For those still trying to figure out what to do with all those leftover coffee grounds and egg shells, there is help. This weekend Felix Neck and the Polly Hill Arboretum are hosting a compost tea workshop with Ann McGovern, Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection’s consumer waste reduction coordinator.

Wow, that’s a mouthful. Perhaps a bit of composting is in order for Ms. McGovern’s title. Like maybe, Lady Who Turns Garbage into Garden Gold. Yes, that’s more like it.

Less agriculturally-minded folk than Mitchell Posin might mistake the sign on South Road advertising compost tea for a joke, something dreamt up by kids searching for the world’s least appealing beverage to flog by the side of the road.

In fact it is there to promote the result of three years’ trial and error by Mr. Posin, the co-owner Allen Farm sheep and wool company: an organic fertilizer solution for the bespoke ecology of Martha’s Vineyard.

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.