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Delta Compost making dirt great

With fall yard clean-up looming there’s a place that will take your leaves, pumpkins, branches or grass clipping for free and then turn them into clean reusable composting for homes, construction or farming.

Lisa Young: Erica Sparhawk, co-owner of Delta Compost, formerly you guys were C.H.T. Resources. You've made a lot of changes. I was out here about two years ago and this place has really expanded and grown quite a bit. Tell me what is new and improved and going on here at Delta Compost?

Erica Sparhawk: Yeah. We're so glad to have you out here. First we changed our name because it was much more logical and easier for people to remember. We're really proud to be in Delta and wanted to make it easy for folks to remember who we are and where to find us.

We've also been the recipients of a state grant that allowed us to purchase a large horizontal grinder. And while we've been accepting yard waste, we can now grind it and get it worked into compost much quicker than when we were having to rent a piece of equipment once or twice a year. So we really want to make sure folks know we're still offering yard waste. They can bring it to us for free. So that's any sort of brush leaves that you might have this fall that you want to get out of your yard.

After windstorms, we see lots of folks bringing in big trees that might have come down a lot of cottonwoods and will take any size of any of that brush or wood that the folks in the Delta area have and they want to get rid of.

Young: And you also added a service where you're able to take the compost to farms, larger users. Tell me a little bit about that.

Sparhawk: Yeah. So we've been selling compost in bulk, but you need to be able to have a truck or a trailer of your own or you have needed that and so we just procured a 14 yard trailer and we have a truck we can come make, you know, these smaller deliveries.

We've had a couple folks get it who might be redoing their entire yard or even a new construction home. We dropped off about four loads to their house so that they could incorporate it and help build soil from the start as they were building their home. So we hope to be able to make it super easy for local folks to get whether it's just a couple of yards or the full, you know, ten yards or whatever that we can fit in our trailer. And that way we can get it out to more folks.

Young: Not only is it more convenient for the customer, but it also saves materials and whatever you're using to bag the compost as well. So that's an added savings to the environment. What else is going on? I mean, there's a lot of expansion. I'm just kind of looking around. I noticed a lot of like wood pallets over here. Is that something you are also receiving at this time if folks have those?

Sparhawk: Yeah, we'll take wood pallets that are not treated or painted and then ask that folks bring, you know, remove sometimes there's plastic connected to it. So we don't want the trash and then we grind those up. Our grinder is able to remove all of the metal and nails, and that way we turn it into especially small wood chips that we can use in our composting process.

Young: On my way out here, I was following a pickup with a little stock trailer and I was looking in the back of it intently to see what where they were going to go. Because I was thinking maybe they're going to come out here, you know, and compost it because they had a lot of look like potential composting materials. But as we got to the T section, we're either go to the landfill or you come out here. They took the right and went to the landfill. I came left, come out here, but I kind of wanted to stop them and say, "Hey, you might have something that you could have composted."

So it is really important to get the word out because you can save a lot of materials going that would go to the landfill out here in Adobe Buttes. You could bring it out here. So that sounds like a great plan. What else is going on?

Sparhawk: Well, along those lines, we have had people start bringing us manure from their horse stalls or farms. And we have a really great relationship with the landfill and they are reaching capacity. So when you when they receive waste, their only option is to bury it or put it for cover on their landfill. So they're really excited or I mean, really supportive of having us take that organic waste that we can turn into compost. So sometimes people will even go up to the landfill and the landfill will say, "Hey, you should go take this to Delta Compost. They can take these materials."

And we currently don't charge anything for taking the yard waste and you do get charged at the landfill. And part of that is so that we can get folks to know who we are and where we are. And we have been in conversations with local orchards and some of them might have some waste. We just need to help them figure out what containers they can get them in. So it's easy to deliver.

I'm looking at a pile of apples that somebody dropped off right over here in our yard waste. And so as after Halloween comes, if people want to come throw their pumpkins in a pile, we'll take pumpkins.

We're looking to grow the kind of yard waste. And then eventually, we'd love to get more. Food waste from folks in the various communities. And we're working with some different partners to figure out options to make that happen and make it easy for folks.

Young: Delta Compost is located on Dough Spoon Road, north of Delta, not too far away from Adobe Buttes Landfill.

Lisa was born in Texas but grew up on a small farm in Olathe, Colorado and considers herself a “Colorado native after six years of age.” Lisa has seven years experience in media, beginning as a News Director for a small radio station on the Eastern Plains. Following her initial radio career, Lisa worked as a staff reporter for The Journal Advocate in Sterling, Colorado and most recently as a staff reporter for the Delta County Independent. Lisa is thrilled to join the award-winning News and Public Affairs team at KVNF.