New to this? Start here. This path walks you from before you own land through your first seasons — the decisions, in the order you'll actually face them.
- 1Reading the land before you buy it: a walk-the-plot checklist for first-time farm buyersThe Inner Farm
Slope, soil, water table, and neighbours decide your next decade more than the asking price does. Here's how to walk a plot and read what the seller won't tell you.
- 2The weekend-farmer reality check: can you do this without quitting your job?The Inner Farm
Absentee natural farming mostly fails — quietly and expensively. Here's the honest threshold for what a weekend farmer can and can't pull off, and how to tell which side of it you're on.
- 3Zoning Your Farm by How Often You Visit It: The Kitchen-Door-to-Far-Corner MethodDesigning the Whole Farm
Place things by how many times a year your feet will visit them — and you'll save more labour over a decade than any machine you could buy.
- 4Your Farm's Water Budget: Litres In vs. Litres Out, Before You PlantWater Is Everything Here
Most farm failures aren't bad luck or bad soil — they're an uncalculated water balance. Do the sum before you sow.
- 5Sizing a Farm Pond for 5 Acres (With the Actual Arithmetic)Water Is Everything Here
One structure, sized from your own catchment and rainfall — not a generic 'dig a pond' recommendation.
- 6The Transition-Year Trap: Budgeting the Seasons Before Natural Farming PaysThe Honest Ledger
You need a runway, not just conviction. Here is how to size it — in months of household costs — before you switch a single acre.
- 7A Worked 5-Acre Layout: Putting Water, Trees, Crops, Animals, and Home in One PlanDesigning the Whole Farm
One integrated design walked through end to end — not to copy, but to steal the logic and re-run it on your own land.
- 8The Year-Round Plate: Designing a Plot So Something Is Always HarvestableGrown, Not Bought
The beginner grows one big harvest and then buys vegetables for eight months. The skilled kitchen gardener grows a little, always — succession, not spectacle.
- 9What a failed first season teaches that a good one can'tThe Inner Farm
A first season that fails is the fastest teacher you'll ever hire. It shows you the land, the weather, and yourself in ways a lucky harvest never will.