Here are my simplified thoughts on unfinished vs. finished compost. Take for example one of my favorite recipes, chopped leaves soaked in coffee ground water for 1 day. Ill bet that is unfinished as you get, so I'll call that mulch. Bad for the garden? But not in my garden. Or the same pile that sat for fall & winter, call that fungal dominated leaf mould, even though no turning, no high temps or no chopping are involved still a good product. How about the famous 2 to 3 week tumbler products with turning, high temps & chopping, but still with some recognizable materials, a good way to quickly to introduce organic material during fall & winter on garden beds. If I want more finished, the previous material sits for a few months to help the lower temp bacteria to repopulate, for spring planting. Using manure & weeds, it may be wise to use in the more finished composting method. The question is what exactly to introduce to the garden. Do you think turning, high temps & chopping play a part on a forest floor, a wild flower pasture? Yet everything decomposes. With that in mind, there are no mistakes...only different techniques.

Oh Debbie lucky you receiving from James. I have some wonderful treasures that I received from James and his lovely wife in a long ago swap. Very special to me is the little Eagle jug he sent me. That gourd is gorgeous! It must have taken a long while to do, very special. The cookbook looks lovely! I know James would have "angst'd" over that! LOL Texas wine you say, guess it has "BIG" flavour! LOL Enjoy Debbie, great job James!

Arley, it will never be worth it to me. I just don't care that much, I never weigh anything and sometimes I don't even measure. I do much of my cooking by "eye", depending on how it feels and looks and if my results are not perfectly consistent, I don't care about that very much either, as long as it tastes good. Plus, making bread, you can't measure ingredients and get consistent results. You could weigh the finished dough and get loaves or rolls the same size, but bread baking isn't an exact science. There are differences in brands of flour, how long it's been stored and where, the wheat is different from year to year depending on the climate conditions, even if it's grown the same place. There is humidity and temperature, a lot of factors that have nothing to do with how much your flour or liquid weighs. Even where your water comes from makes a difference in bread, so I'm always adding more flour or more liquid until it's "right". As for metrics, well, I refuse. I can barely remember the information I have now, let alone convert it to metrics. My theory is that the brain is like a computer. When my memory is full, nothing new can go in unless I get rid of old information and I have a bunch of information stored. Too bad much of it is useless, LOL. I know how much two liters is, because it's the size of a large soda bottle, although the local drug dealers use metrics, because they sell stuff by the gram. (grin) Plus I'd have to replace all my measuring cups, spoons, batter bowls, etc. Nope, I'm staying with cups and teaspoons, thanks. Add the fact that I HATE mathematics of all types any anything I have to do that involves numbers. I can do it, I just hate it, so a sure way to be certain I'll never make a recipe is to give it to me in metrics and tell me to weigh everything or convert it. It's WAAAYYY more fun to just screw it up the first time and then fix it. Something about swamps and alligators...(grin) Annie

Must be the day for car troubles. I'd taken off this morning for the country house--planning to stay until at least Sunday to get some 'stuff' done there. Got a call from DH at 4:30,, "My truck seems to have lost all it's coolant, so I had to take it to the service station." So I hopped in the car and drove an hour through rush hour traffic to get home so I can take him to work tomorrow morning. Hopefully, the truck won't take long to repair, and we'll be back at the house mid-afternoon (DH is only working 1/2 days this week, since it's his first week back after his last operation. Hope your car troubles are quickly remedied. Enjoy the movie.