By Will Rowlands
JULY-AUG 2017 – There are ideas and then there are ideas. Pet rocks, shoe umbrellas, Tamagotchi, etc., are interesting, if somewhat silly, examples. The Freund family, dairy farmers in East Canaan, came up with one that’s not only functional but benefits the environment in several ways.
About 20 years ago, they were looking for a better way to manage the manure generated by their herd of some 250 cows and Matt Freund had an idea. Why not make pots from cow manure?
Matthew and Ben Freund, second-generation dairy farmers, were there and took up the challenge.
Actually, according to The New York Times, the genesis of the idea came from Jane Slupecki from the Connecticut Department of Agriculture. Circa 1998, she asked a group of dairy farmers if they could do something with their manure – “Can’t you guys do something with this stuff – make a flower pot or something?”
What if they could make a bio-degradable product, produced sustainably, from the cow manure generated by their herd? Matt began work on making a pot from the manure.
He mixed the first batch in the kitchen and used their toaster oven as a drier. Good old Yankee ingenuity. I guess we have to thank his wife, Theresa, for not kicking him out of the kitchen.
Here’s how it works in a nutshell:
A digester extracts methane gas from the liquids. (The methane is used for heat and hot water.) A press separates the liquids from the solids. The remaining liquid, basically a manure tea, is used to fertilize the farm’s field crops. The leftover solids are turned into CowPots.
Thanks to Eugene Freund, Matt and Ben’s father, who started the farm in 1949, they’d already started working on the manure problem. Eugene was a graduate of the Cornell University School of Medicine and was committed to environmentally sound practices.
By 2007, they had their first hand-made pots. Fast forward a few years and a factory on the farm now produces CowPots in a variety of sizes, ranging from 3 to 17 inches. Some are square, some are round and they make a tray with six compartments for starting seeds. You can even talk to them about custom products. They’ve produced more than 35 million of them so far.
CowPots were not a huge money-maker initially but they have helped the farm comply with environmental laws. It became a separate business in 2014 when it proved to be economically sustainable and able to stand apart from the dairy.
A third generation of the family, Amanda Freund (Matt and Theresa’s daughter) along with her sister Rachel and brother Isaac, cousin Sarah and her husband Andy, have returned to work with the second generation on the farm. Besides the dairy farm, they grow crops on 500 acres, operate a farm market and maintain 200 acres of forest.
Why You Should Try CowPots
There are a number of very good reasons:
• They’re easy to use. You can plant the pots, just make sure they’re covered with soil. They break down quickly, allowing for unrestricted root growth.
• Once planted they attract micro-organisms.
• They’re manufactured sustainably using solar energy and are biodegradable.
• They break down in about 12 weeks and don’t contribute more plastic to the waste stream.
• They’re odor free and will last indefinitely if stored dry.
• They’re made in Connecticut.
For more information, go to cowpots.com or look for CowPots on Facebook.
