To the editor:

Reading Josh Bickford’s account of dealing with household “food waste” from his last week’s article titled “Welcome to the swamp” made us laugh. We get it.  

The compost team at the Barrington Farm School experience first-hand that special relationship our food scraps have with heat and humidity. We are graced with those overripe food scraps on a regular basis from our food scrap community drop-off and collection bins at the farm stand and at Kent Street. The heat, humidity and our recent rains mixing with the already pungent community contributions in these bins creates an environment that can make the most passionate of high school Biology teachers cower. 

But this is where the magic begins.  

One might think taking this slurry and combining it to make even larger piles would create an environment to overwhelm the olfactory. It probably would if that’s all we did — pile scrap on top of scrap. Luckily for us (and more importantly our neighbors) we do more than that. We mix the food scraps with leaves, wood chips and sawdust to create a medium conducive to oxygen-breathing bacteria and microorganism. When done well, foul odors are reduced and even replaced with a beautiful, earthy smell as our compost matures. It is truly quite an amazing process.  

We all know our current waste system is unsustainable. A few years back, the team from Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corp. made the rounds around the state with their presentation on how our current and only landfill was nearing capacity. They sounded the alarm — or, at least tried. Probably the most troubling thing about our expiring landfill is that we continue to allow food scraps to be part of our general refuse waste stream. 

We placed “food waste” in quotes earlier for a reason. Not everyone considers this valuable resource as waste and should not treat it as such. Though our progress is slow, we’re making strides. Our town and local legislators encourage and support efforts toward environmental sustainability, responsibility and good stewardship. In the meantime, it may require more effort on our individual parts to get things moving in the right direction. Keeping our food scraps out of our municipal refuse and composting might be the easiest and most beneficial first step. 

Even if you are not ready to do your own composting, you can still redirect your food scraps. We’ll take them at the Farm School — all your fruit and vegetable scraps along with your egg shells, coffee grounds, moldy bread and shellfish shells. We are currently not accepting meats and dairy even though these, too, are compostable. And to help avoid the unsavory experience witnessed by Josh, here are three simple tricks you can use to help manage that transition from collecting food scraps in your house to disposal into your own compost pile or to one of our food scrap collection bins at the farm: 

(1) line your container with paper or leaves and continue to layer in leaves or paper as you add your food scraps – this can help a lot.  

(2) if you have room, keep your food scrap collection container in your fridge or freezer until you’re ready to dispose. 

(3) come on over to the Barrington Farm School and see what we are doing there. Our dedicated group of volunteers are out there, sun or snow, processing food scraps. We are at the farm Wednesdays from 3 to 4 p.m. and Sundays from 9 to 10 a.m. Extra hands are always welcome (no lie, it is hard work and might not be for everyone) but we always enjoy showing off our system of scrap mixing, record keeping and hand-turning of the compost piles.  

And if composting isn’t your thing, lots and lots of other amazing things are going on at the farm to see or be part of. Swing on by and pay a visit to the farm stand on Federal Road next to the Barrington Public Safety complex or reach out to us at BarringtonFarmSchool@gmail.com

Happy Summer everyone,

The Barrington Farm School compost team