A Visit to John Anderson's Worm Farm
When I was up in Fort Collins for the Rocky Mountain Compost School, some classmates and I were able to get a tour of the facility of John Anderson (aka, ‘The Worm Man’). I was able to snap a few photos, and you can see most of them below.
Here is a view of the entire Worm Man operation, including fridges, wormbulances, and windrows.
Windrow containing worms. Notice the carpet covering the windrow, and the bales of hay.
Carpet covers all Johns windrows, preventing light from entering and moisture and smells from leaving.
Protecting the windrows from freezing is key. John uses bales of hay to prevent the prevailing winds from stealing heat and moisture from the windrows.
Here is a better shot of a windrow with the carpet pulled back. John is using a pitchfork to move some of the bedding to better show the redworms.
On the right is a pile of bedding and worms, covered in carpet. I believe the left is an uncovered pile of bedding.
John uses fridges as a cheap, effective worm bin. They are almost water tight, insulate well, and hold a large number of worms.
Here are some happy happy worms in the bowels of one of the modified refrigerators.
Here is a fridge that John made early in his experimentation. You can see the plastic on the door was not removed, and it is starting to get squishy.
John hot composts a lot of his feedstock for the worms. He got these large square bins from an A/C company, and mounted them on an axis so he can rotate the compost.
Here you can see John rotating the tumbler, using rope and his truck. I wish I had gotten video!
John makes money selling castings as well as worms. He stores finished castings in these 55 gallon plastic drums.
This was a piece of old farm equipment that John had on his site. A classmate of mine is indicating how it could be used as a continuous flow harvester. You would scrape off the bottom of the worm bin periodicaly, getting most of the castings and few of the redworms.
John built a separator on an old gurney; here is his primary casting separation setup. Worms and castings and bedding are taken from the wheelbarrow and put into the upper end. The barrel is rotated and the worms and vermicompost fall to the lower end. Castings fall through the screen onto the tarp.
The back of the ever popular Wormbulance.
6 comments June 28th, 2009
