Hi Gale,
Europe has a common policy of farming and I suppose Germany is doing the
same as farmers in the U.K. in that, as of necessity, we do not now have to
grow our own crops (rotated, like yours) or supply all our own livestock.
Instead some smaller farms have thought up different methods of earning an
honest penny. Some have brought back the horse and plough and charge
admission, others have set aside land & planted ye olde English specimens of
trees for future furniture instead of using quick growing pine. Europe also
allots 'heritage' cash, which is paid to farmers who do not plow right up to
the farm boundary, but leave a strip of perimeter land growing wild to give
nature's food chain a chance to re-establish itself.
What would each culture do without its own home brew 
Germany and
England grow hops for ale/lager/beer, mead was made with honey (now out of
fashion) both grow grapes & other fruit for wine, USA have your corn, the
Irish make poteen from potatoes, rice makes saki and the Scots make malt
from their crops for their whisky.
Reference 'layering': We have competitions in England and there are
different styles of 'layering'. The idea is to have a row of growing
saplings (ordinary upright young trees) and end up with a 'living'
horizontal woven fence.To keep animals in the field, closely planting a row
of clipped trees is not good enough as the animal can squeeze through the
gaps. We had 4 x 20 metre high fir trees which my husband layered to make a
hedge. I thought we had a dead brown hedge, but next year and thereafter it
was a thick impenetrable bushy hedge, which just needed an annual clipping
to look neat and tidy.
Cheers,
Rena, whose gt.grandfather settled in Yorkshire,GB, from somewhere in
Hannover.