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A cou­ple of years ago my diges­tive health had dete­ri­o­rated to the point where eat­ing any­thing, even as sim­ple as a car­rot, caused enor­mous pain. Through­out my twen­ties, I’ve had symp­toms of what doc­tors politely called ‘Irri­ta­ble Bowel Syndrome.’

But there is noth­ing polite about IBS when it’s hap­pen­ing to you, quite the contrary.

By late 2009, my gut was rul­ing my life. I didn’t know what I could eat, what I couldn’t eat and what was caus­ing my intestines to feel like they were on fire.

After los­ing five kilos in three weeks (10% of my body weight!), I booked in to see a Mora ther­a­pist in the hope of find­ing some answers.

My part­ner, Chris, drove me to the appoint­ment as I was the back-seat, curled up in the foetal posi­tion with pain. I’d packed my toi­letries and a change of clothes, plan­ning to check myself into hos­pi­tal on the way home if there were no answers.

The ther­a­pist found Gia­r­dia and other par­a­sites had bur­rowed into my intestines, mak­ing me highly sen­si­tive to many foods that I could have ordi­nar­ily eaten with no problem.

My result­ing ‘leaky gut’ had also become sen­si­tized to chem­i­cals, mean­ing eat­ing con­ven­tion­ally grown (chem­i­cally grown) pro­duce resulted in end­less hours of inflam­ma­tion and a sen­sa­tion not unlike how I imag­ine drink­ing molten lava would feel.

This explained why a con­ven­tion­ally grown red cap­sicum had caused me so much pain. Those lit­tle guys can be par­tic­u­larly loaded with chem­i­cals to keep pests away from their allur­ing red flesh. I mis­tak­enly ate one that hadn’t been grown organ­i­cally and after a long night nurs­ing my swollen abdomen I had a ter­ri­fy­ing thought,

“If I’m ever going to feel safe eat­ing any­thing again, I’m going to have to grow my own organic food.” But where to begin?

HOW ON EARTH was I going to do that?

I didn’t even know how to make a gar­den bed to keep all the soil from spilling out. A few weeks later I received an email about a free infor­ma­tion ses­sion on Per­ma­cul­ture at the library.

I booked in and imme­di­ately I was hooked by the ele­gant design of herb spi­rals, the log­i­cal pro­gres­sion of bananas around a cir­cle, and the truth behind the abun­dance of sys­tems liv­ing on the edge. I had to know more.

So I joined the local com­mu­nity gar­den in Pere­gian Beach where I learnt about organic gar­den­ing from the knowl­edge­able mem­bers. I was sur­prised to dis­cover the gar­den had been designed using smart, log­i­cal and prac­ti­cal Per­ma­cul­ture sys­tems, which were also beau­ti­ful and tranquil.

My kale seedlings took off in the plot I rented, and I found I could grow things suc­cess­fully, with­out hours and hours of effort.

With grow­ing con­fi­dence (pun intended), I decided it was time to buy my own piece of land, so I could grow more food. After search­ing up and down the east coast for the per­fect, afford­able place, Chris and I moved to our one-and-a-half acre prop­erty in the Sun­shine Coast Hin­ter­land in July 2010.

In Sep­tem­ber, we com­pleted our Per­ma­cul­ture Design Cer­tifi­cates with the co-founder of Per­ma­cul­ture, Bill Mol­li­son, and his highly esteemed col­league, Geoff Law­ton. Since then I’ve come to under­stand what a swale is, how to find that elu­sive thing called ‘con­tour’, more about the mat­ing rit­u­als of frogs than I ever dreamed I’d need to know.

And, how to grow enough organic food to sat­isfy my now mostly healed diges­tive system.

Seven months later and there’s more food in the gar­den than I can eat.

I’ve been giv­ing away bags of man­darins to friends and neigh­bours; the egg­plants are fin­ish­ing the sea­son after months of pro­duce; I’ve planted kale again and the leaves are so juicy I eat them straight off the plant; I just pulled out the cherry toma­toes out after they sup­plied a punnet’s worth of fruit every day for eight weeks; the gin­ger is show­ing its knob­bly roots and has been flavour­ing my fresh juices; the lemon tree is still hold­ing fruit after six months of sup­ply; the straw­ber­ries are send­ing their run­ners out for next sea­son; com­frey, lemon­grass and Brazil­ian spinach are flour­ish­ing; and last week I stum­bled across my first sweet potato.

I was so happy to dis­cover it; I actu­ally cried. It tasted like roses when it was roasted.

I’ve learnt to emu­late aspects of nature in my back­yard, mak­ing my life eas­ier and the gar­den more productive.

I’ve sur­rounded myself with gar­den­ing experts who live and breathe organic gar­den­ing. I’ve joined Per­ma­cul­ture Noosa, one of the longest run­ning Per­ma­cul­ture groups in the world, and am on the dri­ving com­mit­tee for the new Cooroy Com­mu­nity Gardens.

Neces­sity drove me to learn about organic gar­den­ing, but I am so pas­sion­ate about the health ben­e­fits and pos­i­tive envi­ron­men­tal impact grow­ing your own food has, I want to share it with you, so you can have the best food for your­self and your family.

It’s a great feel­ing to be empow­ered with a stronger con­nec­tion to the earth and nat­ural sys­tems. But don’t be scared, it doesn’t have to take over your life.

You can grow loads of food in pots on your bal­cony in less than twenty min­utes a week, or you can have a sin­gle raised gar­den bed in the back­yard and by using some clever, sim­ple meth­ods be largely ‘salad’ self-sufficient.

Be sure to join up for ‘Sprout’ my free weekly newslet­ter for tips, oth­ers’ suc­cess sto­ries, plus a few laughs on grow­ing organic food. It doesn’t have to be over­whelm­ing; in fact, grow­ing organic food is fun, reward­ing and plea­sur­able. Not to men­tion great for your and your family’s health.

Plus, it’s prob­a­bly the most effec­tive and do-able activ­ity you can par­tic­i­pate in to help heal the earth.