Composting for Carrots! (and spinach)

I think my left arm is going to fall off. I spent more than half of the day shoveling and forking various materials and mixing soil. I'm making a dedicated carrot/root crop bed. It is 2x12x2, and the bottom foot-14 inches of material is poopy hay from the chicken coop, AKA chicken hay, leaves, and various other 'brown' trimmings like canna leaves and pampas grass leaves, all in layers, all compacted in the bottom of the bed. It will be the nitrogen rich zone. Then, there is about 3 inches of horse poop/hay compost, 2 inches of regular, mixed source compost and regular garden soil for the neutral, average to above average richness zone. I also mixed up about 16 cubic feet of 'inert' soil for the upper zone, a mix of peat, pine sawdust, and sand. I spent the better part of an hour just mixing that in my cart. I won't use all of it in the long bed. I'll use a bit in places in other beds where I need to sow small seeds like lettuces.
In addition to almost completing the carrot bed, I did prepare a 5x6 raised bed that I will use for greens, spinach and maybe lettuces. This little bed is a wooden sided bed, made with scrap wood 2x8's. I tilled up the top layer of soil using my little cultivator and then raked out the Bermuda grass and weeds. I added a bit of chicken hay and mixed that in with the soil. Then I topped the bed with horse hay compost and then regular garden soil. I'm ready to plant spinach next week. This little bed is in a dimly lit corner of the garden. It gets sun, but it also gets a bit of shade and is generally cooler than other areas of the garden. After the spinach is done, I'm going to cover the area with a shade cloth and then try to grow lettuces here throughout the summer.

In 2006, on a canoe trip, Skyguy and I had a bit of an accident on the Elk River in TN, and I left with a busted left humorous and a pulled bicep. We were in the middle of the wilderness when it happened, and I had no choice but to paddle out. Yeah, it hurt, but I wrapped it with a wet t-shirt-wet from the ice cold river. My left arm hasn't been the same since, and whenever the bicep is stressed, the old injury roars back to life. Tonight is a Ben Gay night. It would be a Jacuzzi night if I had one. One day...