Our initial hugels from a year and a half ago
were too tall and too steep-
more like ramparts at Fort Snelling
than the gentle slope needed
to keep dirt and mulch angled towards the sun.
An overly enthusiastic rookie mistake.
Tim began pulling logs off the top creating a discard pile.
While un-hugeling...
dis-hugelifying...
de-hugelification...
While taking them apart is a lot easier than constructing hugels,
it's still very slow and labor intensive.
And because of my hand surgeries, I was unable to assist.
Then Kifah suggested we try hugeling Somali-style,
by burning some logs the way her dad taught her.
by burning some logs the way her dad taught her.
So she came over and got us started.
We lit fires within the wall of logs
and over hours and hours
it burned deep.
The Prow before burn
Interestingly, the steepest places with the worst erosion problems seemed to burn the most effectively,
traveling through the spaces between logs
where we could never get dirt.
Notice the red glowing coals and white ash
deep in the photos above and below.
The Prow on fire
Over the next two weeks, Tim hauled dirt,
The Prow now
filling gaps and covering char
on the much shorter, less slopey second draft hugels.
Yesterday, Anjali, Mark, Kiley, and I weeded
and the kids mulched.
My farm hands even found some volunteer lettuce-
an early yummy treat.
As Tim has pointed out,
if we keep revising our hugels over and over
we'll lose one of the big advantages of permaculture,
namely that one doesn't have to fuss and redo
everything every year.
You know- permanent agriculture.
I can already tell that Draft 2 is an improvement
over our first draft.
Let's hope it's good enough.
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