Life on pasture · The Branch, NSW

Field notes from a farm coming back to life

Follow the regeneration of 42 hectares in real time — the plantings, the setbacks, the soil results and the seasons. Read along, then come get your hands dirty.

The slope below the homestead at Carinya Parc, where the first food forest rows now run

Featured · Regeneration

The first syntropic lines: 90 metres of forest, planted in a day

After a year of reading Götsch and drawing lines on maps, we planted the first three rows of the food forest below the homestead this week. Bananas, pigeon pea, eucalypts, citrus and an unreasonable amount of sweet potato. Here is the design, the density, and the bit we are least sure about.

JJonno · 4 min read
A new strainer assembly on the ridge at Carinya Parc

Field reports

Old fences, new lines: 1.4 kilometres of winter

Alpaca fencing and Highland cattle do not mix, so winter went to wire. Here is the 1.4 kilometres we built, the 600 metres of old fence we found buried in lantana, what it cost, and the one corner post we will never live down.

Aug 2026 · 4 min

Winter pasture on the hill paddock at Carinya Parc

Field reports

Midwinter pasture: reading the ridges before we ask anything of them

The paddocks are green in July and visitors assume that means abundance. It does not, quite. A walk of the ridges and the flat with a quadrat and a notebook, and what the winter grass is telling us about next autumn's cattle.

July 2026 · 4 min

The farm track and gate at Carinya Parc on a frosty June morning

Field reports

Living in the shed: the winter we moved in for good

After two years of weekends, we moved to Carinya Parc full-time in June, into a steel shed we are turning into a house one wall at a time. Here is what a Colorbond box is like at minus two, what we insulated first and why, and what the kids think.

June 2026 · 4 min

Highland cattle in a paddock, the breed we are bringing to Carinya Parc

The herd

Why Highland cattle, and why they are not here yet

We get asked two questions at the gate: why Highlands, and where are they? This is the working behind both. The breed choice took a year. The decision to wait another one took an afternoon on the valley flat with a spade.

May 2026 · 4 min

The Branch River bend at Carinya Parc, the site of our first planting day

Regeneration

Our first planting day: 1,150 trees, 26 people, one brown snake

We opened the gate for the first time and 26 people turned up with gloves. By three o'clock we had 1,150 tubestock in the ground along the eroded bend of the Branch River. Here is how it ran, what we got wrong, and how we will know if it worked.

Apr 2026 · 4 min

The homestead at Carinya Parc, kitchen garden in the foreground

Produce

A kitchen before a farm

People assume a MasterChef finalist moving to a farm starts with the farm. We started with the kitchen garden, six raised beds and a very ordinary tomato, and it has taught us more about what we want from this land than any plan has.

Mar 2026 · 4 min

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