LOCALadk Magazine
Issue link: https://localadkmagazine.uberflip.com/i/1526221
LOCALadk 38 CfG: Meet the faces behind the name Compost for Good, or CfG as we like to call our- selves, consists of a group of three individuals: John Culpepper, his daughter Katie ("the other Culpepper") and myself — a "wannabe Culpepper" — who are "passionate about composting." We co-founded CfG four years ago, born out of an overwhelming demand and need for support for a wide range of individuals, organizations, institutions, businesses, municipali- ties, etc,. interested in community-scale composting. Culpepper - the John one - was working as Director of Facilities and Sustainability at North Country School Camp Treetops in 2015 when he partnered with Jenni- fer Perry - that's me - to build a 20'x4' rotating drum composter. Designed by John and local manufacturer Greg LeClair, that composter was more affordable than many of the systems readily available. The pilot composter has been churning out compost made from food scraps at the North Country School/ Camp Treetops' Lake Placid campus for nearly ten years. The system was so successful that six more composters have been built and distributed through- out the North Country. Following our open source design document, other composters have been man- ufactured across the US and in several international communities. Upon publication of a case study drafted by myself and John highlighting the operation of the drum composter in 2016, John found himself spending dozens of hours each week responding to inquiries from around the world about composting. Community Scale Composting - The Great Unifier By Jennifer Perry 7,500,000,000,000,000,000. This number, or 7.5 x 1018 represents all of the grains of sand on all of the beach- es on earth. Here's another number for comparison: There are up to several billion microbes in one gram of compost. Compost for Good cofounder John Culpepper — a soil scientist and certified soil microscopist — likes to start our presentations with this staggering statistic that encompasses what is known as the Soil Food Web. This complex interplay of single celled organisms, microarthropods, and fungi deserves all of the attention they can get. Life as we know it is predicated upon its existence and healthy function. It is, in fact, the microbes that steal the show, but let's start with the humans that make up this story first.