Sort of looks like some kind of Soapbox Derby car or a baby stroller doesn’t it? It’s called the Brookwood Worm Sifter and it was made to separate worm castings from worms. The original machine was designed to separate horse bedding from manure, but they found with a few modifications it could also be used for worm castings. When it is used for that purpose, it sifts out some beautiful, uniform castings that can be bagged up and sold at the local farmers market or garden center. It works pretty well for it’s intended use. I originally purchased it hoping that I might be able to find a good way to harvest clean worm protein. I’ve come to the conclusion that harvesting clean worms is a lot of work even with a fancy machine like this. The machine always has some castings that come with the worms, which isn’t a big deal if you are selling the worms to other vermicomposters. It gets tricky when you want to clean the worms and use them for a pelletized fish food, though.

So while it works well for it’s intended purpose, I thought maybe it might be a better cricket harvester so we added some mesh over top of the unit. I have to say, it really works well.

Combined with the Hopper Hopper 2.0, I can collect clean crickets and freeze them all in a reasonably quick period of time.

The unit works by using a perforated mesh surface at an angle and then shakes back and forth to sift out the frass (cricket poop) and sends the crickets down the line into a bin at the end of the machine. This machine has saved me so much time! It’s really been a huge help in collecting the crickets. I’m up to 5.5 pounds of raw cricket per week now and it would take me forever to harvest that kind of volume by hand.