Adventures in rot

I've mentioned before that we got a compost pile started in the side yard of our place, I've been putting mostly grass clippings and kitchen scraps into it to this point. The weekend we cleaned out the gutters we put the already rotting leaves into the compost pile and I figured it would be a great time to turn the pile since my wife had mentioned it was starting to stink a little bit. When you compost correctly it shouldn't stink, I was not sure what to expect. Well when you put mostly grass clippings into a compost pile and don't turn it every week or so like you should you find layers of rotted grass; slimey, stinky, rotted grass. So I used my nice new pitchfork to turn everything onto a tarp, flipped it all over and put it back into the pile, then we dumped the leaves from the gutters into the pile.

Last night there was a good bit of wind in our area that blew down a few leaves, not as many as I will be raking up in October I am sure though. Leaves are a great thing to be putting into the compost pile and since it had been a few weeks it was time to turn the compost pile again. Today's experience was much nicer and turning the compost pile did not bring a swarm of flies and the compost is staring to look like, compost!

The next compost related project is to turn our bin into a two bin bin so turning the pile is an easier endeavor, which no doubt means I do it more often creating less stinky compost much faster than would happen otherwise.