This year’s Western Slope Soil Health, Food and Farm Forum was a sold out packed event at the Montrose Pavilion. Over 200 Farmers and Ranchers moved from keynote speakers to break out sessions while passing numerous tables in the registration area.

This year’s theme “Cultivating a Home on the Range” brought a number of experts on healthy soil, ranching and farming to the two day event which included a local sourced lunch, drone demonstrations and numerous ag businesses, state agencies and vendors.

Penelope Powell, Executive Director of Valley Food Partnership and chair for the event said the value of the annual forum can be found in the power of human connections.

Sitting at her booth filled with numerous packages of seeds is Laura Parker of High Desert Seed and Gardens. Laura, whose business is located in Paonia, was among many ag producers interested in not only promoting her business but in making connections with other like minded individuals.

While much of the time at the conference was spent in break out sessions, listening to keynote speakers or watching demonstrations, one Delta County Company more interested in what was going into the trash cans.

Eric Sparhawk and Jake DeWolfe of CHT Resources, a soil composting business, became inspired to do some onsite recycling and composting on site. Jake said testing took place at their Delta composting site prior to gathering the recyclable products and food waste at the conference.

The two day event wrapped up on Saturday with a beer and wine reception featuring a tasting provided by a local winery and two local breweries.

Courtesy of KVNF. Read the Article Here

In winter of 2024, in addition to being a co-sponsor of this important event, we provided composting services for the first time. The event serves fantastic local food and drinks so it was only logical to set up some bins and provide composting services. EcoProducts donated the compostable products - which are all BPI certified which is a requirement for us to be able to compost them at our facility. We look forward to providing this important service in the future. 

 KVNF also did a story about this event and interviewed us about collecting the composting.

The US Composting Council’s sister organization Compost Research and Education Foundation hosts an in-depth composter operator training a couple times every year. Jake and Erica attended in the fall of 2022 in Tampa Florida. This high quality, hands on training that takes place over a week helped change the course of our organization. We came home from the training with a much greater understanding of how to make quality compost which changed our recipe and process. We learned about equipment and got to tour some very large facilities. We also made lasting friendships with fellow composters from around the country.

Reporter Lisa Young came out to our facility our first full summer of operation and we provided an interview. This was when we were still called CHT Resources and hadn’t attended our compost operator training course. Nutrient-rich composting material often referred to as “black gold” is being created in the dry adobe hills at a commercial composting site near the base of the Grand Mesa in Delta County. KVNF Freelance Reporter Lisa Young reports.