Advanced Composting (Pine Hill)

Advanced Composting Seminar

Tuesday May 9th 2023 

1:00-2:30 PM

Pine Hill Community Center

287 Main St, Pine Hill, NY 12465

This advanced composting class is ideal for home composters who have a few years of experience with backyard composting methods. For those who understand the basics, but want to ‘up their game,’ let us help you to learn more skills and tricks to make that ‘gardener’s black gold’ as quickly as possible! This class will review some of the science behind how composting ‘works’ through the soil food web, how to balance browns and greens and prepare your feedstocks, and various tips for making a hot compost heap. This class will also cover what is bokashi composting and how it can help accelerate your composting process while also aiding in deterring pests!

This class will be offered in person at the Pine Hill Community Center, with hosts Angelina Brandt, Director of Sustainability, and Tanesia White, Recycling Educator of the Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency, in collaboration with the Town of Shandaken’s Conservation Advisory Council. Please pre-register for this class (walk-ins are also welcome). 

Accessibility:This class will take place indoors on the ground floor of the Community Center.  The facility is wheelchair accessible. Reserved seating is available by request; please contact Angelina Brandt at APEO@UCRRA.ORG. Please note: the use of face masks is optional at the Community Center.

We strive to offer equal program opportunities. Educational resources in Spanish are available by request. If you require any special accommodations or have questions about this program, please contact Angelina Brandt, Director of Sustainability, at APEO@UCRRA.ORG  or 845-336-3336.

We’re Celebrating Compost Awareness Week!

About ICAW: International Compost Awareness Week  is the largest and most comprehensive education initiative of the compost industry. It’s celebrated nationwide, internationally, and officially across New York Stare each year during the first full week of May. The goal of ICAW is for communities everywhere to raise public awareness about the many benefits of composting and how to make and use compost to regenerate soils. Visit the New York Compost Awareness Week page for more information about local programs, events, and initiatives.

2023 Theme: For Healthier Soil, Healthier Food…Compost! Each year, a new theme for ICAW is chosen. The 2023 theme was chosen based on a serious world-wide issue that every nation, unfortunately, experiences: hunger. As part of the ICAW committee’s global discussion with our international partners around the world, we spoke the same language, and all wanted to promote a unified theme – aligning a topic important to each country while emphasizing our work with compost. The chosen 2023 theme best reflects the goal of focusing on how compost can have a role in helping feed the world, by making our soil healthier which produces healthier food. How does compost help? By recycling organics into compost and using it on our farmlands we create healthy soils that produce healthier food and higher yields. It also reduces the need for fertilizer and pesticides, improves water quality and conserves water, as well as stores carbon in soil – helping to reduce climate change. Compost not only helps the environment but also helps to decrease food shortages experienced around the world. For Healthier Soil, Healthier Food…Compost!

This year’s winner of the ICAW 2023 Poster Contest is Jun Qi Tan, an illustrator and storyteller from Singapore.