Just my opinion, but it seems to me that all of the "instructions for making compost" that are out there probably discourage more people from starting a compost pile than anything else. Mine is completely random, consisting of all the veggie scraps and then occasional "layers" of grass clippings (once I have enough clippings for mulching the garden itself). They help heat the pile up -- although I don't think my compost ever gets as hot as a "properly constructed" one would -- and also just make it look a little better than the various decomposing vegetables. If the badge looked like my compost pile, I'm afraid it would just look like a brown blob! I do turn the pile a couple of times over the course of the season, and then by spring it's nice fluffy black stuff that gets dug in with some of my plants and top-dressed over others. Right now I still have enough left to put on the asparagus bed once the stalks are cut down, and to put on top of the garlic bed after I plant it. Then I'll turn the newer pile and let it be until spring. Meanwhile we'll add the fall grass clippings and leaves to the top of the garden, which usually ends up about a foot deep on the whole thing and over the course of the winter goes down to almost nothing. During the winter I throw all the veggie scraps into a plastic garbage can that I cut the bottom out of and put next to the pile -- and that stuff becomes the beginning of the new pile (I've learned to empty it out before things get too warm, because the insect life gets pretty crazy in there otherwise
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