Building and Hulgelkultur Planting

Since we were about to buy the property (little over a month ago) we decided to try our hand at building a raised bed area. We drew up plans and had big ideas. We've come to realized that we went about it all wrong.

We bought cedar boards and lattice to build the beds, mistake one. Cedar is darn expensive, SUPER darn expensive but it looks great!

We spent maybe a weekend building everything, it was a great learning process for me. We have gopher and moles on our property so we fortified the underside of our beds with chicken wire. The holes are big enough for worms to come in but too small for anything else. Also, I lined the beds with cardboard so there's a temporary form of protection just below the wire lining.


This serves as a barrier so my garden had time to get roots deep before weeds try to take over. The other benefits are water retention and as the cardboard breaks down from being eaten by worms it will provide rich nutrients to the soil. Win-Win in my books. The boxes aren't a 100% weed proof method, the bothersome things found their way into the beds but I'm able to manage the numbers easily.


Mistake two: We built this thing where it gets shade from 1pm and on. We have trees behind the beds that are very tall and throw shade on most of the structure starting early afternoon. My herbs are fine with the shade, mints, purple basil, catnip, purslane and sage. My tomatoes and peppers are not on board with the shade at all, fortunately I planted the tomatoes where the sun hits the beds the most. My peppers I had to just pray they would produce (they did but they don't look very healthy).


Our method for soil preparation was going the hulgelkultur route. We live in Texas and things get dry during the hots days of summer. I like this method for water conservation since we have only city water at the moment. So far this is working like gangbusters and I will be using this throughout future gardens. We have a huge woodpile in the back of our property that has been there for years and been added to over time. We used older logs and branches to place on top of the wire and cardboard bedding. The older the better because the mycelia had begun working at breaking down the logs which make the nutrients readily available to the garden. Also you get mushrooms which I love finding on cool damp mornings.





The soil we used was potting mix from a big home garden store, soil from our aged woodpile and top soil mixed with compost we got down the road from a soil and rock store. I also threw in compost I made. After we planted we mulched with cedar wood chips, minor mistake number three. I say mistake because I would rather native mulch than cedar up near the plants plus it would break down faster than cedar. I think if we were to use cedar again it would be only for walk ways between the garden plots.


I know there's lots of talk about Back to Eden garden method which would be great at water retention as well but we don't have a form of free manure to amend the soil when needed. I have noticed that the wood chips seems to attract a lot of bugs. Nothing that seems to hurt my garden but its a bit concerning when I step on the mulch and tons of these little stinkbug looking things come scurrying out. This maybe just a Texas thing, I don't know.


What we have done to remedy the lack of free manure for the time being is by purchasing a worm farm and many red wigglers. This will take some time for us to reap the benefits of the worm castings but it's helping with all the kitchen waste while my compost bins are tied up with cooking up the last grass cutting of the season, previous kitchen scraps and leaf collection. I would do an open pile but we have so many wild animals that scavenge the property at night I would hate to keep up with the mess.


I also do some chop and drop if my herbs are getting to be too much for me to harvest and use. I just move the wood chips and place the vegetation around the root zone and then cover up again.


We decided to do in ground planting but still utilizing the hugelkultur method with a no till. Just layering the plots and also ensuring a crop rotation in each plot to keep things healthy. The raised beds are beautiful but too costly and the wood boards will eventually need to be replaced over time. We rather just plant in ground and section each plot off with nature barriers or with mulched walk ways.


Here are some pics of the raised beds from beginning to now:

Our First French Drain

Before we moved into the homestead my father in law informed us that the house had a drain that went out into the back field. He said that the washing machine, bathroom sink and tub(oddly not the kitchen sink) all went out there and not into the septic. We've walked the grounds before and inspected the area, looked hidden and no standing water issues that we saw. My husband, Chris, and I thought nothing of it. We SHOULD have thought more on it, I'll explain.


The first week we moved in we took care of regular moving in things and went about our daily lives consuming the normal amount of water as if we still lived in the suburbs on city sewage. Only after a few days we went out into the field and noticed a disgusting pool of water. This was after my husband  ran over the drain with a bobcat and we had the fiasco with the septic. Chris made the hole bigger to help dry it out but it really wasn't drying out. I was nervous to use too much water, I showered in less than 2 minutes on an every other day schedule. Laundry was piling up and I had to rethink how I sorted clothes for washing. Less loads and quick wash cycles helped but the pool was still there.


We have a huge mosquito problem here in San Antonio and this was just a bad breeding ground for them. We discussed that perhaps we need to trench the area and allow it to flow into less saturated areas of the field. I woke up one morning and went to work digging. The mud was sludge like and difficult to remove, I dug a straight line down from the pool and left it at that. The water was moving and I checked on it through out the day between chores. Chris came home and said it looked better but we probably should make some laterals and have it go out more. My sides ached at the thought but I agreed. The first dig:

Next day, there was more water but that's because we had showered and I did one load of laundry. I went out again with the shovel this time I went to the right in the direction of the down slop of our field. The water was finally draining and the pipe was clear of water but I had dug down hill that eventually started sloping up. there was some standing water from god knows where, probably from a rain shower. I stopped there and gave the draining pool time to seep into the soil. It wasn't really draining as fast as I hoped. I gave myself a break for a couple of days and took water usage slow and serious.


My daughter, Hanna, had time off from work and came out to help me dig. We went left of the initial trench which was a gradual up hill, we dug deeper than the right lateral to make up for the slope. The trench ended to be about six feet long and little over a foot down. Thankfully our soil isn't too hard. Took us three hours, after we got it the length we wanted we then chipped away at the dirt holding the water back from filling the new area and everything flowed great. The husband and I gave it a day and deliberated on whether or not we needed to go further but he didn't think we needed to. The water was seeping into the surrounding field and the whole french drain project was slowly drying up.


Last weekend we decided to edge it out a bit more we also decided we needed some plants to help with water control. We got two Meyer lemons, two Alma fig trees, one loquat and some grasses that are suppose to do well in water/ mud. Husband took his dad's truck and got gravel while Hanna and I went to get stuff to make cake since it was granddad's birthday. I made lunch as Chris, Hanna and Grandma filled in the trench with gravel and then we all pitched in and dug holes for the trees. We have more to plant but everyone was hot and sweaty so we stopped at the trees and grasses. The area looks so amazing now, I can only imagine what it will be like in a couple of years. It looks like a little oasis out in the middle of the field.

Here is what I take out of all this; the house basically only had one person living in it for ten years and he was gone most of the time because of work or out hunting so the systems that are in place never had to deal with the loads that a stay at home mom/wife would put on it. Especially one that was too use to just running water at all times for everything. These three weeks that we have been living here really have opened my eyes to how I use cleaning products, how much water we go through and disposal of kitchen waste. I still have my faults and it's definitely an adjustment that will take time but it's not hard. YES, the trenching was the suck but that's part of homesteading. Getting out and doing it. Hopefully we don't have any more issues with the french drain but if we do I will keep you posted. Pic of the homemade chocolate cake:

The recipe was a little odd, grandpa loved it though, so that's all that counts :)

Introduction to the Bare Bones

  Welcome to the beginnings of our homestead! We are situated in Texas, just out the backdoor from San Antonio. The property is a large but manageable 2.6 acres, 1/3 of the property is forested which butts up to an old dry creek. The other 2/3 half is mostly cleared with three large ancient oak trees and some hack berry trees. There's an old home and an even older barn (once school house) that are the main structures. There's also an old concrete water silo that use to store water from a now gone well.

Our plans for the homestead range from growing our own food and meat animals to selling various products we are able to produce in excess. My husband works a regular long shift at work during the day with weekends off which helps a great ton. I have been retired for a little over three years from the military. He has knowledge building and making things from wood, he's a general can-do handy man in other areas as well. I work with fiber arts such as making yarn, crocheting warm fuzzy things and light sewing. I am able to build as well but not on my husband's scale. I'm very primitive with regards to nailing and screwing things together to make a solid item. 




We were located in Okinawa, Japan close to two years the second time around. The first time we were there for four years. What can we say, we love the small island feel and the culture. We were never bored there and the easy going attitudes made the island a safe haven for families. It was time to leave since our only child had graduated high school and currently has plans for a military career of her own. During those two years I found myself with a lot of time on my hands. I came across this thing called homesteading through fiber arts. I Youtubed a lot of videos on all things yarn which lead to raising the animals that create the fibers to the life style of some of these people who make things from scratch. (I will post in another blog some of the Youtube channels I follow that homestead)


I began calculating and thinking long and hard on this type of life. It was simple and not suburban, I hate everything about the suburbs. So, I talked with the husband about different ideas about what we should do for the long term and he was on board. We will do our best to save money and pay off debts and that is where we are at today. We had a little nest egg saved before returning to the States, we gave some in form of garage storage to the in-laws for putting us up in their home. I should also note we bought the land from them at a great price and that helped us tremendously. We were all set to stay with them for a long time but after many discussions and research we took up their offer to purchase the secondary property they owned (which is next door to them).








We got the land (which is on a land loan) and some necessary things like fencing, riding mower, a shed and various tools for the husband to use. All of this was costly and soon depleted what little we were able to save. Can you say stressed out? So now that we are situated on the land we are going hardcore save mode, our debt includes two vehicles and a home we are trying to sell that resides in the vast suburbs of west San Antonio. We have a renter at the moment in the home, we tried for 6 months to sell this income drain to no avail. The decision as been made to keep it as a rental for as long as possible, preferably till our vehicles are paid off. So, four years? Yeah, that's a helluva long time.


Some improvements were immediately needed for inside of the home. The house was rented out to a smoker who hoarded and generally did not care one bit about the state of the house. He was there for ten years I think. He has some left over stuff and various old paint and chemicals which are housed in the barn for now. As much as I hate it we just have to deal with it all till he is able to take the rest.


Needless to say, we cleaned and cleaned and then cleaned some more. The dust and webs were out of control but that was only the beginning. We also had a hell of a wasp infestation and god knows what else! Once all the bugs were taken care of by professional pest control we set to work repairing and painting. After some wary functional checks we come to find out only one burner on the old stove worked, the kitchen faucet was not useful and the bathroom was a complete nightmare.









We dropped more money at replacing the stove, kitchen faucet, new sink and cabinet for the bathroom. Oh and surprise! The toilet decided to blow a seal and water drained into the septic undetected till we had mud. I'm so thankful to my in-laws. They helped us a great deal with this, they basically paid for the septic to get pumped. Well the home is now at a level of function and comfort that is acceptable for the time being. There will be a home improvements that will come when we have extra money and first on the list will be to level out the floors. My computer is in the corner of the home that has dropped about two inches and it's a weird feeling walking to my computer. It's not severe to warrant urgent fixing, it's a gradual slope. My chair rolls me to the desk with great ease, so there's that little silver lined cloud. Check out the "after" pics :)









I realize we have absolutely no experience homesteading. This isn't a blog about all our successes, no, this will be a blog of amateurs doing a thing and maybe messing up but it will also be about us realizing we messed up and finding different avenues to achieve an efficient and money saving outcome. (deep inhale) Ok, yeah that's good. :) Till the next post <3