it is absolutely insane how much is
wasted every day all across the country
all across the world from restaurants
dining Halls food processing facilities
this is the norm lot of nutrient-filled
material turning into garbage but in
this video we're going to show you how
to turn garbage back into food
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we're up at 1700 feet on standard
mountain in the Northeast Kingdom of
Vermont we're on historically unseated
Abenaki tribal land this is the region
of the nellhagen band Vermont discards
enough food to grow roughly 20 000 Acres
of mixed vegetables annually organically
and that is somewhere between 50 and 100
percent of what it would take to feed
the state depending on how your diet is
configured
my name is Tom Gilbert and I'm the owner
and operator of the farm with a crew of
of 10 folks collecting food scraps
foraging laying hens making compost and
worm castings and growing crops on the
backside
Dr Farm is a full cycle integrated Farm
so specifically the farm being designed
after the carbon cycle is an effort to
you know mitigate the release of carbon
into the atmosphere and sequester it
into soil and crops
but also to capture those resources for
the local food system to make that more
robust and resilient and lastly to just
build in an internal accountability to
the community where we make sure that we
handle our own materials and that we
don't somehow cause an impact in other
communities by sending them to landfills
that will impact drinking water surface
water and other aspects of human and
ecological health
you know one of the ironies in in all of
these things is that many of the places
where there are incinerators or
landfills happen to also be food
insecure communities and so it's this
double insult of
you know we don't make resources
adequately available here and yet we're
asking you to Bear the burden of all of
the rest of society's pollution and
getting these systems right getting in
the right relationship with carbon is
also about getting in right relationship
with each other from Individual to
individual but community community to me
what I see in somebody's container of
rotting material that they may think of
as smelling bad
and being gross you know we we really
see that as uh that's our bread and
butter you know that's that's everything
else is sort of built off of that
material
so the the first thing that sets off our
our chain of Enterprises on the farm is
we go off of the farm and drive a truck
with a 10 yard dump trailer around all
the surrounding communities around here
we pick up from about 100 plus
businesses and schools trailers full and
we come back to the farm we tip the food
scraps here and then we blend those food
scraps with what we call hot mix it's a
blend of other compostable materials a
bunch of different carbon materials
which are the energy source to to
balance the the protein source and the
food scraps and the manure when that
blend is made we bring it up to
temperature first to scrub the pathogens
out of it then we bring it down to lay
hens and give it to them to scratch
through and basically what they're doing
is kind of fulfilling their ecological
Destiny their sort of natural foraging
habit which is to scratch the forest
floor
and then once the hens have their shot
at foraging that and capturing the
energy and the protein from that
material whatever they don't eat we
bring out here to the compost pad and
the material starts on the far end here
and then Works its way this way so these
piles are getting turned and literally
they will kind of creep across the pad
and eventually end up at the screen and
go through the screen and then come in
here to the finishing shed where they
finish curing and then eventually out to
the retail area or get loaded directly
into trucks
one of the challenges with a small farm
is arriving at that place where there's
a balance between your costs and your
revenues and for us an important part to
this is figuring out how to limit or
mitigate input costs
so grain is expensive if we're bringing
food scraps in that we're getting paid a
fee for
to handle for somebody we're bringing in
feed not just for free but at a net
revenue so we've we've kicked off the
the process of feeding hens in a in a
net positive way that allows us to
operate a smaller flock than somebody
who's just a strained grain flock might
need to be operating at and you know and
then along the way just like the carbon
we're capturing additional value at each
step so we're really dragging this out
and and squeezing each each dollar out
of each of those carbon molecules we're
trying not to waste carbon we're trying
to be really efficient with money though
so this is our our worm bin and this is
where we bring in a variety of
maturities of compost and feed the worms
with that this product is ultimately
it's gone through the heating process
out there to hit the organic standard
and then we bring it in here and cool it
down really fast which helps us retain
more of the nitrogen and then we use the
worms to manipulate the soil food web so
that we can start creating a unique
biological finished product and the
worms basically act like a starfish in a
tidal pool and manipulate the other
organisms through eating and other forms
of foraging
and this bin is what's called a flow
through bin so it's it's designed like
the rest of our operation to mimic the
natural habitat of these these organisms
and their tendencies
and then the bottom of this bin is a
great and there's a motor on that end
and that motor has a looped cable that's
has a cutting bar that sits on these
bottom rails and just cuts off the
bottom half inch and so so we're always
filling from the top and taking off from
the bottom takes about three and a half
months for the material to move through
the bin
and then we dry it on the ground and
then run it through the screen
we sell several different size bags we
sell something as small as a two quart
bag that might be like a stored under
your sink and use it on your house
plants bag and that retails for about 10
bucks and then we sell all the way up to
cubic yard sling sacks and those retail
for about 1600 bucks
one of the things that I think inspires
us to specifically build a farm system
that that's built around handling food
scraps and then replenishing soil and
growing crops and other food is you know
ecologically that's that is the
necessary cycle to re-establish in the
food system it it reflects that the
circular nature of the carbon cycle and
the the fundamental pathway and
relationship of carbon in the system
that will allow us to mitigate
greenhouse gas emissions
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so just imagine this same idea
multiplied thousands of times outside
every town and City Farms taking all of
the food waste the garbage of the city
and turning it into beautiful fertile
compost
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