Krull’s composting venture is full of the right stuff

By F. Josephine Arrowood

Sun contributor

Farm stands are a common sight in Leelanau County—the rural antecedent of the pop-up store, perhaps—offering a handy distribution point of fresh, seasonal produce and handmade goods from farmer to buyer. One such tidy structure sprouted last fall on Burdickville Rd, just west of Maple City. But what they sell in this land of foodies and agritourism is both surprising yet makes so much sense that it’s a wonder no one else has thought of it before now.  

Barret Krull is a well-known builder in Leelanau County. His family has been in Glen Arbor for a century or more, running the Glen Craft Villas resort on Big Glen Lake since 1947. At age sixty-nine, he describes himself as “one of the flower children” of the 1960s. “At a young age, I’m starting a new business,” he jokes. 

Krull’s Composting products, created right on his farm, are available in handy returnable and recyclable grab-and-go bags. Larger amounts and compost teas to order are also available. Plaques on the farm stand wall read, “We’re full of it!” and “We are what we fertilize!”

“My passion is health for people. I lost my wife Linda a year and two months ago to cancer. She did not eat well … We have way too much cancer and disease. Our GPs [physicians] get about three hours of education in the field of nutrition.” 

He continues after a moment. “There’s a strong undercurrent of people seeing that things aren’t working. They’re excited about what they eat, and learning about it. I go to these small farm conferences, and seven or eight young people will come up to me and say, ‘I just bought a farm, and the soil is really crummy. What do I do?’” 

“I’m very concerned about kids and young people.” He demonstrates keyboarding on an imaginary cell phone. “I donate compost to TC community gardens, and to three schools—at Traverse Heights Elementary, someone donated a greenhouse, and with my compost on their crummy soil, you should see the tomatoes that grew there. This year will be even better.”

“I’ve been interested in soil science and health since the age of seventeen; I was attracted to it like a magnet. It all kind of evolved over the years. I’ve gone to conferences and classes all over the country. About nine years ago, I started making my own compost, but I wasn’t even ready to give it away until I’d tested it.” He points to several ash trees near his house, crowned in glossy green leaves. He says he’s been treating them with his compost concoctions; and maybe it’s just a coincidence, but I realize these are the first healthy, living ash trees I’ve seen in several years.

“I just started selling my compost last fall,” Krull says. “I’m having fabulous feedback in eradicating late blight in tomatoes and potatoes. There’s less bug pressure; rose chafers are down sixty percent on grapes with my compost tea. I’m not exaggerating here. The past couple years, I raised over two acres of sweet corn. All I used was compost and nitrogen-fixing bacteria. We sold it, and people said it was the best corn they ever had. And I was competing with the big boys: Shimek’s, and Hall’s corn.”

But Krull’s ultimate goal isn’t to become yet another farmer selling seasonal fruit and vegetables in the county. He aims to sell the “food” that the earth itself needs, in order for farmers and gardeners, orchardists, viticulturists, and landscapers to grow their healthiest plants.

In his opinion, the cycle of renewing and replenishing soil was broken by modern agricultural practices of the past sixty or more years. “Farmers didn’t always put the nutrients back in the ground—or didn’t know how to,” he says. Or the perceived cost-benefit equation didn’t compute, or couldn’t compete with a burgeoning agribusiness that swallowed small family farms at an alarming rate.

“Thirty-five percent of food waste goes into dumps. Methane [and other greenhouse chemicals] from cows go into the atmosphere and in our water. I’m passionate about it because I spin it into gold that people can use.”

Spread over Krull’s acreage, long piles of earthy organic materials in various stages of the composting process await his attention. He calls these his windrows. As with any successful recipe, the exact ingredients and their ratios are a secret, but in general he uses organic plant matter (some of which he grows), several kinds of manure, food scraps collected from Grand Traverse and Leelanau counties, inoculant, and of course, clean water. 

The right recipes, he says, have three elements in common: a mix of oxygen and carbon dioxide; temperature around 150-160 degrees to kill soil pathogens; and the proper amount of moisture. There’s a schedule for turning these materials, and several pieces of large machinery to help with the work of chopping, churning, lifting, and moving volumes of stuff. Clearly, this venture is more than a dirty hobby—it’s a time and labor-intensive endeavor, not for the faint of heart. 

“If things go right, it’s a ten- to twelve-week process. I’m not out to make a lot of money doing this; I see it as a service. It costs, yes—the equipment, inoculant, the machinery; you’ve got to pay your bills—but I’m working for the wholeness of community, the health of people; education about what we grow and eat.” The cycles are in place already, he says. Using compost “helps [to maintain] the cycles and speeds up the process. It’s a powerful thing, if it’s understood.”

Which product(s) should someone use on their soil? He asserts that there is no one answer to the question. “As humans, we want an answer and ‘one truth,’” he laughs. Be willing to observe, explore, investigate, experiment. For instance, “Farmers that can read weed patterns can tell if there’s too much or too little of something in the soil. Weeds can heal your ground, but that can take a long time.” 

The quick-fix chemicals sold at most garden centers cause a lot of harm to the soil, and long term, they imperil the health of the plants as well. For one example, too much nitrogen can burn, dry out, and kill the good soil microbes. The weakened plants then succumb to bugs and disease: what Krull calls “nature’s cleaning crews.

“And one more thing,” he says, “It’s not just conventional gardening and farming that use too many chemicals like nitrogen. It’s in our lakes and streams, and it’s coming from our lawns, shrubs, flowers. Homeowners don’t understand that these lawn guys come in, give it big, heavy shots of nitrogen for greening, but the plants can only grab a fraction of it. The rest is going into our groundwater, dissipated as runoff into our rivers and lakes. It’s quickly changing our aquatic environment, and we don’t need that. That’s the crime of the whole thing.”

“It’s not in the terms we use. It’s not like you take a pill, everything will be all right, all of a sudden. It’s more like nourishing the body.” Everything starts with healthy soil. Healthy soil—healthy plants—healthy animals—healthy people.

For general purposes, he recommends his humus (pronounced HEW-mass) compost (yes, he acknowledges, there is some dispute over terms used interchangeably like humus, compost, fertilizer, and so forth) as an overall soil amender. “Humus lasts up to sixty years in the ground. Stable carbon attracts worms, microorganisms, water. It fertilizes with nutrients, and it chelates or mines what’s in the soil to make it available—not just as an amendment, but a living thing that goes out and changes the soil over time.”

With compost, you can plant right away, as proper compost does not burn or overfeed one component (such as nitrogen or phosphorus), and leaches less than two percent of nutrients away from the plant. Another method he advocates is cover cropping in spring and fall, along with his compost. The cover crop is then plowed under, and more compost is added. “In three to five years, you’ll really see a change in your soil.”

Krull also makes a “Millennial Compost” that contains “an extra shot of carbon”—fifteen percent biochar—for more depleted soils. His compost tea is sprayed on plants directly, giving them quicker “sips” of nourishment and protection.

When healthy microbes in balanced soil and plants are able to “hang out together,” as the former flower child so aptly puts it, “They feed each other with everything they need.”

For more information, visit Krull’s Composting on Facebook, or call 231-360-0243.