Rainwater Only Mediterranean Permaculture

hi I'm John kaisner and you're watching the natural farmer [Music] okay so rain water only means exactly what it sounds like you water only using the water that you catch on your land rain water that you catch on your land and the way that you catch the rain water can vary and that's where the strategy enters now if you live in the tempered environment it's not as necessary because it rains during the summer time right but if you live in the Mediterranean or in drier lands it becomes essential because in these climates you have to bridge a very dry period typically throughout the Summer where there's no rainfall you have to rely on some other form of water well rain water unlike water pumped up from the ground in the dry lands does not salinate the soil water pumped from the ground up into drier lands will salinate and over mineralize the soil so that's very important the second thing is rain water does not diminish groundwater supplies and this planet is in grave danger of diminishing their groundwater supplies hence these movements to catch the rain water and use that rain water on the land so I'm going to show you something right off the bat got this hose connects to a valve that's rain water that's harvested rainwater okay no pump up there this is gravity fed rain water this pressure this quantity of water is coming from a tank right up the hill where we stored a bit of our rain water I'll show you the tank right now okay here's the tank 5000 liter temporary tank we have plans for permanent tank we don't have building permission yet so we have no structures we have no permanent tanks as a result in order to survive regardless of the bureaucracy problems here in the Mediterranean we've gone to a temporary tank system the water in this tank makes its way under a buried hose with protection all the way down to the outlet where I started the video but if I don't have any structures I don't have any rooftops to harvest the rain water as is the typical way to harvest rain water what do I do well enter another element down below so here we have three small ponds and we've got two ponds that are similar in shape and depth and a third Pawn that's a little bit different so these two pawns one two are designed to catch and hold water that can later be used up in the tanks they can be pumped up with a little baby pump uphill and then gravity fed down their shape their surface area to depth ratio is such that allows them not to evaporate too quickly keeps the evaporation rate low this third Pawn on the other hand is a biological Pawn so this Pond is a little bit more spread out allows for the growth of life and we have another one down here because this is a beautiful thing about having these pawns that you'll never have in rooftop catchment what I'm about to show you here so I'm going to try to sneak up on this Pond right here because there are a bunch of tadpoles that have almost matured into little baby frogs I'll try not to scare them away see if we can come around here and see them from the other angle here they are bathing in the Sun many many many tadpoles and I don't know if you could see them or not but there are some dragonflies there's a red dragonfly fly flying around and a blue that guy right there nothing shows up defending his territory here and a lot of tadpoles so life comes when we bring water life expresses itself and then the expression that happens here in the water will make its way out onto the land because frogs are wonderful at Pest Control and it's wonderful in the presence to be in the presence of life and that only comes that'll never come through classic rain water harvesting techniques that comes from ponds and they won't stay forever they'll just be here in the spring and then this will all go away but apparently frogs come back to the place where they're hatched so they'll continue to have a presence here and spread to the other ponds which they've already done but it all starts with our action our setting the ball in motion and this is a beautiful thing that I wanted to share with you because it adds such an amazing Dimension to this land and again in addition to the life that we're given we use that water to irrigate all of these trees I forget how many trees we have 180 maybe 200 trees by now between the fruit production the nut production and the nitrogen fixers we have not used a single drop of city water or groundwater okay I'm kind of proud of this I'm sorry if my pride is speaking too much right now but it's a model it's a model for what we need to do in the time coming up ahead so the tanks and the ponds are not the only layer to our water harvesting system we also use swales why well because permaculture teaches us that every essential function should be supported by multiple components in the design so water is a function water is something essential to everything out here so we need to support it we can't just have one system we need backups on backups maybe this one works maybe it doesn't Etc so you need to kind of weave together this design system for stability that gives us stability and sustainability okay so this is a swail system here's a Swale Swale is a contour trench trench on Contour right a little Canal here that we measure up with various tools uh here's another one over here is another one over here so right up at this top we have three then we have the growing areas between which a little bit more wild but they slow stop and sink the water is what we say in permaculture and that water is deposited under this land and we estimate every year we we sink roughly 4 million liters of water into a subsurface deposits that builds just like in a bank account you make deposits it builds it builds it builds and then tree roots the put their you know Roots down deeper and deeper until they meet up I'll show you a diagram now in our little Forest School that'll help it make it a little bit clearer okay so here's our little Forest school where you do some teaching it's really great for uh ADHD kids who have trouble sitting in classrooms adults have trouble sitting in classrooms because this is a classroom this Forest is a classroom on how to grow a food forest and we have tons of beautiful references here in zone five which is another permaculture principle so um just to illustrate on my board that seen better days got to get another board if this is the ground and I've got a Swale kind of does something like that I have the little baby trees then my water gets harvested in there and it sinks right and some of it sinks in this direction which allows for the feeder Roots down of this little baby tree to take advantage of the moisture but most of it a lot of it goes all the way down here makes a deep deep deep deep deposit all right so that's year one and the tree roots are not deep and then year two and year three and your four and your five comes up and up and up and then what happens is We Are One your two your three your four your five and there we've got the connection we're looking for when this tree starts to drink from that water or at least the humidity that's making its way up from that water then you see immediately this like explosion of growth of the tree on the landscape you just see it it's like a it's a little bit like a boy or a girl boy who goes away on summer vacation and returns to school the next year and he's like a young man right you see it you see the trees pop on the landscape when they come in contact with this subsurface water and that is what we want but in the meantime we're going to need to especially here in the dryer Mediterranean keep those trees alive and keep watering them irrigating them until this tree can make connection and then it's self-sufficient and then it's truly truly stable but we need to bridge the gap with that irrigation water so all these things work right and it's rain water only the rain water only techniques now does that mean that it is not allowed to have a well no absolutely have a well maybe you already have a well what about City water can you use City Water absolutely is City water use it well use a stream use a spring whatever you have available is and can be a benefit to this entire system like we said before the more layers we can stack into a system as essential as a water system the better I have mentioned this before I think in one of the previous videos many videos that I worked in India for years and as you'll see in this video worked on a project there I worked on several projects because we filmed this one where um where we're recharging the the farmers well farmer had a traditional well 20 meters deep back long time ago right kids used to swim in it and then the neighbors of the area which is in a rain shadow in coimbatore and uh and they out-competed that Farmer they they dropped the pipe borewell down uh 50 meters sucked out the water to over irrigate to abuse the groundwater and uh and his well dropped to nothing so he had to excavate down further and further and further break the rock break the rock break the rock to keep trying to get water and this kept on for you see how deep that thing is it's ridiculously deep and that's the problem because when people start to pull water out it's like a blank check you don't see it you've made this investment now you've got this borewell and in almost every single case that I have come across there is there eventually just people fall into massive abuse of groundwater through the borewell okay so when I worked on those projects a long time ago I said I'm going to demonstrate ground water zero ground water rain water only I'm going to demonstrate to show that it's an alternative because it's not even on people's radar a lot of times it's not even a passing thought now it used to be part of the culture here the Arab population from North Africa brought beautiful water harvesting techniques one of them is called the jebia here in Sicily but they've been forgotten a couple Generations ago with the Advent of the modern pump and the borewell all that stuff's gone in the past and I really believe that if you out there could start to live with rainwater only techniques you will be surprised at how rewarding it is to develop your system grow the trees grow your vegetables you'll be amazed at the feeling that it gives you the feeling of Independence also and the modeling it provides to the people around you because a lot of people have never tried this and you think it's impossible and you think I need all this it's very simple as you've seen right up here so hopefully that's useful hopefully it's beneficial in Italian foreign people have been watching for a long time really appreciate your loyalty and um and it's been a great journey so far we hope it has many beautiful things ahead so thank you again for for watching my name is John kaisner it's been another episode of the natural farmer hope to see you again real soon thank you foreign

Channel: The Natural Farmer

Views: 64,809

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Id: Tap01nJeSAU

Length: 14min 37sec (877 seconds)

Published: Sun May 14 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/Moochingaround]

I watched this last night by chance. I'm actually trying to do the same in a tropical climate. All rainwater. The upfront cost is a bit higher (with watertanks and all) but it feels good to always have water ready, even when wells around the area run dry towards the end of dry season.

I don't agree with his "irrigate trees until they reach the water table" idea though. I try to let my trees fend for themselves. They know where to search for water. If you keep irrigating them they won't have to search. Sure some trees may die this way, but that's how I end up with strong trees.