Ok first & foremost making compost should be fun, not something to stress over. After all you are doing your own small part to assist mother nature & keeping green waste where it belongs - back in the ground. Making compost is not for those in a hurry. Mother nature is in charge of decompostion whether in the woods or in an earth machine & she doesnt hurry. Your earth machine will heat up if you have the approx. C:N ratio. Above you mentioned crushed leaves are your browns. Perfect, crushed leaves are IMO the best brown. Greens, kitchen & yard waste (take the time to chop green matl. into small pieces). Now mix all that together, dump it all into the earth machine a bucket full at time watering as you go. (This is the only time matl. is added) Jam the lid on & walk away for 3 days. Then come back & notice how the lid goes on easy & how the pile has shrunk. Dig down a little & feel heat from within the pile. You can stir it a little & add water or do it when you come back to check in a couple more days. In any case mix & water when you notice the temp. going down. It is finished when the stuff you get out of the bottom is crumbly, smells good, has a few worms etc...Thats hot composting, matl. added one time only, requires some effort, but not much & its fun because finished matl. happens around 30 days. (sometimes less) Cold composting is not being concerned for C:N ratio, little watering & mixing, adding matl. frequently. Compost will eventually happen. I have two piles one hot one cold. I build my hot batches using the stuff I continually add to the cold pile & my kitchen waste. So fill that earth machine. Go out & fiddle with it now & then, learn as you go. Look at the stuff as it decomposes, think of where you will put the finished matl. Once you get finished matl. you will be hooked... Hope that helps & have fun :)

All, Good to hear all this. I am only bumping this topic with updates as I find the information useful and hopefully so will others. To be clear on a few points, I originally did use my chipper to reduce freshly fallen leaves but no more. I keep them loose long enough to dry thoroughly and then they easily crush to smaller size by hand, only about 30 minutes work. At this point I started my new pile for next year, mixed in some greens and a couple shovels of old compost to "prime the pump". This is the pile that is already very active with internal temperatures near 125 F. I will continue to monitor the old and the new piles as I am in Zone 4 and our coldest months are January/February. In addition, we are semi-arid around here and I will need to occasionally add moisture. My old pile is indeed fogging but only slightly and it is visible only on the coldest of mornings. I will stick my thermometer in the pile to make certain what the temperature actually is before tilling into the soil. Best of holidays to you all.

Lorelei, that's an interesting observation, but the piles of ground tree limbs that the tree trimmers have left for me to use as mulch is full of the huge grubs and there is no manure anywhere around. I just toss them aside as I fill the wheelbarrow. It's curious that I don't see that many rhinoceros beetles. Just one or two now and then and often just an empty shell/skeleton. It seems they burrow because occasionally I see their head at the entrance of a little hole. Sometimes I find them in the soil of a pot that I've topped with mulch, but the plants have not been harmed since they only eat dead plant matter serving to break it down faster, sort of like earth worms do. This post was edited by roselee on Sat, Nov 8, 14 at 11:04

Good advice above. Just cover the pile a bit, start a temporary pile somewhere and wait it out. Post more pics when you have gourds! I do think it's a gourd plant despite the resemblance of the leaves to beans. The thick stems are easy to distinguish from bean vines, not to mention the flowers and fruit.