グローバル ガーデナー 3

Permaculture really starts with an ethic Earth care, that's care of the whole systems of Earth and species So we actually devise model systems Much of the design is drawn from nature The end result that we aim for is to produce a system that is ecologically sound and economically profitabe. It can get as sophisticated or as simple as you like. Tasmania, if you find anyboy else on a beach you just go and find another beach. "Oh, daddy was keeper of the Ederston light, played with a mermaid every night they had children, one, two, three, a porpous, and a herring and the other was me Yo, ho ho the wind blows free, all for a life on the rolling sea" I was born in Stanley, in Tasmania, 63 years ago. It's a cold climate and all my ancestors have come from cold climates. And it was there that I developed the idea that became permaculture. It was there that I built the first models and from there that I teach around the world. I'd been working for quite a long time in the rainforests of Tasmania and I slowly began to realise that their production could be far higher than that of any system we had devised and it was from there that permaculture grew. It's putting the knowledge of the relationships between the plants and the animals into the situation of farming or food production. By 1978 the gardens that we had constructed had given us confidence that we could create forest systems which were gardens. So, I published a book then and three since and then I started to teach in '81, that's just 10 years ago and now those teachers are in their 5th generation they're the students of my students of my students and so on. I often sit here at home thinking of them and just occasionally I decide to go and have a look at what they're doing. I think I'll do that now and see you later. We're in the San Juan Islands, not far from the Canadian border and these islands were heavily glaciated not so long ago in the pleistocene so they're very bare on top. Often they're made up of granites, unlike the mainland and they have lakes and valleys, and typical glacial landscapes And I want to have a look at some of the action on the San Juans. One of my students was Joe Bullock. He's been developing a forest garden. "Hi Bill, how're you doin'" "Yeh, I'm good. It's about 6 years ago that you and the boys bought this area?" "Yeh, about 6 years." "When was I here. 5 years ago?" "Yeh, 4 or 5, something like that." "Things have changed and you've had a long battle to find out what to do that works." "Still finding out, I think." We're fortunate to be here on a fine summers day. Here in winter it can get very cold and heat is an invaluable resource. Joe has wisely combined his kitchen with a green house. It not only heats his house but provides him with winter food. But Joe's developed other techniques to make the greatest use of the scarce heat resource of this area. We've got a palm tree growing here. And if you just look at it you might not think anything is strange about that but actually palm trees aren't too common around here and we do get quite cold. We're just a few miles from the Canadian border and we can get some really cold winds and heavy snowfalls in the winter occasionally. But what I'd like to demonstrate here is that a lot of people think of rocky land as being non-agricultural land but actually one thing that rocky land also has in great abundance is an accumulation of heat And in a relatively cool summer climate like this heat is often one of the most precious commodities to the grower of many, many things So, I think people in England and Scotland have long known this by planting things up against rock walls but if you land with rocky outcroppings one might consider placing a heat loving species close to the rock in order to benefit from the additional heat they would receive. Joe and his brother Sam are putting in a 30 acre orchard which will eventually become a food forest. As orchard plants can be expensive Joe and his brothers have come up with some good ideas to use plants that already exist. We're in the midst of a native crab apple thicket. That's Malus fusca, it has a big range all over the northwest of the United States. Normally its not considered to have much value to most people although it was utilised by the native Americans. However, I've found that you can graft the smaller trees. This tree is growing on a rocky dry ridge and has never received any care from us except for the initial graft. As you can see it has healed up real nice. Now there's quite a difference in the two foliages of these two types and if you look at it the smaller leaf here with the cut edge would be typical of the wild tree and this bigger broader leaf is the grafted apple tree. It's thriving and this year for the first time it has some fruit on it. This variety is called Irish peach and what's even better is that they're really good. I do this with the native species that we have here but it could probably be done with any type of wild apple occurring anywhere. Developing such a complex property can be a lot of work, you have to fertilise and weed and mulch. So they've employed a large labour force to help. "Ah, a duck tractor." The ducks do the job of a tractor in their digging fertilising and weeding. And not only that, the brothers enjoy the duck eggs. "We all thought that chicken tractoring would be the way to go with some of these wet, fertile, fast growing bottom lands "and we did a little with chickens but we've come to the conclusion that ducks are just a lot nicer animal to be around, nicer personalities "Chickens are good because they scratch things up but in terms of being around one or the other, we prefer ducks." "Another good thing about ducks is that if they do escape they're not quite as veracious when they get in to the garden "Chickens they quickly find your mulch" "Yeh, they're mulch lovers" "Ducks are real fun to watch and their families...and the way they cohabitate with each other." Poultry, ducks and geese, can be an important part of any design but 30 miles away from Joe's place in the Skagit valley I visited a farm and nursery where geese are employed by an old friend of mine, Anne Schwartz. "These are White Chinese geese, and they eat all the grass species, they eat legumes, they eat chickeweed, as a matter of fact I couldn't farm without them." "You mean you eat them?" "Sometimes. Right about this time of the year when I don't want to feed them all winter long." "So, mainly they're used here for weeding?" "Uh, I have an acre and a half of potatoes and they did all my weeding for me in the potatoes. The field is spotless, they did a really wonderful job. "We mulch all the beds with the compost then the geese come in and eat all the other grasses and weeds. Everyone once in a while I'll come in with a mower "but by and large the geese eat everything." "So they are your main workers?" "Absolutely." "In your vineyard?" "In the nusery stock, in the raspberries, potatoes, strawberries "And I use a very portable fence so wherever I want the geese I just herd them around." Anne's also trained her dogs to get rid of the overgrown zuchinni's which are a problem for all home gardeners. Like most permaculture farmers, Anne's producing far more than she can use so she has joined other local growers who have adopted a good strategy to sell their surplus product. Cascadian Farm buys strawberries and raspberries and several other kinds of fruit from, probably, better than 60 growers at this point. "Simon are you here?" "Yeh Anne". "Hi, how are you today". "Uh, good morning". "I got flats and about 350 pounds for you today". "Great come on up". Cascadian has always tried to pay a good bonus for organic fruit and they've been more than willing to work with small growers learning how best to meet the market. "The qualities good and the flavours good. We can never get enough pickers but what else is new". It's been very beneficial to advance the profitability of small farms but everything is packed and labeled under the Cascadian Farm label. These are the subarboreal or far-north forests just below the high northern latitude at 45 degrees. Just north of the oaks on the coast and just south of the purely coniferous forests. It's noticeable here, as it is with all forests that the forest depends on a fallen forest to grow itself, so that every log and every stump here, many of them cut off stumps, have cedar trees growing in them and berry bushes. And all these forests are the same no matter whether they're northern or southern latitiude. And then the main foods out of this forest for people and for a lot of animals are sugars which are stored in the maples and the saps of many of the deciduous trees and fungi and there are at least 40 species of fungi. This one looks as though it might make you hallucinate...but there are at least 40 edible species of fungi throughout the forest. So, you find many of the animals are full of fungi in the winter and of course the people eat fungi in the winter. And the Indians cleared holes in this forest and cultivated nettles and from nettles they made very fine silky cloth and also they ate the nettle as a green vegetable. We're in England, in Shropshire. On Roman Bank and it's autumn, or early winter really and we've come to meet Robert Hart who has developed a forest garden here over the last few years. "Hello Robert" "Pleased to meet you." "After a long time." "Yes, after a very long time, nearly 12 years." "Shall we have a look at this garden." "Right, yes." This garden is one of the oldest examples in Europe of how to go about consciously designing a forest garden. "So thi is my favorite fruit actually." "This one is?" "I consider this is as nice as any tropical fruit. This is a universal pollinator, it's a golden hornet crab which will pollinate any kind of ordinary apple." "Great, that's a useful thing." "A very useful thing indeed." "Production of the temperate areas, because of the soft light is much greater than the tropics." "Is it?" "It is, and the day length is much longer, as you realise." A cool area forest with clearings has a very complex series of levels and this garden imitates that very well. "...that's basically the structure of the whole system. How many levels do you think then?" "I reckon there are 7 layers. There is the high tree layer, of trees that require light. This is an old pear tree that was plated 30 year ago, so tht constitutes the canopy. "Then there is the low tree layer, that is an apple on dwarfing rootstock - a shade tolerant apple. "Then there is the shrub layer , this is a red currant bush. Then this is the herbaceous layer comprising apple mint "and this is the ground cover layer, that is a strawberry-raspberry, a plant that spreads horizontally "Then there is the root layer comprising plants that are grown for their roots alone. And then there is the vertical layer of climbers like raspberries and loganberries. "Many of the herbs are fragrant herbs. Everyone knows that lavender, for instance, wards off clothes moths and it's reasnoable to suppose that aromatic herbs of that kind also ward off pests and diseases from neighbouring plants." "Yeh, that's great isn't it. I mean you get quite a lot of stuff in total." These gardens show the efficiency and stabiltiy of a forest but with much better than the production of a monoculture farm. "So between the tropics and the temperate areas we use the same sort of principles both ways." "Absolutely, yes." "The woods are lonely, dark and deep, And I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep." The woods may appear dark and deep but they are, in fact, harvesting sunlight. They are the great reserves of the suns energy on Earth converting it to timber and to leaves which become nutrients for the soil. It's a feature of cold climates that every winter life dies. The leaves fall from the trees and in to the soil or, at least stop growth. And the soil will retain the carbon from the leaves for up to 5,000 years. And when we clear forests in those climates we have inherited a tremendous amount of humus in the soil and that is the reason why agriculture has to concentrate on the humus in the soil in those areas. I came from traditional farming families and we cared for soils for over 200 years but in the period from 1950 to 1990 most of those soils were destroyed. In 1951 I saw the first chainsaw. In 1953 we saw the modern tractor arrive. By 1954 many farmers were pouring phosphate all over their fields. We didn't have to worry about the soil any more, WE were in charge of fertiltiy. In the 50's we, therefore, declared war on the soil. We were using just that equipment we would have used had we have gone to war. Heavy machinary, crawler tractors, biocides, poison gas, the lot. I'd like to take you to meet somebody who still uses the natural systems to create soils. I've known him for 40 years and he didn't start out rich. Bert Farcler has a huge property. By looking after soils wherever he farms he's become wealthy. "You get a thousand pound weight of sheep or cattle above an acre of ground and you get about two thousand pound weight of live animals underneath." "Is this the right one, that is what I'd like to know." "Yes." "This is allolobophora caliginosa?"[note: spelling on original is incorrect] "That's right, yes." "The worms, of course, do enrich the soil enormously. You get up to 70% increased production on new soil or an average of 25% on an old soil and that is enourmous." "That's huge production." While farmers all around Bert spend a fortune on fertilisers and equipment, Bert never followed that road. He's always been an organic farmer and he's always used natural methods. And Bert has adopted some simple methods to spread worms to less fertile parts of his property. "Yes, I think we'll put then in this area. You always put the grass down on top of the other grass, right. "So that will rot and give the worms a good chance. Then you have to put about a square metre of lime or dolomite over it, all around it." "So that does the pH bit for them." "So, you put them every 10 metres apart, in 7 years the whole paddock will be completely covered at the rate of 4 million per acre." The difference between a good and a bad farmer is really applied observation Someone who merely powers their way through the situation is not as clever, nor will they end up as well off as someone who closely observes the inter-relationship between trees, animals and plants. "We have some, I think it must be nearly 50 billion worms working and, you know, seven days a week, 24 hours a day without any over-time or no holiday pay or anything like that, they're all working for nothing "so that's pretty good. If you get 50 billion people or workers working for your for nothing, well, you're going pretty well. The worms enjoy it, so everyones happy." This is a high plateau of Tasmania where you come in winter to snare your wallabies. Where many of us when we were young came up here in the winter to go game hunting. And where you can't be a vegetarian, you've got to be a carnivore. And it's a terrible climate and I'm really pleased I'm living in the tropics. Conserving energy is essential in cold climates and we need to pay particular attention to that in our design. It's a cold day here, it's a cold spring day in southern Australia, here in Victoria at David Holmgren's place. He's just raking his lawn. He's still a friend of mine despite the fact he's got a lawn. And he's built this really excellent energy efficient house because design is at least as much about architecture as it is about gardens. "Not a lot in the garden at the end of winter but there is still a plentiful supply of carrots and always something to make a salad and a soup." And it's integrated garden and house and it's a low energy house. Made out of mud. Mud brick. So this is a bitterly cold day and it feels frosty and it's time to go in to a warm solar heated home. Yeh, it is a lot warmer in here. I'll take off my jacket, I think. "Normally you use solar energy to heat the house but you can also use it for cooling." "The way the cupboard works is that it draws the air in from under the floor where the air is just the temperature of the earth all year round and it drafts through the wire baskets and out through a flue pipein the roof. "It's ideal for dairy products, ideal for most fruit and vegetables. Which means you don't really need a fridge, or only need a small fridge, "and of course that is very significant in terms of cfc's that are attacking the ozone layer. When I came to designing for a climate like this I had to think fairly carefully given the amount of cloudy and very cold weather. "We've got the glazing, that allows the sun in and the greenhouse is really the most important element in that design. "The thermal mass of the walls is very important to store the heat for the periods when there isn't sun. "The sun on the wall is a medium width at the moment and in the summer it's reduced to nothing whereas in the winter it's a very wide band of light falling on the wall." An energy efficient house like David's is not only cheap to run but creates very little pollution. So every way we can save or recycle energy is very important in what we do. All the systems we inhabit require energy whether it's just a house or a farm or a town and the only question is can we conserve enough energy over the lifetime of the system, and can we give enough yields to offset the energy that we use to establish that system. Well, we'll go and see a farm in Germany where methods of recycling energy are being developed and where even the financial systems are being slowly made recyclable. This is the Sonnenhaus, or Sun House, near Munich and it'll be on this and the adjoining properties that we'll look at the work of the Sweisrau[???] foundation. And the main interest here is that everything produced on the property, the meat, the wheat, is processed here and turned in to a variety of products. So, it's a farm whose main interest is it tries to integrate the chain from production to market. Greens from the field...clover and comfrey and fresh grasses are fed to the pigs and they also partly range. Then the waste from the pigs is scraped down and falls into this pit and there are cables there that carry it along most of it goes into tanks for biogas, which can be used for processing the meats and the sludge can be taken out to grow clover. So you can set up a, sort of, cycle system. These are, so called, flow forms. They're developed by the Vavella[???] Institute in England and they were invented to oxygenate polluted water systems. Here we have water polluted with silage run off. And by running it through these complicated oxygenation systems you can raise the oxygen level, make it suitable for fish or make it more suitable for cleaning it up to take to forests or pastures. By using these quite beautiful and functional art forms we can turn poluuted water in to trout. And also create a pleasant environment to contemplate. By grouping the butchery, the bakery, the cheese making and a restaurant on the property Karl Sweisfrau [???] saved a lot of costs. But Karl not only saves costs, he also saves pollution. Pollution is just unused waste! The foundation sells directly to the consumer. Food produced on the farm is 30% more expensive than it is in the supermarket. But when you buy food from the supermarket you don't pay for the pollution that is caused in its production. It's an education for people to come to the farm, see the healthy farm all around them and the clean processing system. They can then appreciate they are buying a food that hasn't damaged the Earth. There is a great variety of vegetables and cheese being packaged here in small lots which go to about 40 families in Munich, distributed by the housewives in Munich. And so, by directly marketing from the farm and then setting up this local distribution system the farm closes off the cycle from production to distribution. Linking the city to the farm is one strategy by which people can make sure of good food. But next we will go right in to the cities and see how we can do that in the city itself. Subtitles by the Amara.org community