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Regenerative
Stewardships
What is a Regenerative Stewardship?
This is a live-in, hands-on opportunity to work within a community as a genuine contributor to Winderong Farm — not as a student in a classroom, and not according to a fixed curriculum. The day-to-day reality of a working farm is ever-changing, and your involvement will reflect that: shaped by the farm’s seasonal needs, your own skills and interests, and the natural momentum of living and working in community.
Previously, we used the word “internship” to describe this opportunity, and we’ve come to feel that word carries expectations that do not reflect what we are offering here. Internships imply a short-term commitment, introductory education, and rigid teacher/student hierarchy, which is often disempowering for learners and places unsustainable dependence on facilitators. That is the opposite of what this is.
What we’re offering is closer to co-stewardship — a shared project where your knowledge, curiosity, and skills contribute meaningfully to the farm, and ours contribute to your growth. You will be part of a community that allows you to live in alignment with your values and supports you to become the person you want to be in the world. The soft skills and personal development that arise from living in community are often the deepest, most valued areas of learning for most people who spend time at Winderong. Additionally, living in close relationship to the land provides a hugely transformative foundation for connection and awareness that far exceeds any learning goals we can articulate.
Why are we offering this opportunity?
To be completely transparent, we wanted to create an opportunity that provides people with a starting point to become long-term residents and contributors to Winderong Farm. The vast majority of Winderong’s evolution has been shaped by a handful of core long-term members collaborating with short-term volunteers from all over the world. We really enjoy hosting short-term residents, but it is not a sustainable model for us to evolve Winderong into its full potential!
We absolutely love this project and know there are so many people out there looking for long-term opportunities like ours to live and grow in. We hope that sharing this opportunity allows us to find those people!
Whilst we outline an initial 6-month commitment, we’re ideally looking for people with the intention and capacity to live and work with us for at least 12 – 18+ months!
The initial 6-month commitment is an immersive introduction to the full breadth of what Winderong has to offer — a period to familiarise yourself with the farm, a chance to explore your areas of interest and get a taste of others, and a time to find your footing in the rhythms of farm and community life. Over time, you’ll deepen your involvement in the areas you’re most passionate about, growing into a core contributor to their development. We see this as a starting point, not a finish line, and we’re looking for people who are interested in engaging more deeply with the experience.
What will you actually do?
No two Regenerative Stewards will have the same experience at Winderong, and that’s intentional. Rather than arriving with a fixed role and a set of predetermined tasks, you’ll be stepping into a living ecosystem — one that asks different things of different people at different times. Your days will be shaped by a genuine combination of what the farm needs, what you bring, and what the land and season are doing.
The farm’s needs are real and ever-present. Winderong is not a demonstration site or a teaching farm in the conventional sense — it’s a working property with animals that need daily care, systems that need maintaining, food that needs growing and preserving, and land that is actively being regenerated. There is always something meaningful to do, and being woven into that daily rhythm is central to what makes this experience so grounding. Some days might look like moving cattle up to the top paddocks, troubleshooting a water pump, spending an afternoon processing an abundant harvest of vegetables or working with the Gadhungal Marring junior rangers. The farm sets the pulse, and we all follow it together.
Your skills and interests matter enormously to us and will genuinely shape your experience here. We want to know what you already know, what you’re curious about, and what kind of work makes you feel alive. If you arrive with a deep passion for soil and growing systems, you may find yourself tending the planting systems — but you’ll also find yourself learning to read the pasture, understanding how the animals move through it, and seeing how it all connects. If you’re mechanically minded and drawn to infrastructure, you’ll be hands-on with the farm’s systems and earthworks, but you’ll may also find yourself in the kitchen or out checking on the herd. We encourage everyone to invest deeply in the areas they love while remaining open and curious about the whole. Over time, as trust and confidence grow, so does the scope and responsibility of your involvement. The farm has a way of drawing out things in people they didn’t know they had.
The season and the moment are teachers. Life at Winderong moves with the rhythms of the natural world in a way that’s genuinely hard to describe until you have lived it. Autumn brings a different quality of work to summer. A wet season changes the land and the animals and the tasks in ways no curriculum could predict. There are windows of intense harvest, periods of planting and waiting, moments of unexpected abundance, and seasons that test your resilience. Rather than following a fixed schedule of what you’ll learn and when, you’ll find yourself in a continuous, responsive relationship with what is happening — which is precisely where the most meaningful learning lives. The teachable moments here are not scheduled. They arise in the middle of a difficult calving, in the discovery of a new pest in the garden, in a conversation around the dinner table after a long day. Learning to recognise and lean into those moments is one of the most valuable things you’ll develop here.
Projects — both ongoing and emerging — offer another layer to your involvement. Winderong is always evolving, and there is no shortage of things being designed, built, trialled, or improved. Some projects are long-term undertakings that span seasons and hands — a new swale system, expanding the orchard, developing the dairy herd, refining how we integrate poultry across different parts of the property, hosting First Nations women on retreat. Others arise spontaneously from an idea, a resource, or a window of time. As a Regenerative Steward, you’ll contribute to existing projects and, over time, could take ownership of your own. We genuinely love it when someone develops an idea and the initiative to see it through — that kind of energy is part of what keeps Winderong growing.
The broad areas of life and work at Winderong include:
Animals — Caring for our beef and dairy herds using Holistic Grazing (inspired by Allan Savory) and low-stress handling techniques (inspired by Temple Grandin). Daily milking of our Jersey cows, training calves, caring for chickens and turkeys, managing bees using natural beekeeping methods, and integrating animals across the pasture, garden, and orchard. Our animals are named, loved, and treated with deep respect.
Growing — Tending our 2.5-acre growing area using permaculture, natural farming, and biodynamic techniques. Seasonal planting and harvesting, soil health, seed saving, composting, compost teas, biochar, irrigation, orchard management, and bush food and medicine. Working with nature to regenerate the bush using 100% chemical-free techniques, including weeding, native seed collection, germination, and planting.
Food Preparation & Preservation — Food is at the heart of life at Winderong. Everyone is integrated into at least one food production system, and the kitchen is a place of real connection. You’ll learn to cook with what the farm produces, preserve the harvest through fermenting, drying, and storing, and contribute to the communal meals that bring us together.
Infrastructure & Earthworks — Keeping the farm running and building it out. Water systems (pumps, tanks, irrigation), solar and power systems, vehicles, roads, drainage, and fencing. There are also exciting earthworks projects involving swales, dams, and water harvesting systems. Problem-solving, practical resourcefulness, and learning to operate equipment are all part of this.
Community & the Everyday — Every Regenerative Steward contributes to the running of the shared space: cooking, cleaning, maintaining, gathering, and showing up for each other. The “mundane” tasks are as much a part of this as any exciting project, and we ask everyone to approach them with the same care and positive spirit.
Social Projects – We feel a deep responsibility about our privilege of living on unceded land and take the responsibility very seriously. Therefore, alongside nourishing ourselves and caretaking our animals, the land and more than human kin, we develop projects to share the nourishment and abundance of this land widely. We currently do this through Farm Tours, Crop Swap participation, hosting junior ranger programs, helping in the kitchen garden at the local school, collaborating on numerous projects with Waminda (the incredible first nation women-led South Coast health services), hosting corrobborees, community events and workshops.
What kind of learning can you expect?
This is a co-learning environment. We don’t have a curriculum to hand you, and we don’t have a teacher standing at the front of the room. What we have is a richly layered farm system, a community of people with diverse knowledge and experience, and a genuine commitment to growing together.
We always aim to share the why behind what we do — the theory, the trial and error, the inspiration behind our methods — so that tasks are understood in context rather than just completed. But because every person arrives with different experience and different questions, we need Regenerative Stewards who are curious, proactive, and willing to ask. Your education here is partly your own responsibility, and that’s intentional.
Living and working in close community also brings its own profound kind of learning — one that’s difficult to put in a prospectus. The soft skills, the self-knowledge, the experience of interdependence and mutual care that arise from communal life are among the most valuable and enduring benefits of the experience. Add to that the daily reality of living in relationship with land, animals, seasons, and cycles, and you have an education that genuinely cannot be replicated elsewhere.
We’re looking for people who:
- Are genuinely self-motivated and proactive
- Embrace learning through doing and through being
- Can find meaning in the everyday alongside the exciting
- Are patient with the non-linear nature of real learning
- Want to invest deeply rather than sample widely
- Are curious about systems and how everything at Winderong connects
Who can apply?
The long-term vision for Winderong is a village of diverse and driven people who co-create a resilient, nurturing and holistically regenerative ecosystem. Our Regenerative Stewardships are one pathway towards this vision so we’re very open about who can participate!
If you already have some of the skills and knowledge we outline and are looking for a community to live in long-term where you can collaborate, apply and deepen your learning, this opportunity is for you!
If you’re new to the scene and want to settle into a lifestyle and workplace with abundant potential for skill and knowledge development, this opportunity is also for you!
If you’re at a time in your life where you’re keen to move through lots of new and different opportunities rather than sink into something shaped by mutual investment and commitment, unfortunately this isn’t the opportunity for you.
Apply for a Regenerative Stewardship today!
Send an email to winderongfarm@gmail.com with:
- Your resume
- A cover letter telling us:
- Who you are
- Why you would like to live, work and learn at Winderong
- What areas of the farm you’re most drawn to, and why
- What skills and experience you bring
We’d love to hear from you.