Commercial Composting on the Farm Environmental Benefits: A Conversation with Curtis Haderle of WYO Farm Composting, Thayne, WY

Mary Caucutt was grateful to Curtis for taking time out of his busy schedule to sit down and talk with her on May 19, 2026 about his farm and composting work.

What was the genesis of this idea for commercial composting on your farm?

It is a little unusual to have a non-municipality commercial composting operation. As a farmer in Thayne, we were already tied to the Jackson market. The Jackson market has been recycling for years and already had a high interest in environmental benefits of commercial compost. In 2013, we were approached by Hole Food Rescue and Healthy Being Juicery to take their food waste. They hoped I could take their leftovers and feed them to my pigs to keep the waste out of the landfill stream. I did, and my pigs loved it.

As people heard about this, we were approached by more and more folks about it. In 2018, we thought, let's do a business where we offer food scrap waste collection to businesses and individuals, either curbside or at a drop point. We grew from there. I still have food for my animals and plenty of organic matter for composting.

How did your operation go from zero to fifty?

We started the compost business with a website to schedule pickups. I incentivized people to buy food from the farm and get a break on their curbside compost pickup. We wanted to create a cyclical economy of nutrient recycling to produce nutrient rich food.

Jackson, WY does not have a landfill. It is in the municipality's best interest to keep anything they can out of the solid waste stream. Added to this, the population of Jackson, by and large, are more conscious than many in Wyoming of the environmental benefits of keeping organic waste out of the landfill. In fact, I just met with a pre-k class in Jackson to talk about composting and they knew so much already. When I was a kid, I had never heard the word.

We started selling the compost small scale from our farm. We package the compost soil in burlap rather than plastic, so its bioavailability remains high. So far this spring we have sold sixty cubic yards.

What obstacles have you faced and what resources or partnerships did you employ to overcome those obstacles?

Compost piles are weather dependent. Unlike backyard compost piles, my commercial piles are large enough to be active through the winter; however, melting snow and rain make the cured compost soil wet and cold and thus difficult to screen. This is spring conditions in Wyoming; the same time most gardeners are looking for soil for their gardens. Our piles are ten feet high, thirty feet wide and two hundred feet long each. We tackle these piles in dry weather trying to screen in advance to get ahead of the high volume needed in the spring.

You know, for breaking down organic waste, you need nitrogen, carbon, oxygen, and water. We don't have enough labor power to turn our piles as often as most operations do to get the piles aerated for the oxygen. Wood chips are our carbon source. I suspect that the wood chips allow space for air naturally, since all winter long our piles are working hard.

We could use more labor. Because we are a farm, we already have the land and most of the equipment; labor for turning and screening is the bottleneck. By the way, have you heard of the SU reactor? It is based on the work of David Johnson, a professor in New Mexico. With the SU rector, PVC pipes with holes in them that you drive into your piles get oxygen down in the piles, you do not need to turn them. Johnson argues that not turning the piles is extremely beneficial because it preserves the fungal life in the pile as well as the bacterial load; turning piles to aerate for the bacterial life destroys the fungal filaments.

Bears have not been an obstacle for us. Our wildlife issue is birds. We found that covering our piles with a layer of sawdust keeps the birds down. I get my wood chips and sawdust from a lumber yard in Idaho.

Our biggest obstacle is contamination in our supply. This shows up in a number of sneaky ways.

You know those clamshell containers that are stamped right on the box "compostable"? Well, they are coated with PFAS! This chemical never breaks down and if we get it in the compost pick up it ends up in the compost soil with which you are gardening. We put a sticker on our pickup buckets alerting customers to this as well as reminding them of what actually should and should not go in their buckets. You know Jackson people, if it says you can compost it, they want to compost it. It is really hard for them to put those "compostable" clamshell containers in the garbage. I have spoken to the manufacturers more than once. Their response is that they are operating within federal law for compostable materials.

A few years ago, Teton County got a grant from Subaru to set up composting with all the concessionaires in Teton Park. They approached me and suddenly I was getting ten thousand pounds of food scraps a week from Jackson Lake Lodge alone. We set it up as a test. Unfortunately, the park food stream had too much non-compostable contamination and we were not set up with the labor or equipment to sort it out. We had to bow out. Teton County invested in a $600,000 de-packager that can do separation and has set up curbside composting itself in Jackson as well. I already was contracted with many of the Jackson business, St. John's Hospital, and multiple home pickup routes. I haven't lost my business to the county, but they now have a way to handle the more contaminated park stream.

Contamination also shows up for us when businesses and non-profits want to partner with me for their events. They want to be able to advertise a no-waste event and want us to pick up their organic waste. Unfortunately, too many party-goers accidentally throw cans and other non-compostable items into the compost bin to make this collection viable.

What have some turning points been for your operation?

It has felt like a natural evolution from feeding our pigs to helping people with their kitchen waste, from using locally produced compost soil ourselves for growing high nutrient vegetables to creating a surplus of compost soil so our neighbors can grow their own highly nutritious vegetables, from curbside waste pickup to sharing the final vegetable product to our curbside customers.

We already had the land and the basic equipment. We found we could help the labor bottleneck by investing in a wheel loader with a screen spinner as well as a large static screen for the final fine grain screening. That was a turning point.

The grant that allowed us to experiment with organic waste from Teton Park and the decision that we could not move forward with that partnership were transitions as well.

Anything else you would like to tell us?

The lack of awareness in this area leads to a lack of composting in Wyoming. We need to educate people and municipalities about the benefits to them of composting. Did you know that 40% of trash in the waste stream is organic matter?

Commercial composting is a benefit to current backyard composters because most backyard piles are too small to stay active in our winter climate, whereas commercial piles stay active all year long. Commercial composting is also a benefit to those who do not already have a backyard pile if the commercial composter can do curbside pickup because the family can feel good about keeping their kitchen waste out of the landfill and if a circular model is set up, the customer can benefit from free or low cost soil for their own yard.

Commercial composting is a benefit to municipalities and counties. If they can separate the organic waste stream, nature does all the work, and the landfill ends up with valuable stuff for local farmers and backyard gardeners to grow food that is more nutrient dense than the poor soils in Wyoming can naturally produce.

Since nature does all the work, I like to refer to myself as a "Compost Facilitator". In fact, that's how I advertise on my business card!