Coffee grinds, apple cores and curly orange carrot peels: straight to the trash they go in most households. But on Island farms, these food scraps (along with egg shells, wilted greens and watermelon seeds) go to the compost. For the farmers, this trash is treasure.

“It’s like crop insurance,” explained Jim Athearn of Morning Glory Farm last week as he stepped down from his tractor.

While the Martha's Vineyard Refuse Disposal and Resource
Recovery District committee negotiates costs, facility capacity and
logistics with the Rhode Island-based Waste Options company to build a
composting facility on the Island, many Islanders seek answers to more
basic questions.