Such a Silky Anniversary

For years, I've seen advertisements for this African Silk farm.  Many years ago, silk worms were a "thing" in Cape Town, at least in the Homeschool community, and we took our turn with raising them, but we never knew what to do with the cocoons we produced.  Or the worms produced.  So we were all curious about this place and process.  We got a guide named Busi and learned a LOT.    

We knew silk worms eat Mulberry Trees.  That was silkworming 101.  But we moved up a level to learn that there are 3 different kinds of mulberry trees.  Their texture changes as they mature, and baby silk worms can only handle the right texture.  Too much milk in the greenery, and they'll get the big D.  Leaves can also be too hard for them.  Suddenly I started wondering how we had any cocoons!  We fed with whatever mulberry leaves we could find!   

Grey eggs mean ready to hatch.  Brown means they died.  You wanna know how they get the eggs in circles like that?  Count down 7 pictures to see the answer.  

Those babies grow fast!  They feed them with fresh leaves every 2 or 4 hours all day.  The wire underneath helps with cleaning out the waste without losing worms.  

They have 3 kinds of silk worms, Thai,  African, and a cross between the two.  The cross produces faster than either of the non crossed ones.  The African makes a brownish silk. 

Busy little guys have their own jungle gym.  

Busi showing us a white one.  The fine silk comes from the white one, produced by the Thai worms. 

Yellow is the African one, light greenish is the hybrid, and white is the Thai worm.  I think.  They call the hybrid the Zebra worm as it is black and white.  

So the guy on the right is Thai, the guy in the middle is mixed, and we had no locals to look at.  They are fuzzier.  

That black cap is what they put over the female moth when she begins laying eggs, so all the eggs will be together on the paper in a tidy circle. That brown thing that looks like a bead is a pupa, which they take from inside the cocoon.

They put boiling water into the red bowl, and then dip the cocoons in there.  After it sits for a minute or two, Busi fiddled with it with a stick to find the end of the thread/web.  From one cocoon they expect to get 1 and one third kilometers of thread/web!!!

And then comes the beautiful, tempting gift shop!  What fun!  

One of the uses for the silk is some duvets. It sounds like the silk is very good at regulating temperature, so here Tim and Busi were stretching out some silk to show how to begin a single size duvet.  

I've skipped a lot, but I'm working in the car, getting car sick.  Please ask any questions and I'll pump Tim's better memory to answer them  :-)