- Soil Dynamics Compost Farm in Ashland, Nebraska turns waste into soil.
- "Like a multi-vitamin that you would use just to like sprinkle in your house plant or your garden or feed your lawn," said Brent Crampton with Hillside Solutions
- The video show Brent Crampton explaining the how the pumpkins are composted along with manure, food waste and more.
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
"154 and climbing degrees inside there,” said Brent Crampton, director of partnerships for Hillside Solutions. "This is what we call windrow composting so we have lots of these long rows here."
"If you are like me before I started this job, I thought like when my pumpkin or food waste goes to landfill like it just turns in to dirt, no big deal," Crampton said.
But if all these colorful pumpkins were dumped in the landfill, they'd produce a lot of methane gas.
"The solution is composting, whereas it does put off methane here, but it is one to two months instead of one to two decades," Crampton said.
Looking at this pile of dirt you may not know that is exactly what is happening. Rows upon rows at Soil Dynamics Compost Farm in Ashland, in partnership with Hillside Solutions and Gretna Sanitation.
Crampton said they have partnered with Dundee Bank for the last 4 years to collect pumpkins. With consistent participation he said it's a good conversation starter too.
"They can find out about what we are doing and see this is the thing, we can participate in not just today but year-round or maybe we should start composting in our own backyard too like, what does that look like," Crampton said.
So how does it work?
Think of it as basic compost you could do in your backyard on a much larger scale.
"It will cure for about up to a year, kind of like a fine wine cures, it's better over time," Crampton said.
Using a specific recipe including elements like air and water.
"You want a certain moisture rate because microbial life likes that wetness," said Crampton. “And once you get that all lined up right, then nature takes over, things start breaking down and it gets really hot in those piles."
The piles of manure, food waste and now pumpkins break down over time, eventually turning into nutrient rich soil to use in our communities.
"Now it's like a nutrient dense material similar to like a multi-vitamin that you would use, just to like sprinkle in your garden or your house plant or feed your lawn," Crampton said.
But for now we wait. For more information about compost visit the Soil Dynamics Compost Farm website.
