Nancy, Your above question caused me to have an OMG moment. My mind snapped back to early childhood, to my horticulturist father (also former Editor of Horticulture Magazine) and a lesson often delivered when walking within a hardwood forest. I visualize him now, bending over, scrapping back the top leaf litter which exposed the rich, black soil beneath. Gently he would lift a handful, run a finger through it and announce that "this is the stuff of life." Further explanations that this mycorrhizal laden soil develops from dropping tree litter which naturally composts. It is found only within a few top inches below ground. In this natural state it is precious. It is fragile. It must be handled with care. Those four inches of black soil you see under your hardwood trees is Mother Nature's way of creating "the stuff of life", the various types of fungi that feed her children and our planet

Please leave your tractor in the barn. Please to not rip into your present eco system as the rough handling, piling and cement mixer treatment you describe will greatly harm MF and also the remaining natural vegetation.

Yes, I do collect MF from wooded areas, carefully. But only to add to trees/shrubs I might be planting. One of my favorite, more unusual gardening tools that I use for collecting MF and moss patches is a metal kitchen dough scrapper. The type with a metal handle, not wooden, very useful for other garden chores such as weeding, seed planting. Using this I can easily push away fallen leaves and carefully slide it under the top soil which I then place into a container for transport. This MF laden soil is then added to the surface soil of a planting hole as it is closed up, mimicking the natural method where it will continue to develop.

A final thought. Are there any tree stumps with rotting centers on your property? That stump dirt soil is pure gold, again to be handled carefully. When I am lucky and find some I like to add a handful when planting dahlias and ferns, etc.

My next door neighbor lives downhill from me and the leaves from all the trees falling in the autumn end up banked against his patio door like a snow drift 8 feet tall. He has been gathering those leaves and hauling them into the woods for 50+ years and leaving them in a double-wide mobile home sized pile to break down. To help out the raised beds in my kitchen garden I bring it up by the wheelbarrow loads and just blanket the tops of the soil. Mother nature has a way of working it into the topsoil/compost blend underneath. No need to make extra work. Rotted oak leaves grow great carrots!