Abandoned Connecticut Quarry to be Transformed Into Soil Farm
By Frank Carini / ecoRI News staff
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Jayne Merner with her father, Mike, and Birdie at Earth Care Farm’s Connecticut site. (Sterling Tougas) |
Jayne Merner, daughter of Mike, the founder of Charlestown,
R.I.-based Earth
Care Farm, recently told ecoRI News the decision to move to Connecticut was
based on land availability, lack of neighbor pressure, and costs. She also said
the search was narrowed because they didn’t want to use “good land” and they
didn’t want to cut down trees.
They found just the spot, on Newport Road in this small Windham County town. The former gravel pit in northeastern Connecticut was just what the second-generation compost farmer was searching for.
The 241-acre site needs plenty of work, but the
transformation from abandoned gravel yard that features cornfields lost to
meadows of mugwort and a cemetery of rocks of all shapes and sizes will begin
on 14 acres at the property’s entrance.
For nearly five decades, the Merner family, led by Mike, has
played the role of an organic alchemist, making a living turning zoo and stable
manure, wood chips, leaves, straw shavings, seaweed, fish guts, coffee grounds,
and food scrap into soil.
This nutrient-rich compost helps meet the needs of New
England farmers looking for soil enrichment. The Earth Care Farm operation
currently generates about 5,000 cubic yards annually of compost certified by
the Organic Materials
Review Institute. Some 25,000 tons of yard debris, manures, and food scrap
is processed to make that compost.
The benefits of organic compost include increased soil
fertility, better balanced soil pH, and improved chemical makeup of the soil.
It also creates a healthy habitat for microorganisms, and increases drainage,
aeration, and the water-holding capacity of soil — all factors that help plants
better withstand weather extremes and disease.
Earth Care Farm’s existing composting operation in southern
Rhode Island uses 3 acres for its six-stage compost production process and
employs four full-time staff and seasonal help.
Merner noted that, with a customer base of 5,000 regional
growers, demand has increasingly exceeded production capacity. Hence, the
search for more room.
“We’ve been selling out of batches of compost for the last five years. I’ve been wanting to just keep that supply going for the gardening and farming community,” Merner said prior to giving ecoRI News a recent tour of the property. “There’s just so much material out in the world that should be composted. This was just the right place at the right time.”
The Sterling operation will model the Charlestown facility,
focusing on the processing of collected materials using thermophilic, windrow
composting methods. This new facility, when operational, is anticipated to
accept 500 tons of material weekly, according to Merner, to produce about
25,000 tons of compost annually.
“The same operation,” Merner said. “Just bigger.”
It took Merner more than two years to find this quiet gravel
pit on a mostly residential street just over the Rhode Island line from
Coventry and some 30 miles from Earth Care Farm.
“I looked for two years in Rhode Island and almost rented a
site in Richmond, and then it just wasn’t quite working out and I couldn’t find
something with enough buffer that I felt comfortable with neighbors,” she said.
“I didn’t want to take good farmland and transform it for compost. I was really
looking for something unique.”
One of Earth Care Farm’s employees, Justin Boss, suggested
looking in Connecticut. They found the gravel bank on Zillow; it had been on
the market for about a year. They drove up two days before Christmas 2023 to
check it out.
“Just coming down the driveway [dirt with plenty of bumps]
felt so similar to the driveway at Earth Care Farm,” Merner said. “Then we
pulled up and there was a scale and a scale house. I’ve always wanted a weigh
station at the farm to make it easier for trucks to not have to stop at weigh
stations. It just felt perfect.”
The real estate agent drove them around fallow cornfields
and a stone quarry, and showed them a forest and ponds.
“The potential was so amazing,” Merner said. “It was almost
like too expansive for my mind to wrap around. But I knew if I could just focus
on this, get this going, and then we’re gonna keep on dreaming about what
happens with the other parts of the land. I’m just super focused now on
the 14-acre piece.”
The cost to expand the farm’s composting operation was $1.5
million. The sale became official in April 2024.
To move forward with its Connecticut composting operation,
Earth Care Farm was required to obtain seven permits through municipal and
state government. Six have been approved. The last one, the operation’s solid
waste permit application, was filed in late April and it could take up to nine
months to be approved. It cost $10,000 to apply.
On the day ecoRI News was given a tour, Merner’s boyfriend —
coincidentally named Sterling — was there helping prepare the site for future
composting, and dog Birdie was busy laying about. Mike arrived shortly after,
to star in an Earth Care Farm video about the importance of composting.
“He just let me run with it, but I think he thinks I’m a
little bit nuts,” Merner said of her father’s take on the expansion into
Connecticut. “There’s a massive amount of work I’ve got coming.”
Her dad, an experienced farmer, certainly understands the
need for more composting infrastructure, but the 75-year-old, looking out over
241 acres of space — for comparison, Earth Care Farm is 27 acres — could be
forgiven for being a bit overwhelmed.
“I think it’s pretty urgent,” Mike said of putting food
scrap and other organic material to better use. “I think with the climate
crisis that we need more composting and conscious sequestering of carbon.”
His daughter noted that as the amount of farmland in the
region continues to dwindle — mostly lost to large, unaffordable homes and
ground-mounted solar arrays — the need for nutritious compost will only be
greater. She hopes to turn this used and abused property into an operation that
helps restore soil elsewhere.
During her flirtation with Connecticut, Merner learned the
state doesn’t have much in the way of composting infrastructure.
“There’s a large yard material composting facility, and
there’s a couple of pilot programs starting up,” she said. “This permit
application is the first large-scale, food-scrap composting permit in the
state.”
Merner, 44, and her team have plenty of work ahead, but they
are up for the challenge.
“There’s moments of pure excitement. It’s so exhilarating,”
Merner said. “And then it’s super overwhelming … and the amount of debt I put
myself in.”