What about the little guy?
Springing forward every year for daylight saving time is always a bit of a shock to my system—and becomes more so with each passing year. It’s hard answering that alarm bell when it still looks like the dead of night outside. Thank goodness for the snooze button reprieve.
On the flip side, the time change also serves as a signal to our many Food Loops gardeners, farmers, nurseries, and landscapers that it’s compost time! Food Loops recycles everything that can be recycled, but our go-to commodity has always been food waste. The fruits of those efforts—all puns intended—is wonderful, sustainable compost. Nothing against regular carbon or mushroom compost, but from what our customers repeatedly tell us, those just don’t perform as well as food waste compost. From what we hear, our formula of three parts food waste to two parts carbon will make your garden, bushes, and trees all sing with delight.
But much like the growing season itself, time is always of the essence. In fact, it’s our most valuable resource—especially when it comes to compost. Because we have limited time, we’re always thinking big. Big as in we like to sell our compost in 45 or 15-yard truckloads. This is great for our high volume customers who often buy multiple loads, but most of our backyard gardeners don’t need nearly that much.
Enter our customer pick up program introduced last year. Pick up being the optimal word in that we began offering 1.5 and half-yard scoops for folks to drive out to our place to purchase. An amount, coincidentally enough, which is approximately the same that also happens to fit the average—you guessed it—pickup truck. Turns out all folks needed was a truck or a trailer to pick up a little sustainable magic and we were off to the races serving a whole new market segment.
The pickup option for our compost has proven so popular that this year several garden groups have reached out to us keeping our phone ringing off the wall—which I realize is a reference that dates me somewhat, but you get the gist. With this new batch of calls, we’ve heard that it’s nice we offer compost by the scoops, but what about the folks who don’t have access to a truck or trailer? As in, what about us REALLY SMALL GARDENERS?!! What can you do for us?!
Never one to turn away the ardent gardener—we’ve come up with a plan. From 9 to 11 every Saturday morning now through April 29, bring your 5-gallon buckets out to our place at 3927 N. Arkansas in Rogers, and we’ll load you up for $5/bucket. Pretty sure even the smallest of cars can hold a 5-gallon bucket or two.
Some might say this is a fool’s folly offering such a seemingly small amount and taking up time on a Saturday that could be spent doing something else, but I assure you, in
just the first few Saturdays we’ve been offering this, talking to customers has been such a blessing. We hear about their gardens, what they grow, and their plans for the coming season. As a boy raised on a farm/turned gardener myself, I can relate to the excitement a new growing season brings.
So if you’re a backyard gardener or looking to become one, or maybe you just want to reward your trees and bushes for looking so good, gather your 5-gallon buckets and come out and see us. No matter what the size, your outdoor green spaces will thank you BIG.