Member Spotlight: Dan Halterman

Originally published in the Summer 2025 edition of the OEFFA newsletter.

Dan Halterman considers himself a “global accumulator of wealth.” He’s dubbed his backyard a “nutrient funnel,” where he composts banana peels from Central America, coffee waste collected from a local Starbucks, bags of leaves sourced from neighbors, and produce from California and beyond. All of this nutrition concentrates in Halterman’s backyard garden at his home in the North Linden neighborhood of Columbus. And then he eats it.

Before retiring from more than three decades with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, he would have a desktop compost collector at work and tell colleagues as they dropped off apple cores or orange peels, “I’m going to eat that in four years.”

After years of experimentation with “every kind of compost technology and process,” he finally settled on doing nothing. Halterman adopted the principle of Occam’s Razor for his backyard compost system: the simplest solution is often the best. Now, he just cycles through four bins, with a new bin of compost being ready for the garden each spring. Each bin starts with woody matter—like old tomato plants—at the bottom, before being gradually topped off with leaves, and other “waste.”

Instead of toiling over turning the compost, Halterman fills the bin and leaves it to do its thing. Other organic materials can go in the next bins, and then, four years later, the original one contains finished compost ready for the garden.

Children, neighbors, and Halterman’s fellow churchgoers are amazed by the process, and it’s easy to see why folks would want to spend time in his backyard.

“Compost and gardening are what my mind revolves around,” said Halterman, as we sipped slightly sweet tea near the tomatoes, peppers, sugar snap peas, and almost-ripe raspberries.

A sunny garden space was something Halterman “could not do without” when he purchased the home seven years ago. While looking through home listings, Halterman would pull the addresses up on Google Maps, using a homemade paper protractor to measure the sun angle; that way, he would be able to see shadows on a potential new home and garden over different times of the year.

Inspired by Barbara Kingsolver’s life-changing memoir, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, in which the author kept track of the amount of food her family produced annually, Halterman also has nine years of data on his garden. His record is 212 pounds, and his current garden produces around 170-180 pounds of food each year.

“The other fun thing is giving it away,” shared Halterman, who spoke of dropping tomatoes off to neighbors, after being weighed, of course.

A garden is something that is in Halterman’s blood. He grew up in Wadsworth (Medina County) and his family’s large garden played a role in his upbringing. His parents weren’t farmers, but being from rural areas knew that “a garden was just a part of life.” As the youngest of four siblings, Halterman often found himself helping his mom and dad, whether it was filling buckets at the creek for watering or the dreaded task of picking beans.

“Over the years, I have learned and unlearned a lot about gardening,” he shared.

Through gardening with his family, and later learning about industrial agriculture, Halterman has also evolved in his understanding of soil health and appreciation of manure, something he shared at the OEFFA Conference open mic.

Our records show that Halterman officially became a member of the organization in July 2002, but he was supporting OEFFA long before. After earning his bachelor’s degree in conservation and spending a Peace Corps service assignment in Paraguay, Halterman ended up in Columbus to get a master’s in environmental resource policy and planning from The Ohio State University. His first post-grad position was with the Ohio Environmental Council, through which he learned about another local organization: OEFFA.

In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, Halterman volunteered regularly with OEFFA, helping out with fundraising dinners in downtown Columbus and with an OEFFA office move from a church in the Short North to an office on Summit Street.

More recently, Halterman has been involved with the organization by attending recent OEFFA conferences, supporting our membership staff in preparing mailings, and participating in our policy team’s Statehouse soil health advocacy days. His advocacy for soil health extends far beyond these annual events.

“I stop people in conversations every time they use the word ‘dirt,’” he said.

OEFFA was formed in 1979 as a grassroots organization made up of farmers, eaters, gardeners, and everyone in between. We are thankful for members like Dan Halterman, whose 23+ years of OEFFA membership and 30+ years of support for the organization have made an indelible mark on our team, our work, and our impact.

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