FARMINGTON — Sixteen tons of food scraps are mixed with animal waste each school semester by volunteers with the new Farmington Compost Cooperative to create a high-quality compost, students from the University of Maine at Farmington and Maine Compost School learned Tuesday. 

UMF environmental health students, led by teacher Kelly Bentley, and students from Maine Compost School, a compost class offered at Highmoor Farm in Monmouth, got an on-site introduction to the process.

Loads of horse manure, or “amendments,” as Thomas Eastler, retired UMF professor and cooperative organizer, likes to call it, are mixed with food waste from UMF’s Aramark food services and the Sweatt-Winter Child Care Center, Eastler told the students.

Within a relatively short period, the finished compost is ready. It has been sold to local gardeners, he said. 

A large cement pad with high walls that houses the composting operation was built by the now-defunct Sandy River Recycling Association, he said.

Association Director Ron Slater secured a grant from the Department of Environmental Protection to build the pad near the Transfer Station off Farmington Falls Road. The pad was given to the town of Farmington when the association disbanded.

Eastler went before selectmen, looking for a chance to pull volunteers together and continue a compost operation and the Farmington Compost Cooperative was born. The cooperative includes UMF, Aramark, DEP and the town.

Selectmen gave him two years to try to make a go of it, he said. “We have done it in less than a year.”

It’s a cooperative effort, he said.

The town provides the site, UMF students transport and dump food scraps using a UMF facilities truck and animal waste is transported from Bob Cushing’s horse barn. Eastler uses his tractor to flip the pile, and compost expertise is provided by Mark King, a Department of Environmental Protection environmental specialist and UMF alumnus.

Along with sales of the product to local gardeners, the site is an educational opportunity to teach the public about recycling food waste and the benefits for the garden and the planet, he said.

When food scraps are added to the pile and covered, microorganisms go to work, breaking down the food. Temperatures within the pile rise to 140 to 160 degrees, King said.

Within two weeks, no food is left.

A good compost needs carbon dioxide, nitrogen, oxygen and moisture, he said.

The pile is flipped over regularly. The color changes throughout the process, starting with the light tan of the manure to a medium brown as it begins to transform to the dark, rich brown of the finished product, Eastler said.

“This is a soil amendment,” he said.  

Direct use with plants during the first year is not advised because the active components in the compost can continue and ruin plant roots.

While the class visited, crows circled overhead, watching the food as it was being dumped. 

“Once we leave, there will be about 100 crows over the pile,” Eastler told the students. “They join the 40 to 60 turkeys, who are all regular visitors.”

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