Combat veteran grows victory garden

Photo by Phil Galdys Operation Iraqi Freedom combat veteran Brian Sales carefully agitates large bins of food waste, paper products and coffee grounds. The bins of waste are latent with growing hungry worms which convert the waste into highly enriched soil for Sublime Soil located in Palm City.

Photo by Phil Galdys
Operation Iraqi Freedom combat veteran Brian Sales carefully agitates large bins of food waste, paper products and coffee grounds. The bins of waste are latent with growing hungry worms which convert the waste into highly enriched soil for Sublime Soil located in Palm City.

By Patrick McCallister
For Veteran Voice

Brian Sales is fighting for his country by sowing the seeds of food independence.
The Operation Iraqi Freedom combat veteran sees urban farming as his next national security mission. In January, he’s off to Wisconsin for a month-long urban farming boot camp with the renowned Will Allen, founder of Growing Power.
“What I’m doing now with my career, it’s food security,” Sales said. “A lot of farmers are getting older, and somebody is going to have to take over.”
Sales is the director of operations at Palm City’s Sublime Soil. Dean Lavallee, owner of Park Avenue BBQ Grille, started the not-for-profit about seven years ago with a mission to completely eliminate landfill waste from his seven restaurants.
Sublime Soil is involved in numerous recycling — what Sales and Lavallee call “upcycling” — projects, but the biggest is vermiculture. That’s a fancy word for worm farming.

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