New Perspectives on Composting for Backyard Gardeners
A Presentation by Bruno R. Follador, Biodynamic Researcher and Consultant and Angela L. Curtes, Land Preservation Consultant
Free to members or with admission to the sculpture garden.
This presentation is designed for home gardeners of all ages who are ready to take composting to the next level. Lynden began working with the presenters during the development of Emilie Clark’s Sweet Corruptions. When it came time to work with Urban Underground to plant the pilot garden next to Clark’s Research Station, we hauled in some of the compost made in East Troy, and Clark has included information on the compost in her station.
As home growers know, good soil is critical to the success of a backyard garden. But quality of soil is also a crucial foundation for healthy ecosystems, food systems and quality of life conditions for the future of humanity. This presentation will explore how to create or improve and enhance your existing compost, while also further exploring the deeper meaning and context of soil fertility and garden ecology.
We will also introduce a relatively new method of composting that can be implemented on a backyard garden scale that uses a hot controlled fermentation process that rapidly transforms materials into a high quality compost that promotes and builds soil structure and fertility.
About the Presenters
Bruno R. Follador, Biodynamic Researcher and Consultant
Bruno R. Follador was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil where he studied geography at the University of Sao Paulo (USP). He received his training in biodynamic gardening and beekeeping at the Pfeiffer Center, NY. For the last three years he was one of the researchers and consultants at the Ludolf Andreas Lab for Soil Fertility at Andreashof, a biodynamic farm in Germany, where he worked with compost and chromatography. Currently, he divides his time between Brazil and the U.S.A where he is consulting at different farms.
Angela Curtes, Land Preservation Consultant
For over 20 years, Curtes has worked in the fields of environmental and wilderness education, and natural area and farmland preservation. She graduated from Prescott College, Arizona in 1992 with two BA’s in Environmental Studies and Alternative Education. She co-founded and for eight years co-directed Common Earth: Educational Adventures of the Earth and Mind in Marin, California, leading women and girls of diverse economic and cultural backgrounds into wilderness settings to build leadership and personal skills, and awareness of cultural and natural history. During this time she also worked full-time as the Education Director of the Pacific Environment and Resources Center (PERC), an international non-profit, directing and teaching K-12 global environmental education programs to schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2000, she moved back home to her family’s farm in southeast Wisconsin and worked for over seven years for the Ozaukee Washington Land Trust as their lands specialist and assistant director, guiding natural area and farmland preservation efforts. From 2008 to 2012, she was the acting executive director of the Yggdrasil Land Foundation, a national land trust working to preserve organic and biodynamic farms. Since early 2012, she has worked for Skylark, Inc. as its lands director to develop and implement a land preservation strategy to protect over 800 acres for sustainable, non-chemical agriculture. Her interest in biodynamic agriculture led to a two-month intensive study in Germany, under mentors Roland Ulrich and Bruno Follador, where she learned a hot controlled fermentation compost method and chromatography. In June 2012 she implemented a farm-scale compost pilot project in East Troy, Wisconsin and set up a chromatography lab to test base farm soils and compost qualities.
