Wes Calloway researches and writes the composting guidance, feedstock data, and calculator methodology behind compost.tools. The work is straightforward to describe: read the primary literature, reconcile it where it disagrees, and turn it into calculators and plain-language explanations that a home composter can actually use.
What "research writer" means here
To be clear about what this byline is and isn't: Wes is not a soil scientist, an agronomist, or a certified master composter, and this site does not pretend otherwise. The value here is diligence and transparency, not a credential. Every figure in every calculator is drawn from a citable source and shown with its citation, so you never have to take a number on faith — you can follow it back to the publication it came from and judge it yourself.
The sources are the same ones professionals reach for: university cooperative extension publications, USDA and EPA datasets (including the EPA WARM model and NRCS soil data), the On-Farm Composting Handbook (NRAES-54), and the US Composting Council's CREF feedstock database.
Editorial standards
Authoritative sources disagree more often than you'd expect — the "right" C:N ratio for grass clippings varies widely between publications. When they conflict, this site shows both values and explains which one the calculators use and why, rather than quietly picking the number that sounds best. When a source is revised, the affected calculators and pages are updated and their last modified date refreshed. The full source hierarchy, the numbered bibliography, and a table of known disagreements live on the methodology page.
Composting is a living process, not an equation. The ranges you see are representative, not universal constants, and the calculators are meant to give you a defensible starting point — not a guarantee. That limitation is stated plainly throughout the site because pretending otherwise would be the opposite of helpful.