Getting my Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds catalog in the mail provided just the motivation I needed to get outside and move around some compost to begin prepping the garden beds for spring.

Here's a look at out current compost bins.

Far left: the bin we're currently filling -- you can see our pumpkin, fall leaves, and goat bedding with poo on top of the mound

Middle: Compost ready for the garden! I actually took the photo after I'd scooped 5 wheelbarrowfuls out, but you can tell by the color of the soil just how great it is! I absolutely love the idea of compost: yesterday's trash and scraps become the today's fuel for growing tomorrow's food!

Far right: mid-decomp bin. The contents of this bin should be ready for use by spring.

Remember, we use the Square Foot Gardening method, so we have a grid like this on top of the beds. For the winter, though, we've removed the grid. This allows us to more easily stir in soil amendments.

Here's a look at the beautiful compost, ready for the garden beds. It was so full of earthworms -- an excellent sign that it's good soil.

Here's a look at the garden beds once I'd added all the compost.

Remember, we do not use our local soil. Our beds are filled with a mix of rice hulls, peat moss, and compost/manure. We aren't sure that the rice hulls were actually the best route, so instead of adding more come spring, we plan to sub in vermiculite instead.

Going ahead and moving the compost to the garden beds allows it more surface area to speed decomp if there's still some stuff that needs to break down before spring. Also, it gets the prepped compost out of the middle bin so that we can go ahead and start filling that one back up.