John Kaisner
The Natural Farmer – India
John Kaisner is a much-loved international teacher, designer and practitioner of Permaculture. But it wasn’t always this way. He spent the first 20 years of his career in architecture, where he designed and completed projects in Paris, New York, Los Angeles, and India. His Permaculture journey began in the villages of India – recharging groundwater, building clay stoves, and teaching impoverished villagers how to grow food using zero budget natural farming. One of the things that makes John’s approach exceptional is the way in which he integrates natural farming into traditional Permaculture practices. He holds that Nature is the ultimate teacher, and that our job is to observe and imitate Nature at every turn. John travels far and wide producing permaculture projects (India, Italy, Philippines, France) and produces lots of informative videos.
In the Spring of 2017, John and his wife purchased a 27,000 m2 plot of land on the NE coast of the island of Sicily with 6,000 m2 of food forest. When they started it was a dry, abandoned lot where only blackberry bushes were able to grow. In about 3 1/2 years they were able to shape the land, build dry stone retaining walls, add 6 small ponds, and plant more than 150 fruit and nut trees, consisting of over 90 different species. The land has been effectively transformed from a dry, abandoned lot to a young ecosystem. As a result, life is starting to take hold. This plot is not connected to a city water source and there is no well. To irrigate these young trees they used 100% rainwater, harvested from the ponds during the rainy season and stored for later. But this is really only the beginning. There are still temporary water tanks about, there’s no shade yet (the trees aren’t even big enough to see from the aerial image), and the land is still healing from the water-harvesting earthworks.
In India, the land served as an education site for poor villagers in India, so demonstrating how to create a food forest in a floodplain proved very useful. It showed these men how to get valuable production from the otherwise ‘useless’ parts of their land – through the use of a simple Permaculture strategy. John uses the technique of Hügelkultur, meaning ‘hill’ or ‘mound’ culture in the German language, which uses buried material, often wood, as a means of boosting and stretching soil fertility, as well as conserving water. It’s ideal for growing trees, especially in areas where soil quality is poor.
In addition, John also teaches at a family property near Hudson, Illinois in the U.S. John has the understanding that there is great power and intelligence behind Nature’s design. It teaches us, inspires us, and often disciplines us.
By working with Nature, rather than against it, farming becomes more productive, the ecosystem thrives, and we ourselves are transformed for the better.
Website: https://www.johnkaisner.com/
Video 1: Recharging a Well
Video 2: Hugelkuter
