Taking Advantage Of Beautiful Weather

Thanks to everyone who sent their kind words and sympathies regarding our Little Mo. We appreciate it! 

The weather last week was gorgeous,as I previously posted. Buds are coming out on trees,some flowers have bloomed,which is just weird for NH in March. Usually,we still have lots of snow left on the ground,but not now-

Friday it had started cooling down a bit,so we decided it would be a good day to start on the compost area. Right now,we just dump our compost in a pile,which has some old cut down saplings and various branches mixed in with leaves,pine needles,etc,etc. We had a small pile of clean compost that we used some of last year for the  garden,but we didn't have enough to fill all the boxes,so we had to buy some. It also gave Rick a chance to play on his tractor. She's a sturdy old thing,and she started right up after sitting outside all winter.Not too shabby for a second buy on Craig's List:

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 Our goal is to clean up the area by separating the "breaking down" pile and the "broken down" pile,as well as taking out all the big pieces of branches. The area will get raked out,then bins made out of pallets and old wood for each stage of the compost process. Then,the piles will be put into their respective bins.

I would rake the top layer of leaves,etc off the pile,put the leaves in one area,the branches in another,and pull down the good compost. Rick would put the leaves in one pile,and the compost in another.He would also use the tractor to pull down the bigger branches so they were easier to get to. We did this over a course of a couple of days-Zach helped me with the raking and sorting of branches on Saturday-he was a big help.

This end of the pile was mostly branches!

I was very pleased to see once the top layer had been removed that we had lovely compost underneath-more than I thought we would have. We also encountered some frozen compost,so we were scratching at it with rakes,loosening up the branches and compost ( I try not to refer to it as "dirt"!). We have not made back out there since Saturday,though. The weather got real cold and windy,and we had some rain. This is where we are at:

On the far right you can barely see the compost pile,to the immediate left you can see our leaf pile. On the left side of the photo,you can see the pile we are still working on-and all that lovely compost! The bins are going to go behind this big pile,set further back.

Do you compost? How do you store it?