Complete The Circle

Grow, harvest, prepare, serve, eat, repeat. It is pretty easy to explain the chain of events that ends with food in the belly. For the past few months we have been involved a little test project with one of our local producers to make that chain a circle. A few months ago Phil Hadley, Jim Garman, and myself began a conversation about using various produce from the land they work off of Green End Ave in Middletown. It was a no brainer, they are growing great stuff the old fashioned way-with a whole lot of hard work. I had Just met Jim, but have gotten to know Phil through our involvement in the Portsmouth Agriculture Committee. I love to grow things while Phil’s real passions are in  the idea of turning the waste and byproducts into something useful, ultimately an anaerobic digester to provide electric power to this area. That piece will take a bit of time because it requires a fairy large facility. Until then we both figured that we could make the scraps useful by means of compost. Several weeks ago we began to collect a modest amount of scraps and will continue to do so. We are hoping that this is just a start of  something that we can  do on a massive scale in the near future. Hey, at the very least I know I will have great dirt to grow in. The raw vegetable scraps break down into a dark, nutrient rich, airy soil that is perfect for planting just about anything that grows in this region.