Status Tuesday, August 22, 2006

I took a look at the paper-only tower; the "only paper and coffee grounds" tower to be correct. (This is one of my heavily-tapered towers; descent of material ought to be facile).

The first thing you will notice is that a week or two ago I enlarged the outlet chute to be the full width of the tower - twelve inches. Still material is not cascading out. That is why this morning I decided to take a closer look.

The material at the base was compacted. I had to work hard at wrenching it out with a pinch-bar. That, surely, is too compacted to make life fun for worms.

Some of the material is visible, swept to the right-hand side. All paper material that comes out will be tossed into the finishing bin, which can always use good bedding!

Castings are evident, the brown mass extending from the right-hand side of the tower. The black area is the black plastic garbage bag that lines the tower. Castings tells me that worms have been here.

To the left of the pinch bar is a knot in the tower frame, and an equal distance to the right of the pinch bar worms can be seen. Worms are active down here. They have not seemed to attack the exterior of the lower portion of the mass.

Again, I suspect the density of the mass is an obstacle. Given time they would probably attack it from the outside moving inwards, chomping away at the fringes.

Within a few minutes, part of the suspended mass has fallen away. In the image above you can see slabs of very damp compressed shredded paper on the floor of the tower, and castings above and behind that. The upper mass of paper is slowly extruding itself downwards and another slab looks as if it is about to descend.

This is encouraging. It tells me that once the obstacle at the base of the tower is removed, material will descend promptly

Parts of the black plastic bag liner are evident. I rip away what I can see as it appears.

More material descends. Yes, those are big fat healthy pregnant worms dead centre of the image, and more worms just below them. You may find it hard to spot, but there is a big, luscious, fat, juicy egg visible quite near the top of the image. I have circled it for you.

I dragged about two gallons of material from the base before propping a sheet of wood against the base. I will check again in a week's time to see how we are getting on.

The finishing bin has received two gallons of wet shredded paper populated by big fat juicy pregnant worms. Just LOOK at the size of them.

Quite makes your mouth water, doesn't it.

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