Sepp Holzer

Please could someone tell me the name of Sepp Holzer"s book? does he have aDVD?  or is he just on you tube?
Im living in Finland and its hard to get permeculture info that deals with our harsh climate! 
we are currently "making it up as we go along!"  but it would be great to have some help!
Thanks
Suomi

        Is not Paul wheaton getting his book transalated or edited for the american market?
i have just looked him up in google , i have been so taken up with youtube i have not read about him in google. If you put in Seppp and veronika holzer and click search the first article is Krameterhof permaculture with Sepp holzer, his own site which contains a list of his books and articles on him . you can probably find out  alot reading articles and patching things together. 
        Can't you just ring him up from scandinavia, if you can talk german? famouse people don't always have the crazy social life you might imagine they have. I have just read somehting in English sighned by his wife veronika in english i don't know if it was transalated or that swhe speaks English.  Scandinavians are good at talking languages. It is good practice facing your fears to ring up strange people who might not want to talk to you, some of them are really nice and talk for ages.
      There are lots of videos of his in you tube just put in his name and the word permaculture but i think just his name will give you videos. Paul wheaton knows more about Sepp holzer than I do far and away more. agri rose macaskie

Thanks Rose
Oh maybe I will be brave and give him a call, not too sure about my german though!
brilliant if paul is getting his book translated, i for one will be buying it when it  comes out!
We will continue to make it up as we go along!  learning all the time....
Suomi

suomi, i have just tried putting, "books organic" and later "books permaculture" in to goggle and both sets of words brought long lists of interesting and cheap-ish books.

      I have an old book on growing a garden mixing plants, not just vegetables, also vegetables with other plants, flowering ones for example, so they protect and help each other and on not grouping your vegetables too much,one cabbage here and another there. This is one part of permaculture ideas, by the BBC gardener Geoff Hamilton called, "The ornamental kitchen garden", I was not looking for permaculture ideas when i brought it, i had never heard of permaculture. The books of John Seymour are  another source of information on ideas sepp holzer works on, they are organics books with a lot of the ideas of permaculutrists in them.  I came across that too without meaning to read about permaculture or organic farming books. I new a bit about organic farming.

     I found a lot looking up articles on organic farming in internet with word like organic farming, organic pig farming or organic cabbage farming or whatever. I found BBC articles and university articles such as ones from Cornell university and things from sources like wikipedia and others from farmers who do organic farming, and from articles on organic farming from all sorts of countries. India, Cuba all over the place.

      You may find lots of the books in your local book shops have organic gardening or permaculture ideas in them though they don't mention it on the cover, neither the cover of Geoff Hamiltons book nor that of John Seymour book  mentioned organic or permaculture gardening though the introduction did and John Seymour is a famouse organics man i found when  i looked him up on the internet.
    There are probably important organic gardeners in Scandanavia.
     Geoff hamilton also has a book called, "Successful Organic Gardening".

         I have just seen a documentary on the reindeer herders in denmark i think it was, on the Aljazeeras news channel, they have really good documentaries. I thought their singing was like japanes singing that i heard once in a classic japanese film. Quite possible as the tundra reaches china, it is also like native american singing. Apparently they have trouble getting any land rights in Denmark. I hope i am right and it was denmark. agri rose macaskie.

Thanks Rose for your time and help, I appreciate it
I actually have both books you mentioned!  and yes they are really helpful.  One of my likes about sepp Holzer is that he lives in a place that has similae winters to us here.  Our winter starts, well now!  and we go down to minus 30 oc for some of the time,snow is here from now till mid may.Our growing season is from June to august! so its short!
Living in this climate is well..challenging! and it does throw up so very particular problems!
we are pn a steep learning curve,as we used to live in England untill 3 years ago! learning and having fun
and still trying to master the language! we are doing things a little differently from a lot of people in our village,they always watch us with amusement and interest!

Hmm not sure if it was Denmark with the reeindeer herders as Denmark is south of us and nowhere near the arctic! although Denmark does still have strong ties with Greenland,it used to "own"! Greenland. I not sure if greenland is now independant, but there are on going problems.
We have the Sami people here in the north that are still herders and semi nomadic and their music is quite magical!
Suomi

Suomi, I believe your climate would be very similar to mine..north central Michigan USA..zone 4/5, lots of snow..

we might be able to discuss things if you want to email me..that I may have dealt with similar to your problems.

Yes the documentary was about the samies.
    The village whatch me but i am not sure that they smile so much as die of the itch to do my garden like theirs.
Sepp holzer does position the trees behind his ponds so they are on the norht of them like a wall, so  that pond reflects the sun onto them and they relfect the sun back towards the pond. He makes sun traps and Paul Wheaton says he puts rocks in them to heat in the sun to make more heat. In spain you would want to do the opposite, to have the trees shading the ponds.
      I think its really interesting, it  reminds me of solar cooking, a reflector the surfacew of the pond to increase the suns heat the pond surface being the reflector and he grows autumn ripening cherries at the top of his mountain so he must get some pretty good heat cheries don't gro easiily in england. By having cherries at different heights he gets fruit at different parts of the summer.  rose macaskie.

not sure if this is the book you're looking for or not rose, but i read 'The Rebel Farmer' and it gives a lot of detail of sepp's methods. great book!

I'm not having anything translated.  I am looking forward to seeing the translated works!

I have read Rebel Farmer, which is the only english book of Sepp's I'm aware of at this time.

I have also seen all four of the Sepp Holzer videos.  Three of them were offered in english several years ago on VHS.  I watched those.  And then they came out on DVD.  I watched those too - although the ones on DVD are actually the german version with dubbed english.  Weird. 

The fourth video is a bit of an odd duck.  The photography and music are excellent, but the narration is frequently errant.

I recently bought a dvd of the three Sepp Holzer movies: Farming with Nature, Aquaculture, and Terraces & Raised Beds.

Had difficulty finding a dvd in NTSC but got it from Natural Building Resources. Just recently came out. Cost was $49 + $6 shipping. Good quality.

Contact Catherine Wanek at 575-895-3389.

tbodkin wrote:
I recently bought a dvd of the three Sepp Holzer movies: Farming with Nature, Aquaculture, and Terraces & Raised Beds.

Had difficulty finding a dvd in NTSC but got it from Natural Building Resources. Just recently came out. Cost was $49 + $6 shipping. Good quality.

Contact Catherine Wanek at 575-895-3389.

I'm very interested in knowing more about his techniques for pushing the zone envelope with regards to fruit trees. Do any of his videos go into much detail about that, or is there online info?I've found some youtube videos where they show his cherry trees but don't mention how he's 'cheating' the zones.

I dont recall seeing anything to specific in these videos, but in general the massive amounts of water surface, huge rocks, and cold hardy species all support the microclimate on his southern exposed site.

I have just read somehting in English sighned by his wife veronika in english i don't know if it was transalated or that swhe speaks English.

Reply: He mentioned that his wife took an English course.  How well she speaks English I have no idea,  but his kids probably are fluent.

not sure if this has been posted yet, but Sepp has a new book out... 'Sepp Holzer's Permaculture: A Practical Guide to Small-Scale, Integrative Farming and Gardening'

3 Sepp related podcasts:

Q & A after watching "Farming with Nature" http://www.richsoil.com/permaculture/?s=podcast+034

Q & A after watching "Aquaculture" http://www.richsoil.com/permaculture/?s=sepp+holzer+film+discussion+2

Q & A at the pub afterwards with friends:) http://www.richsoil.com/permaculture/308-podcast-036-aquaculture-community-weeds/

(from this blog)

I'm not sure if the guy with the blog made this after hearing Holzer, or if it is a formal diagram from Holzer.

Here's another book of holzer's in English. http://www.amazon.com/Sepp-Holzers-Permaculture-Small-Scale-Gardening/dp/product-description/160358370X I just finished reading it. They also have PDFs of it and it's also available for kindle. It's a great book and against the title is more about large scale farming and not small scale gardening.

A video interview with sepp ... and a red chair.

I think this was done a coupla years ago, but the perk now is that it has english subtitles (if you turn on the closed captioning)

part 2:

I'm about to head up to the PDC where Sepp will be a guest instructor.

I'm making a list of questions for him. Some questions I will ask during his "eleven days of sepp" and other questions I'll try to record for a podcast. Maybe I can make some videos. I'm not sure how receptive he is going to be for any of it.

But if I get a chance to as several questions a day, every day, it seems like it would be good to start building a rich list.

Anybody have any questions that they think I should ask?

I would love to get a bit more information on grains, esp perennial grains in small home garden lots. I have just put in my first small plot of hulless barley and hulless oats this spring and have some seed for rye, perennial grain rye and hard winter wheat to start this fall, am waiting on a bit of perennial wheat that was promised to me as well.

Also am planting corn and grain amaranth this summer to attempt to get some grain from those...for household use..not for animal feed.

This is very new to me and most of my information has come from books I've read, but information from someone who has done it would be helpful.

paul wheaton wrote:I'm about to head up to the PDC where Sepp will be a guest instructor.

I'm making a list of questions for him. Some questions I will ask during his "eleven days of sepp" and other questions I'll try to record for a podcast. Maybe I can make some videos. I'm not sure how receptive he is going to be for any of it.

But if I get a chance to as several questions a day, every day, it seems like it would be good to start building a rich list.

Anybody have any questions that they think I should ask?

Any more details on how he handles the cold weather would be great. There's not alot of permaculture info on this. The first real useful bit I found was his use of rocks to heat an area.

I'm interested in the actual or potential income from permaculture farming, outside of any income from tours, speaking, consultation, workshops, etc., etc. (all good, but not included in this question). Regulations may prohibit Sepp from off-site selling, BUT, if he could sell retail or wholesale, what kind of revenue does he estimate, roughly speaking, that he could achieve from strictly selling his farm production, including U-pick (but not entrance fees) ? And, what would that be 'per acre'?

(As the "pope" of permaculture, I think his guesstimate would be very valuable. Thanks)
'.

He said "we steadily change the animals in the belts" (pigs, cows, rest, sheep, then pigs again). It sounds like belts = paddocks, and that he uses a paddock shift system. I wonder if he called them belts because they are arranged by altitude, which might make sense if he moves the animals up and back down based on seasons/weather.

It be interesting to have Sepp share what elements he sees as necessary within each belt area to meet the needs of the sheep, pigs, and cows. And what elements are just nice to have (built shelter, pond, flat area, open area, etc.).

Paul, I think you and Kelda had a question about whether the animals are excluded from certain areas reserved for people food.

Yeah, can you ask him to start a school in North America somewhere?
Thanks

Paul, I posted on here the other day asking about a chronology of the Krameterhof. I would be curious to know the general order in which he did things. In other words, what did he do first? Did he start at the top of the mountain or the bottom? Was there a certain order in which he planted things so that he could be sure the soil would not become depleted (as in biodynamic farming calendar?) What kind of planting schedule does he follow? Et cetera, et cetera... is there any chance you could ask him about this?

If this is not a good question to ask or seems likely to lead to confusion, maybe you could ask it this way: if someone gave him an entire pine-covered mountain in a northern latitude today and told him to transform it into a food forest, what is the first thing he would do? (I have a feeling he would say, "I would walk around it for a year and pay attention to what is already happening there," but I would really like to know from him.)

More details on his animal management within the Krameterof. What specifically are the different species' diets comprised of? In this video, he appears to be feeding something to the sheep; what is it? How much of the pigs' diet is man harvested as opposed to pig harvested? Same for the fish. Does he have off-farm inputs for the animals or is everything sourced for the animals on farm?

Thanks!

Oliver...
www.nwoodsranch.com

How did he get his blueberries to grow next to the roses, etc? Is his soil naturally acidic enough for them OR does he have a method of growing them without the soil being what people usually say is the right pH for them?

I would like to know how Sepp deals with Chinook winds (or föhn winds as they are called in Austria). Not so much the wind itself, but dealing with species that will come out of dormancy during long warm spells brought by the wind only to be killed off once the cold returns.

Denise Lehtinen wrote:How did he get his blueberries to grow next to the roses, etc? Is his soil naturally acidic enough for them OR does he have a method of growing them without the soil being what people usually say is the right pH for them?

pH will naturally stratify over time in the soil if it's not tilled. Plants will put roots in the right pH layers.

How does he go about tapping a spring and what other tips about springs can he give?

Paul, I'm heading to the PDC and thought it may be a nice idea to have a little area where people can post questions and anybody can jump in and write their advice below the question, since it seems a lot of well informed people will be there.
A compost station would be nice too.
See you out there!
Chad

The vids were awesome, thank you. I have 20 acres of desert scrub; desert oak, prickly pear, yucca ect. More rock that dirt. In some spots it's so bad even the cactus is dieing. No water on most of it, tho right next to the house is a hand dug well, 50 feet deep. Some years the water has been as high as 18 feet from the surface, if I wasn't using it much and we had plenty of rain. I would love to know how Sepp would go about terracing and holding the water on here. I will probably not work on the whole 20 acres, mostly just a southwest facing slope closest to my house. I will probably have to build earth works by hand though. But just wondering how he would start out? There are a couple of really bad erosion gullies in this area.... We can get 2" of rain in under an hour in the summer monsoon season, but it almost all just runs off...

Hi Paul. I do have a question. Sepp talks about the symbiotic relationship between his plants on his farm, and how incredibly healthy they are because of it. But he also mentions he has plants growing next to each other, in fact helping each other, that others say can't grow where they are growing.

So the question is, how did he figure out what plants work well other plants? Was it all trial and error? Are there resources the rest of us can turn to? Thanks.

Portugal. Pick Sepp's brain about arid environments, beyond capturing and storing water.

Eric,
the symbiotic relationship between plants is fairly easy to find in the garden world.Not a Sepp answer but many generations and old farmers stick to using different plants in context to helping their neighbors or in some cases working as a host plant to protect them from bugs and disease..In the gardening world their are thousands of combinations that work in this way..And yet others who's roots give off chemicals to keep nearby plants limited from using their resources..In organic gardening we use combo's like these all the time to help get the best production, limit disease and bug controls,,
Mary
of the
Happy House

Hope everyone enjoys the Dayton hospitality...

I have so many questions to Sepp that it's hard to know where to start.
So I start with a simple question that I thought about yesterday. In his book ("Sepp Holzer's Permaculture", Permanent Publications) and also in the videos he talks briefly about using lupins to stabilize the earth in terraces and to improve soil. One can see lupins in many pictures in the book (and in the video), he seems to have lupins all over the place and the lupin looks to me like the same one that is (at least here in Finland) considered an invasive exotic, ie. a problem plant. How does he stop the lupin from takin over all of his new terraces and his meadow vegetation? I have this (if it is the same species) lupin in my orchard and it does seem to be mildly invasive and would probably spread all over the adjacent vegetable patch if I didn't spend some time weeding it. However I'm more concerned about lupins taking over the natural meadow vegetation. It is said of lupins that they can do that and when lupins fertilizes the soil it also makes it too rich for natural meadow vegetation which is then lost.

Thanks a lot for the videos! Enjoy your PDC with Sepp Holzer and thank him too from all of us! Encourage him to write/ publish more in English, in any format, doesn't have to be a fancy book.

Another question: WHERE did he get the seeds of all the old varieties of grain, potatoes and vegetables that he talks about? And where did he get his first sows of those endangered pig species (Turopolje, Mangalitza) he talks about in his book?

It seems to be quite impossible to find the seeds of the old varieties here in Finland and I have not even managed so far to buy them via the internet from abroad. The merchants just don't bother because of the extra cost and trouble in shipping. I haven't even tried searching for the old varieties of grain, but I have tried ordering the seeds of some perennial vegetables recommended in Patrick Whitefield's book, from the UK. And I ran into this problem that they said they wouldn't ship them to Finland.

So, if I was to make a little trip to say Austria or Germany, where could I go "shopping" for the seeds of the old varieties of grain (Einkorn, naked oats, fichtelgebirgshafer, ancient Siberian grain...? Does Sepp sell these himself (my guess is he just doesn't have the time!!) or does he have a merchant to whom he ships seed?

Brenda Groth wrote:I would love to get a bit more information on grains, esp perennial grains in small home garden lots. I have just put in my first small plot of hulless barley and hulless oats this spring and have some seed for rye, perennial grain rye and hard winter wheat to start this fall, am waiting on a bit of perennial wheat that was promised to me as well.

Also am planting corn and grain amaranth this summer to attempt to get some grain from those...for household use..not for animal feed.

Yes a very good question an I would love to get this info too! The problem I ran into in my modest little trial of growing just a few rows of barley in the garden was that the birds ate all, and I mean ALL, of the grain before it was fully ripe. Even though my garden is surrounded by wheat fields just 20-50 metres from the edge of the garden. Okay it's not surrounded on all sides, just two. On the other two sides there is natural forest and orchard. Which is probably why the birds prefer to hang out in my garden rather than risk getting eaten by hawks flying ovet the wheat fields?

Hi Nina, you can get old verieties of seeds at http://www.arche-noah.at/etomite/. They are based in Austria

"Sepp Holzer's Permaculture" - A practical guide to small-scale, integrative Farming and gardening. Chelsea Green Publishing 802-295-6300, www.chelseagreen.com

Bought mine on amazon for around $20.