Who is he?

Well I’m just getting this endeavor off the ground.   Right now it’s a one man show (with a little volunteer help) so I’m busy as a one armed-paper hanger!   

Houston, Texas is where I grew up, and my family owned a restaurant while I was in high school.    But that wasn’t my calling - except when I was hungry.  My wife and I  bought our first home in Houston in 1974 and that’s when I started gardening - just like my “plant by the moon” Grandfather had taught me.  After marriage and the birth of my first son, Travis, I found my nitch in insurance sales.  A family gets a man serious about work!  I ended up building, from scratch, a multi-million dollar insurance agency, Texas Interstate Insurance Agency, Inc. with offices in Houston & Bryan, Texas.  I specialized in all lines of insurance for long haul trucking accounts.  I sold the agency in 1989.  Around 1992 or so I retired into being a gentleman farmer.  We had moved to Bryan  because we did not want to raise our sons in Houston - my wife and I wanted a rural place to rear our family.   Well - not being a real farmer I was bored and started doing volunteer work and teaching at a local children’s home and was doing some part time business consulting on the side.  Even so, the farmer wannabe side of me remained active and curious. Also during this semi retired time I got my Permaculture Certification.  I took courses at The Farm in Tennessee and at Earthaven EcoVillage in North Carolina.  It’s amazing to me what REAL “human life on earth” basics we are not taught in our schools.  See what Permaculture is all about here.

With work, moving and life in general I missed some years of having a garden but I was never without a compost pile or 2 (or ten!).  I just can’t pass up a nice bag of leaves collected and bagged out to the curb for my enjoyment.  My record in one load was over 300 bags collected on a 24’ gooseneck trailer.  Matt, my youngest son was not impressed - but he and a friend helped anyway!

Along the way I too have had my “Dark Night of the Soul”, lost most of my delusions, seen all my life change in a heartbeat, had a broken heart and broken bones, shook hands with death, wanted to die, managed a “nice” divorce and found my limits - we all have our sad stories.

Back to my first love - the one my family has rolled their eyes about for decades - Dad’s COMPOST!   Along with regular compost I always made compost leachate - like making drip coffee - just let water percolate slowly thru good homemade compost - Mmmm good!  Then about 2003 I heard about Compost Tea and Aerated Compost Tea (ACT).  Take all the “good stuff” out of a small amount of compost - initiate a population explosion of the good guys, add some good liquid plant food and spray it out over a large area - much larger than you could cover with regular compost.   So off I went, a Master Composter spreading the goodness of compost over entire pastures.  I took all 3 of Dr. Elaine Ingham’s courses (Soil Food Web)- Compost, Compost Tea and Microscope.  I purchased the proper instruments to evaluate making my own brewer - and that’s an ongoing project.  It all seems to be a process of imagine, build, test, evaluate, re-imagine, re-built, re-test, etc., etc.  Same applies to my spray rigs.

So, I’m now 57 (2006) and following my heart by starting this company.  Not many things crank my engine these days - but this comes close.  What feeds my soul is to try to help in some small way to overcome the insults to Nature being committed daily in our world.  I’ve been accused of being The Green Man of Celtic lore. I want to help folks regain optimum health buy pointing the way on how to grow healing, fully mineralized foods that provide real nutrition. I know it all sound like pie-in-the-sky but what else is there to do? 

If not Us (or Me), Who? (Them? Ya, sure!)

 (Who is Them anyway?),

If not NOW, When? (Later, of course!)

Learning to work WITH Nature for the sake of our Children.

After several sustainable agriculture and organics-related conferences, a lot of reading, a lot of experimenting and 2 years of improving the barns and permaculture-type infrastructure upgrades where we operate  - things are coming along nicely. 

So, what about you?  If you don’t know what to do next - go to the annual ACRES conference - what a blast!  If you are in Texas join Texas Organic Farmers & Gardeners Association (TOFGA). Get some of the books, tapes or DVD’s from them or us on your area of interest and get going!  Do something - if it works you’re a hero - if not you learned something - a win/win in my book!

Thanks,

Royce Bordman

01/2007

 

Compost CoOp

Royce Bordman

Bryan, TX

MISSION STATEMENT

At Compost CoOp our mission is to provide products and training aimed at producing nutrient dense, nutritionally balanced plants, crops and livestock using sustainable soil management and livestock husbandry practices.  These practices will then produce excellent quality, highly mineralized, health promoting human foods and support and expand the natural fertility cycling of the microbiology in the soil.