Vince and Ange
Four years ago, Vince Hunt and Angela Brickwell arrived on a piece of land on Bundjalung country in Billinudgel with big and humble dreams- driven by a desire to cultivate a life closer to nature, community and themselves. First, they started the lifelong journey of regenerating the soil. Simultaneously, they explore what it means to regenerate the spirit. After building two cabins on what is now a 120-acre regenerative farm, they have created a place where you can stay, rest, learn about and absorb a life in communion with the land. Ange runs her kinesiology clinic from the property and Vince paints in his studio. Both help run WaterUps, a wicking bed that Vince invented, reducing water usage, diverting plastic from landfill and making gardening more accessible to those living in urban environments. They’re constantly innovating on the possibilities of the human-land relationship in all its challenge and beauty – we sat down one sunny afternoon to talk to them about it.
Words by:
Oni Blecher
Anna Hutchcroft
Photography by:
Anna Hutchcroft
Oni: Has regenerative farming been something that you have always been interested in?
Vince: I come from a county background. I was a valuer and I used to go to farms. I could feel which places were really well run and in alignment with nature. They always appeared tidy and lush. The biggest turning point was eight years ago when I did my permaculture design certificate.
During our first week here we planted a koala corridor of trees along our front boundary and within a short period of time, we had our first lot of cattle. I watched Ange go from being a city girl to running all the things to do with the cattle. She looks after them, sings to them and they come to her. We saw that the soil was really depleted and had no life in it so we sprayed compost and did biodynamic preparations. We got some life into the soil, such that now wherever I dig a hole now to plant a tree, there’s always worms.
Oni: As you’ve slowly evolved the soil health and learned about the cattle, have you felt differently in your body?
Ange: When we first came up here, I wanted to deepen my connection to nature. I didn’t know what that looked like because until you do something, you don’t know. Now I feel part of this land. Not just nature in general but part of this piece of land; these trees, this forest, these cattle, all of it.
Oni: We noticed that little guest book that says ‘Tell Us How You Feel’. Are you offering people a window to a possible relationship they can have with land?
Vince: What we’re trying to do is to have people come, feel it, rethink, be creative, look at community, work out their path and maybe find a version of that.
Ange: We offer visitors the opportunity to plant a tree. We even have a little ceremony process. There’s also an opportunity to plant some seedlings so they’re leaving something for someone else.
Vince often says, “You have all your experiences in life and eventually they all come around and join the dots.” I was a medical scientist in a laboratory, working in microbiology. Then I ended up working with kinesiology. When I saw this advert for a course on nutritional farming, I was like, “Oh, soil, microbes, human health, food you produce, what it does in your body ... I’ve got to go on this course!” Here’s something that joins all of these things together.
Anna: Is your life different now from what you thought it would be 20 years ago?
Vince: I’ve always been involved in growing things. My daughter came home one day and told me about this guy in England. He had this manicured garden and he said, “It’s beautiful, but I can’t eat one thing out of it.” That really hit me. Then, when I was gardening for people and they wanted a hedge I’d say, “Do you want fredge?”, “What’s a fredge?”, “It’s a fruiting hedge!” There’s nothing prettier than a garden full of food.
Oni: How do you see the value of working with animals to help create healthy land?
Vince: You can’t do it without having animals on your property. While the cows are eating grass they’re going through the motions of peeing and pooing everywhere, helping to feed the worms and the soil biology. Regenerative farming is probably one of the greatest things that we can do to help to combat all the bad things that are happening as far as climate change.
Ange: And the cows draw down the carbon. It’s really important to draw down the carbon and that’s what they do.
Anna: How do they do that? From what I understand, one of the biggest criticisms about cows is their methane and compacting the soil ...
Ange: Imagine a plant and all their green leaves, photosynthesizing. While they’re growing, the roots are feeding all the microbes in the soil and building top soil. When the cows eat the grass, the roots get pulled up. What was in the roots then has come down through the plant and it’s now in the soil, it’s stuck there. It’s been drawn down through the plant into the soil. And it doesn’t leave the soil, because what once were the roots have now become carbon. The cows use the food for their systems and that is also what they drop. Dung beetles take the cow manure and they eat it – they dig deep holes and take the feces and carbon down into the ground and it stays there.
Vince: The dung beetles and worms go down and aerate the soil – the opposite of compacture.
Oni: Tell us a bit about the alternative watering system you came up with.
Vince: The wicking thing was something I invented some years ago. In urban landscaping, I noticed that every time I put water in a pot, it flowed out the bottom. So I had this idea that if you could keep it in the pot and directly water down past the soil, it’s not just hosing the plant, but letting the water down, catching at the bottom, and soaking back up into the soil while overflowing whatever is not needed. On our website for the Water Ups you can see how much water has been saved by using these systems. You can water your garden once and then pretty much for a month all that water is just being wicked up from the reservoir. Another part is how much plastic is being diverted from landfill by being reformed into these recycled plastic planters. It’s just such a sustainable thing.
Anna: How do you see the legacy you’re creating and how do you hope to see it outlive you?
Ange: One of the things we understood when we came here is that we are custodians. And we really need to look after the land for whoever comes after us. And it’s not necessarily our children or our immediate family. It’s about the past, present, and future all at the same time, as Aboriginal people know; about who’s coming, who’s been here, who’s here now. I guess we feel that we don’t just want to regenerate, we want to plant things so that it is nicer for people who are going to be here, whoever they be. We planted a large number of trees so just the creek can repair and the wildlife can come back. It’s a legacy for the wildlife, not just people. We’re part of nature.
Wandering slowly and examining the flora and fauna, we marveled at what four years filled with intention could do. We learnt about regenerating land while also succumbing to the inevitable rest that came from inhabiting this particular environment. We woke refreshed, fed the cows, planted some trees, and witnessed innovation in motion. None of this was without the infectious enthusiasm and creativity beaming from our local elders and new friends Vince and Ange.
