Last night we decided to undertake what I believed to be a small project – harvesting our first batch of worm compost. Research that I have done regarding this task says things like, “gently sift the compost taking care not to lose worms or egg sacks” and “harvesting your compost is easy and fun”. Well… fun yes, easy? I’m not convinced yet. But as it turns out, Miss Meg is a champion worm wrangler. Her natural tendency (as a five-year-old) not to obsess about ‘getting all the compost in each batch’ made her a better wrangler because she lost fewer worms than I did when I insisted on shaking the batch too long. She moved worms from the box to the screen and back again with ease and confidence and commented more than once about her love of worms (I have to wonder if her early exposure to them at her beloved California preschool has something to do with this)!

So, with the harvest in such good hands, I became the ‘picker’ – that is – I picked worms that did manage there way through the screen onto the tarp.

The whole endeavor took us a couple of hours but by the end, we had it down to a science – helped by Kirk’s quick build of a worm shaking box. The absolutely gorgeous compost went straight to the squashes and Meg delighted in squishing her toes in the fluffy moist worm poop. Perhaps she can make this work out vocationally someday…