Before we ask how to compost, since nature is maximally efficient
perhaps it would benefit us to first examine how nature goes about
returning organic matter to the soil from whence it came. If we do
nearly as well, we can be proud.

Where nature is allowed to operate without human intervention, each
place develops a stable level of biomass that is inevitably the
highest amount of organic life that site could support. Whether
deciduous forest, coniferous forest, prairie, even desert, nature
makes the most of the available resources and raises the living
drama to its most intense and complex peak possible. There will be
as many mammals as there can be, as many insects, as many worms, as
many plants growing as large as they can get, as much organic matter
in all stages of decomposition and the maximum amount of relatively
stable humus in the soil. All these forms of living and decomposing
organisms are linked in one complex system; each part so closely
connected to all the others that should one be lessened or
increased, all the others change as well.

The efficient decomposition of leaves on a forest floor is a fine
example of what we might hope to achieve in a compost pile. Under
the shade of the trees and mulched thickly by leaves, the forest
floor usually stays moist. Although the leaves tend to mat where
they contact the soil, the wet, somewhat compacted layer is thin
enough to permit air to be in contact with all of the materials and
to enter the soil.

Living in this very top layer of fluffy, crumbly, moist soil mixed
with leaf material and humus, are the animals that begin the process
of humification. Many of these primary decomposers are larger,