Having found some land to farm in late 2017 I spent the winter clearing the ground to get a good look at it (the terraced land was totally covered in 2m tall grass and the streams were are all blocked and flooding the land). Once that was done, I embarked on the design process and settled on a plan that ultimately involved building 150 permanent beds, 30 of which were to be under cover, all of uniform length and width, and spread over 8 different levels of terraces. With two streams running down through the property water was (and still is) in ample supply, while the differences in altitude and many banks separating the terraces allowed for dividing the land into zones.

With no-till market gardening as the basic model for production on the farm, the idea was to divide annual crop production into ten botanic groups, each group being allocated three separate lots of five beds in order to separate similar plants from each other, breaking up anything resembling a monoculture and giving me the choice of three different plots for each botanical family. With many small beds all the same size (5m long by 75cm wide), production can be maximised per bed, as well as being made totally uniform, but without sacrificing biodiversity on any more than an area of 25m2.

Being both a bio-intensive market garden and a permaculture micro-farm, I decided to adopt two separate but complimentary identities and business models:

1. Under the name Le Potager des Cerfs the farm sells organic French-style vegetables to chefs in high-level restaurants. The idea behind this strategy is to prove that organic, no-till, permaculture vegetable are both nutritious and highly flavorsome, and can compete with anything else on the market. Selling to high-end restaurants also allows me to sell at higher price points, bringing more money into the local community.

2. Under the name Permaculture Mochizuki the farm also serves as a demonstration site for people interested in learning about permaculture to come and visit. In order to raise awareness in the local community, I sell a range of organic, no-till permaculture herb teas under this name: sold loose leaf, by weight at local markets to people in the area, the same teas are packaged in attractive bags with smart labels and an educational leaflet for tourists coming through to take home as a souvenir of the area and, hopefully, some permaculture inspiration. I also run small, informal courses each year in such things as organic, no-till vegetable and cereal production, basic herbalism, ecological self-construction and land management.