Wild Oats Hosts Composting Workshop for Earth Day

	Cynthia Grippaldi of the Center for EcoTechnology shows the 'black gold' backyard gardeners can create with a compost pile. The workshop was held at Wild Oats. Left, a simple fence composter.

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Backyard composting is economical, environmentally friendly and, perhaps best of all, easy.

"I have never taken the temperature of my compost pile," Cynthia Grippaldi of Pittsfield's Center for EcoTechnology said Monday. "I'm a lazy composter.

"But things are breaking down."

Grippaldi broke down the basics of composting for a crowd of about 20 behind Wild Oats Market on Monday afternoon for an Earth Day workshop.

Backyard composters put the natural process of decomposition to work for them — disposing their kitchen and backyard waste without paying the transfer station and producing fertile soil for their garden without paying the garden shop.

And they can accomplish those ends with minimal startup cost or labor, Grippaldi said.

"Composting is nature's recycling system," she said. "It goes on with us or without us. What we're trying to do is manage it."

There are things you can do to speed up the process of turning your waste into the rich, dark compost material that gardeners call "black gold."

Chief among those tasks is making sure your compost pile has approximately the correct proportion of carbon-rich "brown" material to nitrogen-rich "green" materials.

The browns (which come from leaves, dried grass, straw or cornstalks) should outnumber the greens (kitchen waste or fresh garden clippings, for example) by a ratio of about three-to-one, Grippaldi said.

But she does not recommend that practioners get too hung up on measurement — either when it comes to those proportions or, obviously, monitoring the optimal 140-degree temperature needed for a productive compost pile.

And while she touched on some of the compost bins on the market, she said her own setup consists of several wooden pallets stood on end and screwed together to form a box in her the back of her yard.

Other than feeding the compost pile with new material — largely byproducts from daily life in her kitchen — the other time commitment is occasionally turning the pile to keep it properly aerated.

"If your compost bin starts to smell, it's gone anaerobic," Grippaldi said. "The critters (worms and bugs) have moved out. Commercial bins will have holes on the side to let in air. To turn [the pile], you can use a pitchfork. If it's too wet or too compacted, that will keep air out."

You do want a certain amount of moisture, and fresh food scraps will provide a fair amount on their own. Some composters prefer to leave the pile exposed to the elements and let rain do the job, but if we get a particularly dry summer, you may need to use a hose or watering can to help the pile maintain "the consistency of a wrung-out sponge," Grippaldi said.

Because most people will not want to "feed" the bin every day — especially in the winter — Grippaldi recommended keeping a small plastic compost bucket in the kitchen to collect waste up to a week at a time.

Relatively recently, she learned the trick of using folded up newsprint to line that bucket. The paper itself can go right into the compost pile (as a "brown"), and the lining keeps the kitchen bucket clean, Grippaldi said.

Above all, she emphasized repeatedly that the composting process is low maintenance with high reward.

"Compost happens," Grippaldi said. "It is a science, but it's not so much of a science that you have to be all that concerned about it."

And if you happen not to have a ready supply of leaves in your yard to feed your bin, Grippaldi offered one more "lazy composter" tip.

"Go to Pittsfield," she said. "People rake up all their leaves and bag them and put them out on the curb for you.

"I'm all for letting someone else do all the work for me."

Pryor & Peacock's Whimsical Furniture Environmentally Friendly

By Breanna SteeleiBerkshires Staff
05:17AM / Friday, August 21, 2026

 

The company uses digital printing to create the upholstery fabric, saving water and saving vintage furniture from ending up in landfills.

STOCKBRIDGE, Mass. — A unique furniture store has popped up on Elm Street this month.

Mom-and-daughter store Pryor & Peacock is hosting the pop-up storefront from Aug. 13 to Aug. 25 at 6 Elm. The New Marlborough business is co-founded by Rosalina Wright and Luca Shapiro, who is also the creative director. 

Their online shop was created in 2024 but they wanted people to see the pieces in person, so they're renting the space for a limited time before a long-term tenant moves in.

The store sources prints to create unique fabrics and reimagines vintage and antique furniture acquired at auctions, local shops, and online.

"We source prints from all over the world that date from the late 1600s up through mid-20th century, and Luca turns those prints into fabric by manipulating them, scanning them, oftentimes has to add or subtract things, and then we manufacture the fabric using only digital printing, which is very environmentally friendly, unlike traditional textile printing," Wright said.

Upholstering the furniture can take weeks of work. Shapiro looks for the perfect design for each piece and, if need be, uses Adobe Photoshop to extend the art work to fit or enhance the print.

"One of the most difficult parts comes in marrying the fabric to a piece of furniture because we only use antique and vintage frames also to be earth friendly, and they're also more beautiful and durable than new furniture," Wright said. "So the image has to go with the furniture, so that takes a lot of work."

One of Pryor & Peacock's missions is to be environmentally friendly. Digital printing doesn't use the same amount of water as traditional textile productions do nor does it contaminate water with ink according to their website.

Not only are they saving water, but they are saving furniture from going into the landfill while also using more durable furniture that doesn't break as easily as current pieces. They started their business to create something unique and to help the environment together.

"It's creating something nobody else is doing. People can't continue to buy throwaway furniture. Six percent of American landfills is furniture, and digital printing not only opens up the possibility of being able to put unique images on a piece of furniture, but it also is, as I said, environmentally friendly. So, for us, the excitement is to take an old East Lake settee that somebody's going to store in their barn and forget about, and make it something completely new and surprising," Wright said.

They hope their furniture helps bring a pop of fun to someone's home.

"We think our furniture is very whimsical and surprising, and most furniture today is oatmeal colored couches and gray neutral chairs, and it's boring," she said.

The two named their business after their mothers' maiden names to honor them and believe the name reflects their pieces.

Shapiro works in interior design outside of the business and the two liked working together and thought it would be great to start a business together. Shapiro says they can work well together and that her and her mother, Wright, has flipped houses before and have the same eye for design.

"So it's very easy for us to work together. When we see something, generally we agree on whether it works or doesn't work on a piece. We agree on the color schemes and that sort of thing. So it's very fun and fulfilling to work together," Shapiro said.