Strategic Intention

At the heart of Mistwood is a commitment to the relationship between humans and land. Everything we do spans three interconnected pillars: Regenerative Foundation, Permaculture Operations, and Capability Building. Together they form a single system — the health of the land feeds the quality of what we produce, and the knowledge we build makes the whole thing sustainable.

We're not waiting until the farm is finished. We're sharing what we learn as we go — the real decisions, the real costs, and the real trade-offs of building a regenerative farm from scratch on challenging country.

Regenerative Foundation

We align with nature's patterns.

This is the ongoing work of healing the land. Before we could grow anything, we had to understand what we were working with — a neglected property at the end of a ridge in Neerim Junction near Noojee, Gippsland, with steep slopes, dense weed infestation, and a water system that had been abandoned for years. Eighteen months in, we've cleared 80% of the blackberry and ragwort from the main paddocks, restored the homestead water supply, and begun designing the systems that will sustain everything else.

Regenerative Foundation is not a phase we complete and move on from. It's the permanent underpinning of everything at Mistwood.

Permaculture Principles and Ethics

We use the three core permaculture ethics — care for the earth, care for people, and fair share — as the decision-making framework for everything on the property. If an action doesn't serve at least two of those ethics, we question whether it belongs here.

Regeneration Principles and Practices

Holistic approaches to restoring the ecosystem across the property. Biodiversity, soil health, water management, and carbon sequestration aren't separate projects — they're interdependent. Every intervention we make is assessed for its effect on the whole system.

Farm Regeneration

Revitalising soil health, increasing biodiversity, and rebuilding ecosystem services on the cleared paddock areas. We use organic methods (pine oil-based herbicide for initial clearing, mechanical removal, and managed regrowth) and are designing for long-term soil biology recovery rather than quick fixes.

Forest Regeneration

The eastern and northern forests are established native bush. The western forests self-seeded with Acacia and native cherry after the railway line was decommissioned in the 1950s — these are now ageing and dying off naturally. Our role is to support succession and transition, not impose a design. The steep slopes (25–35°) are for conservation, not production.

Water Systems and Catchment

Water is the most critical infrastructure on a hilly property. We've restored the homestead supply and irrigation, designed a gravity-fed system using the 20-metre vertical drop across the property, and committed to capturing rainwater from every new structure we build. Dam rehabilitation and riparian zone management are active priorities.

Land Heritage and Cultural Responsibility

Mistwood sits on the traditional lands of the Gunai (Kurnai) people. The property falls in a gap in the current Registered Aboriginal Party map, which makes it even more important that we engage proactively with local Indigenous communities rather than assuming silence means absence. Hemp Hills Creek, which has its headwaters on the property, is identified as a culturally significant waterway. We're committed to learning from and respecting this heritage as a foundational part of how we work the land — not as a box to tick.

The property also carries European heritage: it's aligned with the decommissioned Drouin–Noojee railway line, and the western side was completely cleared last century for rail and farming. Understanding these layers of history helps us make better decisions about what to restore, what to protect, and what to reimagine.

Permaculture Operations

The tangible work of growing, producing, and welcoming.

This pillar is about the practical application of permaculture on the ground — what we actually grow, make, sell, and share. It's where intention becomes produce, and where the farm earns its keep.

We're building operations in a deliberate sequence: food forest and kitchen garden first (they take the longest to establish), then propagation infrastructure to support both our own planting and plant sales, then produce and value-add as the systems mature, and farm experiences throughout — because people don't need to wait for a finished farm to learn from a real one.

Food Forest and Kitchen Garden

The core production system at Mistwood. We're establishing a 3.5-acre food forest in the north-west "long paddock" — an area with good aspect, some wind shelter from adjacent native forest, and a well-established 40-year-old chestnut tree as proof of what thrives here. Species selection includes hazelnuts, chestnuts, heartnuts, apples, plums, cherries, mulberries, figs, and a full companion planting understory of nitrogen fixers, dynamic accumulators, and pollinator species.

The homestead kitchen garden is our Zone 1 priority for 2026 — getting food on the table while the longer-term food forest establishes. Everything we learn here feeds directly into our consulting work and our journal.

Propagation and Plant Sales

We're building propagation infrastructure — starting with a tunnel house in early 2026 — to grow the plants we need for our own food forest and to supply curated plant kits to other cool temperate landowners. Our Food Forest Starter Kits package proven species combinations with planting guides, companion planting maps, and video tutorials, so people can skip the years of research and get straight to planting.

This is a revenue stream that directly funds the farm's own planting program. Every plant we propagate for sale is also a plant we're trialling and proving on our own property first.

Farm Produce and Value-Add

As the food forest and kitchen garden mature, Mistwood will produce chestnuts, hazelnuts, walnuts, seasonal fruit, herbs, and berries for sale — through local farmers markets, farm gate sales, and direct delivery. Value-add products (preserves, dried herbs, seasonal boxes) will follow as volumes grow. This is a Year 2–3 horizon for most tree crops, but we're planting now for that future, and the kitchen garden and existing chestnut tree will produce sooner.

We're honest about this timeline. Trees take years. We'd rather tell you the truth than pretend we're already harvesting.

Farm Experiences

You don't need a finished farm to offer a meaningful experience — you need an honest one. We run farm experience days, seasonal open days, and guided property walks where visitors get hands-on with the reality of building a regenerative farm: reading landscapes, understanding water flow, composting, planting, and the decision-making behind it all.

Noojee's tourism market is shifting toward nature and eco-experiences as part of the broader forestry transition. Mistwood is designed to contribute to that shift — connecting visitors with the land, the practice, and the local community. We also offer bush camping through Hipcamp for people who want to spend longer on a working regenerative property.

Longer term, we intend to develop sustainable on-farm accommodation — but that's a significant infrastructure investment and we'll only build it when the demand and the finances justify it.

Capability Building

Scaling our impact while remaining small.

This is about sharing what we know — through consulting, facilitation, writing, and technology — so that the knowledge doesn't stop at our fence line. Our backgrounds in strategic design and human-centred leadership give us tools that most farms don't have. Our farm gives us credibility that most consultants don't have. The combination is the point.

Regenerative Property Design — Consulting

We help landowners make confident decisions about their property using professional-grade spatial analysis — high-resolution elevation data, contour mapping, water flow modelling, slope analysis, and sun path mapping — combined with permaculture design principles and financial thinking.

Our services range from Desktop Property Assessments (remote, using government DEM data at 50cm–1m resolution) to full Property Master Plans (site visit, detailed zone mapping, enterprise recommendations, phased implementation) and Enterprise Feasibility Studies for specific ventures. We bring the same systems thinking we used with corporate leadership teams to land — because a property is a complex system, and it deserves rigorous design before you start spending money on the wrong things.

Regenerative Strategy — Facilitation

We facilitate strategy sessions for organisations using the Huddle Thinking Framework — a proven methodology for getting leadership teams aligned on purpose, priorities, and plan. For Melbourne corporate teams, we offer immersive one-day offsites at Mistwood that combine Deep Design connection work with rigorous strategic facilitation in a farm setting that strips away the noise. For regional and community organisations across Gippsland, we offer flexible formats adapted to local context and budget.

Cam brings 15 years of strategic design facilitation across corporate, government, and community sectors. Melis (Dr Melis Senova) brings deep expertise in human-centred leadership through Deep Design — the practice of connecting people with what genuinely drives them before asking them to align on strategy. Together, they've facilitated hundreds of sessions and the methodology has been tested and refined with leadership teams of every kind.

Farm Build Journal — Knowledge Sharing

We document everything openly — the design decisions, the financial reality, the mistakes, and the systems thinking behind every choice at Mistwood. Published weekly on Substack as the Mistwood Farm Journal, this isn't a lifestyle blog. It's a transparent, systems-thinking account of what it actually takes to build a productive regenerative farm on challenging land, aimed at tree-changers, permaculture practitioners, and anyone who wants the honest version rather than the curated one.

The journal also serves as the foundation for practical micro-courses, downloadable tools and calculators, and a growing library of GIS tutorials — so landowners can learn to read their own properties with the same rigour we apply to ours.

Fieldwalker — Technology

We're building Fieldwalker, a property design application that reduces permaculture site analysis from hours to minutes. Using satellite imagery, high-resolution elevation data, and machine learning for feature detection, Fieldwalker makes the kind of spatial analysis we do in consulting accessible to permaculture designers and landowners everywhere.

Fieldwalker is currently in development (Phase 2 of the V1 build). Mistwood is both the development testbed and the first case study. When it launches, it will be the "scaling impact while remaining small" promise made real — one tool that can help thousands of properties, built by people who design their own land with the same software.

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