Garbage turns to gold in compost pile

SANDPOINT — Start with a few tons of castoff paper plates and food scraps, mix it with several yards of manure and rotten hay, let it cook for two years and the result is what gardeners like to call “black gold.”

It’s another way to describe high-quality compost — a commodity which, for the first time this year, is being openly shared with members of the Community Garden, as well as The Healing Garden at Bonner General Hospital and all the flower pots that will be overflowing with blooms at this summer’s Festival at Sandpoint concerts.

The Festival takes center stage in this story, since it is that organization’s refuse that is creating this fertile reward.

Earlier this month, a host of volunteers from the above groups joined forces with members of the Sandpoint High School lacrosse team to shovel, filter and bag the compost so it could be hauled away to enrich local gardens. A few years ago, in its first step toward becoming a “green event,” the Festival started sending much of its compostable garbage to a farm south of town. In 2011, however, that option fell through.

Enter Mary Ann Jeffres, who contacted the organization at about that same time to inquire about the prospect of hosting the operation on property she and her husband, Larry, own along Shingle Mill Road.

“I called and asked if they were still sending it where they had been and they said, ‘No — and we don’t know what we’re going to do this year,’” she said.

Jeffres, a longtime gardener and veteran composter, jumped at the chance to help out.

“That first year, we collected bags with everything in it,” she said. “There was all sorts of garbage, because people were throwing everything away. Then I called farmers to get manure and rotten straw. After that, I just started putting all the stuff together.”

The eventual mound turned out to be more than five feet high and nearly 25 feet long.

“When we got it done, my grandson made a flag and climbed up to plant it on top of the pile,” Jeffres said.

With the aid of volunteers who showed up a couple of weekends back, she started to whittle away at that mountain. Using feed sacks donated by Co-Op Gas & Supply, the volunteers filled several truckloads with 80-pound bags of rich soil. Before getting to that point, however, they spent hours sifting out the garbage that was left in the pile.

Going forward, the procedure will be considerably easier, Jeffres pointed out, thanks to the Festival’s “Green Team” under the leadership of Terra Cressey.

“Terra has single-handedly made this composting thing so much easier,” said Jeffres, whose second mountain of soil is still cooking away about 50 yards north of this year’s heap. “It’s going to be even better this summer.”

In 2012, the Festival Green Team began sorting through the materials on-site, reducing the amount of trash and maximizing the materials that would break down into a prime growing medium. The team also assisted concertgoers in tossing their waste into the appropriate containers, further expediting the sorting process.

And while most of the food vendors already use compostable plates, cups and even silverware, Jeffres believes there still is room for improvement by convincing them to leave things like plastic coffee stirrers and salad dressing containers out of the mix.

“We’re doing well, but we can do better,” she said. “The biggest problem now is when people bring their own stuff from home that isn’t recyclable and then just throw it out to let someone else take care of it. Like they say, ‘Pack it in; pack it out.’”

Jeffres, who sits on the Healing Garden board of directors and works there as a volunteer gardener, looks forward to seeing the results of what this nutrient-rich soil will do for the trees and flowers growing in that public space. But there is a bigger picture, she added.

“The coolest thing is that what started as waste is going full-circle to end up in the Community Garden, the Healing Garden and all the pots the Festival uses for flowers,” she said.

“I’ve always composted our own stuff — I won’t even throw away a lemon seed,” she went on, acknowledging that the scale of the Festival composting effort takes thing to a new level. “The big motivation for me is that we’re keeping it out of the landfill and making all those gardens as beautiful as they can be.”

Jeffres is just as enthusiastic about the benefits for The Festival at Sandpoint, both financially and from a public awareness standpoint.

“You wouldn’t believe what they have to go through to get all of that garbage off the field every night,” she said. “This whole thing helps lower expenses for them, because they don’t have to pay to take it to the landfill. And being able to advertise that you have a green venue is a big deal, too.”

Interested local gardeners can purchase compost for their own flower and vegetable beds by calling Jeffres at (208) 265-4854. Proceeds will go toward purchasing manure for next year’s compost pile, with a portion of each sale being distributed to The Festival at Sandpoint and the Healing Garden.