Hi everyone, I've not used forums before, so please excuse my inexperience. I run a 40 acre farm/permaculture food forest with my husband Pete and friend Ray, just west of Armidale in northern NSW, Australia at 1040 m altitude. We have had the farm for 4.5 years, so early days yet. Also, we are experiencing the worst drought in living memory at the moment, so fingers crossed for all the young trees we have planted. The farm was mostly overgrazed paddocks when we bought it, with hawthorns dotted about and only 2 large eucalypts in the fields. We have one boundary that is a creek and relatively good alluvial soils but wind and frost are problems. We have planted over 1000 native trees and shrubs and have started a mixed orchard inspired by Mark Shepard's Restoration Agriculture and Stephan Sobkowiak's Permaculture Orchard. We have a small market garden amongst the fruit trees, chooks that help convert paddock to garden and are agisting some cows on about 25 acres - we have set up 19 paddocks to allow us to move them often. I used to work at Schumacher College in Devon and was very inspired by Martin Crawford's forest garden next door. So I have a small field put aside to try to create something similar but that has taken a back seat so far - we have planted quite a few nut trees in there but all except the almonds are struggling in the drought. looking forward to making contact with other permies Jane