Sepp Holzer permaculture part1

I am Sepp Holzer.
Mountain Farmer here at Lungau.
Here we are 1400 meters above sealevel.
Here we cultivate plants, water lilies and several other aquatic plants, that usually can't be found on this height,
since this is the coldest place in Austria.
[ Sepp Holzer - The Permaculture Pope ]
Here you can see a perfect system of "Permaculture after Sepp Holzer", lushest vegetation with all kinds of plants.
Over here lupines, mugwort, digitalis,
poisonous plants of course, very important for soil and animal health, so they can get whatever they need in natures drug store.
You see that steep slope, that rock. everywhere apples and rowans.
They mature at different times, and the wind blows.
then the apples fall down, roll down the whole hill, to the sheep, cows or pigs, whoever is down there on the belt at the moment,
That's like an automatic chucking machine.
Permaculture after Sepp Holzer, is self learned, expirienced, symbiotic, organic agriculture.
Roses grow here next to rhododendron, right next to it azaleas.
usually it's not supposed to be that way.
One plant protects the other, therefore symbiotic arrangements. Together it works better than being on your own.
And for that, one has to pay attention. And you can watch that everywhere in nature.
If you try to understand nature, then you are so excited by that perfection and so confident, you can never finish you training on that.
This way i have the symbiosis of correlation, while monoculture is against each other.
That's a struggle because all plants need the same nutrients at the same time.
and that isn't available in nature.
And then i have to add those, plants become sick, they become addicted.
Then the spraying starts. Fighting instead of understanding.
But when i have the symbiosis of correlation, they are healthy, they reciprocally provide each other.
I have much less effort but resilient plants.
It's just humans who don't work perfect. They believe to be more intelligent and think they can improve something.
This causes great damage.
Over there we see the counter slope. That's the classical spruces monoculture.
That exploitation, there you see the forest declining in a huge extend.
Where the whole forest is collapsing by snow breakage, wind and bark beetle seizure.
But that is goverment funded.
With reforestation bonus, bonus for building trails etc.
I inherited the farm in 1962 at the age of 19 years.
Our property reaches from 1100 meters up to 1500 meters above sea level. within 50 hectare, there are 400 meters altitude difference.
And i terraced the whole mountain.
And you can see here as well that abundant vegetation. The tremendous variety, in parts also exotic plants as visible all around this place.
These are blueberries. We have hundreds of them. Reaching all the way up to the alp.
It's a mixed cultivation, since beneath it there are carrots everywhere.
Here they are, the carrots, they become wonderfull carrots until late fall.
Then there is salad in between. Here i can show you very old sorts of salad. You will rarely be able to find them somewhere else.
This is a leaf salad. Very old sturdy kind.
Wonderfull to eat.
Every plant is a living entity
All lives. Nothing dead exists.
Nothing at all. For me, all is living.
Therefore it is important to treat your fellow living beings good.
When i stand here and feel this plant, considering i would be that blueberry plant. Then i look at it, asking it in my mind.
Seeing the leafes, fruits, soil, symbiosis... It just tells me that it feels fine here.
I can sense it, i feel it. When i say "good morning" , of course it won't understand me.
It continues all the way down, fruits, fruits and even more fruits.
Look up there, how many kiwi there are. those are the chinese ones. You can eat those with their skin when they are mature.
Wonderful, highly aromatic and way better than the others.
Here we see rocks. These are sun collectors, meaning small climate areas.
The rock saves the warmth from the sun and releases it so grapes can grow. That is very important since they need a lot of warmth.
Now look here. The grapes grow all around here.
And that's one of my pleasures to experiment and try to raise very warmth depending plants even on this height and the low temperatures.
There are 72 ponds and lakes here.
The small ones included.
All together 4 hectares water area.
Water is the most important thing.
The whole world consists to 70% of water. We also do. Water is more productive than any other soil if you can use it the right way.
That way i already earned money as a kid, still in school, digin the first ponds to raise water plants. And today i do that on a large scale.
With fish, with crabs, with mussels and all the water plants.
But this water has an even more important purpose. To have a compensation all over the year. So it isn't too dry in summer. Raising the danger of fires
And when the soil dries up, becoming depleted and hard it can't absorb water.
Because the ground has to have a lower temperature than the rain that falls down. then it attracts the water.
But when it's the other way around, and the ground is hot, depleted by monoculture. Then it's dry and hard and can't absorb the water as it should.
And that is leading to huge flooding catastrophes.
In here there are over 30 different kinds of fish. Like outside, where everything is mixed, variety and not simplicity, it is also in here.
Basically all i have done here, if it's the terasses, if its the fruit trees within the forest, if it's the fishponds, all forbidden.
I am the most fined farmer in austria.
The fruit trees within the forest are in matter of fact forest degradation.
Because it is a forest foreign grove.
Building terasses, forbidden - unauthorized groundworks.
You can't even imagine. People came, officers in paks. All they did was causing crop damage.
Trampling everything down and dictaded.It was unbearable.
[talking to the pigs] What's up come over here.
It's hard to last all that. I could tell you stories, where you get goosebumps from what i expirienced here.
These are schäbisch haellische, duroc pigs and duropolia. We have some with 400 kilogramm and even more. 460 kilogramm we once weighted one.
That are the biggest ones.You can build terasses with them. Or to dig biotopes. They dig several meters deep into the ground.
If you direct them the right way with food.
Pigs for factory farming are totally unsuitable.
They get sunburn, being to dumb to look for shadow. They just lie down where they are and the next day they are done because they have such a sunburn.
We steadily change the animals in the belts.
The pigs come here to plow, then we bring out seeds. Then after the pigs we bring cows.
Once the lush vegetation returned and there's enough food for them.
Then next the sheep and after that the pigs again.
I don't have to lock up the animals and play prisonguard, having to provide the imprisoned animals in the stable with everything.
Then i would just have all the work which is unneccessary.
There is a baby, just a few days old.
[talking to sheep] What's goin on?
The bees, earthworms and wood ants are the most important insects.
The earthworm mixes everything, so i have all nutrients. Without earthworms we perished a long time ago.
Ants regulate the insects if there are too much anywhere. Ants are the regulators. They step in and eat the caterpillars or the insects.
And they have a grid of paths beneath the grass. It is like in a city. Trails, paths, highways, also underground.
You have to understand the life of ants, study it just to see how highly intelligent they are.
The next village is Ramingstein. Basically i don't have anything to do with them. I haven't been at the town hall for 3 - 4 years.
Why should i visit a tavern where the groups of regulars sit.
First of all most don't understand what i do, they don't know it at all. And.... yeah, distinct envy. Like first they laught at you.
For what you do, you are a weirdo and all you do is crazy.