Join Adam Hyde of Compost Earth! for a half day hands-on composting workshop. Participants will explore several approaches to homestead-scale composting. The workshop will focus on generating small-volume high-quality compost that will enliven your soils with both beneficial soil microbes and nutrient dense organic matter. Together, we will build several proven systems of small-scale composting, covering key concepts, including carbon:nitrogen ratios of different feedstocks, managing air and moisture, qualitative and quantitative monitoring and evaluation, fungi:bacteria ratio, thermophilic process, vermicomposting, and more! Biology of living soils, compost extracts and teas, and biochar are soil health topics that will be explored and demonstrated.
What To Expect
You will spend he day with Adam Hyde at Cave Creek Farm to develop this essential regenerative farmstead skill to take home with you. Please be prepared for any weather as we will be outside for this workshop. Light fare and beverages available at the Farm Stand. Please feel free to arrive early if you wish to tour the grounds prior to the workshop.
Space is limited.
Details
All materials for the class are included. No experience necessary. Open to ages 16 and over.
Meet the Instructor
Adam grew up a New England farm kid on a historic family homestead, Gateways Farm, connecting with the land, always curious about living with nature. As an only child he spent hours and days wandering and exploring the farm. In his early years, Adam studied primitive skills and spirituality, running a small CSA on his family’s land. It is that same feeling of belonging to a place that guided him and Kaye to find and create Broadfork Farm.
Adam is tending Broadfork toward a perennial style of agriculture, focusing on perennial field crops, woody plants and soil microbiome health. His approach is influenced strongly by his academic background in agroecology, and graduate study in systems theory, complexity science, and Goethean phenomenology. Though, perhaps, his greatest teachers are his three children. And of course learning from mistakes made. Farming is nothing, if not learning from one’s mistakes.
The soil microbiome is Adam's business interest and the focus of Broadfork Farm's new humus compost enterprise. With an ear to the earth, 2020 is a year for site and logistics development, material trials, and refinement of a premium quality humus compost that will serve as the base material for a range of microbial soil supplements, to support a diversity of growers and customers in the Columbia Gorge and beyond.
Adam's professional background includes working as a farmer, conservation land planner and steward, and as a project manager in corporate sustainability strategy consulting for a handful of Fortune 500 companies. Adam has accumulated 20+ years practicing organic agriculture, and developing food and farm enterprises on both US coasts. Adam is available for consultation and teaching and is open to collaborations of many forms.
Visiting us for an event? Enjoy the farmhouse or glamping tent to get the full experience.
