The Food Farm

A life growing and eating our own food

Angela Clifford and Nick Gill have spent twenty years developing a sixteen-acre block of land in North Canterbury into a thriving food haven that feeds and sustains them, their three children, and their extended family. They follow permaculture principles, which means farming organically without using any chemical fertilisers, herbicides, fungicides, or insecticides, though it involves much more. It’s a way of working with nature rather than against it. How to achieve this, even on a small scale, is at the heart of this book.

The Food Farm: A life growing and eating our own food progresses through the seasons, covering gardening and outdoor tasks such as managing food waste, composting, planting, pruning, harvesting, seed saving, and storing produce. You can also learn how to build a food forest. Aspects of this might appeal to home gardeners, particularly the ‘chop and drop’ system of tidying up the garden, that is, leaving trimmings and leaves where they fall, and allowing them to decompose into mulch and send nutrients back to the soil.

Seasonal recipes sprinkled throughout are mostly hearty, homely fare – the kind we really want to eat midweek. While not completely vegetarian, the focus is on produce that grows in or above the soil. Farmhouse staples like sourdough bread, homemade butter, farm cheese, and sausages from scratch are included. If you’re keen, there’s a recipe for nettle pasta with instructions on how to harvest your nettles. Other interesting recipes, include garlic salt, elderflower cordial, fig sandwich, and lacto-fermented dill pickles. 

A substantial read, packed with delicious recipes and practical advice on how to stop wrecking the planet and make sustainability a way of life. Highly recommended.

The Food Farm: A life growing and eating our own food by Angela Clifford and Nick Gill, photography by Angela Clifford and Nick Gill, published by Bateman Books, RRP $55, release date October 2025