Sepp Holzer's Permaculture - Harmony with Nature

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

A bearded man in a wide-brimmed hat raises his finger to the sky and says: "The easiest way to deal with nature is to imagine yourself in the place of a tree, a fish, an earthworm, a pig." For such speeches, the Austrian farmer Sepp Holzer could easily be considered crazy, if not for a few buts. Herr Holzer has thousands of followers all over the world (including royalty), and all because the farmer has repeatedly done the trick of turning a lifeless desert into a fertile oasis.

Holzer himself owns 50 hectares of mountainous Austrian Siberia with an average annual temperature of 4.5 ° C. Here lemons, cacti, peaches, grapes, kiwi, strawberries, etc., etc. grow alternately. The yield of all this eden is 18 times the world average. We are standing with Sepp Holzer in an open field 40 km south of St. Petersburg. The revolutionary farmer talks about how to turn ordinary land into paradise.

Photo 1. Sepp Holzer in the Leningrad Region, at a seminar on permaculture.

About the European Union

I live in an area called Austrian Siberia. Snow often falls here in June and July. The land has long been considered unsuitable for agriculture, and all of my neighbors, the plots of which I eventually bought up, were paid extra by the European Union so that they were not used for farming. In the EU, in fact, there are many prohibitions and restrictions on the use of land for agricultural land. Almost nothing is allowed - or you will pay huge fines. All this is done for the sake of chemical corporations, without whose products specially bred seeds do not even germinate. Children of farmers no longer learn to take care of plants, animals, they sit at computers and learn only to receive subsidies from various structures. But payments to farmers are not help. Reimbursement is the wrong agricultural policy. These huge corporations with their murderous technologies will come to you, to Russia. In America, with its monocultures, terrible things are happening.

Photo 2. Sepp Holzer advises an excavator operator how to form a high ridge correctly

About your farm

We have 50 hectares in Austria. We are five of us. Me and my son - we are engaged in large projects in other countries, in addition, my wife and secretary work. Plus one assistant. The rest is done by the animals themselves. In the morning, the pigs rush to work themselves - to dig up the field. Pieces of delicious pumpkin are spread across the field, and the pigs carefully plow the ground up to 1 m deep. The animals also harvest the crop themselves. All animals - horses, sheep, pigs - are divided into sectors: they have covered corrals, they dig up Jerusalem artichoke and potatoes, harvest grain and eat as much as they need. The rest is collected by tourists. Every day, 100-200 tourists come to us, as well as companies that supply food for shops and restaurants, they pay 30 euros to enter, then they collect what they need, for example, cherries for liqueur, and then they weigh and pay for the collected. Researchers have calculated (I myself would not waste time on this) that the average yield in my Krameterhof is 18 times higher than usual. With this yield, you can feed 3 times more people than currently live in the world.

Photo 3. Sepp Holzer advises the participants. Left - Sergei Sidorenko, one of the organizers of this seminar and a participant in the first year's group of practical training in permaculture

About animals

Animals do not get sick if they live in natural conditions where medicinal herbs grow, and they themselves know what herbs to use for treatment. The worm cannot go to the vet. If these plants are at their fingertips - under their paws, they themselves can solve all their problems. We have curly pigs, Cameroon sheep, highland Scottish cows, horses. We keep them in special pens - igloos, which we build from earth and logs and insulate them on top with a layer of earth and grass growing on it. I saw these needles in a dream. Animals do not get sick because they are not locked up and they themselves heal themselves with the help of medicinal plants. They can enter the paddocks when they want and leave when they want. Trampling of meadows can be prevented by adjusting the direction of the animals' walks. When trees fall, we grow mushrooms on their branches - more than 30 species. We breed fish and crayfish for sale in ponds. We also sell animals. The humane slaughter of animals is very important - the fear of death is very strong in them. We also make wine from grapes, apple juice, smoked trout, and grow many vegetables and fruits. For example, radish in December.

Photo 4. Alexander Bukin fixes the concrete pillar in the correct position

About dreams

The dreams I see are the most important. It is not just a connection to the information field. I see it this way: I can get information from every living being. All living things are around us. Imagine yourself in the place of a living being - and you will understand how to act. Our brain is always working, especially at night. He always analyzes information. There is so much to learn. I have had dreams since childhood - how to build a pond, how to make terraces for plants, how to build earthen dwellings for animals, and this is my way of receiving and analyzing information. I think all people can do this, but few people pay attention to dreams. I started dreaming very intensely 40-50 years ago. I watched the pigs, had a dream about it and understood how the lakes could be compacted.

Photo 5. Seminar participants lay logs at the base of high ridges

About childhood

When I was 8 years old, I grew an apricot in our village Lungau at an altitude of 1300 m. I vaccinated plants, stuck branches of roses, and roses grew, and what! All the neighbors asked to do this, and I did it for a small fee. When I graduated from high school I was a wealthy young man and bought a moped! The age of majority comes in Austria at the age of 21. But at the age of 19, my father wanted to transfer all of our plots to my management. He could not do this, and then the judge, at the request of my father, publicly declared me an adult. My first business experience was disastrous. I did everything as it was written in the textbook on agriculture: poisoned all the mice, applied chemical fertilizers, cut off branches from fruit trees - after that, of course, they did not survive the frosty winter in the mountains. My first rock garden was washed away by the rains along with the trees. Then I realized that trees must be strengthened with stones, then they grow better and bear fruit wonderfully. And in no case not to cut the branches: they bend, and the apples hang to the very ground! Later I realized that the most thermophilic trees should be planted in niches in the rocks, for example, edible chestnuts, grapes. There is no wind here, and the rocks keep warm. This is how my first terraces appeared. And strawberries grown next to stones are sweeter and larger! And the biggest harvests are brought by the crater-garden, arranged in terraces downwards and keeping water in the very bottom of the crater.

Photo 6. Construction of high ridges

About water

In our highlands, the European Union prohibited the construction of reservoirs. This required a lot of permits. I also encountered such prohibitions on building ponds and lakes in other countries. Officials are afraid of new reservoirs like fire. In Portugal, I managed to convince the local authorities that the new reservoir is necessary to fight just with forest fires. The largest fine I have paid for the construction of the reservoir was a fine of 3 million Austrian schillings. But I have always won all the courts against officials. In Russia, ponds must be dug to prevent forest fires. Tina will not overgrow anything. Nobody has to look after the ponds, absolutely nothing is needed except the right fish in them. Carps, grass carps, water buffaloes - they all eat algae and keep ponds and lakes clean. Water is the biggest asset. And people need to learn how to use water correctly. Then the springs will flow again.

Photo 7. Sepp Holzer buries seedlings on a high ridge

About Russia

In Russia, a unique situation is now - to restore burnt forests in their new quality. Ashes can be an excellent fertilizer for new plants. But so that the upper fertile layer does not wash away with rains, the area of burnt-out fields must be plowed up and the seeds of trees, both coniferous and deciduous, for example oak, beech and fruit trees, must be planted, and you will get a huge amount of renewed forest. In general, your country has ideal conditions for permaculture (a movement to revive natural ways of coexisting with plants and animals). There are 12 hectares of land for every inhabitant of Russia. This is wonderful. Water, sun and soil are your main capital. Oil and gas will run out, go to the ground! Everyone should have a home and a garden. And grow the necessary vegetables and medicinal herbs with your own hands. There are no poisonous plants, only the wrong doses from their use. Plants heal everything. Wild animals are smarter than us. They are not stupid, as we think, they know exactly what they should take from what. My veterinarian examines my animals - they are healthy - and writes for officials, just vaccinated them …

Photo 8. Infection of logs with mycelium of cultivated fungi

About warming

Global warming is a big question. We are intensively destroying the earth's natural lubricant - oil and gas. But nature did not create them to be simply burned. The next generations will pay the price for carelessness. Monoculture farms dry out huge areas, drainage depletes the land. All this will lead to big problems. There will be hunger and epidemics. I don't want any panic. But it will. The intensity of the impact on the earth is increasing, and this will have to pay off with diseases that will no longer even be given names. It will be somewhere between allergies and immunodeficiency. Russia - despite its harsh climate - is simply a paradise for ecological farms. You have enough of everything - land, water, there is still no dominance of chemical concerns. It is necessary to activate the life of the soil, abandon the use of chemistry and set the animals free - then Russia will flourish.