NIck moving kitchen scraps from his "Gator" into the compost bin
Camp Ballibay is in the middle of their second year of composting food scraps from the kitchen and dining hall. This environmentally friendly strategy reduces waste and creates a nutrient rich supplement for the camp garden. Recently, our giant camp compost bins were moved from outside the kitchen to a more distant location. The reasons for this move were many. Compost needs full sun in order to optimally heat up. Compost can be sort of stinky if its out of balance, no one wants the odors of stinky out of balance compost while they are cooking or eating.
Now that the compost bins are not so convenient to the kitchen, food scraps from both the kitchen and the dining hall need to be transported to the compost bins on a daily basis. This boiled down to yet another job for an already very busy staff.
Who ended up with this new job? Nick Faber. A big and strong, highly dependable guy, Nick has been an integral part of Camp Ballibay for over 12 years both as a camper and now as staff. Its people like Nick that make this camp special. This year, he oversees lighting and all aspects of technical theater. Without Nick, the show might not go on.
Every night after dinner, Nick loads two heavy bins filled with scraps to his John Deere “Gator” tractor and drives them out to the newly relocated compost bins located beyond the horses in a distant field. At first, Nick wasn’t too pleased with this new additional responsibility, driving heavy pails of food scraps out to the compost bin every night. But it didn’t take long for Nick to become connected to the compost. Like the garden, each day it changes. with the addition of some hay each night along with the full sun each day, the compost was no longer stinky. And, most importantly, it started to decompose right before his eyes.
Compost can be a metaphor for all sorts of things in life. When things break down, they create the opportunity for new and better things to come along. While moving food scraps into a distant compost bin can be heavy and sometimes stinky work, Nick has begun to see the beauty of this task as he bears witness to this summer’s food scraps transforming from garbage into something much more useful. By next spring, this nutrient rich product will be ready to be added back into the soil so that our veggies next year will grow even better than this year.
After dinner, I sometimes hitch a ride with Nick on the “Gator” to visit the compost. It makes my heart smile to see that Nick is taking such good care of next years garden.
