how do I get the hugelkultur article into the brains of 50 million people

Update on the new facebook page..I have nearly 70 folx who have liked the page..but what is blowing my mind is on my traffic insight's page it also says the exact same amount are also "talking about this" I run a few pages and this I have never seen..usually it's in the single digits or low teens. If you have not made it there yet please do
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Hugelkultur-Log-Based-low-to-NO-Water-Gardens/192188357546360?ref=tn_tnmn
tags and threads I have been following now are; survivalists- carbon off set- forestry- any water saving councils/groups- orchard growers- waste management- children's garden programs- in addition to gardening etc...just to name a few.
We need more pictures and new videos of older beds, hopefully as spring kicks in some new shots will come in. I myself will be building a new bed but that has been seen.
this video is cool even if I didn't like the crummy paper they threw in..this could be redone better ..the fast pace is good ...
Roxanne Falkenstein
aka WildeHilde

As seen on TV (guy with Aussie accent narrating... er, shouting)

"What to do with ALL those PRUNINGS !! ?? !!" If you don't have a chipper, don't make twig furniture, don't know a goat.......make ... a PermBerm!! Save water, time and energy.... let the new and dynamic PermBerm system solve your problem once and for all !!! Don't want a hill? ... do it .... in reverse!!! Put the unwanted, annoying woody stuff... UNDERGROUND!! Works above and below ground - any time of year, any material, any size, any how !!!....eat like a king from you very own Permaculture Berm/Bed !!! Send $9.99 for this must-have, revolutionary problem-solving treatise!" ("At the same time, save the planet! save water! save the atmosphere! save your health! save your grandkids' future" etc. ;)


My point is that the name, hugelkultur, could hinder consideration and inquiry. Plus, piquing curiosity with a question always gets my attention.... and the 'what to do with all the prunings' is what sold me on HK. I think earth911 and it's ilk would snap it up... but maybe call it "permberm (or something better), aka hugelkultur". (and trademark it...just joking! :)

Re: MEN - they have articles on biochar, surely they could post or print an article on HK (or PermBerm? :). Maybe if several of us (especially subscribers) contacted them asking ..... "I just heard about this unusual method...weird name of HK...could you give us more info? how is it done? what is it?" Here's their contact info...(let's hope they'd end up w/ Paul or Suzy)

http://www.motherearthnews.com/help/contact-by-email.aspx

Re: demo plots - a local community college is sponsoring test plots to assess biochar (Art Donnelly's Seachar group is doing the work). I wonder if someone offered to do the work, they would allow a HK demo? There's an Ohio college/univ guy doing some kind of permaculture work... in forums somewhere.. he might allow a 'demo'. In fact I wonder if Wash State Univ's extension stations might allow demos....hmmmm. (Anyone in Seattle Tacoma are want to work on this with me?) In fact, the Tacoma Permaculture Guilt Meetup has park of a park to make a food forest in.... and now I remember another park in Seattle that is going permaculture... HK's should be in there, too! If these demos look beautiful, take-away how-to flyers should be available for the curious, with appropriate websites listed ;)

(I'll add.... "and thanks for all the fish!!" to Dave's great Porky mandala :) (from 'Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy")

Thumbs up to Nancy!

Like "permberm", conveys concept in the word without need for all the background history...

Slick infomercial too...

Definitely will help to have examples and documented results...

Just my thoughts on her brainstorm ideas...

Regards To All,
Monte Hines

I like PermBerm...and am going to use it...your a genius...i will say i fell in love with the word hugelkultur myself but I have seen the look of confusion so...genius word-smithing

So, to help with this, I hereby offer by first "please copy this far and wide" blog/article

https://permies.com/t/12304/tinkering-site/free-stuff-guest-blogs-articles

I will attempt to mash it into a press release soon.

Thumbs up on article! Paul

http://hines.blogspot.com/2012/01/keep-those-branches-twigs-rotton-logs.html

Hope I met all the requirements. If not guide me...

Regards
Monte Hines

I agree! Posted, tweeted and (soon to be) Facebooked and Stumbled...

I just grabbed your pic and bio from makeitmissoula...

And, last but not least, "It's all FREE!!" Plus, we get the deeply satisfying gratification of 'making/doing it yourself' (Martha Stewart has made a million by 'giving' folks permission to enjoy this basic pleasure :)

(btw - I'm not a 'genius' - maybe no one is! - PermBerm just popped into my head, from....... Somewhere! ?? I think any 'brilliance' is just being ourselves, which often means not caring what others think of us... paradoxically, making it much easier to enjoy 'others', and vice versa !) (Sorry, just can't resist singing my favorite song ;)

I vote for Perm-a-Berm over PermBerm... FWIW...

On subject of:
how do I get the hugelkultur article into the brains of 50 million people

Post articles and make comments on http://www.reddit.com

Include in your comments and articles, URL references to our communities here (www.permies.com & www.richsoil.com - articles, videos, podcasts, threads, and posts)

Related Subreddits:
/r/agriculture
/r/Anticonsumption
/r/aquaponics
/r/baking
/r/Beekeeping
/r/Berries
/r/biodynamic
/r/Cooperatives
/r/EcoEvents
/r/farming
/r/fermentation
/r/foraging
/r/forestgardening
/r/frugal
/r/gardening
/r/green
/r/GuerrillaGardening
/r/homestead
/r/livestock
/r/mycology
/r/organic
/r/organicgardening
/r/Permaculture
/r/RenewableEnergy
/r/resilientcommunities
/r/seedstock
/r/seedswap
/r/selfsufficiency
/r/simpleliving
/r/Strawbale

This will help expand Paul's community (ours too) and our mutual goal to educate the masses on all the positive building "blocks" available. Expanded community means more "minds" working together to produce more knowledge and solutions (Synergy).

Regards,
Monte Hines

So I'm going to ramble on for a bit here. I've been thinking for several days about what can be done to help Paul's stated goal to put hugelkultur into the heads of 50 million people.

I'll begin with what little I have done and what I plan on doing to further this goal. I already got the word into about 150 heads here on the fifth of January. I hope that by mid summer as I have the compost bins going full tilt at our new community garden and start to dig and fill in the beds that people will wander though to see what that crazy word really means. If all goes well I plan to hit up the local paper next summer and see if I can get someone out to do a human interest story about building a community garden that needs no watering an costs approximately zero dollars. That will get the idea into about a thousand more households in my area.

Now I live in the south part of the Puget Sound here in western Washington and I think it would be great if in the long run we could see many people doing just this sort of thing in there communities and hitting up there local papers to come check out this cool no water gardening thing. So there is an article in Seattle and Tacoma and Spanaway and Bremerton and Port Angeles etc. Then drop a tip to the local news to run a human interest article about it. Then it would be in the heads of tens or even hundreds of thousands of people.

Then all we have to do is rinse and repeat for allot of other locations. It may take years because people don't want to see a pile of dirt, the want results. There are people from all over the world on this forum and I think that if we were to work together to get projects going in our own communities or even just at our own homes and get the local paper to mention it then you can drop a tip to the big papers or networks that "Hey, all these different people are doing this thing that really helps them to grow fresh veggies with less work". Or something like that.

I agree with what Victor Johanson stated about a sexier headline. I'm thinking maybe I'll link to the article as something like No Water Vegetable Gardening. And then explain that the way to do this is very simply to bury wood under your garden. The more and the deeper the better but that is really all there is to it. Then they can click the link to get the full explanation and learn that it is called hugelkultur. I think that allot of the permiculture people are probably already aware of it even if they don't like it or do it.

I want to aim at the person who maybe has some flower beds that could benefit from this or a small vegetable garden that they can't weed and water the way they should. If you have kids going to school and activities and both parents work and stuff is going every which way maybe you forget to water the garden for a week, or it's hot and you are to stressed out and tired, or go on vacation for a week in August or whatever. But with hugelkultur you don't have to worry about watering, the veggies will take care of themselves. I think that's an idea that can be sold to allot of people.

I also intend to photograph and document everything that is used and done so if people want more info they can come look at the community beds or the ones on my property and go see online exactly how I built them. I will of course direct them here for a more through explanation of what to do.

Anyway, that's my plan. It may not be fast but I intend to change my self and my community first and then use that as a shining example of what others can do to get more abundance for less work.

Would it behoove someone to try translating the hugelkultur article, or at least part of it into other languages?

John Crawford - Great work!

Would it behoove someone to try translating the hugelkultur article, or at least part of it into other languages?

I think Browsers like Goggle Chrome do that, already, with Plug-ins.

Keep on Keepin' On!
Monte Hines

Monte Hines wrote:Thumbs up on article! Paul

http://hines.blogspot.com/2012/01/keep-those-branches-twigs-rotton-logs.html

Hope I met all the requirements. If not guide me...

Even better than I expected! And you give my empire several plugs at the top and the end. Excellent!

Jackson Barnett wrote:I agree! Posted, tweeted and (soon to be) Facebooked and Stumbled...

I just grabbed your pic and bio from makeitmissoula...

It looks excellent! Spiffy!

Monte Hines wrote:On subject of:
how do I get the hugelkultur article into the brains of 50 million people

Post articles and make comments on http://www.reddit.com

Include in your comments and articles, URL references to our communities here (www.permies.com & www.richsoil.com - articles, videos, podcasts, threads, and posts)

reddit is an amazing resource. It is designed to be a link aggregate site, so link all the stuff there that you think is of value.

I make a habit of linking my stuff there, because there is always something I don't quite like about other stuff. And then there are still times that I do link other stuff there.

The odd thing is that I might link the same thing once a month, and in the first five attempts (each time a different subreddit) is does so-so (about a net 30 upvotes) and then on the sixth attempt it will get something like 300 upvotes and I'll get 12,000 people looking at the page. And the comments will say things like "Why have I never heard of this before?"

John,

Maybe the thing to do is to craft an article for the weekly-funky-paper. Then maybe we can all send that to our weekly-funky-papers. ??

paul wheaton wrote:John,

Maybe the thing to do is to craft an article for the weekly-funky-paper. Then maybe we can all send that to our weekly-funky-papers. ??

That sir is a good idea. Just change the who/where and maybe a couple details to fit your local. I like that. More efficient dissemination.

Paul, I keep an eye on gardenweb.com. I wouldn't call it particularly progressive, but there's been more than a few threads started in the last couple of weeks re hugelkultur. Maybe it's coincidental, but the 'word' is definitely out there!

Leila Rich wrote:Paul, I keep an eye on gardenweb.com. I wouldn't call it particularly progressive, but there's been more than a few threads started in the last couple of weeks re hugelkultur. Maybe it's coincidental, but the 'word' is definitely out there!

The word is out there. Look at all the pics in the hugelkultur thread.

The key is that I am powerfully compelled to "Save the world". And as I think about things like "how to make the biggest impact on the world in the next hour" it seems that this "50 million" path is the best.

50 million by mothers day.

paul wheaton wrote:

Jackson Barnett wrote:Posted a link to the hugelkultur article at ChrisMartenson.com the other day. Today Ireplied to *another* post there, linking to Paul's article.

Little by little...

Total traffic from chrismartenson yesterday: 487
so far today: 138

Nice!

And now, Chris Martenson took that submission and put it in his daily mailing. it looks like that is a massive site.

Traffic from there to date: 900.

Got this from my yahoo seeds.
Begin forwarded message:

Great link - I passed it on to a friend who is converting areas of a timber forest into forest gardens, here is his response:

This is utterly brilliant. I have lots of piles just like this … if we added in a few charcoal fines along with the topsoil we may enter the world of hyper fertility … even more like Terra Pretta.

I am already passing this round to interested parties. Suggest we all experiment this year?

Holly Brown wrote:Contact a local school (or church or community center etc) and volunteer to get a hugelkultur garden started there with the help of the students after school or as a class. The school may have enough debris from usual landscaping to provide a bit of the supply, and other businesses locally like tree trimmers would be more likely to donate if they can just stick their name on it for a good community cause (education as opposed to someone's backyard). Once you have a model, with happy principal, teachers, students, parents.. other's will want to jump on the bandwagon. As this is happening, it may spread to student's homes as they get excited about it and their parents observe. AND, (this is KEY) have one of your students in the group take videos of the process, and then get them posted to YouTube. Have this linked to your article, and whatnot. Internet is great, I love it, but I believe that human to human connection is so powerful and meaningful.

I think as awesome as this would be, Paul just doesn't have the time to do it. If anyone out there hears of such a thing going on, or is doing it themselves though, I bet Paul would love to come do a youtube of it.

hey folks,

I am super into hugelkultur, and I agree with Paul that it can save the world.

Here is what I'm doing to help spread it:

-upvote the article on reddit
-join and click the like button on the "Hugelkultur Log Based Low to NO Water Gardens" facebook group
-follow/like the article on stumbleupon: http://www.stumbleupon.com/content/2beoNc
(this is a big one; the more people suggest permies and richsoil channels, the sooner the sites will be added to their sites. GO THERE AND DO IT!)

Easy stuff. If I can do it, you can do it too, and you should.

That's all for now,
ABE

try this one too with stumbleupon: http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit

and this one too: http://www.stumbleupon.com/feedback/

tell 'em!

FYI - Got a quick reply from Mother Earth News, Heidi Hunt: "thanks for your interest, we are considering an article on this....." (I did put 'permies.com' in my suggestion.) Maybe a few more requests could speed up the process ;)

there is a somewhat widely used comment application called Disqus, that is used with increasing frequency on some pretty large media websites. I registered an account and posted a few comments with the link to the article.

I posted the following comment on a new article in time magazine's website, and 5 hours later it's still the top comment!

the article: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2105169,00.html?artId=2105169%3FcontType%3Darticle%3Fchn%3DsciHealth

my comment:

As a young farmer living in the arid intermountain west of the USA, I can't recommend enough how valuable the technique of hugelkultur is. A German word that literally means "mount garden," hugelkultur is simply the practice of burying large volumes of wood under gardens. As the wood breaks down it becomes spongy and absorbs any rain that falls throughout the year, holding that water and making it available to your plants during a prolonged dry season. It works and it's awesome. Hugelkultur has the potential to enable food production in places previously thought to be unfarmable, enhancing food security for everyone. Paul Wheaton's website has tons of info on it: www.richsoil.com/hugelkultur


challah

Excellent work, Abe! I promptly followed your link and "liked" your comment... Let's go, Team Permies! Time to swarm and keep Abe's comment at the top!

Scientific Animations Without Borders (SAWBO SM) is dedicated to helping people gain access to knowledge critical to improving their lives...
http://hines.blogspot.com/2012/01/scientific-animations-without-borders.html

Scientific Animations without Borders (SAWBO), established out of the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (Illinois), is utilizing animated videos viewable on cell phones to educate populations in developing countries.

My take away:
Key to success is what is taught... I am in hope it will be lower input, greater production, sustainable permaculture... but I have some doubts...

I think this type of teaching tool, utilizing animated videos, viewable on cell phones to educate masses, is a great idea which could be used to teach sustainable methods, "Permaculture Building Block Technologies". <-- "how do I get the hugelkultur article into the brains of 50 million people"

Just food for thought... What do you all think?

Would it not be great if they took "hugelkultur article" and produced an animation...

With regards and respect for all,
Monte Hines

Re: SAWBO and Kahn's chalkboard instruction, I love the RSA animations, and wish there was something similar to email to Wheaton Eco Scale 1 folks.

Here's one: (looks pretty simple.... filmed in real time, and speeded up with narration?)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

Could this be an irresistible challenge to any graphic artists/illustrators out there? ;) (I can just see it....plants (in rows?) prostrate on the dry ground, while shooting up on the permaberm; the tiny 'regular' roots vs the network of hugel roots (in red) invading the buried wood/twigs, etc. etc.) with a nearby hose rolled up on the wall, unused, and the gardener in the hammock ....initial building process showing possibilities of low, high, ground level, bordered beds, etc., etc. :)

I think something that would be a good thing is a flyer. Something printed, on two sides of a single sheet of paper. Leave a little space for somebody to advertise their own stuff.

Anybody wanna volunteer to make a pdf that could be printed?

paul wheaton wrote:I think something that would be a good thing is a flyer. Something printed, on two sides of a single sheet of paper. Leave a little space for somebody to advertise their own stuff.

Anybody wanna volunteer to make a pdf that could be printed?

I heard back from Helen that it is possible that if a sheet is sent to the extension office, they might reprint it and make stacks available for people.

Plus, it seems that we could make it available to lots and lots of permaculture groups that could hand it out because it gets them hooked in permaculture and they could then add their local info to the bottom.

Plus, once it is available, we might think of other stuff.

I just went ahead and printed Paul's article a few weeks ago to bring to a neighbor who has and old apple orchard that is untended, an exciting project. it was a few pages long. A cleaned up jpeg sheet of the article that anyone can copy would be perfect. We are over 150 folx now on the facebook page.. I got myself in trouble over posting. ooopsay daisy. anyway it was worth it the word Hugelkultur is spreading.

We made it onto lifehacker!

http://lifehacker.com/5880237/hugelkultur-can-create-irrigation+free-garden-beds

woot woot!

the lifehacker article actually came up on my google news!@

Awesome! Was thinking I'd post it to reddit but see that you already have. Shall I post it to organic gardening? Gardening has me on hold...

It is okay to post the same thing to multiple subreddits. Maybe one or two more would be good.

paul wheaton wrote:We made it onto lifehacker!

http://lifehacker.com/5880237/hugelkultur-can-create-irrigation+free-garden-beds

By all means, Team Permies, go look at the article at lifehacker AND if you want to add to your impact, Share it to somewhere AND/OR comment as well.... I did!

Tallyho!

Just under 30,000 views of the article on Lifehacker (with 40 shares and 100 likes on FB), which means that thousands of people who didn't know what Hugelkultur was 24 hours ago now know the basics.

My submission at reddit got some troll hate, but the other two seem happy and healthy!

nancy sutton wrote:FYI - Got a quick reply from Mother Earth News, Heidi Hunt: "thanks for your interest, we are considering an article on this....." (I did put 'permies.com' in my suggestion.) Maybe a few more requests could speed up the process ;)

Excellent! Maybe the article they are considering is suzy bean's effort (which is really my article).