Compost

What do you do with your food/garbage?  What does your compost pile/bin look like? 

I don't remember having a garbage pile or compost bin when I was growing up . . .   I asked mom today and she said that she just dumped her foodscraps/garbage into the garden and it got tilled into the dirt.

I have not always had a garden, as much as I like to grow things.  This year trying to garden on sand, I have come to recognize the urgent need for a large compost bin.

I rounded up some old pallets and had the boys screw them together . . . Though they weren't there more careful about the looks of things so they look at bit shipshod, but it works.  Most of the summer I have gathered grass clippings from a neighbor/ friend ( our grass clippings don't hardly amount to a "hill of beans"), some leaves from last fall from another neighbor who puts his junk wood things to burn in our burn pile ( with our consent), and some straw/ hay (with a bit of horse and donkey manure in it) and a little bit of garbage from our kitchen.  Most of our kitchen scraps go directly to the chickens.  

Since most of the year, things are frozen, I'm not sure how long the garbage will take to break down.  I have never done this before.  The first bin I didn't add water and that was a mistake.  

Yesterday, I started turning it with a pitch fork for the first time.  And by late afternoon, I brought the water hose to help moisten things a bit.  I was so grateful that it is close enough to the outside water spigot that with three garden hoses I could reach where I needed to.

This last (first) bin needed water the most, so I had a helper nearby to run the sprayer for me so it didn't take so much time stopping every few minutes.

Can't wait to use this stuff next year.  

What is your experience with composting?