Harvesting Vermicompost

Well I ended up harvesting months ago, waaaay back in March or April and intended to update my blog waaay back then. But life had other plans and I was busy planning for the birth of my twin daughters, who arrived healthily in May. So it's time to update some of whats been going on in the world of worms.....

This project was about building a sifter and harvesting the vermicompost from the worm inn with the help of a wonderful family!

The first step was to decide how I was going to build a sifter. I wanted to use some screen that would catch the eggs, so I did some research online about proper screen sizes and started from there. I will have to look up what size screen I used to provide the proper size for those of you following this blog.

 I decided to use recycled wood, meaning wood from other projects that has been sitting outside for a while. As you can see, it is damaged, but Ive always been the type of person who cares more about function, than looks, though as I get better woodworking and finding pride in my work, Im finding a middle ground :)

 My neighbor Tom was nice enough to donate some old hand rails from a bathroom. These are the types of rails you see in stores for the handicapped. They fit quite well and provided stability for shaking this heavy sifter. And it is pretty heavy, so keep that in mind as you're building one.

 This was the final product after some hard work. I used: scissors, a drill, a hand saw, and some old screws. All of the materials, including screws were recycled from other projects.

This was my first attempt at sifting. It was unsatisfying because I was losing a lot of material on both sides, since the bucket underneath wasnt large enough, nor the right shape.

 So we decided to pour to the entire pile onto some old tarps I had. The tarps were also donated from elsewhere and had some holes in them, so I used a few of them overlapping each other to make sure no material was lost during the process.

 Then I added the vermicompost and held it over the bucket or tub. Because of the odd shape of the tub I wasnt able to lay the sifter onto it and just shake it back n forth, but instead had to hold it and shake it. Trust me when I say this becomes very exhausting, very quickly. I had to find another way.

 There were a lot of baby worms and eggs falling into the finished product.

 I decided a red ryder wagon was the best way to go, so I switched to using that. My wife and kids used forks to pick out as many eggs as they could, since we were already putting undigested material back into the worm inn.

 My wife was very pregnant at the time, carrying twins, but she was happy to show us her amazing camera skills! Notice how the sifter sits on the wagon, it was much easier to sift that way.

 Heres a nice shot of some worm eggs. There could be 3 to 6 worms in each egg, sometimes more, sometimes less. There's not very many good pictures of eggs out there, so I wanted to make sure we added some.

 And more sifting. As you can see, we were losing some material on the ground, wonder why I didnt use a recycled couple of tarps over here :-/

 Lots of little worms and little eggs but wow, look how that vermicompost is coming out!

 Luckily we had these tiny kid forks that we were able to sift with. We gathered hundred of eggs of these little worms. The kids love this job, but its tedious. Still, there's a job for everybody!

 We started to get quite a bit of vermicompost. I needed to get a couple buckets.

 We were collecting worms on this wet paper you see in the picture above. We also tossed the little worm eggs in there. The worms you see were scrambling to get out of the light and many of them moved under the damp paper.

 I was doing a final check here to see if we had gotten all the little worms and eggs out. It's impossible to get them all, but a little bit of OCD goes a Looong ways!

 Wow, look how nice that stuff is.

 This is good stuff!

 Its really earthy, and smells like earth. Doesnt stink at all, very uniform in size and shape.

 I collected about half a bucket worth of vermicompost and only harvested my worm inn. I could have collected more but I wanted to let the rest of the material in there break down more, so I just tossed it all back in. A handful from this bucket in distilled water or water that is left to sit for a few days to let chlorine evaporate is the beginning of a beautiful worm tea.

Sadly, Ive been neglecting my worm bins since the birth of my daughters. Ive been overwhelmed with many projects. I will try to be more dedicated to my blogs but my health is also a factor that has played a major role in the success of my ambition....until next time!