West coaster here, having a heart attack. :)
It's awesome that you want to start composting! And...composting well is not always as easy as it sounds. My first instinct was that, if it were me, I'd just be spreading all those wood shavings around the garden as mulch. Is that an option? Of course doing that doesn't help you compost all the other things you want to stop from going to the landfill.
SO! Remember that compost is the process of decomposition that happens when you mix tough, long-dead, woody material (carbon), with leafy, green, was-just-alive material (nitrogen), with air and water. You need all of these things in the right balance for the decomposition to happen in a timely way. Wood shavings are a very carbon-dense material, and they are going to need some serious nitrogen and some water to break down. Your kitchen scraps are a good start, but they won't be enough. For instance, wood shavings are often used as bedding material for animals, where they get mixed with urine and manure (both very concentrated sources of nitrogen); even then the piles can take a long time to break down (you probably know this if you were offering the shavings to ranchers). So first order of business is to find a good source of high-nitrogen material. If you can't find anything locally (coffee grounds from a local coffeeshop, maybe?), you could get some alfalfa meal or cottonseed meal from your local farm supply store.
To your question of piles, this depends on how much time you want to give your compost piles and how quickly you want to be able to use your finished product. There are two main options. The first is to gather up all the materials you have/need, and build a big pile by layering everything in and adding water to your layers so that everything is nice and moist. The pile will get really hot and possibly smelly. Wait a few days for it to really heat up and then start to cool off. Then turn the pile, adding water if there are any dry sections. Repeat every few days, or at least once a week. Depending on how consistent you are, your pile will be mostly broken down and sweet smelling in 4-6 weeks. Then let the pile sit for another month or so before spreading it around the garden. While this pile is going through it's process, you can gather new materials for a second pile and then start the actual composting in a second pile once you have enough stuff. Adding new stuff to the pile-in-progress will just slow things down.
The second option is to have a big pile that you just regularly add material to, and add water when it gets dry, and just let it sit. Eventually everything will break down, it just might take a year or longer. If you're in a warm, dry area in TX, then things are even slower to break down on their own. In damp climates, the decomposition will just kind of happen, and you can scoop out the composted materials from the bottom, while the pile just keeps settling in and breaking down at the ground level, and while you just keep adding stuff at the top.
In a wet climate, a big pile of shavings, even with no added nitrogen, will just break down by itself over time. But in a dry climate, you will likely have to do some work to accelerate the process. In my climate, wet in winter/ dry in summer, we do our most effective composting in the fall and spring; very little happens in the summer unless you're adding water and doing some turning.
On another note, using your kitchen scraps in an outdoor pile can attract rats and other rodents, so if that's an issue for you, you may want to create some kind of animal-proof bin. Alternatively, cut the bottom off of a garbage can and bury it partway in the ground. Put your kitchen scraps in there, keep the lid on, and let the worms and other critters take care of the rodent-attracting stuff. Then compost your wood shavings separately with another nitrogen source.
Hope that helps--happy to answer more questions if you have them...
