Dust to dust - recycle via compost

Happy Friday the possibilities are endless for what can be accomplished today.  I recently won a raffle at a belated earth day event that I attended.  My grand prize was a compost bin!

Take a gander at my lovely new Soil Saver composting bin, pretty right?  Just the finishing touch for any back yard.  Well maybe with stickers or decoupage?  This brand boasts of zero odor and zero rodent penetration. Hurray because I hear that rodents and stench can be a reason to not attempt to compost.  Besides, although convenient, this would look horrible in my kitchen.  Can you imagine?  Don't even try.

For those unfamiliar with this way to recycle food scraps and yard leaves, per Wikipedia, composting in the early Roman Empire was to pile organic materials and let them stand for about a year, or until the next planting season, at which time the materials would be ready for soil application. The main advantage of this method is that little working time or effort is required from the composter and it fits in naturally with agricultural practices in temperate climates. Disadvantages (from the modern perspective) are that space is used for a whole year, some nutrients might be leached due to exposure to rainfall, and disease producing organisms, some weed, weed seeds and insects may not be adequately controlled.  


In modern times composting is recycling waste [food scraps, yard materials-leaves, old newspaper] with and without the use of worms into decay for the purposes of fertilizing soil [in an organic way] to avoid contributing to land fills by creating bags of trash.  A rapid attempt to correct some of the perceived problems associated with traditional, slow composting. Many advocate that compost can be made in 2 to 3 weeks.


Due to the fact that this bin must be assembled, this project will be put off another few weeks for I must solicit help with said assembly, after which I am looking forward to giving this compost thing a whirl.  Let's see if I can make this 

look like this in just three weeks

so that my flowers can look like this in a raised flower bed!

I'm not opposed to them but I do not plan to utilize worms for my first go round.  I was thinking more of egg shells, food scraps, leaves, junk mail and newspaper.  Worms actually do speed up the process though.


Do any of you compost?  If so I'd love to hear your stories.
(photos courtesy of veer.com and Google.com)