Times of Extreme Frugality: What the Heck is Hugelkultur?

It's been a while since I posted but the beginning of autumn and the end of garden season has meant a mad rush here at Silk Road.

We've been harvesting and processing tomatoes, picking apples, pulling carrots and onions, digging potatoes, mining for sweet potatoes, gathering pumpkins, and trying to take back the garden from a massive weed invasion. 

Tom has also embarked on the adventure of substitute teaching, getting calls at 7am to be at the school by 7:30. Needless to say, being blasted out of bed and pushed immediately out the door is hard on a night owl like my husband. But he's managing.

And we have finally managed to try our first experiment with hugelkultur.

Hugelkultur (say it like you're baying like a bloodhound. Don't you just love German words?) is gardening with raised beds built on rotting wood and other biomass, providing long-term humus and fertility production. It has been practiced in Europe for decades and is now the latest darling of the hipster gardeners. 

Since part of our garden was water-logged long into spring, I thought a super-raised bed might help. 


The first step is to dig out the soil.

We did this with two shovels and two aching backs, so we didn't dig that deep.

Next, you put wood in the hole. We didn't have any rotting or otherwise useless wood hanging around, so Tom ventured into the edge of our lawn and hacked off some dead limbs.

We had saved the hay mulch that was on top of the bed. This went in next.

Then we got to re-shovel the same dirt, back where it came from.

Not as high as a traditional hugelkultur mound and it will settle over the winter, but I'm hopeful it will drain faster than this spot did last spring.

We can now say we are up with the latest trend in gardening; two  hepcats swinging to the hugelkultur beat *plays bongos and snaps fingers*.

Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail

After months of moaning around, feeling like nothing was happening, we're springing full-speed ahead.

Got our shiny, new metal roof finished.



The garden is plowed and soon to be tilled*.

And we have rabbits!

I hopped on the idea of the bunny trail during the long days of dreaming and planning during winter.

Rabbits are, supposedly, easy homestead meat animals. They require little space, they're quiet and produce copious amounts of great fertilizer, and they breed like...well, like rabbits!

We started building cages and I began checking Craigslist for some local furballs.

Before I was really serious, I came across an offer on a local Facebook page that I had to grab. Three does, cage, bedding, pellets, the whole shooting match. And the seller was only 11 miles down the road.

After a few emails, we came home with the three nose twitchers.

Of course, there's more to the story.

Earlier, I had gone to our feed store and saw they were selling rabbits. I asked what breed they were; the young man paused to consider and answered "Amish rabbits. We get them from an Amish farmer." Hmm, never heard of that kind before. I wasn't quite ready to buy yet anyway, so I passed on the bunnies reasoning it wasn't a good thing when even I knew more about rabbits than the seller.

Leap forward to the Facebook post which claimed these are Rex rabbits. In conversation with the poster, turns out the husband works for the feed store so these are also "Amish" animals. However, the wife had raised rabbits in 4H so at least had some experience. They looked healthy and happy so we brought them home. The cage doesn't have electricity and they're dressed in black and white and grey so I guess they really are Amish.

We had part of the outside stand for the cages finished but still needed a roof. It took us two days but we got one done that should work.

The rabbits are around 2 months old so in a few months I'll be looking around for a buck. By fall we should have the ingredients for rabbit stew!

Roof, garden, new livestock and warm and sunny days--welcome May.

*For the record: this is the first time in my long history of growing things that I have ever had a garden plowed. We have always hand turned garden beds and small plots. But this size is a bit beyond a shovel and fork; I may even plant some things in rows!