Arrived in Gailīši & First Hugelkultur bed

We have a huge amount of space to play with but the first few days have been spent cleaning the house quite a bit. I forced vineta to make sure she spent a good amount of time not cleaning and working and enjoying outside instead. We made the two hugelkultur beds using logs from the property and a nice little cold frame for the seedlings using lots of hay and an old rotting bed frame, everything wood eventually rots into the ground here in Latvia.  

 

There are literally hundreds of derelict farmhouses all over the countryside and you can buy one for a couple of thousand euros. This one that we have is very old I found a board nailed into the kitchen wall that says 7 Oct 1820... I guess the building was completed before this board was nailed in. These last few days we have been enjoying the space and feeling so grateful we have water and food to eat and the possibility of growing our own using the tools and space we have here in this old rotting house is just wonderful! The space is enormous and it has so much potential for allowing us to try things out , to grow stuff and learn how to see our environment in all it's stages of life. 

 

It's spring in England but here it Latvia we are almost a month behind it feels like spring isn't quite here so we haven't missed the growing season. It's minus 4 outside and the leaves are still not on the trees. So preparing the ground for planting and getting in seedlings protected from the frost is our number one priority. We walked around and found a great number of berry trees! 

Photos on this post are the spot where a big upright Soviet fridge was kept in the kitchen when we moved it from its spot I promptly fell straight through the floor and into the cold room under the house that must have been dug sometime around 1800 at a guess. The next image is what it looks like in the big hole.the next sequence is from vineta working on the hugel mounds (we now have two) between digging and filling vineta was keen to collect as many pellets of animal droppings we could find to add to the lovely organic matter in the mound. 

What we realised in the last couple of days is the reason why we came to Latvia is to grow food so we have enough to share and give back to family members who have helped us out. Food really does keep us happy and I think that our own home grown food will keep us happier still!