Peace, dirt, and love: an inside look at Blackbear Composting

OVERVIEW

Greetings crunch vessels!! Do you love dirt and earthworms? Do you feel sad when you see countless Roots bowls in the trash cans along the corner and want to better understand where food goes after we say goodbye to it? Do you want to increase the DIRT component of the ODC trinity “peace, love and dirt”? Do you identify with decomposers in the ecosystems of life? Do you feel deep and soul-tuckered joy every time you see the pit of food buried into the shred shack’s backyard? Do you feel compost-curious, compost-confident, or compost-enthused and wanna learn about Charlottesville’s robust Black Bear Composting system?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, come join Elli, Owen, and me for a QUEST OF COMPOSTING ENLIGHTENMENT right after classes end. That’s right, folks, the whispers in the wind prevailed to be true – we are bumping to Augusta County just Northwest of us to witness and experience the Black Bear Composting facility in action, facilitated so kindly by composting expert Eric Walter. Black Bear is the industrial composting facility that services UVA’s compost along with hundreds of household compost collections in town, and Eric will bring us behind the scenes to help understand how composting works, where we fit into the system, and how we can improve composting / commune more deeply with dirt in our own lives. The magical cycle of food regeneration squirrels on, and we can experience it all together.

SO HERE’S DA PLAN:
9 AM – gather at the corner of Echols, pile into ye old vehicles and embark
10 AM – 12 PM – tour w/ Eric wooooot composting so much communion
1PM – return home with the deep regenerative power of soil embroiled into our souls

WHAT TO BRING:
-Layer yourself! Wear shoes for the cold and mud – we gonna be outside the whole time and probably get muddy!
-Water and snacks as desired
-Small vessel for collecting small amounts of soil with if you desire…???

**DRIVERS ARE PRIORITIZED off the waitlist and gas shall be reimbursed!!**