There's Food Back Here! - RodneyCurtis.com

I use both my countertop compost container and a bigger bucket to feed my compost pile out back.

“There’s food back here!”

At first I didn’t understand what she meant, but then I let loose a laugh when I heard my granddaughter’s young friend yelling to her mother, shocked and intrigued by my compost pile out back.

I guess it’s not normal for every backyard to have a place designated for food and yard waste. Nor is it normal to have THREE SEPARATE WAYS to compost. But I’ve never claimed to be normal.

We explained to our three-year-old friend that the food becomes dirt and then the dirt helps more food to grow. She seemed interested, but not totally sold on the concept. It doesn’t phase my granddaughter though; she’s already into it, asking to help me carry my bin and bucket out to the pile whenever they’re full. I try to make making dirt fun. Who needs toys when you’ve got all these banana peels and soggy french fries lying around?

We’re one of those families, environmentalists who try to do everything they can to help out Mother Gaia. (I’d tell you all about our solar panels, our electric-only yard implements, recycling and our Priuses, among other things, but that’d just be virtue signaling.)

According to the EPA, food waste comprises about one quarter of all the solid waste from cities or towns tossed into landfills. There, in landfills, the food waste produces methane … a LOT of it. And that’s bad for the planet. In your backyard, that same waste is far more likely to produce carbon dioxide; that’s much, much better. “Keeping food out of landfills helps tackle climate change,” the EPA says.

“Methane is more than 28 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.” — EPA

I’m a lazy composter, though. I should be out there turning the pile, aerating it, adding the right brown-to-green mixture and … nah! I just wanna dump the watermelon rinds, the inordinate amount of avocado waste and the silly little coconut shell from years ago that has turned itself right side up and now serves as a cute critter cup collecting rain.

According to the University of Georgia extension office, “landscape refuse accounts for up to 20 percent of the wastes being placed in landfills.”

So from time to time, I also add some grass clippings, leaves or chunks of dense dirt from the front garden that took me waaaay too long to dig up and transport back.

It began with just a pile; then my wife bought me a few rotating bins. But my daughter took it to a whole new level, gifting me with a countertop Lomi composter for the depths of winter when I just don’t have the gumption to trudge out into the back 40 (feet). Dump in some romaine lettuce ends, some fruit that we didn’t quite get to on time, a bit of rice and some leftover Indian food we forgot in the back of the fridge and — presto chango — a few hours later, we have some lovely loam (and some perfectly polished pits that decided not to be composted, thank you very much.)

Maybe LIFETIME should change their name, as my compost bins have only been in service for a fraction of mine. New hinges and bungee cords keep them closed as they cook dirt.

But it probably started way earlier for me. My dad had a compost pile in our backyard as I was growing up, so that’s likely where I caught the bug. We also had to take all our recyclables to a center in the next town over and deposit them there. I celebrated moving to a city that collected recycling, even though most places do now. Many cities even have food and kitchen waste recycling. I can’t tell you how irrationally jealous I was of my buddy Kurt’s place in San Francisco that has little green bins right in their kitchen.

Trash goes into a black bin.
Recyclables go into a blue bin.
And compostables go into a green bin then are composted into nutrient-rich soil used by local farms.

— San Francisco Environment Department

Powered by solar panels in the dead of winter, my Lomi makes dirt when I don’t feel like it. Or when I don’t feel like messing with a hawk enjoying a meal out there.

I’m in the zone, writing this piece as my wife arrives home. Sometimes, it’s tough to end these stories with a flair. I’ve just taken photos for it, dumped a bunch of new scraps out back and I hear from the kitchen, “Haha, someone’s munching off our pile right now.”

One of our neighborhood mommy deer has come by for a snack. Her normal tagalong fawns are nowhere to be seen.

“I guess she ditched her kids while she came for the free buffet,” my wife concludes.

Come back whenever you want, mom. The Curtis Compost Café is always open; kids eat free. Tell all your friends, there’s food back here.

Rodney Curtis is a recovering journalist and author of four books.

Check out Rodney’s books here.

Want to read an absolutely FANTASTIC novel? Check out Nick Fuller Goggins’s The Great Transition featuring a hopeful look at a post Climate Change Apocalypse world. (Yes, REALLY!)

There’s Food Back Here!