How to manage compost

The work, the love, the art that goes into making soil from waste (composting) is a critical part of how that system out there (Nature...) created the fertile world around us. Understanding that system and putting ourselves into it we began to create our own fertility and it changed the way people practiced agriculture.

I grew up using a compost pile in the back yard for our food waste, and often had the job of going out to dump the pail on the pile behind the barn and layering on a bit of dry stuff: leaves, hay, and some animal manure if you had some. These piles would heat up as the microbes burned through life cycles and changed  that pile of kitchen scraps into that fluffy black gold that then fed the next years gardens, and yes made more kitchen scraps.