New Sifter in Action

In yesterday’s posting (which I did today), I repeated a posting on Worm Condos. An important tool to use with a Worm Condo or a worm-enriched compost pile is a sifter. I built myself a new one today. It fits over my wheelbarrow and has wire-meshing wide enough to allow only the fine enriched compost (or castings) soil into the wheelbarrow. This is the worm-enriched soil needed for mixing with coir in planters, or for the top of the raised beds or mounds. At Growing Power where they have 20 or so worm condos, they have converted an old electric dryer machine to shake out the fine soil. But a simple handmade sifter is good enough for the home garden or community garden. Actually making a sifter is simple for anyone handy with basic tools. However, for me it was a chore. My father was an all-around handyman, but never showed me how to do what he did. But a sifter, a valuable tool, is so simple that even I could make one today. The soil you see to the left of the sifter is actually from the bottom of my compost pile, not from the worm enriched worm depository. Worms found their way into this compost and did their magic on it. So with some sifting you can find “black gold” to top off the mounds, to fertilize the seeds or to make tea

Sifting can be tedious work but the soil produced is so valuable that it is not hard work. Now if I can find someone to make worm condos for community gardens maybe we can market them by throwing in a free sifter. We can make sifters of various sizes to fit over any container you may want to collect the enriched soil.

When I find myself doing meaningful work in life, sifting through the daily routines or repetitive jobs, like sifting through the enriched compost it may be tedious but not hard. Like miners of old, sifting through the bed of a river in Colorado, we know that there is gold, “black gold,” to be discovered.

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