I think your doing great!
I don't know of a cardboard shredder for big boxes I leave mine out in the rain or hit them with the hose so they fall apart real easy but I usually throw them into the pile whole after the boxes are wet they break down fast and provide a little air space

I have tired paper and cardboard in my chipper shredder it just didn't work in there

Your are one of the lucky few who dont have to pay for kelp/seaweed.

Life is rich when you're a dedicated composter. One thing I'd suggest is to hold on to some manure full of redworms. You can use shovelfuls of it later as an inocculant, adding it to piles that are cooling down (below 90F somebody said on another post). Given time, the worms will do the work of turning the pile for you and make a high quality, fine textured compost.

Pete! Yikes allmighty, I am so glad you don't live near me! Pre-dawn, Nov. 1st, there'd be me and Pete, cruising down Main St. looking for smashed pumpkins, him on one side of the road, me all nerved up and irritated on the other, trying to beat him to every little fleck of orange pulp.

Fall, I'd probably find you, Pete, batting your eyes and trying to sweet-talk some guy at the Brewer dump into tossing the pine needles from his truckbed directly into yours. Boy! That would really frost me! I'd probably arrive some afternoon at the Five Mile Store to find the counter man saving lettuce leaves and onion skins for you. I wouldn't be able to take that.

No offense, Pete, but I think you and I are going to get along better if you stay on your coast and I stay on mine. You've embraced this with far too much gusto for a newcomer. People like you make me nervous.

Thanks for the kind words everyone. I used all my material and have started collecting again. Yesterday I shoveled and wheeled another load of horse manure before the wet weather sets in and access becomes imposible. Today I got more grounds and a bunch of those waxy-cardboard produce boxes. Doed anyone know of these are good in the compost pile, lasagne beds, or worm bedding? By the way what is a brewer dump and how do you use pineneedles? I have over an acre of heavy 10' pine and cypress duff and a brewery in town! I also scored 3 loads of pine chips from a tree company (about 15 yards) , any suggestions for use other than pathways?

Annpat means Brewer, Maine. Here's a map.
What a shame Nova Scotia is such a rocky, inhospitable place, with no stores or coffee shops, and where months go by without a glimpse of a scrap of anything you'd ever want to compost.

Here is a link that might be useful: brewer

The waxy boxes are fine in compost

Wood chips make nice mutch and bulking material to let air into the compost

The brewery would be nice to check out there are some posts here on brewery waste

Here is a link that might be useful: gov't study on wax produce box composting

I have always heard conifer chips and mulch are too acidic. I do have several old burn piles with lots of ash. How would a mix of pine chips, duff, manure, coffee grounds and woodash work???

Paul! You are too, too, hide your light under a bushel basket-ish. Nova Scotia is a wonderful place, a composter's Heaven! All that seaweed, all those canneries!

I hate putting wood chips in my compost. They slow my pile down. I'd rather pile them aside for breaking down, or better, do what Polly does and make paths out of them. When they break down in the path, she either rakes the black stuff up, or plants in it directly and makes new paths elsewhere.

I get annual deliveries of wood chips and whenever I'm bored, I'll take a wheelbarrow from the pile to my garden paths and freshen them up. I like to go into spring with fresh paths.

By duff, Pete, do you mean stuff you hope to take from a forest's floor? I hate to see the forest floors robbed. The layer is thin and many small forest plants depend on it---hereabouts Lady Slippers, for instance, require that crucial duff layer.

Paul! In that Brewer link, did you read the story about the "French Canadian" girl, who climbed to the top of the ladder and won $10? I loved sharing that story with my mother this morning who grew up across the river in Bangor.

Re; wood chips - I'd mix those with coffee grounds in a pile that was scheduled to go for 18 months before incorporating into a new garden bed. If you run out of coffee grounds, I'd try to score some of the brewer's old mash to use as a 'green' on the wood chip 'browns'.

Oh, no, annp. There's nothing worth seeing here. The fish plants have all been shut down. The mountains of seaweed are a coastal legend, a tall tale told of an evening by a retired composter on his creaky porch. The manure comes from a horse that wanders through this rocky unpeopled place once a year, me following closely behind with a large basket.

Excuse this rather melancholy tangent, mendopete.

While I go read that story, here's a riddle told me by a Newfoundlander (stop me if you've heard it).
Q. What's the fastest thing on the road?
A. A horse with a buggy behind.

Ann, you made me feel bad so I will leave the 100 year old duff layer in place. I was only considering radom pitchforks full as I have a hard time getting browns. I will stick to straw, chips,and cardboard. But wait...Todays score was getting hooked up with a landscaping service - maybe truckloads of grass and leaves dropped off at my place- premixed!!! I have about 1/4 acre I fenced to garden in. It is pretty much a blank canvas to create a dream garden. Paul you are right, life is rich as a composter! I assume a "buggy" is a term for an organic gardener or composter?? Thanks Idahoe for the wood chip recipe. I still think I will add some woodash to help the PH, maybe even of some of my new found bounty.

Pete!!! I live to make people feel bad!! So thank you, I feel good now.

Truly, people like you---crazy, enthusiasts, compost-gathering-at-every-turn-types are my favorite people!! And exclamation people!! are my second favorite, so you are number 1 and 2 in my book!!!

DIONE CLIMBED THE LADDER.; She Won $10 and When Offered a Husband, Said She Preferred a White Flannel Waist.
"not only the prettiest girl, but the pluckiest".

Charming. You ought to write up a full length story about that, Annpat.

"I assume a "buggy" is a term for an organic gardener or composter??"
It could be a synonym for 'wacko', the adjective. See FAQ for soil forum shorthand definitions.

Speaking of old stories. A while back I read this one in the local museum archives. About seventy years ago a journalist came from the Boston States (as New England is still sometimes called hereabouts) to write a travel piece about northern Cape Breton Island, where we live. It was a very rural place back then, populated mostly by tight-lipped Scots. One of the things the journalist reported was that there were only three cows on the island, and nobody seemed to know who they belonged to.

(Lloyd, did you notice how Paul spelled wacko? I.e. correctly.)

When I was a teenager our road had a horse that supposedly was owned by a man without a fence about 9 miles from here. Drivers hated that horse.

Ya I saw that, I just assumed he was into the Newfie screech and mis-typed a letter!!!! Sometimes I mis-type stuff and it usually ends up funnier than what I had intended!!!!!

I also noticed he talked about a "retired composter", as far as I know, there is no such animal, once a composter, always a composter!!!!

Roid!!!

P.S. Your road had a horse???!!!!!

"I think my back hurts.." Hey Pete, if you only *think* your back hurts just keep on composting the way you are and soon you will *know* it hurts! LOL You are doing very well and I'm sure a lot of us would love to see pics of your compost operation. Keep going and you might end up with a system like Lloyd's!

If you can get wood shavings they work well mixed with compost as a mulch. I use it regularly and the shavings disappear within a few months. Actual coarse chips from lumber mills are OK for paths but take ages to break down in my experience. Fresh wood chips from tree services are faster. So it all depends on what a person means by the term wood chips.

Cardboard is useful placed between plants under mulch as weed/moisture control. Easier to work with than newspaper IMO.

Paul, I never realized you live on Cape Breton Island. We have fond memories of towing a travel trailer all around the Cabot Trail back in the 70's. No one had told us that was ill-advised because of the grades. Of course we were from BC and didn't think the mountains were all that high! We also learned during that trip summer was over in the middle of August and we "enjoyed" a lovely storm coming off the Atlantic while we camped on the far side. Great memories!