My Silkworms Are Here!

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Back in college I once sent my sister a post card that had printed in bright, bold lettering, "Do you still have a crush on your postman?" (I thought that was so hilarious at the time.) Anyway, when this little beauty of a box was sitting on our doorstep I thought of the vast variety of assorted strange cards and packages that a postal worker runs across over a career.

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I'm getting ready to take the old spinning wheel on down to the Bayfront Harvest Festival in Duluth so, not much time to share all the excitement that was to be had yesterday as we set up the nursery and nestled the petri dish of silkworm eggs into their new cozy, warm environment.

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Here' they are! 500 itsy, bitsy silkworm eggs.  Thankfully nobody emerged in transit as the little characters need to eat straight away once they get movin'. From the vast amounts of research I've done in preparation (doubtful anyone believes that) the eggs will become a light blue-grey when they are very close to bursting forth with life. They start out as little yellow eggs when the mother moth first lays them then slowly change to a darker color. Once the eggs have darkened they can go into a dormant artificial winter (refrigerator) for at least 2 months. Around 10 days after they come out of the artificial winter the eggs begin to hatch. These were removed from the refrigeration stage at Mulberry Farms when they were packaged for shipment so exciting things should start happening any day now!

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Tomorrow I don't have any harvest festivals to go spinning wool at so I shall prepare their special mulberry mash diet then. It will be good to have food at-the-ready. I'll take a few pictures to share of that fiasco. Meanwhile, I've got Claxton thinking up names. I have a good feeling that we're going to need quite a few.