Harvesting and sifting

I spent time this evening working on three drawers.  I cleaned one drawer, harvested worms from another and sifted my beetles.  

My neighbor wants to start her own farm, so she came over to see what I'm doing.  I gave her about two cups of worms to feed the bluebirds and wrens in her yard.  That would cost a lot at the bird store!!  They're easiest to harvest when most of the bedding has turned into frass, and you can just sift the worms out.  I've found that if I sift the frass two more times after the first sifting, I save most of the tiny worms that went through the first time without having to pick them out with tweezers.

It's only been two weeks since I last sifted the beetles, but now I have so many that I think I should do it more often than I've been doing.  I'm going to give my friend some beetles to start her farm so it won't take so long to get worms.

I've looked at the dates on my drawers, and have found that it takes about two months from sifting until there are worms that would be considered "medium".  I can see movement (barely) in the drawer that I sifted two weeks ago.  

It seems as if these drawers are progressing really fast now!  For the first few months, I thought I'd never get anywhere!