Composting - A reason to look forward to yard work.

I'd been trying to get around to mowing up the yard all week, but things have been getting in the way.  It doesn't look TOO bad I know - just a few weedy flowers poking around - but with little kids that love to poke and prod things - and it being the season for fire ants to start showing up (as well as other things like snakes) - I like to keep the yard well trimmed.
Once it might have been a chore - or as a kid even a punishment, but now I actually look forward to yard work, raking, and sweeping - because it's all compost.  This years crap is next years soil.
I started composting in earnest with Garden #2 due to the incredible amounts of kudzu and other unwanted vines. It was a constant battle between a garden and a jungle.  Combined with the incredible amount of paper goods you end up accumulating with 2 small kids - I started what seemed at the time a 'mini landfill'.  It was one of the successful things to come out of that garden - with a turnover of 4-5 months per pile. I hoped to tweak those methods when I got a yard of my very own to do with as I please.

This is a 4 cubic foot composting frame I put together in April - On my birthday actually. I wanted a day to myself to get some projects done that I got to choose, of no particular priority. This was one I knocked out in a few hours.
A simple frame glued and screwed together with cheap strip timber, lined with landscaping fabric and floored with some plastic chicken wire.
The size came from previous compost cages I did, where I experimented with the size - only to corroborated later with online research.
4 cubic feet seems to be the acknowledged ideal lower end of effective composting. It's all kept neat and away from the kids, and simple so I can work out how to harvest that compost later.  I can cut out the bottom of the cloth and put a hatch in there, or sheath it in plywood if the cloth is too flimsy - so far it's held up.  Composting is a long term plan. I've had a full compost area turn over in as little as 4 months, and others (smaller) taking a year. So it's to supplement the worm bins, which are still front and center in the garden plan.
I try and keep to the same plans as my worm bins too so far as what I put in, and how much I put in.  When I have a huge cardboard box, like a swimming pool or a TV, an AC unit - where it would be a month of Sundays to break down and bed the worms, it goes in here. Also surplus shredded bedding from the house (because without really thinking it through - I shredded down all the supplies I used to move house - I have literally a years worth of shredded worm bedding stored in empty diaper boxes).
Instead of coir, we have the leaves that fall from the neighbors trees (and my own magnolia), instead of veg scraps, we have grass clippings.

 I've piling clippings, cardboard and leaves in this since I built it, and although it took next to no time to reach half full, it has remained there. Every time I go to pile stuff in, the level has noticeably dropped.
I was planning on filling it and building a second while this one settled down, but it's now looking like I'll be modifying the design to dig out from the bottom and having it as a flow through.
It's getting eaten away by critters on the top, earthworms coming through the chicken wire on the bottom, and the mass builds up heat in the middle.  These things seem to be adding up to a perfect storm of composting - so much so that I may be forgoing my original idea of tumbling it top to bottom every few weeks when it was full... because it might never get full.

It's good to have as a backup as well - as by ignoring my own guidelines my worm bins are still getting back up to speed due to a lack of green scraps.  So surplus paper scraps have a place to go while I'm sorting that out.
The biggest thing though is the lifestyle change - no longer is this aspect a chore, even though I enjoy my yard time I find myself looking forward to mowing and cleanup as I'm actively working towards my own supply of good soil.

In no time the yard is ready for the kids again - I still haven't worked out a 'fun' angle for moving those wooden shelves and the planter/shed project I put on hold when I moved here off the driveway and tucked away .... but still there'll be no complaints about having the yard ready for the kiddies and the wife, and that's always a priority.
As I tell my friends 'Happy Wife = Happy Life'