Our garden looks a little wild, and there's a reason. We're practicing permaculture and hugelkultur — building soil that lasts, one messy bed at a time.
Our garden is only in its first year, and we're practicing permaculture — including something called hugelkultur, which is a fancy word for a very old idea: burying logs, branches, and leaves under a mound of soil to make a raised bed that holds water and feeds itself for years.
It can look a little wild to folks used to traditional row gardening. The idea is simple: we keep the ground covered. Mulch, leaves, living roots, and yes, sometimes what looks like weeds. We do this to protect the soil — to keep it from washing away, to keep it alive, to keep feeding the good things underground that feed us above ground.
A hugelkultur bed is basically a sponge. Those buried logs soak up rain and hold it through dry spells, so the plants can drink long after the last storm. As the wood breaks down over the years, it feeds the soil — slow and steady, the way nature does it.
We started this in a spirit of hope. But we also know this: some estimates say we have about 60 more harvests before the viable topsoil we all depend on is gone — lost to generations of keeping the land stripped bare. That's not a political statement. It's just dirt, and dirt doesn't care about politics.
So here we are in Year One, and it's a little hard to see where we're going yet. The beds look messy. The paths aren't neat. But underneath all that mess, something is being built — soil that holds water, soil that feeds plants, soil that lasts.
This isn't philosophical or social or political. It's simple, old-fashioned, rhythmic living — working with the cycles and seasons that were here long before us, and learning to cooperate with them instead of fighting them.
Now we learn more. We understand better. We do better — with good cheer.
If you're curious about the bigger soil story, here's a good place to start — a documentary called Kiss the Ground, narrated by Woody Harrelson, that explains it all in a way that's both clear and hopeful.
Watch: Kiss the Ground — Official Trailer (narrated by Woody Harrelson)
