even managed to capture close-up video of the transitions from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly. I’ll have to post the video somewhere one of these days.
@Bookworm, I’d love to hear more about your butterfly pavilion.
Doug,
These are just the ones sold by http://www.insectlore.com When my oldest was small, we bought one. We no longer need the “help” by purchasing the caterpillars, since my boys are exceedingly good at finding and bringing home caterpillars, <g> but I kept the nice enclosure, and in fact found a bunch marked down at Aldi’s one day for $5, so I have a row now and they are always full of something all summer. We had quite a caterpillar season here–we found things I’d never seen before, and I’d begun to think I was pretty familiar with the buggy population of Iowa after this many years of boys. Don’t know whether it was the weather or what, but we had caterpillars I couldn’t identify! A few died before we could figure out what they ate. We released the last of our butterflies last week and now the kids have the enclosures full of mantids, including a giant 8 inch one that I think wants to eat me. 🙂 It has eaten everything else it has seen, including another pretty big mantid of 4 or 5 inches. He’s a real go-getter. I’m actually the one that caught him, in a plastic supermarket cookie container after church one night, and he tried to beat through the container and get me the whole way home! They have such personalities–we had one once for six weeks or so, and when my son went to release him, the critter climbed on his arm and didn’t want to leave. So little Mr. Aggressive is quite different from that one!
I hope the milkweed I planted and what we had from previous years does grow this year, but we’ll have to have a better spring! My backyard was under water for almost five weeks and we have nothing left back there but dandelions and a few other tenacious weeds!
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