Foreword

In the film Sepp Holzer’s Permaculture there’s an image that really says it all.
Taken from the air, it shows steep mountainsides covered in seemingly endless
monocultures of spruce trees, broken only by the mountainside that is Sepp
Holzer’s farm, the Krameterhof. In contrast to the dark trees on either side,
it’s an intricate network of terraces, raised beds, ponds, waterways and tracks,
well covered with fruit trees and other productive vegetation and with the
farmhouse neatly nestling amongst them. There, at an altitude which everyone
else has abandoned to low-value forestry, what is probably the best example of
a permaculture farm in Europe stands out like a beacon. It stands as witness to
both the contrariness and the skill of the Rebel Farmer.
He has always gone against the grain of modern farming: he cultivates rich
mixtures of plants and animals in place of monocultures; he has no need for
chemicals because the dynamic interactions between the plants and animals in
his polycultures provide all the services which conventional farmers find in the
fertiliser bag and the crop sprayer. But it takes more than a contrary nature to be a
rebel farmer. It also takes skill and knowledge, and these don’t come easily. Right
from his childhood, when his mother gave him a small plot for his first garden,
he has observed, questioned, experimented, observed again and experimented
again. He knows the natural world like few other people do today, and treats his
farm as an integrated part of that natural world – which is exactly what it is.
In this book he shares the skill and knowledge which he has acquired over his
lifetime. He covers every aspect of his farming, not just how he creates a holistic
system on the farm itself but also how he makes a living from it. He writes about
everything from the overall concepts which guide him down to the details, such
as which fruit varieties he has found best for permaculture growing. Farming at
such a high altitude is a challenge in itself, and as well as his knowledge of plant
and animal interactions he has had to learn much about how heat and water
pass through the ecosystem, and how they can be stored and made to work for
the system.
An important part of permaculture is getting to know your own individual
place. Every patch of the Earth has its unique personality and character, just
as each person has. Nevertheless Sepp Holzer has taken his skill and applied
it on sites all over the world and in urban gardens too. It takes a great deal
of experience to be able to look at a site in a different part of the world and
understand how it works well enough to be able to give advice on it.
The other side of that coin is that what works for him on his Austrian
mountain will not necessarily work for you on your own land. Here in Britain,

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 Sepp Holzer’s Permaculture

for example, we have a cloudy maritime climate, in strong contrast to Austria’s

continental climate. Although our winters are milder, so too are our summers.
Above all we lack the sunshine which is such a key element in the way he creates
favourable microclimates. Humidity is also greater here. What you can do, say,
at 250m on the edge of Bodmin Moor is not the same as what you can do at ten
times that altitude on the Krameterhof. Similar allowances must be made for
other parts of the world.
This is not to negate the value of this book for people who live outside
Austria – far from it. Much of the detailed information is highly relevant in any
temperate country. As long as you bear in mind that both your climate and your
soil are possibly quite different to those on the Kameterhof, you will find it a
storehouse of valuable information.
Nevertheless the book’s greatest value is not so much in the information
it contains but in the attitudes it teaches. Its message is not so much ‘this is
how you do it’ but ‘this is the way you go about thinking of how to do it.’ Sepp
Holzer’s way is the way of the future. In the fossil fuel age we’ve been able to
impose our will on the land by throwing cheap energy at every problem. In the
future that option won’t be open to us any more. We’ll have to tread the more
subtle path, the path which patiently observes nature and seeks to imitate it.
That future may not be as far off as we think.

Patrick Whitefield
September 2010

Patrick Whitefield is a permaculture teacher and the author of Permaculture in

a Nutshell (1993), How to make a Forest Garden (1996), The Earth Care Manual
(2004) and The Living Landscape (2009). More details about his courses can be
found at www.patrickwhitefield.co.uk

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