Growth of the soil: Local farmer turns waste into food

Every day is Earth Day at Full Circle Compost. Craig Witt's sweatshirt says so. He wears it in his daily celebration of the round, rain-wet fecund earth; the spring-warm, worm-pocked funky earth.

"Somehow we forget our food comes from the soil we're standing on," Witt says.

The 54-year-old former dairy farmer digs his arm into a squirming worm bin outside his Minden storefront. He comes up with a slimy, decomposing apple. With his bare hands, he breaks open the rotted fruit and points out the tiny whitish worms inside.

Shaped like a barrel, the worm bin has four circular layers stacked together. Green waste goes in the top, along with some water, and rich, dark, worm-digested humus comes out the bottom. Witt rubs the finished soil between his fingers, as rich and supple as chocolate mousse.

Minutes later, he's showing off the arugula, Swiss chard, parsley and cilantro growing in his cold-frame planters. He chews on the hearty leafage, staining his teeth an inky green, and thus the cycle from waste to food is complete.

"I would like to have people understand what they can do if they stop using their garbage disposals and instead get a worm farm," Witt says. "It's all about the recipe. We want to satisfy the cravings of plants. Compost is great for soil, but compost won't automatically fix the cravings of plants; it doesn't understand the deficiencies."

If organic gardening and farming is the future of food, then Witt is one of the mad scientists shaping the industry. The self-described soil farmer spent his childhood on one of the Valley's historic dairy farms: The three-generational Milky Way Farm in Minden. With a lifetime of experience and an agriculture degree from the University of Nevada, Reno, Witt has spent the last 15 years slowly building up customers for his compost business the way a good farmer slowly builds up fertility in his soil.

In Witt's head, the loose, loamy stuff we want in our gardens is a complex equation that balances the right amount of organic matter with the right amount of minerals.

"There's a whole turd science," he jokes. "The quality of compost is determined by its recipe. We've come up with a general understanding of the fertilities, deficiencies and excesses in the area. Being raised on a dairy farm, I thought every soil had a deficiency of cow poop. Every time our garden wasn't growing right, my dad would dump another scoop of cow poop on it. But it actually made it worse. It's like perfume or after-shave. You can't put on too much. You want to be subtle with it."

For example, Witt says, the No. 1 deficiency in Carson Valley soils is available calcium. Thus, his soil essence plus contains a trilogy of calcium-based minerals to offset that deficiency.

The product lies in one of two dozen piles of composts, mulches and fills scattered around the yard. Organics in the fertile mixtures range from straw and fainting goat feces to pine needles and grass clippings, not to mention kelp and feather meal in the really good stuff.

"We use compost as a matrix, the living biological workforce that takes the nutritional amendments and activates them," Witt said. "We have great compost made here; it understands temperatures in this area can swing from 22 degrees to 77 degrees in one day."

When a truck from Tom Ediss Landscape pulls up to the site, Witt says it's one of many companies that bring green waste to be recycled and take away finished compost.

He says he charges $8 a cubic yard to take green waste, but that suppliers get a $3 credit for every yard in return. Customers can either fill up their pick-ups in bulk or use the station's bag-your-own service.

"Commercial bagging is about something else, not about satisfying plant cravings," Witt says. "It's about the picture on the bag, and the bag's hiding what's inside. God made soil, and man made soil-less mixes. Unbalanced soils sure sell a lot of chemical fertilizers."

Witt estimates 95 percent of his materials come from local sources. Lira's Supermarket in Minden and Whole Foods in Reno routinely drop off their produce waste, and Witt said he's currently working out a deal with Douglas Disposal to get Walmart's green waste delivered straight to his composting site: The 30 acres of land leased from the Northern Nevada Correctional Center farm in south Carson City.

"What's happening today is that food is starting to become fun again," Witt says. "After you eat fresh produce grown in balanced soils, you feel different."

For aspiring composters, Witt says the trick is "lots of turning and lots of air," plus a good recipe to start with. He said to avoid anything potentially diseased, such as pet feces, and anything with harmful synthetic chemicals, such as clippings from a lawn recently treated with weed killers.

Of course, in vermicomposting, worms are king- red worms, pot worms, springtails.

"Worms eat pathogens. It's why God made worms, and why we're supposed to use them," Witt says. "Here, we try to emulate, to copy Mother Nature."

In light of the recession, Full Circle Compost has set up workshops for the second Saturday of each month through October. The workshops focus on recycling, composting and growing your own food, among other things.

Located at 3190 Highway 395, Full Circle Compost's regular business hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday.

For more information, visit www.fullcirclecompost.com or call 267-5305.