Why create a Compost Trust?

Urban Tilth now cares for seven locations three urban gardens, two school gardens and two urban farms. The most recent piece, the North Richmond Farm, is three acres, which they secured with a 30 year lease almost four years ago. It was a piece of ground that in its distant past had been farmland and in recent years had become a dump. The first two years were spent hauling away that which had accumulated over decades. In this, the fourth year, soil is being rebuilt: truckloads of wood chips and compost, straw and donated horse manure, the shaping of raised beds. There are plans for a community pumpkin patch and beds of flowers to cut for bouquets.

But the thing that's missing, that cannot be rebuilt overnight is fertility.

Compost is the quickest way to build that and compost takes good feedstocks and years, or money, and usually both. Not only does compost lend itself to the restoration of soil, it adds microbes, fungi, worms; it sequesters carbon; it reduces the amount of water needed to irrigate; it becomes a sponge and holds onto rainwater longer; it grows healthy plants; and good compost smells and feels good like chocolate cake for the earth.

As a food desert, Richmond offers little in the way of fresh fruits and vegetables, and what is available in stores is more likely to be conventional than organic. Fertility will allow Urban Tilth to grow more food for their community healthy, fresh, local, organic food...

Since the need for fertility will be ongoing, we are starting a Compost Trust, a bank of donations at Urban Tilth that will be able to be used at any time for the purchase of compost. (Compost piles will always be under construction, and with time, ready for application, but there will always be an appetite for more until the soil is adequately restored.)

If you would care to sponsor a load or a yard or a load and a yard, it would be much appreciated. The going rate for high quality organic compost is about $80 / yard + there is a $80-$240 per load trucking fee (depending on the size of the load and distance to drop off site).

*$150 - approx. 1 cu yard + trucking

*$300 - approx. 2 cu yards + trucking

*$600 - approx. 4 cu yards + trucking

*$1200 - approx. 8 cu yards + trucking

*$2400 - approx. 16 cu yards + trucking

If you can please make a donation today. Donations are 100% tax deductible.

Many thanks!