lol - just need an editor to gather it all up .... I am actually a 'master composter' and do some education locally, and am very into food waste composting as a way to reduce chemical dependence in the garden

it's fine to 'fluff' things when the mass gets too compacted, although it's not essential it does help drainage and aeration, and I prefer to do it once in a while to check what's going on - I use a pitchfork in my big bin, a hand garden fork in a rubbermaid tote, and sometimes a shovel in either, and you can don some rubber gloves and just dig in by hand

just today I was taking material from one side of my big bin {{gwi:1335266}} for the garden, and got down to a wetter area where there were quite a few worms, so I dug the rest up with the fork and heaped it against the other side - in a couple days the worms will have mostly migrated to the fresher material there, and the castings will be drier and easier to rob without picking out so many worms

I've been getting the finished compost from the bottoms of {{gwi:1335267}} too, and picking out worms there to throw in the worm bin - those bins get forked back and forth every day as I add fresh produce scrap, and each bin is completely turned every 10 days or so - the worms in there have {{gwi:1333766}} you could imagine, and they're mostly big fat old breeders after months of chowing down on prime feed, the agitation doesn't bother them at all

Bill

will you autograph the pictures! Wow! I'm inspired and want to build big bins like that.
I'm just trying to save our Hawaii landfills!!

Worm Nelly