- Proudfoot Post
- Posts
- Once i learnt this style of growing, i fell inlove with gardening.
Once i learnt this style of growing, i fell inlove with gardening.

First off—thanks for signing up to our Proudfoot Post newsletter! I’m really excited to connect with the Proudfoot community on a deeper, more personal level.
By joining, you’ll get updates on the project Keira and I are working on, recipes from the food we grow, and little blurbs from gardening, food forest also write ups of other cool people doing inspiring things.
Feel free to reply to this email anytime—we’d love to hear from you.
Let’s get into it!

Once i learnt this style of growing, i fell inlove with gardening.
How did we get here? Why the ‘food forest’?
Like a lot of people, my love for all things green started with my grandparents. With Italian and French roots, they somehow passed down this inner urge to grow food. But honestly, it wasn’t love at first sight. I gave annual gardening a go, didn’t have much luck—but my love for plants stuck around. That led me into conservation work, where I learned about this idea of regeneration.
At first, I was hooked. The concept of turning degraded land back into thriving native forest was fascinating. But the deeper I got into it, the more questions started popping up. Why the chemicals? Why rip out one plant to make space for another, just because it’s “native”? It started to feel like… what exactly are we regenerating towards?
Nature doesn’t care about our timelines or categories. She’s not checking off boxes or trying to meet quotas. She just grows, adapts, moves. But we humans? We project all kinds of emotion and bias onto her.
That said, I’ve seen some incredible progress in the regen world—and this is just my own take, based on my experiences.
Eventually, I hit a wall. Got a bit tired, a bit jaded.
Then my mate Nathan introduced me to the world of a food forestry—and it genuinely changed everything.
Suddenly, it all clicked. Weeds aren’t evil. We can actually use them. We can combine native plants and exotics to regenerate land and grow food/resource/carbon…. LIFE. It ticked every box. The questions I’d been asking finally had answers. I was in.
I signed up for a course with Alasdair (See our youtube video below), and the journey hasn’t stopped since.
And now—here we are. My first real project: regenerating a block of land on the Mid North Coast of Australia. I’m working with native plants, hardy pioneers, and plenty of edibles to turn a tired patch of heavy clay lawn into a thriving forest.
Welcome to the Proudfoot story.
🍦 Vegan Ice Cream Bean Ice Cream
Creamy, tropical, and dairy-free!
This dreamy ice cream is made with the unique, vanilla-flavored pulp of the ice cream bean (Inga edulis) — blended with oat milk and rich coconut cream for a smooth, tropical treat.
Check out our video on instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/proudfoot.ff/reel/DJOWKktvKco/
🌱 Ingredients:
1 cup ice cream bean pulp (remove seeds)
1 cup oat milk
1 cup coconut cream (full-fat, from a can)
⅓–½ cup maple syrup or sugar (to taste)
1 tsp vanilla extract (optional)
Pinch of sea salt
🥄 Instructions:
Prepare the Pulp
Scoop out the fluffy white pulp from the ice cream bean pods and remove the seeds.Blend It All
Combine all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. If the pulp is fibrous, strain the mixture through a fine mesh sieve.Chill the Mixture
Refrigerate the mixture for at least 2 hours to get it cold.Churn or Freeze:
Ice Cream Maker: Pour in and churn according to your machine’s instructions (usually 20–25 mins).
No Ice Cream Maker? Pour into a shallow dish and freeze, stirring every 30–45 minutes for about 3 hours.
Final Freeze
Transfer to a container and freeze for 3–4 hours until scoopable.Enjoy!
Let it sit out for 5 minutes before scooping. Top with toasted coconut or a sprinkle of lime zest if desired.