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Sunday, December 20, 2015

Another year of composting at Sunny Compost!

Wow, 2015 flew by! With our weather feeling more like springtime, it's even harder to believe we have reached the end of the calendar year.



Sunny Compost has provided our community with a local food scraps drop-off site for over three years, continuing the hard work started by Peter Richter before us.

This year's accomplishments:
We are grateful to all who help us - Sunnyside Community Garden members, Sunnyside Gardens Park, NYC Compost Project, Big Reuse, NYC Department of Sanitation, Woodside Neighborhood Association, PS 11, and all of our dedicated volunteers.

Reminders:
  • Sunny Compost is open year round. Our drop-off hours are on Sundays from 2:00 - 4:00 from November through February and then 2:00 - 5:00
  • If the weather is rough or if we don't have any volunteers, you may place your food scraps in the black bin outside the gate.  As always, please take your plastic bags or other non-compostables with you.
  • Big Reuse food scraps drop off at the Skillman Avenue Greenmarket is  open year round! Sunnyside Greenmarket  Saturdays, 8 am-2 pm YEAR ROUND
    Skillman Ave between 42 and 43 Street (http://www.bigreuse.org/compost/drop-sites
  • We have finished compost if you need any. Makes for a unique gift! 
  • We welcome new volunteers. Our sign-up sheet is online.  
Thank you for being a part of our community's compost program!

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

SunnyCompost Invites YOU to its 4th Annual Open House!

SunnyCompost (@SunnyCompost on Twitter)
invites you to its 4th Annual Open House 
on Sunday, November 15, 2015
from 1:00 p.m. until 4:00 p.m. 
Help SunnyCompost celebrate Autumn. Bring your:
food scraps, 
leaves, 
&
  pumpkins! 
·         Tour the composting site located at beautiful Sunnyside Community Garden at 50th Street and Barnett Avenue in Sunnyside. 
·         Join us and meet your neighbors and fellow composters. 
·         Learn about composting - Beginners Workshop at 1:30
·         Hands on activities - chopping, sifting, and much much more!
·         Bring your pumpkins for smashing!
·         Bring your bagged leaves for mulching (aka Project Leaf Drop!)
·         Bring food scraps for composting!
·         Take a sample of finished compost!

Please stop by!
We'll have refreshments (compostable)!
Can't wait to see you!!
 (If the weather doesn't cooperate, we will reschedule. For updates,
please follow us on Twitter @SunnyCompost or go to our website, http://www.sunnycompost.org/.)

Sunday, October 25, 2015

November 1st: New Winter Drop-off Hours: 2:00 to 4:00

Hello Compost Friends!

Beginning Sunday, November 1st, our drop-off hours will be between 2:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. through the end of February.
Visit http://www.sunnycompost.org/home for more details of our food scrap drop-off program.

Thank you for being part of our Compost Community.

Thank you to our amazing volunteers who give their time freely, especially:
  • Soja, Ken, and Deena for helping out on our workday as we prepare for the winter.
  • Walter for sawing up a huge fallen branch.
  • New volunteers Elizabeth, Benjamin, and Eileen. We couldn't do this without you!
  • Maddy for providing her annual workshop for students at PS1.
  • Kanka, Teresa, Lora, Sharon, Maddy, and Deena for consistent chopping & sifting throughout the year
  • Hope who made our signage and who has since moved on.
  • Soja for putting our bin out each week and keeping a watchful eye during the week.
  • Gardeners who help us out, donate food scraps and moral support!
  • And extra special thanks to one of our founding volunteers, Alvin, who has moved on. You added so much to our group, Alvin, from t-shirt design to building bins to helping our site stay beautiful (and so much more.) Alvin and William made our awesome new sifter.  Your contributions are invaluable.

Join us! Our website has a sign-up page to volunteer. 
Thanks and see you in the garden.

Sunday, September 27, 2015

Remembering our Friend

A part of the Master Composter course I took back in 2012, I tabled at the Sunnyside CSA to gauge interest in my idea of conducting worm bin workshops. Then I met Angela. She told me how much she missed being able to divert her food scraps from the landfill by bringing them to the Sunnyside Community Garden. The 24/7 drop-off had ended around March and she really missed it. We talked for awhile and a few other CSA members mentioned their desire to reinvigorate the drop-off program over at the community garden.

Angela's passion made an impression on me. So as the summer went on, my idea to conduct worm bin workshops continued but soon I was working with Queens compost gurus at NYC Compost Project at Queens Botanical Garden and Build It Green! Compost to organize a community meeting about reinvigorating the Sunnyside community garden drop-off compost program.

Three years later and dropping off food scraps at SunnyCompost is a routine Sunday activity for many of our neighbors. Angela was a regular composter, usually making her way down 50th Street after 4:00. We'd see her and greet her at the gate to help her carry her bags of scraps. We loved Angela because she believed in and appreciated us. When she wasn't able to bring over her scraps herself, Angela had her own crew ready to bring them over. She would tell them not to be late to drop-off because we're volunteers and she appreciated our giving of our time and didn't want us to have to work too late.

Angela cared about us, bringing us delicious baked goods for our Open House events.  On the last Sunday in August, Angela enjoyed our 'Snacks and Sifting' event by visiting with neighbors and newcomers. I sat with her for awhile as she relayed her recipe for homemade hummus. Angela told a favorite story about her cat that was prescribed Paxil and one about her excellent ability to spell.  Personally, she gave me advice that day to pass on to my mother about how physical therapy can be helpful.

SunnyCompost exists because of Angela's impassioned plea to rejuvenate the drop-off program. There are so many stories and memories to share. We love her and will miss her dearly.

Friday, September 4, 2015

Happenings

Life is never dull at Sunny Compost!

Back in June, Maddie gave a workshop to students from PS 11. This is the third year in a row she's provided these hands on "in-the-garden" workshops. Many thanks to Jeremy from the NYC Compost Project hosted by Queens Botanical Garden for helping out!


We also had a Snacks & Sifting Sunday in August where some of our compost heroes put our beautiful sifter to use.


Recap of Queens Bike Compost Tour

One of our compost comrades, Sashti from 462 Halsey Community Garden, wrote a beautiful recap of the Queens Compost Bike Tour. Check it out here.

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

New Sifter! Check it out!




Thanks to Alvin and William for  their innovation and determination!

Monday, June 15, 2015

Queens Compost Bike Tour

 Smiling Hogshead Ranch and the NYC Compost Project hosted at Queens Botanical Garden  organized a bike tour of six community composting sites in Queens, including Sunny Compost. A big crowd checked out our tumblers and bins and shared in some fruits as they made their way to the other sites.

The tour included stops at:

  • Queens Botanical Garden’s site
  • St. Marks Church/Farmspot CSA compost site in Jackson Heights
  • JH SCRAPS
  • Brooklyn Grange
  • NYC Compost Project hosted by Build It Green’s compost site at the Queensbridge Baby Park
  • Smiling Hogshead Ranch
The last stop included an overview of SHR's six different composting methods being demonstrated. Including the unveiling of their newest addition, ThermoSense, a technologically advanced
compost monitoring system, installed in partnership with We Radiate and
funded by the Manhattan Solid Waste Advisory Board’s CCNYC 2015 Composting
Grant.

Congrats to all who organized this amazing event celebrating community composting in Queens

Sunday, May 24, 2015

Just another weekend at Sunny Compost!


Volunteers worked hard this weekend turning bins, emptying tumblers, sifting finished compost, chopping up newly donated food scraps, sharing information about vermicomposting, adding compost to Barnett Avenue, planning workshops, and adding hay to our leaf bin! It's never dull! Come join us!

http://www.sunnycompost.org/volunteer






BB in the garden.



Sunday, May 3, 2015

Spring has Sprung!



Thanks to all of our die-hard winter food scraps dropper-offers, we have plenty of compost and survived the harsh winter. As always, thanks to the folks at the Sunnyside Community Garden for their kindness, smiles, and assistance in helping SunnyCompost maintain our efforts.

Brief news:
  • BiG!Compost has expanded their hours at the Sunnyside Greenmarket to 8:00 AM - 2:00 PM every Saturday.
  • Open Bin NYC takes place Saturday May 9, 2015. Join us in Queens as we check out the windrows under the Queensborough Bridge as part of International Compost Awareness Week. 
  • Join us on Sundays between 2 and 5 to drop off your food scraps or to volunteer. Signing up is easy: simply go to our website and sign up for a shift. They are listed as 2:00, 3:00, 4:00. If you sign up, we will be there to show you around. When you volunteer, you may:
    •     Chop up donated food scraps. We provide tools and gloves.
    •     Sift finished compost so it's ready to be used. We provide sifter and gloves.
    •     Turn compost piles. We provide compost pile, tools and gloves.
    •     Meet and greet our food scrap dropper-offers. 
    •     Clean up/organize our space.
    •     Chalk our Tumblers with the date of the action. We provide chalk.
    •     Miscellaneous: Provide moral support to hard-working food scrap choppers. Grab a coffee or water from the deli. Smile.
    •     Become friends with BB (do you see him in the photo above?)
    •    Meet interesting people.
    As always, check us out at http://www.sunnycompost.org/home. See you in the garden! 

Thursday, February 5, 2015

2015!

SunnyCompost is thriving with lots of food scraps donated each week. We were also included in the report on 2014 Community Composting in NYC submitted to the New York City Council. Check it out!

In other news, you may have seen reports of the plans of NYC Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) for creating affordable housing on various pieces of land, including 16 community gardens in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens. Fortunately, we are not affected. But there are opportunities to support our fellow gardeners: