Wild Ridge Farm and Working With the Land
Growing the Future
Tucked into the Pine Avenue corridor near Healesville, Wild Ridge Farm sits in some of the most biodiverse country left in the Yarra Valley - land that links the slopes of Mt Toolebewong down toward the Birrarung. It's the kind of place where the line between "farm" and "habitat" starts to blur, which is exactly the point.
Kirstan Flannery and Stu Ryder farm by a simple conviction that what’s good for the land is good for the farm. Regenerative agriculture isn’t a separate project bolted onto food production here. Healthy soil, healthy water, healthy biodiversity, and a productive farm are treated as the same outcome, not competing priorities.
Stu Ryder, is the farm’s agroecologist. Utilising systems thinking, the farm design process starts with the ecological pattern and develops appropriate detail as necessary. This includes adaptation, responsiveness to feedback loops and experimentation for what contributes to a diverse and healthy ecosystem, the farm is part of. Healthy diversity here also includes mixed farming. Agroforestry means long-term thinking; trees take years to mature for harvest. Biochar use is part of the mix too – converting woody waste into a stable form of carbon that’s worked back into the soil, improving water retention and microbial life while locking carbon away for the long term. Layered through all of it is a permaculture design logic: building systems where each element -trees, soil, water, stock, vegetation – supports the others, rather than managing each in isolation.
It’s slow, iterative work. Not every experiment will succeed, and that’s treated as part of the method rather than a setback. Wild Ridge functions as something of a working laboratory for what regenerative, biodiversity-positive farming can actually look like on the ground in this landscape, not just on paper. Essentially a healthy, functioning farm eco-system.
Farms like Kirstan and Stu’s are proof that conservation at this scale doesn’t require taking land out of production – it requires rethinking what production means.
“I’ve got young kids, and every decision we make here, I’m making with them in mind. I don’t just want to hand them a farm, I want to hand them land that’s healthier than it is now. More trees, better soil, more life in it. That’s the only kind of farming that makes sense to me long-term.” Says Kirstan
It’s a theme that runs through everything Wild Ridge – a deep sense of responsibility to younger generations, and a commitment to handing them real skills, a sense of belonging, and an understanding of how to care for both land and community. The farm isn’t just growing food and rebuilding soil; it’s growing the people who’ll carry that work forward.
Wild Ridge Farm has become a focal point for the community with farm tours, permaculture days, and community planting events turning the farm into a place people can walk through, work in and learn from; get their hands dirty or just satisfy their curiosity about what regenerative farming actually looks like.
Kirstan and Stu have now convened the Pine Avenue Community Habitat Corridor (PACHC) with their neighbours – a community-led effort to restore an unnamed creek running through their properties. In recognition of its cultural significance, they are working with Wurundjeri Woi-Wurrung elders and the Victorian Aboriginal Heritage Council’s waterway naming project to give it a proper name of its own. PACHC will be part of C411 Country’s Australian Geographic Corranderk project.