Here's my current compost setup:
It hasn't been there much more than a month. The reason it's in a pit is my cousin had a sort of wooden corral installed there and the compostables from the kitchen just got tossed in there. It didn't work very efficiently but she did get a little compost each year. When she said she'd like to have me set it up I requested the wood be removed because it would just have been in the way. I only got the straw in there this past week. I'd been using white pine shavings for the carbon material.They work nicely but don't help aerate like straw does.
Anyway, at this point we could harvest compost if we wanted to. I got the pile going pretty hot at first, with alfalfa pellets mixed with steer manure, and we have a fair amount of vegetable waste from the kitchen, especially when we make green juice -- all the pulp is wonderful.
The wire fencing took some locating; we finally had a couple of scraps offered to us by a friend, and I pieced them together.
