You could start a worm bin. They need shredded newspaper for their bedding
and it has to be supplemented often depending on how well they're doing.
Then you could compost all your non-dairy or meat food scraps at the same
time :-). My worms "eat" a Chronicle a week along with all food scraps I
make, and I make a bunch because I'm vegetarian (lots of vegetable and fruit
scraps).

FYI - alfalfa and cottonseed meal is SOO much cheaper if you buy it in a big
bag at the feedstore, rather than in fussy little bags at the garden store.
I bought a 40 lb. sack of cottonseed meal at Buck Moore Feed for less than
ten dollars, enough to feed your garden and supplement your compost pile for
a couple of years.

"GATR" wrote in message
...

If you have a mower with a bag, cut your grass and add one or two bags of
grass clippings. The nitrogen in the grass will cause the pile to heat up.
I
did this about three weeks ago, several days before a cold spell. I walked
out one morning when the temp was around 40 and stuck my rake in the pile
to
turn it. The heat from the pile hit the cold air causing it to condense so
much that I thought the durn thing was on fire. I cut my grass Sunday and
did the same thing. I checked on it awhile ago and it was heating nicely.
No
need for any other means of combustion.

I also read a tip in the paper some time ago that said you could add small
pieces of paper. It occurred to me that I could add the bills I shred to
the
pile. I'm going to start doing that as well. (Not for combust the pile,
though.) I don't know about colored paper so I'll probably just use white
paper that doesn't have a lot of colored ink in it. My compost does not go
on vegetables so it shouldn't matter.

The earlier poster (animaux?) was right about keeping it wet. The grass
has
really helped break up the cantas that I had put in there some months ago.