Hugelkultur Beds & Black Solider Fly Larvae

Spring time here in Utah has felt immensely long and dreary with the massive amount of rain we've gotten but it's nice to know it's taken us out of 'drought' status. On the plus side, I haven't hardly had to water my garden. Steve and I are trying a new technique this year with the garden and have created these massive hugelkultur beds. This is a German inspired method which simply means hill culture. The idea is the garden beds are raised up on top of dirt and rotted wood. The organic material breaking down is loaded with nutrients, microbes, fungi, insects, and worms which help make plants thrive in these conditions. It also retains water extremely well and the rotting wood keeps the soil from becoming compacted.

Hugelkultur beds can be made on a small scale or made entirely massive taking up an entire hillside as I've seen done by the infamous (permaculture expert), Paul Wheaton. The point of doing these raised garden beds for us, is to be very low maintenance. Steve and I love the idea of having fifty projects going at one time, but we love even more the idea of having low tech systems that create high returns. This is the same idea we had with the chicksaw we built for our hens. Less maintenance+versatility+eggs+happy chicks=happy Steve & Alonna!! :) We're hippies, but the modern day, lazy version of a hippie haha.

Let's be real too for a minute.... none of this would have been possible if it weren't for my incredibly strong hubby doing the hard parts. He dug out the holes, cut down the wood, moved the wood, and stacked it so I could do the easy part of piling dirt on top.... That's true love right there! Steve also was gifted a nice early father's day gift of a chainsaw, soooo I feel like that helped out the process a ton! We had about three trees on our property that died or were dying so those got chopped down real quick!

The portion of the pasture that we turned to a garden also consists of plants that I directly sowed or transplanted into the soil (before we decided to do Hugelkultur beds) so it'll be interesting to see which plants do better--the Hugelkultur bed plants or the pasture plants. I'm excited either way to have so many different garden veggies/fruits growing! We bought an apple tree, blueberry bush, raspberry vines, and tried direct sowing cherry seeds too! I feel slightly overwhelmed with the amount of vegetation, but Steve made a great point by saying we could give extras to our chickens or future pigs.

Steve also decided to add to his bug collection and bought 5,000 black solider fly larvae!!! Yes, 5,000! These bugs are more creepy crawly compared to our meal worms so I've decided to leave this venture up to him for the maintenance and such..... Haha, they are a bit much for me and I hit my limit with extra-curricular bugs on my property. Black solider fly larvae grow incredibly fast and they can eat just about anything! Fun fact, if you give them coffee grounds it speeds up their metabolism and they'll go on an even more crazy feeding frenzy! Steve currently has them in a small bucket but they'll be needing a bigger home soon due to the sheer amount and how fast they've grown. Just another average, ordinary thing to have in your house, right?! But the overall idea with these guys is to give the larvae to the chickens for another protein source and ideally, they'll be fairly maintenance free once Steve gets their setup complete.

As for soap, I've got plans to start kicking up the production and revamping my website/designs. I certainly can get carried away with all the other projects we have going, plus taking care of the kids makes things a bit trickier but I absolutely love making soap and won't give that up! We've got a family trip coming up here soon too and I'm excited to get away for a few days with my boys!

Life is pretty great though all things considered and I'm looking forward to all our summer adventures on the homestead!