#Moundlife
This weekend we broke ground on our very first hügelkultur permaculture mound baby!
Our first step in breaking ground on our hügelkultur food forest was conducting a comprehensive assessment of our land and how the elements naturally interact with our space. We were quite fortunate in December and January to receive weeks of rain that certainly aided in our understanding of where water falls and how it moves around our land. With earth’s most precious resource in mind and Seal’s strategic planning for our property design, we decided to give birth to our first hügelkultur mound at the southeast side of our property. The sun blankets this corner in the most perfect way. The space is fairly clear with a few oaks that weave through, providing a soft sheet of shade for hot summers. Most importantly, the corner is perfectly perched, allowing for water to flow naturally.
We got to work this weekend with the help of our handy dandy tractor trenching our “OG Mound.”
We are building our hügelkultur mound babes in layers of three to ensure years of nutrient rich, regenerative soil. We start by digging 3-4 ft deep, mostly 😂 and then get to work on layer one.
Layer one is a perfect puzzle of generally 6' long by 1' wide, 25+ lb pine, oak and cottonwood logs.
Thank the universe for the support of our tractor 🚜 😂 it comes in handy when we start "building the pyramid” as Seal likes to say 😂😍! The next step in this process. Layer two is made up of mega chunky, a few hundred pound rounds that we lay up to start creating the spine 🦴 of our babe. Step three consists of strategically layering in rounds. These "rounds" are cushioned in on each side by more logs and thus you have layer two. Oh, we meant to also mention that a lot of this is meticulously backfilled by hand by yours truly.
Layer three or "our fresh breath of air" as we like to refer to it, is made up of thin logs, generally 6' long and 6 to 12" wide and LIGHT in weight 🙏🏼😵💫. These thin logs sit on top of the spine to reinforce the pyramid and then are cushioned in by small cuts of wood, generally 1' long by 6" wide. However, reminder… nature is perfectly imperfect and the puzzle that building our hügelkultur mounds is might actually be our favorite and most satisfying part!!
Our next step involves very delicately backfilling the mound to cement the “pyramid” shape and personally “stamping” the mound solid.
Next, on each side of our pyramid, we lay all of our collected scrap wood branches to hold the soil in it's pyramid and then BOOM 💥🤯🎉💥, we can get to sowing seed and getting our bushes and trees in the ground!!
-🧡Seal + Dove
