Sustainable Kentucky:

:not an oxymoron.

Harrodsburg to Booneville

We spent the night in Nicholasville, Ky, a little bit northeast of Harrodsburg and off the route.  The reason?  Cody, our couch surfing host!  I’ve written before about how much we enjoy staying with locals, and Cody was no exception.  He cooked us dinner, taught me how to make rice his special way, taught me how to make tomatilla salsa (DELICIOUS, btw), and made us avocado smoothies for dessert.  They sound bizarre, but sweet and avocado flavors do indeed go nicely together.  

Perhaps more exciting than his cooking (to me, at least) was the fact that he collected all of the tomatilla skins, pepper seeds, and lime skins in a basket by the sink.  After dinner (and after I told him about my project), we went out to his backyard add the food scraps to his compost pile!  And what a nice compost pile it is, enclosed by a retaining wall that Cody himself built after he bought the house.  In addition to the compost pile, he has a garden, and several fruit trees.  A further measure he’s taken to conserve resources was to install a rainwater collection barrel on the side of his house.  When he needs to water his garden, rather than turn on the hose, he goes to his barrel and takes water from there.  What a simple way to conserve!

Compost!

Collecting rainwater

I had gone on a run around Cody’s neighborhood before dinner, and since it was trash pickup day, had noticed all of the discarded items on the street.  I had also noticed red recycling bins, but not in front of every house.  Cody explained to me that the single stream recycling program cost residents an additional $1.10 a month on top of standard trash pickup, and that some people refused to pay.  I was shocked, and tried to imagine the ostracism that would occur in my California neighborhood if someone refused to pay $13 a year to recycle.  

This morning, we stopped in Berea en route to Booneville.  Berea was a nice little college town, and was in the midst of a local foods celebration!  I stopped in Berea Coffee & Tea, where I was given my iced coffee in a compostable cup.  I asked the owner if they had a compost bin in the restaurant, but he told me that customers had to take their cups home if they wanted to compost them.  He also told me that the cups require higher heat to breakdown than most backyard piles allow for.  If so few cups are actually being composted, what’s the point?  Why don’t they provide recyclable cups?  A recycle bin is much more accessible than an industrial compost pile.

Despite this small flaw in logic, Berea Coffee & Tea is actually quite environmentally friendly, and was the first Kentucky coffee shop to be distinguished as a “Green Restaurant.”  This website outlines some of the great initiatives they’ve undertaken (and has a great photo..I forgot to take one).

Main Street Berea—the large building is Boone Tavern, named for Daniel Boone, who passed through here in 1775.

The local foods celebration is an excellent idea, and I wish I could’ve participated in it a bit more.  You can read more about the celebration here, including the philosophy behind the celebration, and the “100-mile potluck” featuring local foods grown within, you guessed it, 100 miles.  Tomorrow, the community is hosting an auction where residents can bid for food and sustainability-related prizes.  A sausage making workshop, a canning demonstration, a pizza-tossing class, and, my personal favorite, a composting workshop, are among the prizes being auctioned.