The Rural We: Melissa Higgins
Like the idea of composting but need some help? Melissa Higgins has a solution.
Melissa Higgins and her son, Jack.
A report on NPR gave Melissa Higgins the idea to start a composting company. Berkshire Compost is a service that supplies customers with the compost bin, picks up the contents weekly, and returns the soil-like compost when it has reached its final stage. Higgins, who lives in Housatonic, is assisted by her son, Jack. Berkshares, a local currency for the Berkshires region of Massachusetts, recently named Berkshire Compost its Business of the Month.
I opened a family child care facility in Great Barrington in 2001 when my third child was born. I’m still doing that. But when I heard the NPR report about a composting business in New Hampshire, about how something simple can have such a great impact, I thought, it’s perfect for our area. We’re not really city, not really rural. And we already have the farm-to-table movement. Why not do the next step: take that local food and put it back into local soil?
My son Jack, who is 19, had been attending the University of Vermont, but decided to take this year off because of COVID. He works at Guido’s, and then in the evening helps me with the composting business. Before we started It, we got certified in processing compost. I lthought it was something we could do on our own property, but it turns out there are regulations. So I took a farming course to see if I could buy my own farm. It was more like a “reality course,” but it got me connected to farmers in Massachusetts, and legal advice on how to start an LLC.
Then, Peter Stanton from Stanton Home called. He said they were thinking they’d like to have a compost facility on their farm, something they could have the residents work. We made an informal agreement that I would drop off food waste, they’d process it, and then we’d bring back the compost for our clients.
Jack Higgins making a local pick up.
We’ve been at it a couple of months. We have one commercial client — Guido’s — and a dozen or so in each of our little towns in South County. When he can, Jack picks up the food scraps from our clients on his bike.
It’s like having your garbage picked up. Once a week you put out the filled-up five-gallon bucket we supply. We take the food waste, bring it to Stanton Home, and empty it into the compost pad. They have someone there that manages the compost piles, turning the scraps and taking its temperature. A good compost takes nine months to a year, and we haven’t had a full season yet to return it to our customers.
It’s been difficult to promote Berkshire Compost with COVID; we had hoped to be at the farmers markets. Jack is trying to get me more involved in social media. People already get the value of composting, but don’t know that we offer this service. We do accept Berkshares. But I’m really excited about it. There’s a sense of accomplishment each time the bucket is filled that all of that is not going into the landfill but coming back to the soil.
