A few weeks ago you found me lamenting my situation vis á vis the mealworm ranchwhich, in order to work long term, looked like it would require another doubling in scale to provide the necessary capacity for the thousands upon thousands of Tenebrio molitor issuing forth from the improbably still-living batch of beetles I raised from the initial stock I purchased at Petco, lo these many months ago. My concern was that we were going to have to give up on the mealworm ranch or build a barn big enough to raise them in.

Well, it looks like we’re in for a barn.

This new construction enterprise has nothing to do with the practicality of raising these multi-segmented packets of chicken Crack. It has nothing to do with the fact that I have to dig potatoes out of the garden to feed them. And, it has nothing to do with the fact that having two five-gallon tubs filled with squirming larvae and scurrying bugs just down the hall from the bedroom is, to say the least, a bit creepy.

No, our mealworm ranching business has been forced into overdrive by that entity responsible for so much of what is Wrong with America these days; namely, Walmart.

Now you may wonder – as did I – why, exactly, Walmart had a standalone display piled eight-feet high with bags of mealworms. Your wonder would have been quickly displaced – as was mine – by the more troubling question of why said display was positioned squarely between the pharmacy and the candy aisles. Regardless of the clinical significance the answers to those questions would bring, the bottom line was that now one can buy mealworms from Walmart for $6.82. Which is about the same amount I have to spend on mealworm feed.

But the decision of what mealworms our organic, no-GMO, free range, tie-dye wearing, tree-hugging, predator-safe chickens get to eat is more than one of economics. It has to be. When you grow your own – or buy from somebody you know – you know exactly what you’re getting. In our case it’s hand-coddled mealworms fed on organic wheat bran and home-grown potatoes. Those worms at Walmart?

They come from China.

‘Nuf said.

So, now back to square one, to be sure we get what we think we’re getting, the only way to get it is to make it ourselves.

With the mealworms it looks like they’re here to stay and grow and grow and grow until the new barn is overflowing and further expansion becomes inevitable. Regardless of the room provided, they will continue to increase their numbers and my job is to get them into a steady state where I can daily harvest the same number of mealworms that are introduced at the lower end of the life cycle.

It’s called “making increase.”

Making increase is a very old-fashioned sounding term that I first came across in reference to raising bees. It basically refers to your ability in an agricultural venture to not only provide for your current year’s crop, but to use part of that crop to assure you have an even larger harvest next year. For example you could plant a pound of wheat seed which would give you a (theoretical) harvest of about twenty-four pounds of wheat. You could save out two pounds of seed for next year and keep both doubling the size of your harvest and doubling the size of the planting you make next year for as long as 1) you still want to eat bread and 2) you haven’t covered the world in wheat.

Which is one of the things we’re trying to do on the micro-farm. We’re not there yet but – absent a lawsuit from Monsanto or Dow for growing things which have been subject to their malodorous manipulations – we are making some headway.

There are a few reasons to do this type of management. First, being a cheapskate, saving seeds and using them next year means we don’t have to buy those seeds – ever again. A packet of seeds may not seem like a lot of money, but over ten years those seed-bucks add up to a ticket to Hawaii. Second, by using seeds from plants which have thrived in our particular microclimate, we are selecting for varieties which will keep improving over the years as opposed to always putting in the types that the seed companies tell us will work best. We get to improve our stock and make increase at the same time. The last reason we might want to make increase is because it’s an easy way to cut down on the workload. Which I am so down with.

The economy of scale issue we ran into at the mealworm ranch has a flip side. That is, that it is possible – up to a point – to make increase without making work; or at least not make much work.

While this may seem counterintuitive, consider for a moment some hypothetical chickens.

If you have four hens you’ll get two to four eggs per day and will probably have enough eggs to satisfy all of your needs up to the point where you’re sick of eating eggs and will start giving some away. You have to build a coop, you have to buy feed, and you have to do all the things you want to do to keep your chickens safe and happy. Now, if you have six hens everything stays the same except that you need 50% more food. But you still don’t have a big surplus of eggs. The work is still about the same too. You just have to remember two more names. And then you hit the sweet spot. Add two more chickens and, suddenly, with eight everything gets better. The food requirement and chicken recognition workload has doubled but now you’re getting enough eggs to sell which means 1) you’re not as sick of eating eggs as you were and 2) your operating costs drop to zero. The chickens are now paying you to give you eggs.

But there is a limit beyond which the equation breaks down. For us that limit is twelve, at which time we’ll have eleven hens and Solo, the happiest rooster in the world – if you get my drift. So we bought three cuckoo marans chickens; a breed in line with our les oeufs marketing plan. At eleven hens we’ll not only be able to make expenses but can apply a dozen or so a week to paying off the initial outlay for the coop and predator-proof (knock on wood) enclosure.

Perfect.

But, if we were to add one more chicken to that number, the whole thing falls apart. The current structure suddenly becomes crowded; the chickens less happy. We’d have to get a bigger coop, a bigger cage, a longer fence; all of which adds up to more work. To say nothing of more mealworms.

The bottom line: four chickens are the same work as twelve chickens but cost more to have; while thirteen is twice as much work as twelve and cost more too.

The trick is finding that balance point.

Which brings us back to the bees.

Our original plan was to start with two hives, manage them to give them the best shot at getting through their first winter, and then stand back and let them go to town their second year. Counter to the rest of the country, both hives made it through the winter, but the lazy-ass Italian bees are still lounging around while the highly efficient Carniolans (originally from Germany) are packing in the stores and threatening to overrun the apiary. No surprise there, huh? To avert that catastrophe and hopefully prevent a swarm I made increase by taking about a third of the frames and a bunch of bees out of the crowded Carniolan hive and started a new hive. We now have a another hive – current retail $95 for the bees, our price Free! – with the bonus that is populated with bees who have not only survived in our little corner of the world, but have thrived. Plus, the original hive now has all the lebensraum needed to keep them from bursting through their borders and spreading across the neighborhood.

I’m not sure what to do about our Italians though. The hive has been weak since we got it, the bees never stored much for winter, and they didn’t build back up their population this spring. I’m tempted to try to replace their queen but, given what happened last year when I tried to replace the queen – namely, nothing – and given the state of Italian leadership changes in general, I may be better off putting a German in charge of that hive too.

And they say history doesn’t repeat itself.

But that remains to be seen. Right now anyway, the micro-farm is on its way to self-sufficiency. This spring we’ll be planting a number of flowers from seeds we harvested last year – lupine, poppies, and a ton of marigolds – along with onions, shallots, garlic, and lavender grown from our own stock. And, yes, we’ll even be planting a bit of wheat which found its way here last year.

For the future it’s a trend we hope to increase.