CLARENCE: Here in the Illawarra, the weather is a bit less extreme
than elsewhere in the country.
Add to that good rainfall -
and you pretty much grow food for yourself all year round.
In suburban Woonona, Sarah and Ben Anderson
have taken advantage of that weather
to create a backyard market garden that feeds the family
and allows them to sell their produce to neighbours and the local area,
in doing so, bringing the community together.
I love what you've done here. How did this come about?
Well, about 10 years ago, we sold our place,
and we spent a year WWOOFing around the world with our kids,
which is like volunteering on farms,
with food and accommodation in exchange for our labour.
And it was just enlightening. It was amazing.
The people we met were so inspirational,
just the way they live their life was what we wanted.
So we came back to Australia
after working in nine different countries,
and tried to figure out how we could do the same thing.
And this block of land just appeared,
and it was it was meant to be.
North facing. The Illawarra has such amazing rainfall.
And I thought, "Oh, I've worked in organic food, I can grow food."
I had no business knowledge, no growing knowledge,
but with naivety as my superpower, away we go.
And a whole lot of energy. Yeah.
You've already won me with the finger lime.
Yeah, this one's really well.
It's such a happy tree and it gets so much fruit on it.
That's amazing.
I can actually measure forecast yields,
and it's manageable for me.
I tried permaculture shapes.
They're a little bit tricky, but these, I can handle.
Certainly looking good. But, look, I'm looking around.
I'm guessing that it didn't always look like this.
Not at all.
It had been in the same family for 100 years prior to us coming in.
And we believe they had a market garden here before.
And chickens and sheep, and did so much work.
But the family couldn't look after it anymore.
So by the time we came in, there was a lot of work to be done.
It was turning it back into a blank canvas
that we could really work,
and observe, with, you know, the land,
what the rainfall was doing,
where the water flowed, what the animals were doing,
and how the sun moved around the place and the predominant winds.
So you're incorporating an amalgam of different principles
in this in this space?
Definitely with this one.
So there are some of the permaculture elements -
trying to use comfrey as an edge to the property,
but also because then I can grow it as a compost activator.
It's pulling up those trace minerals,
and then I can use it as a mulch as well.
Any of the waste goes into the chicken coop.
So we're trying to keep everything in the loop,
keep it all moving around.
Food that we will like.
There's things that I like bolt to seed,
so then all the pollinators can have a party.
So some things are left just to follow their natural cycles
and see what's happening over time as well.
The soil is just so happy now.
Every time you dig, there's just worms everywhere.
There's so much fungal activity. I'd love to learn more.
There's just fungi popping up everywhere.
What's that one? What's that one
A creek divides Ben and Sarah's land,
and on the other side of it, there's even more on offer.
This is a fantastic bridge.
I had a lot of fun building this, actually.
So all out of reclaimed stuff, as you can see.
This is where the magic happens. Absolutely.
I didn't even see this from the other side,
but there's a whole lot more to your market garden than meets the eye.
That's the nice thing about this side.
It's a little secret pocket of its own.
It's younger than the other side
because we didn't have bridge access.
But over here, I could go fence-to-fence
and then the full depth of it.
And I've set it up in bed styles that I can work.
So they're all the same size
and I can rotate my crops through each one.
At maximum, there's probably 30 different edible crops
in the market garden.
I only harvest once a week, because it is time-consuming.
And when I have to plan when I'm going to plant
to get that succession happening, it takes a little bit of time.
So if I harvested left, right and centre, it'd be too much.
And both sides, I'd get maybe 25 kilos a week of produce.
And its peak season is seven to eight months.
So there's a fair bit going on.
But that 25 kilos is just from the vegie beds to. The fruit trees...
The peachcot alone makes about 40 kilos of fruit.
One of the figs gets almost 500 figs just from one tree.
We've got four different trees there,
So there's a lot of produce
that comes out of quite a small area.
And I think we're still learning how to increase that productivity,
but we don't want to drain the soil at the same time.
And there are even a couple of rooftop gardens.
Ben and Sara certainly know
how to maximise the potential of their property.
What sort of advice could you give people
wanting to maybe try something like this?
Look, I think the permaculture principle of observe and interact
is really key.
So getting a feel for the land, seeing where it's hot,
where it's dry, where it's wet, where the sun moves,
and planting appropriately and clearing appropriately,
step-by-step is really key.
If you try and blitz it all at once, you're probably going to fall over.
It's been so important for us to build our relationships
with our neighbours, with our local community,
to make everybody feel involved and part of the ride too.
Dare I say, a lot of hard yakka.
Yeah, it is a hard job, and it's a great job.
And, I don't know, I feel excited to try and care for this land.
It's a really good opportunity.
So the hard work is something that I actually enjoy.
But yeah, if you like your couch, maybe it's not for you.
(LAUGHS)