One of our favorite film titles
Worm Ranch!? Doesn't that make you want to open this film can? It's the #ArchivesBugs hashtag party today and although worms are technically animals and not insects, we're going to call them bugs for the sake of today's party. Play along...
Back in 1950, UGA Extension Service filmmaker, J. Aubrey Smith, traveled just down the road to Eatonton, Georgia, and filmed the operations at Rainey's Bait Ranch, where red wigglers were grown, harvested, packed into white paper cups with lids, and shipped all over the world, much to the delight of the fishing community!
Rainey filed for a trademark of the logo design on the paper cups in 1952:
An article in Georgia Game and Fish, the 1956 "Fishing Edition", held at Clemson and hosted on The Internet Archive, has more information about this operation. Mr. Rainey built "the largest worm ranch in the south” from a mere hobby operation on 7 acres of land into an international business. The article goes on to provide his helpful hints to setting up your own worm ranch. And don’t you want to??
Vanishing Georgia has a photo of Milton S. Rainey in front of the store, and it looks just like the man in our film:
In the January 28, 1956 issue of the Atlanta Constitution, a brief mention of Rainey’s ranch said he “employs 75 people at peak season, can ship 500,000 worms daily, and spends $1,000 a month on postage.” Search old-newspaper sites and you’ll find his advertisements in papers all over the country. What a business!
Sadly, by the time it got to us, the film was extremely brittle, so the only thing we could do was take these frame images to document it for the future.
Worms are kinda creepy-crawly “bugs” but they do a lot of good in our soil, they do great work in compost heaps, birds love them, and they help us catch delicious fish for our tables. Here’s to worms!
