A 2020 stimulus check is what created DamGood Family Farm, a first-generation garden-turned-farm owned by husband-wife duo Shayne and Lucas O’Neill-Carillo. A few years later and they’ve launched a brand new community composting program for the Hamlet of Wallkill.

Lucas O’Neill-Carillo is a musician who handles a lot of sales and compost operations, while Shayne O’Neill-Carillo handles most of the day-to-day-operations of the farm. They have a flock of chickens, a goose, an intensive market garden and more, still doing many long tasks to build the farm up. With a location right on Wallkill Avenue, they get a lot of foot traffic, which is great for their operative farm stand out front.

“It’s mostly agroforestry,” says Lucas O’Neill-Carillo of their 33-acre site. “We have about a half acre of growing space which we use to grow vegetables [and] just a variety of produce. You name it, we probably grow some variety of it.”

As two long-time composters, the pair wanted to bring composting awareness to Wallkill. The program launched in Spring of this year, and they’re excited to get more people involved in composting.

“We’ve been composting for ourselves since we’ve lived here in 2019. I feel like we’re in a bit of a unique situation where the larger area’s quite rural and a lot of residents do compost for themselves, but our immediate neighborhood is a lot of multi-dwelling apartments, and not everyone has access to being able to compost for themselves,” said Shayne O’Neill-Carillo.

Lucas O’Neill-Carillo explained how the program works, explaining that it’s focused on the Hamlet of Wallkill only.

“When somebody signs up, what they’re doing is joining what we’re calling a waitlist. [It’s] not waiting for the program to start, but essentially it’s the onboarding step,” said Lucas O’Neill-Carillo. “We check to make sure that they’re within our areas, they can finish their enrollment, and then it kind of looks a lot like your normal trash pickup. You’re really just adding a third bin.”

A weekly pickup is $24 monthly, while bi-weekly is $18. The weekly deal includes weekly compost pickup, educational material and 2x farmstand rewards, while bi-weekly includes bi-weekly compost pick up, educational material and farmstand rewards.

DamGood Farm drops off a compost bin with a guide to get started, then picks it up on “pick up day” and exchanges it for a new one.

“We give you a five gallon bucket with instructions on what we can and cannot receive in the form of a magnet,” added Lucas O’Neill-Carillo.

People who enroll will also receive rewards to use at their farm stand, such as produce to help their compost grow or the farm’s compost.

The results they are looking for? A lot more people composting.

“Really the end goal is that we just get everyone composting no matter how that’s done; whatever it looks like,” said Shayne O’Neill-Carillo.

As far as the farm goes, it’s still a growing empire. They hope to continue to build and expand, having started it because of their desire to eat more responsibly, according to the O’Neill-Carillos. From there, it transitioned to scaling up for the community around them.

Those interested can sign up for their composting program on.damgoodfarm.com.