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Cut your opening in the bottom of the barrel. Keep the opening in a flat panel area of the bottom so that you can fashion a screen cover if fruit flies move in. Also keep the opening a bit off the floor so that there is a lip to keep any liquid in if that happens. And most important, make sure it is on the side that has the wires coming towards it. To speed up the harvest, you can scrape some of the castings free of the wires. This requires that the wires are coming towards you. Use a three fingered garden fork for that purpose. You can harvest quicker this way, just stop scraping when you start seeing live worms falling through! Your worm barrel is done now! To start it up, lay in a half dozen layers of newspaper to support the bed at first. Make sure you stock it with at least a foot of material from an existing bed to provide the necessary structure to the pile. After a few weeks the newspaper will have disintegrated and the bed will have developed some structural integrity and will be easily supported by the wires.
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