It's one of my favorite parts of composting! I think a lot is the increase in density, but maybe just as much the loss of carbon to the atmosphere through aerobic digestion by micro and macrobes.
I also enjoy it! I made a compost pile for the first time last year of about a cubic meter, and I was a bit worried about the volume (I don't have that much space). I probably have 25% of the volume left but the quality of the soil seems really good!
I made a larger compost pile this year which has already been full twice before some compaction allowed me to add more stuff.
Oh man, ain't that true 😂 I made my first batch lost year, and it literally lost ⅔ the size, and it was a piddly amount lol, but it was really nice, very loamy
I went a little heavy and used mulch, haven’t worried about keeping things super small, and have even been tossing in entire weed clumps and leftover fruit rines.
So I’m not expecting it to be done until next summer. We’ll see how many more times I get to fill it up lol
Oh yeah, I'm not one to really break my stuff further down, I just make sure I do a couple layers and wet it when I'm done with that layering process, I'm not going to use compost I make this year, it's gonna go through this whole year until I even think about putting it in my garden area
Gardening