Downtown Coffee Shop Partners With Local Farmer to Collect Compost

Wednesday, April 8, 2009 | Source: Capital Gains

When a Mason farmer asked downtown Lansing’s Great Lakes Chocolate and Coffee Co. to save its coffee grounds for him, he hoped he might be starting a Capital region movement. Proprietors Paul and Jared Smith were happy to comply.

So Tim Fischer dropped off a five-gallon bucket the next morning. By 4 p.m., it was half full of coffee grounds and the biodegradable filters used with them. He planned to take the grounds home the next day to his three-acre farm and add them to one of his compost piles. With the help of a hoop house, he’s able to grow enough vegetables there to feed his family year round.

Making compost is like any other recipe. The ingredients have to be in the right mix, he explains. For compost, it’s two parts dry ingredients (coffee grounds, straw, shredded leaves, dried grass, wood chips) and one part wet (kitchen scraps, fresh grass, weeds). Coffee grounds are high in nitrogen, he says.

But the Smiths have a caveat. Coffee grounds can get moldy, so they should be used quickly.

Fischer is not the only one growing food. The White House has a new vegetable garden, as does the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, and according to the National Gardening Association, the number of households planning to grow their own food in 2009 has increased by 19 percent from 2008. The Burpee seed company says that $50 spent for seeds and fertilizer can yield $1,250 of produce.

Home and community gardens are proliferating throughout the Capital region. A free supply of compost material will be useful. Fischer, whose day job is in agricultural policy at the Michigan Environmental Council, has had lots of practice on his home farm. But he also has a broader view.

His hope is that other gardeners will approach nearby restaurants and create partnerships to divert some of the restaurants’ waste from the landfill while providing the gardeners with rich material for their own compost recipes.