Sepp Holzer on ponds and "the monk"

@Paul .I have been watching it a while. The collar does not seem to have made the water surface any oilier, but really its too early to tell. I do notice on the water, from time to time some kind of oily film. I have read it has to do with ground water bulbing out of the ground and something to do with bacteria and iron content. Does anybody know more about this ?

Nicholas said

and seem to not only think outside the box, but don't even know of the existence of the box. In a lot of cases, that's referred to as Autism. I have two sons who have it. And everything is black and white with them, no in between.

As a kid I thought the same way, then realized it is 90% grey with bands of black and white at each end.

This video shows what appears to be the thip, thip, thip from the monk at 3:28.

I enjoyed this short video and the narrator also has a nice and relaxing voice.

Sepp discusses how he uses the pond and plants around it to hold heat and moisture.

He also discusses using a variety of different fish and having habitat for the little ones to hide in.

This video shows a lot of really neat things at Sepp's newer farm, the Holzerhof!

It shows three new ponds recently dug out before being filled with water.

It discusses the plants he puts around the banks to both stabilize it and protect it.

I really thought it was neat where the monk was shown and adjusted, and how it's located at the end of the frame of a dock being built to access the monk easily!

Something that Holzer writes in Desert or Paradise seems worth mentioning here.  I'm not sure if this is the same as the "collar" idea, I think it isn't.  it's to prevent fish from escaping down the pipe (if you don't want them to go down it, I gather).

quote:

Every monk needs a safety device to prevent fish swimming through it.  Conventional monks have a slit-plate installed before the dam planks.  For the Holzer Monk I use the pipe-in-pipe system.  I slide a pipe that is about 5cm in diameter larger over the vertical pipe.  I use an angle grinder to make the slits and waterproof the end with gauze or builder's fleece.  A spacer keeps the pipes in place. The pipe with the slits should be at least 10 cm longer than the viertical pipe.  This prevents fish from swimming through and allows sufficient water flow.  This also helps to keep leaves out of the drainage pipe.  (p. 73, Desert or Paradise, Sepp Holzer)

Note--it seems the horizontality of the opening isn't sufficient to keep leaves from getting into the pipe (perhaps clogging it?). And this will work even when the Holzer monk is in a lowered position, not just when it's at full height.

Does anyone know why you need to waterproof the end? isn't that part always going to be out of water? I understand making it fish-proof, but not sure why a screen wouldn't be sufficient.  Nor how gauze makes something waterproof...

Also, there's such a thing as a regular monk, and a Holzer monk.  Regular monks are adjusted by removing some planks from the stack of planks, and Holzer's innovation (that someone else seems to have invented also) is to make the L-shaped pipe that can be adjusted.

Paul Wheaton's trickle pipe is another interesting twist: https://permies.com/t/33162/Paul-Wheaton-trickle-tube#1236175