Author: Robert Creenan
After a few years of creating compost for their urban farms, the Farmer Pirates composting crew hopes to sell their bounty to local backyard farmers.
Farmer Pirates member, Terra Dumas, said that after years of picking up food waste from people’s homes to make compost, they hope to finally have extra supplies to share. “We want to sell it back to the community at a good rate to the backyard gardeners in the city,” Dumas said. “We’re still working on figuring out a delivery system and how to market and sell our compost, but people will want to stay tuned for that.”
The Composting Crew is an LLC spun off from the Farmer Pirates Cooperative, a group that manages eight urban farms in Buffalo – 5 Loaves farm, Westside Herbs & Alliums, Michigan Riley farm, Wilson St. Farm, Groundwork Market, Common Roots Farm, and Pickles & Peppers homestead. The compost is spread out to all of these farms.
Farmer Pirates currently collects food waste from around 90 households in the city as part of its residential program. The crew also picks up food waste from Buffalo State College and businesses/restaurants such as Ristorante Lombardo, Merge, and Block Club for their commercial pickup program.
The composting crew looks out for discarded pumpkins, sawdust, leaves, and other organic materials that are discarded throughout the course of the year. Compost piles are alive with nutrients that get recycled back into our complex ecosystem.
As for the main operating arm of Farmer Pirates – farming – the collective doesn’t start planting seeds until somewhere between late March and early April. It’s still too early to tell if the warm winter we’ve been experiencing has had any effect on their activities.
Lead image: Michigan Riley farmers using Farmer Pirates compost to plant some bulbs for the spring (Images – Facebook)
#compost #urbanfarming #buffalony
To learn more about Farmer Pirates and the composting program, visit their Facebook page.
If you want to get in touch with Farmer Pirates about picking up your organic waste, click here. Choose residential or commercial and you’re on your way! You can also get some of the compost that you contributed dropped off at your home or business for free. Be sure to check out all of the pick-up program rates on the website.
Since starting the program, Farmer Pirates has already composted over 29 tons of waste food. Now that’s pretty cool.