Buy Compost

You can calculate how much compost you should purchase here: https://www.savingwater.org/lawn-garden/soil-mulch-compost-fertilizers/compost-mulch-calculator/.

Wondering how to apply compost to your growing space? Try this handout from the University of California.

Our compost is made from local food scraps, horse bedding, and wood chips. We do an annual nutrient analysis, and the most recent one can be found here: https://www.farmerpirates.com/s/FARMER-PIRATES.pdf

Compost is superior to synthetic fertilizers because of the diverse benefits it offers. Some of those benefits include: improved water retention, improved soil structure, extended nutrient release, and more. There’s a reason they call it Black Gold!

Wondering how to apply compost to your growing space? Try this handout from the University of California Cooperative Extension.

If you have been a member of our Residential Pickup (green bucket), Neighborhood Drop Off, or Hamburg municipal program for 3+ months, you are eligible for our compost give back. To claim those bags, log in to your Customer Portal to place your order. You will see a product called “Free Member Compost” with a price of $0.

We wish everyone could be eligible for the compost giveback, considering their material contribution, but unfortunately this is not the financial reality of our business. For the Scrap It! Curbside program in Buffalo and West Seneca drop off program, the aim is to maximize participating households by minimizing the cost per household, which means that we need to sell more compost to make ends meet. Thanks for your understanding and continued support. If you’d like to purchase compost, you can do so in your Customer Portal shop.

We use repurposed burlap coffee bags for our bagged compost. These bags are a donation from McCullaugh Coffee. Burlap is compostable which is both a pro and a con: it’s a pro because we are not creating any waste but it’s a con because they will break down! So, if you are not planning to use your compost immediately, we recommend dumping the compost out of the bag onto a tarp until you’re ready to use it.

Once you’re done with the burlap, we hope you’ll find another use for it - but, we are also happy to take them back to our site to be composted. If you are a pick up member, leave the bags with your bucket/tote. If you are a drop off member or if you don't recycle food scraps with us, you may bring the bags back to our site and deposit them in the silver cage container outside of our gate. 

Sling bags can be returned anytime to our site at 0 Gittere Street, Buffalo, NY 14211. In order to receive the return deposit, sling bags must be returned before December 31st of the year they were purchased. Place them in the crate outside of the fence and send an email to compost@farmerpirates.com. Please include your name and # of sling bags returned.

If you paid by credit or debit, your deposit will be returned to that payment method. If you prefer to receive a check, please let us know in the email. If you paid by cash or check, we will send you a refund check asap.

This year we are able to offer a limited number of discounts on bulk compost to non-profits, community/neighborhood organizations, community gardens, schools, and cooperatives. If you fall into one of the above categories, please reach out to ahoy@farmerpirates.com before placing your order.

More or less, yes. Our prices are competitive with other local composters, and to be entirely honest the prices are set so that we can meet our bottom line. There is a lot that goes on behind the scenes in a compost operation, like vehicle and equipment maintenance, hours upon hours spent turning rows and screening compost, and coordination of delivery routes, to name a few.

As a rule, no we do not sell unscreened compost. The nature of our food scrap collection means that we do get contamination (i.e. plastic) in our compost, and screening is one of our safeguards in keeping this contamination out of your garden. If you have more questions about our unscreened product, please reach out at ahoy@farmerpirates.com.