Making Change by Making Compost

Being a sustainability activist in eastern Montana can be frustrating, and there have been moments as I listen to coal trains screech their way through Forsyth when I have wondered what the hell I am doing here. Helping people to think differently about their food and where it comes from can seem an insurmountable task. Although this is probably the most important part of making change, sometimes I wish my work would produce something concrete that will be around even when I don’t change minds. A couple days ago, I finally got it!

Rosebud School has expressed some interest in composting, even more than for the garden. With some hard work and organization, I scheduled (and rescheduled) a day for students to learn about composting. We had a visit from Mike Dalton, founder of Gardens from Garbage, who came down from Great Falls to teach us about Bokashi composting and how to build an appropriate compost bin.

Bokashi composting is a form of cold composting that uses microbes which ferment rather than decompose food scraps. Meat cannot be added, but it can compost breads and grains as well as fruits and vegatables. The Bokashi we’re using is a dried mix of wheat bran, molasses and microbes purchased from Gardens from Garbage. A small amount of Bokashi (which smells and looks like Grapenuts Cereal) is sprinkled into the food scraps along with some carbon matter, and will produce a rich fertilizer in about 60 days without the maintenance that a traditional hot-compost pile requires. The fermentation process is anaerobic, so the compost pile does not need to be turned or watered, making this method the easiest one for the school to start with.

In preparation for compost day, I spent several lunches collecting food scraps from the cafeteria, which was one of the funniest things I’ve ever done. I stood over the table where students dump their lunches and supervised what could and could not go into the compost bin. Most of the older students easily figured it out, but for the kindergarteners and first graders it was a fascinating challenge. Their eye grew huge and they asked me in amazement, “You’re RECYCLING our food?” They could barely hold their trays steady as they asked me about every single thing on their plate- “can this green bean go in? Can my corn dog stick go in? What about this grape?” They dropped in spoons, milk cartons, and spilled chili all over the cafeteria floor. Subway sandwich day was the worst- these kids were determined to throw in the bread from their sandwiches, which required pulling out the meat. You cannot imagine what a trial this was.

On compost day, the 7-12^th graders at Rosebud gathered out by the workshop and the greenhouses and built two compost bins under Mike’s supervision. We stuffed wooden pallets with flakes of straw for insulation and then wrapped them in visquine plastic. We arranged an open-topped box out of 5 pallets and held them together with wafer board on the outside.

Although this is a simple process, building these bins with nearly 50 students on a Friday afternoon and only a couple people who really knew what’s going on was definitely a challenge. Luckily I had help from Anne, the Glendive Foodcorps member, who was instrumental in keeping things running smoothly. (She also finally got to see that I haven’t been making things up about what a unique community Rosebud is. While we were sitting outside waiting for Mike to arrive, a man walked right past the school with his shotgun during recess, and no one blinked an eye.)

At the end of the day we had one bin fully constructed except for a permanent lid, and one waiting for final assembly. We dumped in several pounds of food scraps along with some straw and leaves to inaugurate our new compost bin and sprinkled in the first handfuls of Bokashi.

When I came in to collect compost this week, one of the high school students told me she had collected all compostable food scraps over the weekend from the bar next door and was bringing it over to add to our bin. This was the most exciting thing I could have imagined- every institution in Rosebud now composts (except for the soon-to-be-closed Post Office, which doesn’t really count). My hope is that composting will reduce the amount of garbage the school produces and the costs the school spends on shipping garbage to the landfill. I also envision the compost enriching the garden and saving us the cost of buying fertilizer, and the garden, someday, saving us from having to buy tomatoes for school lunches all together.

This concrete success makes me feel a little bit better about the time I’ve spent just talking to people about composting and gardening and eating local. And now I am excited to be able to point out the beautiful compost bin behind the school slowly filling with food, as tangible proof that I am making a difference.