The management of the three bin unit is simple. One bin is current stuff -- all winter and all summer all kitchen wastes and some garden waste goes into this bin, however it occurs with no particular order or "recipe". In the fall this "current" pile will be covered and left to work, and a new "current" pile started. The second bin is last year's pile, just sitting there continuing to compost. Bin 3 is from the year previous and this is what gets screened and moved into the greenhouse for winter and spring potting soil. Whatever is left gets shoveled onto the "resting" compost in Bin 2. In the spring, I use this compost around transplants in the garden. If I have a lot, it gets spread on a plot that I think might appreciate a little boost, being sure to leave enough for the fall potting soil. The empty Bin 3 is now the new "current" pile. And so it continues.

    The compost does just fine this way, and many years that’s all I do. There are always some pieces and chunks that aren’t yet decomposed when I dig it for potting soil or garden compost, but these are easily removed and thrown into the current pile. However, I sometimes get ambitious and shovel the contents of one or another of the bins into another bin to help the process along. It seems to help get the composting going faster. I’ve found this particularly helpful in a overly wet or overly dry year. Actually, the management of the bins is not as clearcut as I’ve explained above, it all depends on how the compost is coming and what and when I need it. I'm pretty laid back about the whole thing, leaving the compost to do what it does without interference, which it does very well.   

    You can do much more shoveling and fussing and management if you want -- it does speed up the composting process and probably doesn’t hurt -- but it’s a choice not a necessity. I’ve always found enough other projects to keep me busy. There is no special compost recipe that I use, nor do I add any purchased this or that. What we have is what goes in. On a "bad" apple year, a lot of cull apples go into the bin. On a good year, most of the apples go into sauce and dried apples and cider and vinegar, just the waste making its way to the bin. When we had chickens, they got most of the kitchen scraps so our pile was mainly weeds and garden plants. Then the chickens left and everything went into the compost pile. Then I reread Ruth Stout and Richard Clements great book "The No Work Garden Book" and picked up several points I had somehow missed in earlier readings. One was -- Why carry half the garden to the compost pile only to haul it back again to the garden? Why not leave it where it is and let it compost right there? Why not indeed. That's how Nature does it, and she is sure a much better gardener than I am! So I pretty much stopped hauling garden plants to the compost pile. Now it's kitchen scraps and whatever I pull out of the garden that I don't want, for one reason or another, to leave where it is. Both the garden and the gardener are very happy with this arrangement. And the compost is as good as ever.
    An even easier alternative would be sheet composting, right in the garden. But then I wouldn’t have any compost for potting soil [see Potting Soil article]. So the compost bin stays a part of my garden and our life, as well as a boon to many small creatures and birds who make use of it in their own way.