Andy’s 10 Tips For Urban Regenerative Farming

What if your “lawn” could behave like a productive paddock – storing rain, growing feed, and bringing wildlife back?
In the Perth Hills, former farmer Andy Farret is turning 3½ acres on the edge of suburbia into a regenerative water-harvesting paradise.

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In this episode, Andy tells how reading one book flipped his thinking from traditional farming to regenerative management and how he’s now applying those ideas on a small “special rural” block above Perth.

We walk his contours, hand-dug trenches, mulch beds and “water tank” gardens, then follow the flow downhill into a multi-species paddock, chicken tractor system and leaky weirs built with neighbours on Kadina Brook.

If you’ve got a small block, steep country, or an urban fringe property and you’re sick of erosion, dead lawns and rising water bills, this video is packed with simple, practical ideas you can copy:

How to slow, spread and sink fast rain events

Using mulch, fungi and cover crops to hold water in the soil

Turning roadkill and manure into fertiliser (safely!)

Building leaky weirs and riffles to restore creeks and frog habitat

Using a simple chicken tractor to “graze” a suburban paddock

In this video we talk about regenerative agriculture on a small block, contour trenches and swales, mulch and fungi in the soil, cover crops and tillage radish, catchment management in the Perth Hills, urban water harvesting, erosion control on sloping blocks, leaky weirs / riffles in creeks, bandicoot and wildlife habitat, chicken tractors for suburban backyards, and how small landholders can manage water, fertility and biodiversity in an urban catchment.

This video was made possible by RegenWA through the West Australian state government’s NRM program https://regenwa.com/

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Location / guests / mentions
Location: Perth Hills, Western Australia – Gooseberry Hill / Darling Range catchment
Guest: Andy Farret – fourth-generation WA farmer & small-block landholder
Featured topics: contour trenches, mulch beds, cover crops, roadkill compost, chicken tractor, leaky weirs / riffles, Kadina Brook, RegenWA, WA State NRM Program

#RegenerativeAgriculture #SmallBlockFarming #PerthHills #WaterHarvesting #farmlearning

00:00 Andy’s story – from broadacre farmer to urban regen
01:10 The book that changed everything (“My Father and Other Animals”)
02:00 Hand-dug contour trenches and mulch for water infiltration
03:30 Fungi, toadstools and building a living soil biome
04:30 Turning the driveway into a “water tank” garden bed
06:30 Habitat garden: bandicoots, birds, reptiles and ground cover
08:10 “This isn’t lawn, it’s paddock” – 25-species cover crop mix
10:30 Roadkill Hill: collecting bones and composting fertility
12:10 Tillage radish and opening soil to store more rainfall
14:10 Redefining weeds and transitioning away from capeweed
16:00 Ducks, manure and multi-species biology in the paddock
17:30 Chickens, mulch and cycling nutrients into citrus and veggies
19:10 From one block to a whole catchment – rethinking Kadina Brook
20:40 Leaky weirs / riffles: slowing water and bringing back frogs
22:30 Community rock-moving day and kids restoring the creek
24:00 Simple chicken tractor design for small blocks and backyards
26:00 How to rotationally graze chickens in a suburban veggie patch
27:30 Final thoughts: storing water, cutting erosion, healing catchments