In episode five of Farm Boys, Heath and Addy head north, out of the dry and dusty south and into the green belt of NSW’s North Coast, spending the day in the garden at Dave and Lauren’s.
The episode is a stark contrast to farm life down in the Bight. “We get a lot of rain, we get a lot of hot humid weather, we get a lot of surf, we get a lot of humans,” offers Dave Rastovich. “A lot of everything. It’s just an abundance of life in the sub tropics.”
Dave and Lauren’s garden is a shared space with neighbours and friends and provides a nice balance with life on the beach. “I think my program these days with surfing and growing is really complimentary actually,” says Dave. “When I’m torched from being in the ocean a lot for my own reasons, or because I’m taking my grommet and my partner to the beach and we’re spending a lot of time at the beach, the next thing to do that feels so right is to just be in the garden.”
Dave has adopted permaculture guru Geoff Lawton’s gardening strategy of Strategic Total Utter Neglect. Dave clarifies, “It’s strategic though… not just total utter neglect.”
“The garden – and we’ve been calling it this from the start – is the ‘surfers’ garden because it looks a little rogue. We don’t want it to be this monoculture. We don’t want it to be this English garden, this European idea of dominance over this space. It’s awesome to be wild and schizy, and that frees up heaps of time too. It’s like I don’t have to go to the garden and slave away every day to control the space.”
No, instead he goes surfing… and after a day in the garden that’s what Dave, Heath and Addy do.
Watch episode 5 of Farm Boys here.
