Episode 42: One Acre Farmer with Brett Cooper and Morag Gamble

In this episode of Sense-Making in a Changing World, I am excited to share with you my conversation with one-acre permaculture farmer, Brett Cooper from Limestone Permaculture in Stroud, NSW.

Brett and his family moved from the city and busy full time jobs and health issues to this country property. They now source their entire income from their beautifully designed small-scale permaculture farm with 11 sources of income - including food, courses, tours, accommodation, consulting and very importantly - the gift economy.

Listen in & be inspired by the transition story Brett shares. It is such a wonderful story - motivating, uplifting and enabling!

You can also Limestone Permaculture on Youtube - made by Happen Films.

And check out these links:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LimestonePermaculture/
Simply Homesteading Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SimplyHomesteading.Nici
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/0zDigga/videos
Instagram: @limestone_permaculture

You can also catch the youtube version of this conversation here.

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• Download this list of 10 of Morag's favourite books.
• Morag's 4 part introduction to permaculture video series.

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FIND OUT MORE ABOUT PERMACULTURE
Join me to learn more about permaculture. Come and explore the many free permaculture resources my Our Permaculture Life Youtube channel  and blog .

The world needs more permaculture teachers everywhere sharing local ways of one planet living, regenerative design and growing, and working toward a climate-safe future. Being or becoming a local grower - on a farm or in your backyard - is critically important, as is supporting local regenerative growers to supplement your food needs. Our current industrial food systems is responsible for a huge proportion of our carbon emissions, land degradation, soil erosion, water pollution, habitat loss, species extinction and human ailments.

I invite you to join the

Transcript

Morag Gamble: 0:00

Welcome to the Sense-making in a Changing World Podcast, where we explore the kind of thinking we need to navigate a positive way forward. I’m your host Morag Gamble.. Permaculture Educator, and Global Ambassador, Filmmaker, Eco villager, Food Forester, Mother, Practivist and all-around lover of thinking, communicating and acting regeneratively. For a long time it's been clear to me that to shift trajectory to a thriving one planet way of life we first need to shift our thinking. The way we perceive ourselves in relation to nature, self, and community is the core. So this is true now more than ever. And even the way change is changing, is changing. Unprecedented changes are happening all around us at a rapid pace. So how do we make sense of this? To know which way to turn, to know what action to focus on? So our efforts are worthwhile and nourishing and are working towards resilience, and reconnection. What better way to make sense than to join together with others in open generative conversation. In this podcast, I'll share conversations with my friends and colleagues, people who inspire and challenge me in their ways of thinking, connecting and acting. These wonderful people are thinkers, doers, activists, scholars, writers, leaders, farmers, educators, people whose work informs permaculture and spark the imagination of what a post-COVID, climate-resilient, socially just future could look like. Their ideas and projects help us to make sense in this changing world to compost and digest the ideas and to nurture the fertile ground for new ideas, connections and actions. Together we'll open up conversations in the world of permaculture design, regenerative thinking community action, earth repair, eco-literacy, and much more. I can't wait to share these conversations with you.

Morag: 1:53

Over the last three decades of personally making sense of the multiple crises we face. I always returned to the practical and positive world of permaculture with its ethics of earth care, people care and fair share. Over the last three decades of personally making sense of the multiple crises we face. I always returned to the practical and positive world of permaculture with its ethics of earth care, people care and fair share. I've seen firsthand how adaptable and responsive it can be in all contexts from urban to rural, from refugee camps to suburbs. It helps people make sense of what's happening around them and to learn accessible design tools, to shape their habitat positively and to contribute to cultural and ecological regeneration. This is why I've created the Permaculture Educators Program to help thousands of people to become permaculture teachers everywhere through an interactive online dual certificate of permaculture design and teaching. We sponsor global Permayouth programs, women's self help groups in the global South and teens in refugee camps. So anyway, this podcast is sponsored by the Permaculture Education Institute and our Permaculture Educators Program. If you'd like to find more about permaculture, I've created a four-part permaculture video series to explain what permaculture is and also how you can make it your livelihood as well as your way of life. We'd love to invite you to join a wonderfully inspiring, friendly, and supportive global learning community. So I welcome you to share each of these conversations, and I'd also like to suggest you create a local conversation circle to explore the ideas shared in each show and discuss together how this makes sense in your local community and environment. I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land in which I meet and speak with you today, the Gubbi Gubbi people and pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging.

Morag Gamble: 3:36

You're in for a treat today. My guest is Brett Cooper from Limestone Permaculture, a one acre permaculture farm near Newcastle in Australia. This is a story of how he and his family moved from the city, full-time work in a business into living full time on their small farm. It's a journey of determination, as well as clarity of purpose and vision. There's just so many different aspects to this story that Brett shares, which I know you're just going to love. It was such a wonderful time chatting with Brett, and I really encourage you to follow a number of the links that we've popped down below. So you can see more about the work that Brett does and see some of the films that are being made at Limestone Permaculture. Enjoy. Thanks so much for joining me today on this show, Brett. Just for listeners Brett and his and his wife, Nicole, or Nic. Do you call her Nic or Nicole?

Brett Cooper: 4:37

Nici.

Morag Gamble: 4:38

Yeah. So they run a place called Limestone Permaculture and Limestone Permaculture is a one-acre permaculture farm about an hour North of Newcastle on the East coast of Australia. And I'm so excited about talking to Brett today because it's a remarkable story. On this show we talk about Sense-making in a Changing world and what Brett and Nici have done is really make sense of what's going on in their life. What's going in the bigger picture of what's happening on the planet and transformed basically a one-acre paddock into this thriving permaculture farm that's their full-time work, their, family life. You may have seen some of the Happen films about their place. And I'll put the links down below in the show notes, and I highly encourage you to have a look at them to kind of get a visual image of what we're talking about, but thanks for joining me, Brett. I wanted to start out by asking you, how did you find permaculture? How did permaculture find you in the first instance? Where did it, where did it begin for you?

Brett Cooper: 5:49

Well, first of all, thanks Morag for having me on it's fantastic. Look permaculture kicks in for many of us after talking to many of our visitors and students, we all seem to have very similar stories. For us it was, it was to do with, just realizing, just having those little moments that we weren't eating as well as we should have been. And then finding out my wife had ailments that were immune issues and there was some deficiencies there and whatnot. So these things, it was, it crept up on us. It wasn't something that just went bang! Here's permaculture. It basically started with just trying to, wanting to consume better quality food. That's where it sort of kicked off. So, I mean, that would have been getting close to 20 years ago now. That was back in the day when we had a little place in mayfield in Newcastle. 330 square meters, which we ended up turning into a little permaculture property called the Urban squeeze. We started off just basically doing a little bit of gardening, finding out about our local community gardens. And then o ne thing led to another, before I knew it, I was t he coordinator of the community gardens and all of a sudden, I'm researching, I'm doing courses, I'm doing workshops and this, what i t was u sed l ight. A nd when I went, Oh, w ell, I've done that. But you know it was something that crept up on us, but initially it was more to do with t heir health and then everything else evolved around that. Yeah.

Morag Gamble: 7:32

Yeah. That's really interesting. Isn't it? I find it interesting too. You saying how it crept up on you. You just find yourself immersed in it over time and health is one of the major reasons why so many people get into it. And like you're saying, you go into the store and if you have a health issue, what is the food that you actually really want to eat from there? Like, what is the stuff that's going to nourish you? And we all know that the best stuff comes out of most beautiful, most healthy soil and as freshly picked as possible and infused with love of growing it and, and all of that. So that's fantastic. You mentioned too, I think in the film you were talking about how permaculture has changed you. How do you think it's changed or maybe your family as well?

Brett Cooper: 8:32

So if you think about when I found permaculture, I found It coming in from a health impact. We know permaculture is much more than all that, but that's where it kicked off for us. And so for us, when we say it changed us it brought about a new thinking. So it brought actually more awareness. And I know it's something that's thrown around a little bit, but it needs to be. So the idea of awareness of what's going on culturally, what's going on socially, what's going on throughout land, through the demographics of people, the whole package. It was one of those things that we were a little bit eye shut. Well, we were probably mostly eye shut. The initial thing was health. It flagged it for us, it opened their eyes. And then It brought us into that situation where we got to pick up these books and read them. We got to check websites out. And before we know it, we're delving much farther and much deeper than health. So, permaculture changed us at every level. And then it got to a stage where we spent the best part of probably close to 10 years in Newcastle building up an urban scenario. So it started with health and we ended up getting to the stage where we were actually having open days and we were doing that kind of thing. So then we had this realization that we felt that we wanted to be educated. We thought that we could have much more to offer if we could show demonstration. And demonstration was one thing good in the urban area. That was great. And there was a lot going on. Then all this moved towards a semi-rural peri urban. That i n b etween zone, which we're at. Where we c ould sort of show farmers what potentially was for t heir farm and homestead and urban and suburban what the potential was f or the y ards backyards and urban homes. So this was a really directed move. Like we really got there and sat down and we started thinking and planning and yes, permaculture was all part of that idealism of actually taking a time, not just observing, but observing within. So getting it right. What do we want? What's our vision, what's our context? What's a holistic context? So we got there and we really put some emphasis in our family sitting down at the dinner table and going, where are we, what are we doing? Where do we want to be? And so we started planning and that even meant that we changed our jobs. So, I was a builder and I knew that with what I was doing, being a builder and doing administration at night and working 11, 12, 13, 14 hours a day. It was going to be hard to try and fit something else in. So the problem was the solution. I had to find a job that brought it back to a nine to five job or something where I wasn't caught up with my own admin. So I changed from being a builder of my own business.It was only a tiny little business, but I moved into a job and I took risks. I took gambles. Like everybody, I was basically fluffing my way through and just trying to find a job that had nothing to do with making big pay or anything. It was something that gave me time. Time to think, time to plan, to put more time in more family about where we are going to be in the future. And that was a real thing to us. So when you say permaculture change us, it hasn't stopped changing us. You would be in the same boat and everybody who has taken on permaculture in their life would be in that same situation. It just continually evolves, continually changes. And that's what you get excited about what you wake up in the morning for. It's brilliant.

Morag Gamble: 12:37

Yep. Yep. I think you kind of opened up to one of the other questions that I wanted to ask you about. The transition. I know that as you're saying, you were running your own business and fully immersed in that and then that's really interesting what you're saying about taking on a job, knowing that that was a transitionary stage. Like that, wasn't you that was the thing you're going to do forever. That that was a step towards creating something else that this whole idea of transition from being fully immersed in a business or a job to being on a farm and that being your full-time work.I do a lot of work with young students. I actually got a group coming up on the weekend, actually Thursday, Friday, a group coming up of high school kids who are doing a permaculture camp here. I quite often ask them things like, Oh so who's interested in being a farmer or a grower. Everyone's sitting on their hands, like, nope. Although I have to say, it's changing a little bit. There's more people starting to go, it's starting to be really interesting. I wonder for you that process of transition, what are some of the tips or the hacks or the advice of making that transition. Like a lot of people dream about what you're doing. Having a nice property in the country, making a living off the farm and you're doing it on one acre. How do you do that?

Brett Cooper: 14:18

We actually t alk about this in our courses and we talk about it on our open days and f arm t ours. I t all comes, it all stems back to, first of all have some kind of vision, some kind of core intention. First of all, y ou've got to acknowledge that you you're looking for something more in your life. You're aiming for something m ore, and there's a lot of us. I think nearly everybody does. So that's the initial part. And then going wit using permaculture principles to actually guide you. So take those principles a nd use i t in all different ways, but take those principles and then use them in the planning process of your future of vision. So for us, when we were sitting around t he table back in 2007 saying we want to move out of the city and live in the country. We've got a mortgage back in there. The actual mortgage was higher back then living in the cities is more expensiv. So we were trying to work at how can we do all this. Actually pulled our kids out of school. And there was so much to this. And so we sat down and we just pen to paper, and we just planned that we had brought up, what have we got right now? And when I say, what have we got? I meant not just in the physical terms, but what have we got socially we had a good neighborhood. Then what do we want. What do we need? And then what's our wishes? So what do we need? Well, we'd like a bit more space. We'd love to take our neighbors with us, but that couldn't happen, but we want to have space and be able to do more and we wanted to be able to give more. And then the wishlist was, can we afford it? Could we somehow get a loan and get that. So the transition for us was taking those steps early and just simply put in pen to paper. And one of the things people can do right now, and this is what we talk about all the time is you're not going to achieve anything in the future like five years down the track, if you don't stop thinking about it and planning for it now. You've got to do it. And that should be exciting to them. It shouldn't be overwhelming. It shouldn't be scary. It should be absolutely exciting. It's like thinking about going on a holiday, but this is a lifelong holiday.. So ideally for us, that thought, well, I need to change my job. My wife needed to change her job. Now sometimes you can get lucky. Sometimes you have the privilege of being able to change jobs quite easily. You may have certain academics or there may be some scenario. And then other times y ou really g ot t o give it a big go. You g ot t o take a risk. Well, we took some risks. We took some pretty serious risks. I wouldn't say that we w ere lucky. W e've forced them. We made them happen. So even when I m oved to my next job i t was a job that I'd never done before. I'd never worked in any form of coordinating or mentor, a nd, and basically what would you say? But I grew into the job and I used the job as a stepping stone. So again, when you're thinking a bout y our planning, everything is a stepping stone to where you want to be. So I u sed the job as stepping stone, and then the more I read, the more I started to understand the principles and I utilized them into everything th at I was doing. So I g ot the stage where I was getting more confident and whilst I still didn't know all the things I ne ed t o know, maybe to be on the land and all this kind of thing, it was all in sequence. And it was all transitionary to get to that point. So then 2007, we've got up to 2010 and all of a sudden we' ve go t our house on the market. We still don't own it it's a mortgaged house. But we've managed to get enough from the house to pay that back, but, and li ft this with just enough to get the deposit, to get the next place and have a mortgage for that. But the good news was tha t mo ving it mo ving a little bit further out of the city just gave us that chance. It was a little bit cheaper. So it, actually, one of the thoughts patterns for us was how can we get out of debt? How do you reduce your debt? And we made some stupid mistakes when we were younger. We paid for them but we w or king our way back out of that now. So everything was about all these little steps and all these things that can onl y be ack n owledged if you actually put them out in front of yourself, in front of your partner, in front of you family, friends, whoever you'r e tryi n g to w o rk in w i th. And that transitioning thing worked its way all the way up to the end of 2017. So 2010 to 2017, and that job did its job. I stayed with that job right through to that 2017. So it wa s nearly 10 years at that job. And it did exactly what I planned and hoped it did. I mean, we can talk about with all honesty. The reality was that at the end of 2017 I w a l ked up to my boss and I shook his hand. And I said, thank you very much. This has been an absolute pleasure. Bye bye. And we made the transition over into our far m. B ut during that time, from the moment we moved ont o th e farm to that point of 2017, we actually had bu i lt the pla nning an d de s ign of th e property. And whilst that was happening. So we were only getting afternoons and weekends to make this happen. Cau se we we r e do i ng 50 hou r we e ks, b oth of us wi t h young kids. So we' re doing 50 hour a week. And es s entially what we did was at the same time, by about 2012, we started bringing in the business model and again, we self taught us. We didn't know how to run a website. We had no idea what Facebook was. All these things are self-taught. We built our ow n we bsite, we worked everything out. So we researched, we studied. And wh en people ask, what does this all mean to get to that tra nsition? O r wh at does it all mean to transition? It means research, assessing, analyzing, observation. You need to, you need to put your effort into this to get a good outcome. You got to put time. These things aren't goi ng to co me to you on a spoon yeah. The things that we had to go through. Yeah,

Morag Gamble: 21:03

I think you've explained that well, a permaculture life. The kind of life that you've created comes from that really clear intent and a lot of hard work. And that idea that there needs to be steps along the way. It's not like just jumping in right now. And this is exactly how it is. You have to see that bigger picture and you map it out together and you do the groundwork, you do a design on your life. And I was wondering about how in all of that, too. O h, just before that, I was just thinking it's almost like you've c hanged your brain into a certain pattern. To be receptive to learning different things, seeing certain opportunities and t hat everything is kind of tuned in perception of the world shifts from having these particular goals to having these. And so everything that you're doing in your life is then sort of a imed towards that direction. What I was going to ask you though, was about your kids. So you say y ou got two kids.

Brett Cooper: 22:14

Yeah. Well, one's not a kid anymore I should say. He's 25 and six foot high.

Morag Gamble: 22:18

Oh but they must've started in this process young. So how did they feel about this process of moving out of the city to the country and all of that? What were their needs that they asked for in the process of all of that?

Brett Cooper: 22:32

Honestly Morag we could definitely do this for about three days. Look, the impacts are profound. So if you can imagine my kids are 10 years apart. So my boy was 14 years old and my daughter was three and a half when we moved. So more son was in a school in Newcastle that had 1500 kids and sometimes kids can get a little bit lost in that. When he moved up here, he moved up to Gloucester high. And then there was 200 kids. And when he walked into his first day in his classroom, t hey all stood up and went and shook his hand. I mean, it still brings a tear to me, it was amazing. Absolutely amazing. So my daughter didn't know the difference too much. We had a beautiful little courtyard that had pumpkins growing over and waves of all kinds of stuff and everything. So she knew no different. She just went from green to green. But my boy definitely took hit. So it was interesting. Cause we got to see a four year old to a 14 year old and a young person out of school it's a big impact he had friends. And there's some big talks and decisions there to make, but we brought him up just when we were getting close to wanting to purchase the little one acre. And we walked down onto the grass and I said, can you imagine riding your bike around here? We got him trying to envision himself playing there. And he turned around to me after being there for about half an hour, he goes, and he's 14. He said, I can do this, Dad. Awesome. So it might much easier. I mentioned that you could be more locked in the cities, but, he left a year. He was in a soccer team and those things he left. He moved on and he's moved on in a big way. He end up going to year 12 i n Gloucester and showing cattle and winning awards. And now he's a n apprentice landscaper and and all that kind of stuff. Things move and c hange i n funny directions. And we're also big believers in the universe, t oo. So it's amazing if you can keep moving forward, if you can keep f eeling positive and just keep doing the little things, it's amazing how sometimes the big things can f ollow.

Morag Gamble: 25:15

Absolutely. Totally. I totally agree. Now, I wonder if you could kind of, it's so much easy to show, but I wonder whether you could describe what it is that happens on your farm. I mean, t here's something I heard on your film and you can correct me if I misheard this, but so it's one acre and you can feed up to like a hundred people off this piece of land.

Brett Cooper: 25:46

Yeah. Look, I got a little bit carried away back in the day. In 2015, when we had Happen films come in for the first one, the farm wasn't even like halfway there. And I got a little bit excited and during my excitement while being filmed, I said that we've fed 50 families. What was meant to be said at the time and Happen films rectified, but it was too late. So it was my fault. I said, we feed up 50 families. What I was meant to say is what we assisted in feeding people. So we were getting 50 families worth of people buying from our farm gate and bartering and all this kind of thing. But yeah, we weren't feeding 50 people each.

Morag Gamble: 26:33

Well regardless, that's an impressive thing. Like you're talking, you've got one acre. The whole one acre is fully productive. And you animal systems. You have, food forest systems. You've got zone one systems, maybe just l ike, walk us through some of the things that you've got there. A nd some of the really particularly I'm really interested to hear. You described your farm. It's like an ecosystem. It's like nature's come alive in your farm, g oing from a paddock to what you've got. Maybe just, y eah. Tell me what a re some of your favorite parts of t he farm of yours?

Brett Cooper: 27:13

So I'll try and keep this short.

Morag Gamble: 27:19

Oh you can talk about this for days too I'm s ure

Brett Cooper: 27:20

Anybody in the business knows that I can talk. So on average, we've got 130 animals and 500 fruit trees. That sounds a little bit overwhelming to people. That's just the way it's evolved. Its got to that stage. We never said hey we want 400 fruit nut trees. That's just where it's evolved to. So we would have been happy with a hundred. So what we found out was the more we delved into, the stack functions and the, and, and really get nitty gritty with intensive systems that were regenerative and beneficial to each other, the more we found that we could just keep putting more in there and then they were just working towards each other. So it's been mind-bending for us. I mean, we still wake up in the morning and grab a cuppa and sit down on the bed and just look at that and just go, wow. And we get excited when the first type of fruit of a particular tree comes on. My wife is flat out always fermenting and preserving and all this kind of thing, but the reality is the farm itself has become so complex. It is so full of complexity. So I suppose for those listening when you think about us humans, and you'll hear this in holistic management that as humans we're really good with complicated stuff. Working with linear and mechanical and we're fabulous. Complexity in the bio ecological side of things is where we sort of come a little bit undone. If you can combine both, if you can bring some of that complicated thinking into that complexity, you can start to interweave some of these systems that are just familiar. That's the way I like to think. So I'm a carpenter. I'm a tradesman. I'm not a horticulturalist or a botanist or anything like that but I've just brought what I've wanted in the past into support what I'm learning now to help me get to the stage where the farm has got systems in place now that are doing so many functions. Examples, we've got systems in place in the front. When we first got to the farm, we had one of the worst winds within the first four months. It was nearly 110km gusts. And on average, 90k winds. Now it picked up our house and threw it down the valley.

Morag Gamble: 29:58

Oh no.

Brett Cooper: 29:58

Yeah. So we placed it in the right position. It was on the downhill side of the West. And we looked at all that we both based on site sector analysis and the rest, but the planning, I had only done part of the planning. So the reality is that the system now is set up that we've now managed to get the wind going over the top of our property. The whole property now has got a filtering effect down low and a buffering effect up high, everything is multifunctional as you would expect in permaculture. So we've got our vertical props. We have our chop and drop. We have our fodder. We have our actual edibility for us. So there's stuff that we can pick from it. And we've been really precise and really different in the way we think about what's going into the place. We're also part of the cruel land care. So we're always thinking about weed species. So essentially a lot of thinking into play. And it's evolved as it's gone. So we had a design that got us to the stage where we could provide protection and stability. And if anybody was to ask me, what was one of the key things you want on your property? And the first thing that comes to people's minds is I need a kitchen garden, I need to eat. Yeah. That's great, but what are you going to do to protect it? So now when I talk to people, I say, you need to bring stability into an environment, whatever environment that is, even if it's a grass paddock, you need to bring stability into that environment to then be able to evolve from that. Use that edge effect. Build from that. And once you've got stability, there's not much you can't do you. You can grow whatever you want to do but the reality is that the systems we now got has got in place that it's so what's the word I'm looking for? It's, it's greyed over, in such a way that there's no defining line between going from the animal managed systems into the food forest, into the orchard systems, back up into the market garden Northern area market garden Southern area. Even into our social areas and water towers where we can now test, they are our means and our bees. Everything flows through. And I think that's where you start to get to a stage where you sit back and you see the resilience of your property and it all stems back from building protective systems in place, bringing stability in, and then proliferate, just coming back out of that.

Morag Gamble: 32:55

Absolutely. It's making complete sense. I had the same experience on my place. I was this frost pocket in a wind tunnel and all these things, but I could do nothing. Kangaroos would come in and like beat up all the plants. Until I got the protective systems in place, anything that I did would just fall over. I would give myself the same advice if I were starting from scratch. So I think it's such an important part. It's like you say that often the first thing people want to do is go out and buy the seedlings and ready to get a garden going. We've gotto start way back, way back before then. And I think that's one of the brilliant things about permaculture is it does help us to stop and to think, and to plan. And even when we do plan, we know that there's always something else we learn. And that was something else. I think that you said in the film too, which I picked up and I thought, yes, absolutely. That there is no final design. And so do you want to just talk us about that? Because I think that was a really key point that you mentioned, and I really loved that.

Brett Cooper: 34:03

Well, that was an evolution as well. So when I did my training years back through the PRI there was a mention of some teachers were mentioning final design and that's fine but what we realized was there couldn't be. The more we n etwork, the more that we got to meet more people in permaculture, everybody's saying the same thing, how could you even let anybody know that there is such a thing? You're working with nature. It's ever changing, ever evolving? How can you have a final design, it's not like a h ouse p lan. So f or us, that was t he light bulb moment for us. I started doing designs back in 2 015 for some people where I was initially doing consulting. And I started doing a couple of designs for people. A nd now I still think d esign work is important. And I still think some people do require that assistance and absolutely no dramas for all those permaculture people out there doing that. But what we found personally was that there was a couple of things. First of all, I felt like I was giving them a fish rather than teaching them how to fish. And secondly, I felt like I was giving them something that would change the minute they did one of the projects on it. And then how would they adjust to that? So I p ulled back. The light bulb moment was when I actually had some elderly people come back to me and go, Oi, Brett, we've done these things you said, it's all worked out, but now this is all different and we can't use it and I've gone, Oh my God, this is not right. So we took a step back and we said, right, i t can only ever be a concept. And it can only e ver be a concept design that has the ability to move in so many different directions. And then you, as either the designer or the consultant or the client or student or whatever, have the ability to move with that. So at the moment, when as an example, if you plant a tree, if you do a design and you say writer, I'm going to put in some kind of c limax o r canopy tree in a certain spot, and then you come back a year later and t hat's three meteres high, t wo y ears later, i t's six meters high. What was there initially has changed profoundly to the extent that i t was relying on everything else ar ound i t. N ow it is the environmental changer. Now everything's relying on it. if it's making too much shade it might kill something. The situation with that was we then realized that, okay, when we start doing t he PDCs that's[inaudible] we evolve was that we started to bring that thinking in, right through the whole part of the course. Never mind you are not building a house. You're not doing a structural drawing. But it has to be fluid. It has to be organic. Just roll with it. When people come up and tell you, I'm not sure about this, we'll go do the best bit of research and give it the best possible understand you can. And then trial it and then watch it. And if it needs modification, modify it. But don't let it overwhelm you. Don't let it scare you. Don't let it hold you back.

Morag Gamble: 37:39

Mm. I think you're right. It's not a building. Building is using materials that are dead and fixed. And when you put them up and you hammer them in, they're going to stay there. Whereas when you plant a tree, the tree grows and things change. It's a living system, and it's not just a living thing. It's a living system. And the system constantly is dynamic and it's constantly in flow and flux and change. And you are part of that system, or you are like, you're embedded in that. And the more you're out there and noticing it, the more you can just kind of notice where you need to tweak things. I actually went through landscape architecture school back in my uni days, way back. I got to the end of that, and I sort of scratching my head thinking too, like this doesn't really make any sense that you're designing these things for people and handing it over to maybe like someone who's going to put it in. And then they just become the consumer of this constructed space. Didn't make any sense to me whatsoever. And I was more interested too, in designing edible landscapes and,natural landscapes. And I realized too that in order for this to work, people needed to know how to interact with it, how to do it themselves. And so I think this idea of being a design consultant as an educator. So you're helping people to design, you're doing design and educating simultaneously. And even if you are a consultant, that it is kind of almost like a coaching process of how you see. It's not just designing, constructing, okay, here's your permaculture design. It's actually working with people to help them to also see it, and then be able to interact over time and become part of a learning community where you've got people you can be learning with and trading with and coming over and going, Oh try this over here. I'll try this over here. You bring people to your place and they see something and then they go back, Oh, I know what I can do at my place. And it's learning, it's this lifelong learning. And I think that's what you said early on. It's what makes it so exciting that there's always something new to learn and everything's always changing. And it's never the same every day. And there's always something new, like a new bird might land in your garden. I was just been listening the last couple of nights to the barking owls and out there watching which trees are they landing and going out with my head to watch them. And it's just like, wow, did you hear that Monty- to my eight year old- where's the barking owl? Sounds like a dog.

Brett Cooper: 40:17

Well, look, honestly what you said about the coaching side of things. It's the only way it can work. Truly. It has to be a consultancy. It has to be part of a consultancy. So for me, and I'm seeing it everywhere, like it's so good all the educators are taking hold of this that you're not going there and not telling somebody how to do it. You're actually educating them and showing them the benefits of doing it. S o, for me, it is coaching. It is education all the time and we let them know. So when we offer somebody our services, we tell them we're coming here to really do on si te education. And out of that, depending on the circumstance, you may get a bu bble c oncept style situation, or an overlay concept situation that more talks about the connections, the integrations, the mutual benefits, the synergies. Rather than saying, that's going to go there and you need to plant those fo ur t rees with it. It's about the connection and and a mutual connection of t hat. But once they get that then they start to understand. So giving them a design that is more like a blueprint is helping no one.

Morag Gamble: 41:43

Well. It's just one point in time. Isn't it? Just an idea. I really liked that way too, that essentially permaculture is, I mean, there's different dimensions of it, but essentially like it is a system of education and changing perceptions on how we think so that then we can, how we can design how we can share that with other people that everything we do is a form of education. Whether it's like you've got your demonstration farm, or whether you're it's the way that you raise your family within it, that it's t his immersive learning. I've just been doing some studies with Fritjof C apra, the systems scientist, and basically right at the very coreof life at a cellular level is saying that what describes life is that it's a learning system. From a cellular level. Right from there. And so this whole idea that w e learn and we learn in communities, we learn in context with each other, we learn in context w ith place. It's not like this abstracted thing. I t's gotta be like this totally connected system.

Brett Cooper: 43:04

One of the great things about being human! Past beneficial knowledge.That's one of the things that does make us great. The problem is we we've lost some of that. Something learned because of either an error or good judgment passed down and then it's sort of slowed up in some ways, and that's what we need to regenerate that we need to reinvigorate that permaculture really highlights that. Absolutely.

Morag Gamble: 43:41

I'm just looking at the plan behind you. What you've done is really quite remarkable. And I think that there's something very important in what you're doing. You've created this, it's a learning center. It's your family's place where you live. It's where you get your food. It's a demonstration to people, and a demonstration about how you can live regeneratively. You can live a kind of a one planet life on one acre. You haven't got a 50 acre farm. You haven't got a hundred acre farm, you have one acre and how much productivity that you can get out of one acre. I mean fruit trees and animals and plants and food and how many people are coming and getting their local, fresh food from you at the farm gate. One acre. Now, I keep saying that because it's, it's remarkable. And if we all start to think about, well, how much could we all be doing on our one acre or quarter acre? If we're, in the suburbs, or less that if every single piece of land that we're stewarding, we think about how we can make it a place for people place for food, nature, a place for learning, a place for connecting with nature and just having really good sense of health and wellbeing. What an amazing world it would be? And we could actually compress so much of our footprint on the planet so that we could allow nature to regenerate. Like there's so much of our food, just, so much of our planet is taken up by creating food for animals or food for people or food for the industrial system in one way or another, we could bring back our footprint as much as we possibly could. I think this this is such a brilliant example.

Brett Cooper: 45:40

Well, we're really, we're really proud of it. I'm proud in the sense that we've been able to see some of our vision come to the forefront. This is something we've been working on for so long to think that we were sitting back all those years ago at a table and scribbling around and not even knowing what we're going to get but always thinking about we wanted to stay small. So just to give you a little bit of insight, when we were moving up, it was cheaper to buy five or 10 acres, than it was to buy one acre. back in 2010. When we came up here, one acre was hard to come by. For some reason, the little one acres were taken up. So we've got really lucky, lucky we did. We got lucky with that, but it wanted us, there's no doubt it wanted us cause it stayed on the market. When we got here, it was one of those things where we took in that again, that site sector analysis style of thinking? So the analysis thinking where we looked at this placement. Imagine a farm gate[inaudible] we're looking at all these things. We look at the potentials and that's what life should be about. What's the potentials. What's the potential in you? What's the potential of my family. Look what we can do. And it doesn't matter how big or how small. And we talk about all the time about things being scalable? The good thing where we come from was we come from 330 square meter property with a house on it, which means there was a little courtyard, a two meter strip out the front of the house and a little tiny strip down the side of the house so we know it's like to come from tight. Real time. The next stage after us is a unit on a veranda because there was no grass, there was no lawn or anything. It was just tiny. So we really gave that a good shot. We've got all our old photos a nd, at the time we had people coming through. So we know what that is. So w hen w e when we're talking to people and anybody listening to the podcast, the main thing t o remember is that t here is always potential. Always. T here i s always change that can be made. That's going to bring back something more in your life and i t doesn't have to be always food. It can be beauty. It could be fragrant smells, just b lowing through the glass. We've worked on off little a ssistance with concepts and stuff where we've set up l ike a perfumery stall sensory just on a veranda, just so th ey h ad nice smells coming through. So permaculture is so broad in its thinking, in its potential. That you can, apart from working at community levels, regional levels, country levels, and low levels, you can bring it all the way back down into a tiny little apartment veranda, and you can make that something so special that you want to sit d own there and have your coffee every morning and truly enjoy i t. And people need to know that that's t here. That's totally possible. You've just, you've just got to have a gap.

Morag Gamble: 49:06

There's a couple of questions that I really need to ask you because I know listeners will be wanting. Like, how do you make a living on one acre? Like, what are the multiple dimensions? I know that you it's not just one thing, obviously it's not one thing. And I know that myself, I'm here on one acre as well. And in the ecovillage.. There's many different things that make up a livelihood. What are the things that support you?

Brett Cooper: 49:32

So for us, again, you're talking about something, that's been a transition. So one of the great photos that we show in our PDC course when we first kicked it off was in 2011 when we would just basically be bare bones on the ground. We had a little a little fold down box at the front where the little tin sign, your honesty is appreciated. And we had veggies at the front. So it started off like the old wheelbarrow style idea of a little veggie thing and it brought a couple of dollars that healped us buy more seeds and the rest, but it was a transition. So it started there then from that point where we got to the stage where w e built this up, o r I would say first and foremost, it came from upskilling. It came from building your knowledge base. So when I was working these jobs that I was doing night school s o I did a diploma project management because I wanted to know that if I got to t he stage of doing permaculture p roject, how c ould I help manage that? So and then apart from PDCs and other things, and eventually do the cert four permaculture, and t hen eventually did the advanced design with David Holmgren and Dan Palmer. So it's always been learning, learning, learning, and number one rule is you never stop. I mean, something as simple as watching a video, listening to a podcast, reading a book. You can g o any level learning as long as you're taking something and knowing more than you did a minute ago, probably, o r the day before. So the idea of income for us is now we've got to a stage where we've got 1 1 income streams I was taught by a lovely old fellow years ago, a South African fellow. H e u sed t o s ay to me guys all the income streams he says, i t doesn't matter if that makes a dollar there. And t he dollar there, he says, as long as it's ethical, as long as that dollar still coming, he says, that's just as important as making a hundred or a thousand dollars. So we treat each of our income streams, no matter how tiny as important. So you give respect to your income streams and basically your income streams should always be permaculture based. They should always have the ethics and the principles. So the ethics p roviding the moral i n the principles providing a road map. So that's that. That's where that works into your business life. So y eah, we live in a world where we still have we still need to pay a mortgage. That's life. We do a hell of a lot of bartering. That's part of our income stream. So we do a stack of bartering. We have a huge network an d it's amazing. That is in fact I ca n't wa i t to get to the stage where I never have to even think about moving a dollar ever again.

Morag Gamble: 52:28

That's an amazing that you saying that, and you're counting that as I like that, you're counting that as an income stream, because we often dismiss that the whole, the gift economy and the sharing economy is like separate. It is actually a core part of actually having creating abundance and feeling like we have enough and making sure that everyone has enough, that is a key part, isn't it?

Brett Cooper: 52:52

I can't even put value to it, Morag. Honestly. It is so huge. I mean, we barter for aged venison. We barter for fish and prawns and oysters.

Morag Gamble: 53:04

So you get the quality that you couldn't have, wouldn't probably wouldn't be able to afford necessarily.

Brett Cooper: 53:10

No. And not just that, some of the things you can't even buy!

Morag Gamble: 53:13

I know that it's true!

Brett Cooper: 53:17

Right! Some things you can't even get in the shop! But remember, it's that old adage of one person's treasure and other person's, well, I won't say junk, but it's they've got a surplus, they've got an excess. And so what we're finding is, as network grows and we're very hands-on and face-to-face tight people. So as this grows, we're getting there in the interactions are just humbling. That's the best word I can say. It's absolutely humbling. And sometimes I'm going, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. And then they give me fish. I'm going I've only got this veg and honey, and whatever for you. And they go, no, that's enough. They argue with me and I'm like No! You need more.

Morag Gamble: 54:04

I also love that about bartering is that you're not actually trying to push the price down. You're always trying to give more.

Brett Cooper: 54:11

So you just shovel stuff off to them and you'll look at what you're about to get your going Oh no, this isn't enough.

Morag Gamble: 54:23

Isn't that interesting though, like when you create abundance within a system that you have this sense that it's not a lack. I have more than I can give, like I have more than enough food out in this garden. I can give more, without it even really making much of a difference to what's going on there.

Brett Cooper: 54:43

I mean, look, honestly and this without sound flipping or anything, we've got to a stage. We have got so much food on this property so much that we food over many times. We've taken bags of foods cafes or whatever, and even bought i t for dinner. We got a beautiful community. It's a dynamic that you haven't got total control o f. And that's what I love about it. I love the fact that you c ould be talking to somebody and they go, Oh, I've got something in the car a nd t hey'll go, all right, now y ou g o, Oh yeah, wow, I've got this. A nd so it can happen at the flash and it's so different to money. It's so different to that idea of paying for something. And there's a price. This is something that's f luid it's just I love it.

Morag Gamble: 55:43

Yeah. That's absolutely beautiful. That's amazing. and one of the other question I was going to ask, in a way that you've kind of, you've almost answered this because I was going to ask you how you went during COVID because you've got your food system, you've got your community network there was a sense in many urban areas that there was a fear of t he food system breaking and t here not being enough and panic buying. How did you feel in the midst of all of that time and what happened did more people start coming out to you saying help us to do this? Like what was it like for you?

Brett Cooper: 56:22

Well, as all know, COVID was a special period for good and bad reasons. I'd like to think that for every time we have something that is an event that puts pressure on the system or puts pressure on us as human beings also can have an uplifting to it. Can be something that brings change. So for us what we saw was a huge influx, massive. Basically people couldn't move. The zoom stuff that was going on, there was so much movement happening without actual bodies moving around on the ground. And that was fantastic. But the other part we got was people then emailing us and ringing us and text. At one stage we're doing 35 a night. It was nuts. I mean, this was crazy stuff. But it was uplifting. It was overwhelming, but uplifting. And it was people asking when we get back on deck, how can we do what you're doing? And so in the meantime, we set up these little packages where we would in j ust an email package, we'd g o here are s ome good books to read, watch these websites, check these podcasts. So we got th e s tage we were just pumping that out every night. So whilst we couldn't directly assist straight off the bat, we got the ball rolling and we always speak about locality. So then we had people, Oh God e m ails fro m Fr ance and Portugal. Oh, amazing. Well, India, everywhere. A nd we've even got to the stage where we've managed to find some of the texts for different books In their language. So o bviously we know some of them like that the de sign h as been, but I en ded u p pointing some ot her f o r i nformation. Plus we ended up finding some of the educators in their region. So we set up these little folders on our desktop. So somebody from Portugal come in and boom boom, and I'll get ri ght w h ere y ou at. And I'm looking on a m ap and I' ll d o it, use a t ranslator to translate back and push that in. And so w e will send them this stuff off flat out, so we're doing this and we weren't even letting people know that we're do ing i t, we're j ust doing it. And we did this all the way through last year. Now we did it with ou r l ocals too. So we did it with all throughout the region and the interstate. And we wr at the time we're goin g, ye s, thanks for coming to us. But you' re in Queensland, well, you need to check out Mich ael O'D ell, save us all. You're in Northern New Zealand, ni ce wash. Yo u need to check out Maureen and So we're pumping that out, flat out as well. So this was a big part of our emails. People reaching out and going, okay, this isn't acceptable. We're not happy with this sit uation. And we've just realized how vul n erable we are at the moment. So we're wanting to make change and you've already made the first step. Thanks for coming. And then we'v e sta rted pumping information. And then later on, as it started to s et t led in, an d people coming back into our far m courses. Some of these people will tur n up. So like we'd have somebody that will com e into her e and come to a place for say, whether it be private tours or pub l ic farm tours or small courses or w ha tever migh t be. So this has been an impactful event and it's one part over of a group of events for us. So[inaudible] we've had the worst fires, the worst flop, the worst drought and COVID just thrown in the mix? So it's enough to start givi ng us a little slap in the face and come on, I'm trying to tell you something here. This is natur e sayi ng, watch me, you guys need to start getting your act together. And people actually started to listen to that and wake up to that. So we've had a massive influx and it's been brilliant and everybody I've talk e d to. So I talke d to o ur peers in Qu ee nsland and Victoria and W est ern Australia. And everybody's saying the same thing. So yes, it was a tough event and a sad event for some people but there were these things to be taken out of it that I think you've got to empower people, move people forward. And it's going to be interesting to see where we go from here.

Morag Gamble: 1:00:55

It's just wonderful what you just described. What I find is interesting is that when you have that sense of resilience and security you're kind of settled in, you've got your place set up. You've intentionally done that. So when there's, when there's a crisis, like that, you are grounded enough to be able to then be the one that's in that position of doing the community service work and reaching out, and that people are seeing that's kind of like a beacon of safety or security, or what is the possible future, and trying to find out more and that's so great that you had the time, or you made the time into your evenings, just because not for any other reason, but just because it matters that people have access to this information.

Brett Cooper: 1:01:54

Absolutely. It does. We never knocked back an email. I mean, if it comes through, we're going to respond to it. Look, just touching on a point on the the importance of taking from our strengths. So using your strengths. So, okay. My strength these days is to be an educator in permaculture. And more importantly, the part that I focus on in permaculture, because obviously there's people that know a lot more about the socio sort of the things and the philosophical side of things. So I'm more into that demonstrative design style set up and building systems. I love it. I get super excited right Various living systems and making systems just functional work. We'll start them off. And then they work themselves out. But what I was actually getting back to was that that's my strength now, during the fires I had my local community, and then some of their strengths they were firefighters and they saved my plight. They saved our area and then during the floods we had people who, who had strengths in that. So everybody you come to the fore with the things that are within you, that you feel empowered and confident by and I've seeing that through all the events. So when it got to COVID, that was my time.

Morag Gamble: 1:03:28

I think you really hit the nail on the head with that. And then it's not about going and hiding away on your one acre. Is it like doing your own thing? You are very much this part of this web of strength that a community brings and that you are as strong in your place as your community is strong. And it's really about community resilience more than self-sufficiency. And I think what you've just said brings that so much to the fore.

Brett Cooper: 1:04:03

Yeah. Look for me you've just touched on a point for me too. So it's talked about much. On our own websites and stuff. We talk about self-sufficiency and I think it's important still to have that in the game, but being aware that it's only part of what this all big picture is about, because the reality is we as a species cannot live alone. We can't be disconnected. We can not be not integrated. So we actually have got absolutely no choice, but to work it out together. And that's, and I'm not being fluffy about, this is the absolute truth, because I've seen what happens firsthand. I have seen a farmer who was, who went off grid and was trying to do the thing, had a beautiful young family. Was into the game for a few months living in a remote area, tough to start with. We've been trying to be trying to be that real, that real off-grid thing. And he broke both his legs on the tractor rolled over, and that was game over for a long period of time. But guess what happened? He was disconnected. He's fantastic guy, but he was disconnected at the time wouldn't have done it, but disconnected a little bit from his community. But then when this happened, it was the community that came together to help him sort everything out. And so we were involved too. So seed packages, plant packages assistance coming in, helping the wife, boom, boom, boom. Now he could not have done that without that help. So how could you ever be sustainable on your own. How could ever be truly self-sufficient without having that community connection?

Morag Gamble: 1:05:49

You can't. you can't. Oh gosh. Thank you so much. It's been such a delight talking with you today. Before we end up, like where can people find out more information about all the stuff that you do tell us what your, all your links are. And I'll also put them down below in the link, but maybe just tell us now as well.

Brett Cooper: 1:06:08

On our website www.limestonepermaculture.com. you can find our upcoming events. You can find out more information about us. There's local accommodation around the area and what we do within the community. You can also find on our other Facebook page, which is simply homesteading. I think it's just simply homesteading I should know that better, shouldn't I. It's my wife's Facebook page, but more importantly, it's a page that comes in on the limestone permaculture, where everything is just even back to our community, giving back to Facebook community. And it's just stacks of recipes, highlighting what you can do with the produce off your farm, off your garden, even adding a bathtub, a garden bathtub. There's a stack of information there. On our website too. We have a resources section and we put together a manual on how we do wicking beds. We've had a a collaboration with a lovely elderly couple that have been in permaculture f or 28 years. And w e've designed our own style of wicking beds, which are very interesting. Also you'll find p l ans and how to do things in the wa y o f e xclusion tunnels. Everything's in there that we believe is important to us on our farm. And it may assist you a little bit with what you want to do.

Morag Gamble: 1:07:36

Brilliant. Absolutely fantastic. Well, like I said before, I'm going to put all these links down below. So if you want to follow up anything that Brett's talked about, and then of course if you live somewhere nearby, maybe you want to join up on one of the tours or courses, because it's seeing what you've done there. Actually like hearing it or watching it on Happen films, I'll put the link to the Happen films as well. Cause you've got two of those haven't you and that seeing it or hearing it is one thing, but actually being in it and walking it, smelling and tasting and the immersion of that is yeah, that's amazing. Gosh, thank you so much again, Brett, for taking the time today to talk to me and hopefully one day I'll be able to come down and walk your garden with you as well. That would be wonderful.

Brett Cooper: 1:08:28

My pleasure Morag. And you're always welcome and I hope you can make it sooner rather than later.

Morag Gamble: 1:08:31

Yeah. Yeah, me too. All right. Well take care. Thanks so much, Brett.

Brett Cooper: 1:08:36

Thanks Morag. Bye.

Morag Gamble: 1:08:39

So that's all for today. Thanks so much for joining us. Head on over to my YouTube channel, the link's below, and then you'll be able to watch this conversation, but also make sure that you subscribe because that way we notified of all new films that come out and also you'll get notified of all the new, all the new interviews and conversations that come out. So thanks again for joining us, have a great week and I'll see you next time.