From yard waste, a business blossoms
Humus farmers focus on benefits to the earth.

SEFFNER - It's a business concept at once simple and strange: making dirt.

From the road, a sign announces Mother's Organics Humus Farm. It stands at the opening of a wide driveway, flanked by neatly trimmed grass and shade trees. Like the business itself, there's a lot more to it than what can be seen from the road.

Not until you get past the two low bunkers that serve as offices, and up the edge of a flat concrete pad, can you see the deep scar in the earth, more than 40 feet deep, and stretching back the length of a football field. The plan is to take yard waste - up to 4-million cubic yards of it - and grind and compost it into a nutrient-rich soil to sell to local farmers and nurseries.

"We need to do it," said Bill Stanton, a sun-weathered 40-year-old who gives his job description as "visionary." "We need to build places that are environmentally friendly and responsible, and deal with these materials."

The yard waste can come from cleared lots, or trees and branches felled in a storm, said Mother's Organics president Pete Nelson. The idea behind the venture is that good yard waste shouldn't be, well, wasted.

Nelson, Stanton and vice president Carmel Monti recently sat down at a picnic table toward the front of the nearly 60 acres they have on County Road 579. The talk went from carbon footprints to solar power, from recycling to affordable energy, from electricity to responsibility.

It isn't just about the business they do, said Stanton, who worked for years in salvage and other industries. It's about how they do it.

Stanton, 40, drank coffee out of a reusable plastic cup that he's had for a year, and refilled it from a metal thermos that looks like it's been run over by a tractor, which is about what Stanton said happened to it. Born and raised in Florida, Stanton said the streams of his youth don't run clean anymore, if they run at all. It can be different, he insisted. There's another way to do business.

Monti talked about energy-efficient lighting, reusable grocery bags and the solar energy system he's planning to install at his house. They want Mother's Organics to become a "living laboratory" for businesses that want to get off the grid of utility-supplied electricity to sustain themselves.

Belief in the business pulled Monti from semiretirement after a career in sales and marketing for Pentax for 17 years, followed by five years as president and CEO of a Boston eyeglass accessory company.

At 60, Monti senses a groundswell of support. This time, it will take, he hopes. Not like the '70s, after gas prices dropped again and environmentalism slipped back to the margins.

"The very big difference this time is the groundswell of consumers that don't want to go back," Monti said. "Even if there's dollar a gallon gas, I'm not going back."

Mother's Organics' machines run on biodiesel made out of soybeans. The fence posts are recycled telephone poles. The retaining wall, as well as their offices, were made from recycled shipping containers. The driveway is ground, recycled asphalt. They carefully built up the edges of the properties, so neighbors don't have to look at enormous piles of brush. They plan, at some point, to generate their own power, probably from solar. Maybe they'll grow some mango trees and vegetables, build some ecofriendly housing, perhaps try tilapia farming.

Nelson, 33, came to Mother's Organics after three years in corporate banking with SunTrust Bank, his first job after earning his MBA from the University of Florida in 2002. He said the business has the backing of a well-meaning but private investor, but wouldn't discuss specifics. Monti described it as "patient money."

It might have to be very patient; Stanton estimated that it could be several months to a year before they gather enough biomass and begin churning out humus. They still haven't decided what method they'll use to produce their own power.

In the meantime, their site looks pretty from the road. The enormous pit, out of view behind grassy berm, holds truckloads of brittle limbs and leaves, waiting for Mother's Organics to start remaking the world, if they can, from dirt.

St. Petersburg Times | Published on September 12, 2007
By Asjylyn Loder
Asjylyn Loder can be reached at (813) 225-3117 or aloder@sptimes.com