Earth Care Farm To Expand Composting Operations on Former Stone Quarry
Print this Article | Send to Colleague
Family-owned and -operated compost manufacturer Earth Care Farm, based in Rhode Island for the past 48 years, has reached the final stage of the permitting process to open its second site on a former stone quarry in Connecticut.
Earth Care Farm’s current 3-acre site has a throughput of about 5,000 cubic yards per year and produces compost that is OMRI-Certified for organic use. Company owner Jayne Merner says that the growing demand for organic-use certified compost motivated their search for a larger site. Their move to Connecticut was motivated by a lack of ideal sites in Rhode Island; the former quarry in Sterling, CT, will provide an ideal site for its remoteness and status as former industrial land.
The team at Earth Care Farm has been pursuing the required permits since they acquired the new land in 2024, and as of April 2025, the company is waiting for its final solid waste permit to be approved. Should the permit be granted, Earth Care Farm’s composting operation will be sited on 14 acres of the former quarry. Merner expects that the new site will be able to produce 25,000 tons of compost annually.
Photo credit to Frank Carini, ecoRI News. You can read more about Earth Care Farm’s new site here: https://ecori.org/abandoned-connecticut-quarry-to-be-transformed-into-soil-farm/
