Building Community in Buckman, One Banana Peel at a Time

Meandering down SE 15th Avenue between Hawthorne and Alder, I notice lots of lush gardens. Clearly, inhabitants here are not unfamiliar with the feeling of dirt beneath their fingernails—my kind of place. I head toward the roundabout at the intersection of 15th and Alder and see the swirly pattern of a vine unfold on the pavement before me. This is definitely the place I'm looking for.

I get out of the car and meet Nancy Oberschmidt, who heads the Buckman Sustainability Committee of the Buckman Community Association. The committee formed a year ago, and set out to undertake a project that would get the neighborhood on the path to sustainable living.

She shows me the compost set up, then welcomes me into her beautiful 107-year-old home. She leads me into her kitchen where a counter is covered in still-warm jars of jam she's made from her own plums. At her kitchen table sits a binder stuffed with design plans, notes, charts, etc.—a history of all of the work she has put into the Buckman Community Composting Project.

She begins by telling me how the small group went back and forth on different ideas for starting a sustainability program until, in January, a few students from Portland State University joined the group. They helped inspire the idea of community composting. "Apparently there are a high number of renters in this area, without the space or rights to start their own compost pile." They began brainstorming on how it could work, and where it could be done.

The group may have come up with the idea to start their road to sustainability with a community composting site, but Nancy Oberschmidt is no stranger to composting herself. Besides her own composting bin for her family's kitchen scraps, during her career as Assistant Director of Food and Nutrition at OHSU (she's recently retired), she was the resident "Composting Queen." During her tenure, waste pulpers, which grind up food scraps to be taken to a commercial composting facility, were installed in the institution's kitchens. After a series of processes there, it is sold to garden centers. Raking leaves one day, surveying all of the homes surrounding hers and thinking of all the kitchen waste each household produced, she thought, "Why not do it right here, and offer the stuff back to its rightful owners, fully composted and free?"

They applied for and received a Vision into Action grant, which would not only be enough for their first compost site, but probably a few more as well. They were ready to get down to the business of planning. She admits it was hard to know where to start.

 

"We should apply to be part of VBC!" One student exclaimed. Nancy, who says she often feels like young people speak a language as foreign as Greek to her, nodded vigorously, figuring she would find out soon enough who or what "VBC" was.

And that she did. The local nonprofit agency called City Repair sponsors local community building projects with their annual Village Building Convergence, or VBC. She spoke to someone there about what VBC was all about and they said, "Why don't you just start coming to Placemaker meetings?" She learned a lot about the goals of City Repair there, and she learned something very valuable: "They had the answers we needed," she explained. "They knew how to get the community involved." She said that the timing of the VBC (early June) is no coincidence. "People are out and about in the summer. It's a great time to meet your neighbors and talk about what's going on." She also found out that the VBC loved potlucks. "We had many potluck meetings. Not a bad thing," Nancy remarks. They also hosted a workshop for all interested parties to come learn about the project and hear about proper compost management and permaculture design.

Then there was the business of selecting a site. "Somebody had to volunteer the space," Nancy explains. And when no one jumped at the chance to have the compost site on their property, Nancy did. In doing so, she also defaulted to being the site's host, meaning she is in charge of making sure it is filled properly, that batches of waste are added to the tumbler, and that the tumbler is accurately and regularly rotated.

 Photo: Jennifer Coughlin

The group wanted the place to be accessible to all users and where it wouldn't disrupt the Oberschmidt family's life too much, so they decided against putting it in her backyard. They worked with the city's Department of Transportation to make sure the chosen planting strip site wouldn't interfere with street parking regulations or pedestrian safety. They came up with a design for their bins and then the all-female team—many of whom had never before handled a power tool—constructed them out of wood purchased at Habitat for Humanity's ReStore and chicken wire. The compost tumbler was purchased after extensive research, and instructions on how to properly use the system, as well as a log book for recording compost deposits were housed in a wood and glass kiosk next to the bins.

The group also worked on a design for the street mural they envisioned leading community members to the site. Built just north of the roundabout, the group began sketching murals that would surround the circle. Once that was done, posters were created and signs went up, inviting the community to come in and help with the mural painting and to learn about the composting program.

The day scheduled for the mural painting threatened rain, but did not deliver. Within six or so hours, no rain had fallen, the chalked design meant to guide painters was covered in paint, and over 30 community members had stopped by to lend a hand. Nancy provided the volunteers with her homemade chili. "And hummus, bread and veggies for the vegetarians." It is clear that she thinks of everything, and is often thinking of others.

Since then, Nancy reports, the compost site has been visited by a lot more people, many from beyond the Buckman neighborhood borders. "I have almost more scraps than I can handle at this point!" she says. I ask her what challenges they have faced so far.

"The only real problem is with communication. We need to make sure we are communicating the system to everyone." In other words, some folks are not reading the posted instructions for using the compost site. Whole ears of corn, food rotted beyond recognition are some of the things making Nancy's job more difficult. When food is too rotted, it causes unwanted odors. Large items like ears of corn or paper cartons need to be broken down into small bits. If the person dropping them off doesn't deal with these issues, then Nancy has to.

"We're working out the kinks," Nancy remarks. This is the pilot program for the group, so she is hopeful they can get it running smoothly enough to start additional sites this summer and next spring.

"We'd like to have more in the Buckman neighborhood, but are open to areas outside of it as well. We care about the greater good most of all."

While we chat, Nancy turns the compost tumbler. A little girl runs up to us with a baggie filled with eggshells and banana peels. She wants to see the first batch of compost. She is duly impressed. She is ready to add her own scraps to the bins, and seems to know how to do it. Nancy explains to her that it is best to crunch up the eggshells, which she does gladly, dumping her bounty in the "green" bin and covering it with the dried leaves provided in the "brown" bin. She skips away, joining her father waiting at the curb.

"You're creating a whole new generation of composters!" I remark, marveling at the thought that this little girl might just grow up with curbside composting as the norm.

She smiled as if to say, "That's the idea."

I head out, with a jar of plum jam under my arm and a clear sense of the kind of retiree I want to be—anxious to teach, learn, and do the work needed to build a stronger sense of community.

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