Inspiring Family Turns Property Into Food
(Family Self-Sufficiency On 2 Acres)
What if your property could feed your family?
Not just with a vegetable garden…
But with hundreds of fruit trees and shrubs.
What if your landscape captured the rain, grew more abundant every year, and became a living example of what is possible?
That was Ben’s and his partner Cara’s dream.
Ben is a geographer, change maker, husband, and father of two young children.
He didn’t just want a beautiful property…
He wanted a property that reflected his values:
- A place his kids could grow up surrounded by food, nature, and abundance.
- A place to grow more food than his family could eat. To give it away!
- A place to demonstrate what thoughtful watershed design can achieve.
This project was also important to me.
I was in Australia studying Permaculture with Geoff Lawton. As a recently graduated intern, Geoff entrusted a colleague and me with the design and installation of Ben’s family acreage.
The responsibility was exciting. And a little intimidating… It was the spring of 2012 and my first major landscape installation project.
Together, Geoff, my colleague, and I developed the design around one simple principle: Work with water, and everything else becomes easier.
Designing For Water
When I first stepped onto Ben’s acreage in New South Wales, Australia, two things stood out immediately.
1) Water.
2) Sun.
The property was a sun-facing hillside with about two-thirds of that was lawn. There was also a gully running down each side.
… it got tons of sun.
… it needed plenty of mowing.
… it lost all its water fast.
This was a Permaculture designer’s dream job.
The task was clear:
- Slow the water.
- Store the water.
- Soak the water into the land.
Do that well, and this hillside could become a Willy Wonka factory of fruit and veg. So water became the backbone of the design.
(The map of the design was extra memorable because it was huge! We projected onto a whiteboard and traced out all our data from Google Earth & surveying reports. Then we did the design on top of that.)
Water would first land on the roof, then flow into large rain tanks under the deck. And the overflow from the house flowed down to the land.
To stop water from quickly escaping into the gullies, we designed three cascading swales across the slope.
One high. One middle. One low.
At either end of each swale, we added a simple but effective technology: pivot pipes.
When pivoted up, water stays in the swales.
When pivoted down, water could drain downhill to the next swale or into the gullies.
Now Ben can control the water on his land.
In dry times, the land could hold water.
In heavy rain, it could safely release it.
While the swales were the superstars of design, they were not complete without trees that went on top of them.
We planted 282 fruit trees and shrubs of 82 different varieties! So each swale (and the spaces between them) became a forest of food.
From acerola cherries to mangoes.
From Cassava to Bunya pine.
And many, many more.
But trees make SO much more than just food.
- Trees give fuel, fibre, fodder, fun, and farmaceuticals. 🙂
- Trees make precious shade and build water-absorbing soils.
- Trees slow or even eliminate dry winds, further saving moisture.
- Trees produce rich habitat, including bug-eating birds!
The design also included a large market garden below the top swale. We placed the pathways and garden beds on contour, making them easy to walk and better at holding water.
Altogether, the swales, food forest, and gardens created a passive water-retention system all working together to make a productive, lush, and nearly drought-proof property.
There was just one problem…
The whole property was covered in grass.
And anyone who has removed established grass knows that this is work…
Bringing The Vision To Life
Designing Ben’s property was one thing.
Building it was another.
The installation took over three weeks. We had an excavator operator, a skid steer, three labour helpers, my colleague, and me.
The work went something like this:
First, surveying.
We flagged and marked out the whole property.
Second, grass removal.
Using a commercial turf cutter and machinery, we removed most of the lawn.
We wanted fruit trees, not pasture.
Third, came the earthworks.
The excavator operator dug the swales while we checked his work to make sure each one stayed perfectly on contour, like a long, narrow pond.
As he dug, we saved rocks and used them to build a small stone bridge with a culvert across the top swale. We also uncovered an old clawfoot tub buried in the landscape!
What do two permies do with a random clawfoot tub?
Naturally, we put it in the middle of the garden as a raised bed for aquatic plants.
Fourth, came cover cropping.
We used perennial ground-cover cuttings, such as pinto peanut, plus a cover crop seed mix that included cowpea, vetch, and other vigorous plants.
Some fixed nitrogen.
Some mined nutrients.
All covered soil quickly.
Together, they would outcompete weeds and grasses, protect the soil, and act as understory placeholders while the food forest matured.
We even dipped the seeds in a probiotic mix to coat them with beneficial bacteria and improve germination, growth, and soil health.
Fifth, came scatter-mulching.
We sprinkled a light layer of weed-free straw over the seeds to reduce bird pressure, protect the soil from the hot sun, preserve moisture, and improve germination.
Then finally… Tree planting.
Hundreds of holes.
Small trees. Large trees.
Trees. Shrubs. Support plants.
My personal favourite tree was the “Ice Cream Bean Tree” (or Inga edulis if you speak Latin).
Not only does it grow huge pods filled with a sweet white flesh that tastes like ice cream, but it is also fast-growing and nitrogen-fixing.
Tree planting days were happy long days…
Dirty boots. Tired bodies. Big smiles…
Work for the body, the soul, and the planet.
And then came the moment I will never forget…
…the day we completed planting all the trees it rained.
Instead of watching water rush off the hillside, we watched it fill the swales.
The design came alive in front of us.
All the planning suddenly became visible.
The landscape was working exactly as intended.
That moment has stayed with me ever since.
Because good design is not something you simply look at.
It is something you watch come alive.
More Than A Food Forest
Over the months and years that followed, Ben kept sending me updates.
The cover crops taking off.
The kids playing in swales full of water.
The trees growing taller & fruiting.
More than a decade later, the property is almost unrecognizable. This drone video by Ben’s now-grown son tells the story better than words ever could.
What was once an open hillside is now a thriving food forest; a living example of how thoughtful design can transform a property and a family living with it.
When people look at this land, they see physical things…
… the trees. Or the swales. Or the tub in the garden.
I see something else.
I see parents making decisions today that will benefit their children for decades.
I see biodiversity replacing a monoculture of grass.
I see a family choosing to live in alignment with their values.
I see a model for how people can improve the land they live on.
To me, that is what this project was really about.
It’s a story everyday people can own.
Want To Create Something Similar?
Whether your dream is a productive acreage, a family food forest, or a property that reflects your values, every successful product begins with good design.
If you would like help creating a property that is beautiful, resilient, and deeply functional, I would be honoured to help. 
Learn more about my services.
And if you aren’t ready yet, we also have an online course and community to help turn property dreamers into property doers.
Learn more about the online community.
We are on a mission – to change the world, one person, one property, and one community at a time.
Warmly,
Kenton “Food-and-family” Zerbin