Terraces and Raised Beds - Sepp Holzer - Trailer of film

[@reneek8223]

Amazing that our people have had the knowledge to continue to farm this way!

[@danielgillieron4265]

I offer permaculture trainings in China and work with a small farmer. With the participants I create the raised beds (Hügelkultur) manually. A rather slow way to build them (about 6 meters' length per working day), but the result is fabulous. Compared with the level compacted soil around, the raised beds are giving a much higher yield and you don't have to water your plants or provide them with natural fertiliser since the wood and other organic material releases a steady flow of nutrients and warmth. At the beginning you have a lot of work, but afterwards you don't. Just make sure to cover your raised bed with a thick layer of mulching that will prevent many "weeds" (that mostly are light germinators) from appearing and will protect the soil from drying out or from erosion. Our next training is to build a pond without concrete or pond liner. It's simple using Sepp Holzer's techniques. Conventional or biotech farming (GMOs) is an utter failure that will, if left unchecked, lead to the extinction of the human species.

[@Timodeus]

So amazing!!

[@TheWillowwaterer]

I've just got a piece of land 30ft by 30ft to grow food. it's south facing and on a slight incline. I wonder would terracing it work? guessing it would jjust smaller scale, no? get at me ;) if you have thought. ~appreciated.

[@berruyer-johnstonaanoelle8732]

ty

[@TheWillowwaterer]

oh to have a mountain t...

[@HolzerHolz]

We related lol

[@va3svd]

It might be on a small scale and in certain geographical contexts. If you're thinking that you can make that work while resurrecting the Soviet kolkhoz or sovkhoz model, it probably won't. You always have to measure yield/acre to really assess these things. You can always raise enough food for a group of people living on a plot of land if you really put your mind to it, but that still might not be the most efficient use of those people or that land. "Viable" doesn't necessarily equal "good".

[@xyzsame4081]

Your realize that the Krameterhof (an that new plot of land he transformed) is _marginal_ land. Have you seen the slope ? you cannot even have cattle on some of the property (well not before the terraces), some of it is too steep and too stony to be mowed, even if there would be enough cheap human workforce to do it. He puts the land to much better use than his parents did with the traditional methods. Those 45 ha are a not a small farm (area wise) in austria, certainly not in the early 1960s. But that land, slope, short growing season had to be fairly large for extensive use because it brought so little yield. Farms started getting bigger after a few decades of EU membership of Austria (small farms stopped their operation when they older generation retired) farmers today usually lease some land (not one sells). He took over the farm around 1962 and after a few years when he attmempted the modernization measures that were all the rage then (fertilizer and fir monocultures in his neck of the woods) he started to fall back on his childhood experiences. Observing, doing unusual things, trying out a lot, and many of it worked. They made a modest living on dairy and logging - like the other farmers in that region.

[@xyzsame4081]

This has been a farm many generations back and it was a farm that made a living also when Sepp Holzer took over in the 1960y. So it did not only "feed a few people" - it had to create a surplus like any other farm in the region, it also had to finance the usual things like clothes, later cars, some machines, modernization of the house like indoor plumbing, new windows etc. In the mountains some farmers lucked out and their area became touristic (so bed and breakfast, leasing land to become ski slopes in winter etc.). Or they could take jobs in winter (in the winter tourism season when they had less work with the farm). But that did not apply to that region and not to family Holzer.