Because my worm population has grown completely out of control - i.e. one vermihut (using all five trays), two 45-gallon bins, one 50-gallon flow-through, and two deep 10-gallon trays, I decided I needed something other than the "dump on tarp in piles" method for harvesting the VC and the worms.

I looked online at some you-tube videos of commercial harvesters and what some other people had constructed for harvesters, and decided to make my own MUCH simplified version. I went to the hardware store and purchased:

two six-inch diameter metal ducts

two feet of 24" wide 1/8" wire mesh

four uni-directional castors (wheels that only spin forward and back and can be mounted on something)

one 4-foot piece of wood that was 1" x 4"

a little baggie of plastic zip ties

The total cost was around $16.00. I drilled holes about 1 inch apart all around the edge of the ducts and attached the mesh with the zip ties. Then I closed the overlapping seam of the metal mesh with more zip ties. The final product is six inches in diameter and about 38 inches long. I cut the piece of wood approximately in half and attached the castors with screws so that the ducting could sit on them and spin.

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Our driveway has a natural slope to it before it levels off at the top, so I used that natural angle to make the whole apparatus work. I set up two buckets on the slope in the shade. The green bucket on the right is upside down, that is the feeding, or INPUT end. You can see the grey tray with raw VC in it on the right-hand side, next to the green bucket. You can see bits of unfinished food in there because in the process of trying to dry the VC out enough to sift it, I got worried that the worms didn't have enough food and would begin to starve. So I started adding more food. I'm still trying to strike that happy balance of continuing to keep the worms fat and happy while still allowing the VC to lose enough moisture that it doesn't gum up the mesh in the harvester.

On the left-hand side you see the OUTPUT end of the harvester over an open white bucket. I sat on another up-turned half-size bucket in front of the INPUT end. I used my left hand to keep the harvester turning and used my right hand to scoop up the finished VC out of the tray and put it into the spinning harvester. The very gentle slope allowed the VC and worms to slowly travel from right to left through the harvester while the finer, finished, pure castings fell below onto the tarp (I used an old shower curtain, hence all the colorful fish). In the picture you can see the growing pile of rich, fine, dark brown finished worm castings. The worms and the larger pieces of uneaten food fell into the white bucket at the end. It is now much faster and easier to sort the worms from the unfinished food because the ratio of worms to bedding is much higher. In short, there's much less food and bedding to remove from a very high concentration of worms.

I package up the sifted vermicompost in empty yogurt containers and give it away to friends, family, and neighbors. I also take it to local garden swaps and swap it for fruits and vegetables. I use the unfinished food and still-too-wet-to-be-sifted bedding to start new bins because it it is still moist and rich with microorganisms so it jump-starts the ecosystem and gives the worms readily-digestible food. The unfinished VC is also chock-full of cocoons so within a month or so the worm population increases substantially. I suppose I could wait a few weeks and then sift the compost again when it is drier, but by that point all the cocoons would have started hatching and I don't know if the itty-bitty baby worms would survive the tumbling process, or perhaps slip through the 1/8" mesh.

All in all, I spent about 45 minutes and turned 10 gallons of unsifted compost into 5 gallons of sifted. And I wasn't on my hands and knees killing my back, or burning up electricity with bright lights trained over the bins. I should also say that my children love using this thing. One spins and the other feeds the compost into the tube. When they use it, it tends to slip of the castors pretty often, probably because they spin with gusto and they're just little kids. I used it by myself today, and it stayed put and didn't slip at all. Overall, I'm very pleased with it, and the price was right! Thanks to all the people on you-tube who were inventing their own harvesters - there are too many to name but they inspired me with their ingenuity.