AQUACULTURE

Fishponds on a mountain farm: an unusual sight at these altitudes. On an Austrian mountain, permaculture farmer Sepp Holzer created more than 70 ponds and wetland areas covering about 3 hectares.

Sepp Holzer: "In these ponds and lakes the fish are mixed in a colourful way, just like my plants. In a number of places in the ponds I put roots and stones, about 4 to 5 metres deep. It is important that the fish can hide, so they are not being chased all the time. The predator fish can´t enter such a tangle of roots, so the small fry feel safe. If they are being followed all the time they would either die of stress or be eaten. The big fish, the predator, has to get through these roots, but the small ones are faster."

The stones also help to raise the temperature of the ponds: Heated by the sun, the stones transfer heat to the water. And when I let only a little water run into a pond, and when there are many flat zones with stones and roots, the water heats up. It can reach the outside temperature - sometimes 25 degrees up here on the mountain!
Nature provides its own self-service restaurant – organic, of course! To do this he has to balance the food chain so it becomes self-sustaining: algae, insects, newts, small fish and large fish. No one goes hungry and his fine trout end up on many a good cook’s dining table. Instead of costing him money, the fish earn Holzer a healthy income: economically his pisciculture is highly successful. Apart from providing for his own needs the fish are very popular with local customers. Unlike many fish farms, Holzer doesn’t serve his fish processed food.

This second instalment from the Krameterhof continues with the exploration of an extraordinary hillside farm, high up in the Lungau Valley of Austria. In the first video, Farming With Nature, we were treated to a stunning overview of Sepp and Veronica Holzer's long-term application of Permaculture Design to terrace agriculture in a temperate climate. Here, we see in greater detail the water management on the 45-hectare farm. It is explained through an intensely personal journey from Sepp's first interest in pisciculture at age seven and on later through the 40 years that he has boldly transformed a total of 3 hectares of the hillside to produce 70 interlinked ponds and wetland areas. Sepp farms fish and, in the way of all good animal husbandry, he observes and understands their behaviour, their nutritional and habitat needs, and the natural order that exists between predator fish (pike) and feeders (carp and trout). It's as though he constructs guilds of fish since the variety of species, and the colourful decoration from inclusion of Japanese carp, makes them the equivalent of an underwater flower garden. He eats the fish and also sells them to restaurants locally.

Fish farming is but one purpose from his water management. He generates power; uses collected water to extract and pump up drinking water; the water surfaces reflect the warmth of the sun, provide humidity and create microclimates; and water temperature is varied using large boulders as heat sinks or through water movement from deep or shallow ponds elsewhere. But there is more than function: each water element is carefully located in the landscape, is provided with a variety of niches and aquatic plants, and is fed and drained by restfully-noisy waterfalls and watersinks. Here is natural beauty and sensory charm, because Sepp knows that we need more than food to sustain us, and he shows us how in this video.

(Dr.Mark Fisher, Permaculture Magazine, 2002)