Yup, that's exactly right. It's actually a very sad story. He used to have the greatest organic compost pile in Southern California -- several stories tall, nearly an acre wide, populated by foraging chickens and geese. Homeless guys also came to sleep on it in winter to keep warm. It was lovely golden-colored stuff that smelled wonderful. Local gardeners for years were welcome to show up with a truck or wheel barrow and help themselves. After decades of fighting with the land owner and county over its size, The Pile was completely bulldozed last year. He no longer maintains a pile.
What distributes now isn't as good as what came from The Pile, but it's still works wonderfully so long as you water it in well, and you don't plant tender new plants in it right away (after a few months, seeds sprout like mad in it, though).
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