The RegenNarration Podcast
The RegenNarration podcast features the stories of a generation that is changing the story, enabling the regeneration of life on this planet. It’s ad-free, freely available and entirely listener-supported. You'll hear from high profile and grass-roots leaders from around Australia and the world, on how they're changing the stories we live by, and the systems we create in their mold. Along with often very personal tales of how they themselves are changing, in the places they call home. With award-winning host, Anthony James.
The RegenNarration Podcast
He Could Have His Ridiculous Festival: A Grounded vignette with Matthew Evans & Sadie Chrestman
We’re just days away now from what’s been loosely dubbed ‘Regen Week’ over here in WA, an unprecedented series of international events that have gravitated together between Perth, the wheatbelt and Bridgetown. I’ll look forward to sharing some of what happens with you all afterwards, especially for those who can’t get here. Right now, though, on the back of last week’s episode focused on the centrepiece of the week, RegenWA’s major conference at Perth Stadium, it felt irresistible to release this excerpt in anticipation of the climax to the week – the first Grounded Festival in WA.
Welcome to the 8th instalment of Vignettes from the Source, the new short form series featuring some of the unforgettable, transformative and often inexplicable moments my guests have shared over the years.
This vignette is drawn from the conversation I had with farmer, author and founder of Grounded, Matthew Evans, and his partner, farmer and teacher, Sadie Chrestman, just after the very first Grounded had been staged at their place, Fat Pig Farm, in Tasmania last December. We pick it up with Matthew a little over ten minutes in, before Sadie joins us five minutes later.
It was raw, fun, and so endearingly candid. Unforgettable, really. So, on the cusp of the next edition of the festival, here’s 15 minutes with Matthew and Sadie – followed by five minutes of extraordinary music alongside a story about how it played out at that first festival.
If you’d like to hear or revisit this conversation in full, head to episode 247 – ‘Celebrating Grounded Festival: Behind the scenes’ (there are a bunch of links in those show notes too, and a very special photo from this conversation on that episode website).
Originally recorded 18 December 2024, and released 5 February 2025.
Title image sourced here.
For more behind the scenes, become a supporting listener via the links below.
Music:
My Mother, The Mountain, by Claire Anne Taylor.
The RegenNarration playlist, music chosen by guests.
Pre-roll music: Heartland Rebel, by Steven Beddall (sourced from Artlist).
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Before I ask you about some highlights, I don't want to let pass too quickly though the physical, visceral experience of it for you. Setting something up like this from the get-go you mentioned the word broken to me even in our little exchange after before. This Give us a bit of an insight, as raw as it may be. So we get a glimpse of behind the curtain in that way that feels important and perhaps instructive for those who might be thinking of other stuff in future too, but also to perhaps help out next time or just appreciate what goes into it.
Matthew:Yeah, it was interesting. We had a couple of people who were on site, who've run things before, you know, field days or that kind of stuff, and they looked at what we were doing and they were the people who, I guess, like a parent, you know, until you've been a parent and you've had your own toddler screaming in the supermarket, you know don't understand what other people are going through. So, look, I have to say I had no idea what I was getting into and I was kind of like, well, why don't we have three tents in the middle of paddocks? Why don't we just film it all? Why don't we just have it on farm? You know, and every step, you kind of went oh, that's why. That's the reason, you know, I think that the moment when I was wanting to film it and you know, have you need a microphone in each stage, you want to have a screen in each stage, because a lot of people were saying they needed PowerPoint and whatever, and I was trying to talk people out of that, the speakers, but they were very keen to have PowerPoint.
Matthew:Oh, it sounds exciting. And so we went to a professional because people are saying you need to be able to see this. Like people have paid hundreds of dollars to come to this festival slash conference. You can't have PowerPoint that no one can see. And so we went to a professional and they said oh yeah, no problem, we can put those screens up. We'll need a tech person and an AV person, no problem, that's going to cost you between $30,000 and $40,000, right?
AJ:Yeah.
Matthew:So that's the moment where I went, holy moly, we'd already got a forecast that we were going to lose 30 grand on the event before we got that quote. And you, the event before we got that quote, and it you kind of went oh, that's why you don't have a screen in every tent, that's why you don't do in the middle of a paddock, because you have to have power. Yeah, you know. But what was amazing? Anthony and I was a bit broken by the experience, but only because we tried to do a bit too much, like, I ended up having 40 speakers, we ended up having 65. I thought we'd have 42 sessions, we ended up having 86 sessions over two days. Yeah, you know, this is no small thing that we did, but every step of the way. So when I was like, oh my God, how are we going to put up a screen, my filmmaker friend said well, I've got a projector for one of the tents, you know. And Sadie said I know a tech person, so you don't have to employ someone at you know $1,000 a day which is what I was being quoted to make sure that the PowerPoint runs properly. They do all the computers at the school where she teaches, you know, oh, we need to do some signage. Well, I know how I'll just come and hand, paint old Apple palette boards and do all your signage for you.
Matthew:And people stepped into the room and the thing that blew me away, anthony, like I put in a quite large effort, but I was surrounded by goodwill and it was only at the very last speech, like sort of saying thanks for coming, that I realised that we had only paid at that point and we have to pay a lot of people since. But at that point we had done this event, as I say you know, over 60 speakers, over 80 presentations, two and a half days of full-on stuff happening on the farm. We had paid one person, eight hours a week for some admin for about three months and by the time the festival was on, no one had been paid for the previous three months because I was time the festival was on. No one had been paid for the previous three months because I was doing all the admin and it was all done on the good energy and the good vibes and the goodwill of the people who wanted to see it happen, and that blew me away. I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about it.
AJ:Yeah, me too. Yeah, no, I think of how you only experienced that because you stuck your neck so far out as well. But then the person who can do that is game enough to do that. Wow what it can animate in others yeah look, I.
Matthew:I think I was lucky because I mean we've run hospitality stuff, we've done learning things on the farm, I've been to events so I had some idea of what kind of worked and what didn't. One of the most beautiful things that happened was we. We opened our house as a bit of a space where it was a quiet space. Um, it certainly wasn't. At six in the morning when dan kittredge is there cooking eggs for 12 people. There's people sleeping in the lounge room. There's dan kittredge, you know from massachusetts, wherever he, you know, cooking eggs and going. Oh, there's another person I walk in from milking. Someone grabs my milk churn. Who's a farmer from New Zealand who's over-volunteering and happens to be sleeping in a tent outside our window and he can recognise that I've just, you know, got the good milk in my hand. He starts making coffees.
Matthew:But during the day the house was this sort of haven and you know the Rebanks, helen Rebanks and one of her sons. They were jet lagged from the UK, so they slept in the house and had a little quiet moment. We had this beautiful woman who used to work with us, who volunteered to just make people comfortable, or the speakers comfortable, and would sort of insist they have a cup of tea and a pastry and a sit down before their session. And so people fulfilled all these little roles and we stuck our neck out. Well, I stuck my neck out, but kind of knowing that around me were some people who had some skills and hoping that all of the things that I am incapable of doing, there would be someone who might be capable of doing it.
Matthew:And if not, you know we also. Everything was done with good intentions, everything was done trying to make things nice and good, and I think it was a very forgiving audience as well. Yeah, beautiful. Is it time to bring Zadie into the fray? Hey, how are you? And I think it was a very forgiving audience as well?
AJ:Yeah, beautiful, is it time to bring Sadie into the? Hey, how are you?
Sadie:Hello Anthony.
AJ:Welcome.
Sadie:Thank you, thank you.
AJ:I feel like I've been waiting to say that to you for a long time. It's great to see you.
Sadie:Very nice to see you too In wherever you are, because I obviously missed the beginning. Oh yeah, guatemala.
AJ:I'm in Guatemala at the moment. It's an old home of mine.
Sadie:Yeah, yeah. No, I know that from listening to the podcast I knew you were going down there. Oh, fantastic.
AJ:Yes, I'm not yet back where I used to live, but we're en route. It's a smallish country but, relatively speaking, to get between places because it's very mountainous, dramatically changing climates and, of course, logistical stuff, so nowhere goes anywhere terribly fast.
Sadie:Well, that's a nice way to live for a while.
AJ:Exactly it is. It's timely that it's the end of the year and I need to take the foot off the pedal a bit too, but also very surreal that I'm here again and with the family and yeah, I'm bracing myself partly, to be honest, 20 years on, like what's a town, a small dusty town, gonna look like these days, and who's there and who's not, and who's died and who's born, and what school kids are now grandparents? I don't know. Um, it all happens pretty quick there. So so, yeah, we'll see. But back to you. You've come in at this point where we're just talking as much about the um, the task of pulling it off and to get as real as possible, sort of with that to really convey some of the depths of the experience outside of the the party. How was it for you? I?
Sadie:largely ignored it for six months.
AJ:Just the yes, dear.
Sadie:Yeah, pretty much the deal was and Matthew may have already said this the deal was that he could have his ridiculous festival but that I wanted nothing to do with it. He wasn't allowed to call on me and he stuck to that Like he really did. I mean, it helps, I now work, I now teach off farm, so I'm gone four days a week and the fifth day I'm still doing sort of teaching things and catching up things.
Sadie:So I wasn't available either. But he would work, you know, long into the night. He would have, you know, we would have family dinner together and then he'd be up at the kitchen bench back on his computer emailing speakers and answering questions and asking questions. I mean it was a massive, massive administrative effort to make it all happen. So I really didn't come in until the last minute, like I took a week off work and I worked the week of the festival itself. So that was my main contribution, that and making sure that you know Matthew was Ben Wharton for the six months before.
AJ:Well, having a partner who does a bit of that here as well, that's not to be taken lightly. And in that context, then the burst experience for you. How did it look through your eyes and how did it feel?
Matthew:I think we need to start with when she first looked at the program and realised exactly what I was doing, which was on the Saturday eyes and how did it feel? I think we need to start with when she first looked at the program and realized exactly what I was doing, which was on the Saturday before the. You know you kicked off with the Tuesday cocktail parties. This is the Saturday before she's taken the week off.
Sadie:She looks at the program and I don't remember what did I do what?
Matthew:the hell, did you do, what on earth? And then she cried.
Matthew:Then, then she swore, and then she left the house for six hours. Did I, yep? And I told our son she can't even remember this and she told our son Sorry. I told our son that nature sometimes has a way of saying beware. And the way your mother just behaved means beware, do not go near, don't touch. It's like a snake when it flattens its head. You know, that's kind. There's a warning sign there. Hedley, you and I, let's not go near Sadie for a few hours and let her come back Anyway. So that was the Saturday, anyway, you can tell us Very good.
Matthew:It wasn't good, Anthony.
AJ:No, well, exactly. So this is what I'm really interested in the actual lived experience in the background of oh shit.
Sadie:Pulling something like that off.
AJ:Yeah.
Sadie:It's sort of actually how Matthew and I have run our lives since the very beginning is that we've given off more than we can chew.
Sadie:And then both of us are extremely stubborn and we have to make it happen Like there's no room to go. Maybe we shouldn't do this. It's like, once you've sort of made the decision and you're going with it, so you just do and you just. If it means you have to stay up later or get up earlier or move faster, then that's just what has to happen. I think this festival has taught me that. I am now.
AJ:I'm now 57, and I don't want to live my life like that anymore.
Sadie:I would actually like to slow down and plan things a bit and give, you know, have a bit more space around each project to actually let it finish and wrap up and just settle really. But yes, that first weekend I realised I had to get from sort of zero to a hundred, um, very, very quickly and get my head around things about what was happening and what needed to happen and what my jobs would be. Once it all got got rolling and that's what it was, it was just like moving really really fast, um, making sure that all the volunteers had what they needed to do, the jobs they volunteered for, to make sure that all the kitchen staff were supported, because that would normally be Matthew's job but he wasn't available to do that and my job is often the people support and making sure that the people who are I mean, it was the same when we had staff in the restaurant as well is just to make sure that people were happy working here and therefore to do their best, and that's what I slipped into pretty easily.
AJ:Yeah, that's it. Yeah, so you've got the skills, obviously in the background, but huge job nonetheless, and so how was your experience of it then actually? So the festival was amazing.
Sadie:The festival was absolutely amazing. So once the speakers started arriving and no one really knew what it was going to be, and they would arrive, and there were these massive marquees and there were flags and there was bunting and there were hand-painted signs and there were lots of really delightful people welcoming you and explaining where to go, and I think a lot of the speakers were like oh, wow, okay, this is what this is.
AJ:Excellent, it was very well organised.
Sadie:I think everyone felt that it was. The vibe was incredibly joyous. A couple of people have said since the festival and Matthew might go into this that it was the kind of there were a lot of people with very different opinions and they all chose to find common ground and they all chose to listen to each other and they all chose to find something in what the other person said that they could agree with, and that was a pretty amazing atmosphere.
AJ:Yeah, that is awesome and it reminds me Matthew and I did want to come back to this of what we talked about three months out when I first saw the sort of draft program and I was struck by the inquiring nature of the program. We talked a bit about that framing and it made me wonder then what did come out of that, if there was that sort of a vibe for a start, and then I guess what gems may have come out of it yeah, after our conversation that was really interesting, I think, because I hadn't realized that lots of the topics were questions.
Matthew:You know, I hadn't sort of picked that and and I think that after you and I talked about it and you brought that up, I suddenly realized, yeah, so I guess what we're trying to say is we don't have the answers. Yeah, maybe some of these really clever people have the answers for your farmer or your land or whatever. Maybe they don't. Maybe you'll come up with the answers after listening to them. Maybe someone in the line for the toilet will have you know the answer. Um, whoever you might meet having a beer afterwards or whatever it might be. Um, look, it's hard to know for me. I didn't really see sessions I, I think what all I I could do, because I was generally dealing with, um, a lot of little on-site, little issues that were nothing major, but just lots of stuff. Um, so I was just picking up on the energy of the event mostly.
Matthew:Yeah, the energy was good. People talking about cool things, testing their brains, testing out ideas, wanting to discuss things way beyond. You know, the 50 minutes or whatever we allowed in each marquee and yeah, like a really like say you're saying so good acceptance of other ideas. Because you know, and right at the end, that the last three sessions I just wanted to throw stuff in the air and say, okay, you've been sitting here for a couple of days listening to stuff, but let's just, let's just blue sky. I think, yes, let's think of how we can look at the world differently and and I think a lot of that was happening anyway, you know, we didn't maybe need to structure it like that. There was already people sort of trying to take concepts and work out how they worked for them.
Matthew:You know, and I don't know what were the magic moments. For me, the magic moments were the madness on the farm, you know, like waking up and going. I think there's 35 people. We have a two-bedroom house. You know there's like 12 people. You know, in the kitchen having breakfast at 6am, there's something like 35 people sleeping on the farm in various places. There's this whole community and thing that just appeared and disappeared, you know, sort of a day before the event and a day after the event. It just sort of you know appears, and for me that was the wonder was how something so transient or whatever, so Ephemeral Ephemeral, yeah, just can actually have so much resonance.
AJ:All right. So was there some music out of the festival that perhaps captured you as well that we could make mention of here.
Matthew:Yeah, so we had an incredible trio. A woman named Claire Ann Taylor came, and I think it's called my Mother is a Mountain.
Sadie:That's funny.
Matthew:Yeah.
Sadie:My Mother, the Mountain.
Matthew:My Mother the Mountain. So Claire's, I think, born down in this part of the world and lives down in this part of the world, and so the idea that the I think it's about Kunanyi, Mount Wellington, my Mother the Mountain. Yeah, she writes songs that have a lot of resonance and she's got this beautiful husky, you know, voice. Yeah, I have to say I walked into the because it was a bit separate from where the conference bits were and I walked in having dealt with the woman with the migraine and dealt with a few you know, the toilets running out of water and all the things that we dealt with during the day, all the tiny little, you know, admin and I walked in and there's Claire belting out this song and I reckon my smile stretched, you know, around the back of my head because I was just like, oh my God, we got through it and we've got this incredible music and everyone's having conversations. I just stood there and watched like 13 different conversations happening while she was singing, you know, and yeah, it was just beautiful.
AJ:Beautiful. I'm so glad you got that moment, matthew, where you got to take it in that way. That's awesome. And Sadie, for you, did you get to pick up some?
Sadie:I was just elbowing Matthew, then going Claire Ann Taylor. Claire Ann Taylor.
AJ:Oh, there we go. I booked her, I remember her.
Matthew:Yeah, I remember her.
Sadie:We had this other beautiful singer too, Esther Cook, who for her. We had this other beautiful singer too, Esther Cook, who runs the local Whole Foods shop. Oh, there we go. So she came for the cocktail party because she has this insane sort of soul-like voice, love it. And she came with a guitarist and they did sort of standards and it was really and folk songs, it was very beautiful, very beautiful, and I like how distant from the original what have you done?
AJ:moment where you went apart, you left the building that actually, at the end, with this pinnacle moment of thinking about the music, you are utterly united. That's symbolic and a great place to end. I can't thank you enough. I'm blown away that you guys pulled this off and your team and I, you know, personally hope there's another one.
Matthew:I'll get to get that one yeah, yeah because you might be back I have to say, when terry was stuck in sydney, who was supposed to be looking after a whole tent for you know, running a tent for a day, and we're like, oh, we just have to find someone to fill in. Um, there was this moment of well.
Matthew:If, anthony was here anyway, we luckily we got kirsten bradley from milkwood who did the most incredible job. You know 8, 30 at night. Hey guess what? At 8 tomorrow morning you've got to be on stage for five hours and she, um, so she pulled it off. But there was this thing of like oh, luckily we have friends who can do this sort of stuff I tell you, this is the thing.
AJ:The pieces are there, aren't they? We have the people can do this sort of stuff. I tell you, this is the thing. The pieces are there, aren't they? We have the people and the skills. That's a great example, and Kirsten's another person. I look forward to meeting at some stage, and there would have been many at that festival. So, yeah, I hope there's another one. I will definitely be there. We are going to be back for at least the Region WA conference in Perth in September, but but thanks for speaking with me, guys. I'm so glad you were both here. Thanks, sadie. Look forward to seeing you when we're back.
AJ:It's somewhere sometime see you on one side of the country or another thanks again, sadie, for being here too, and thanks for your support of this as well.
Matthew:Cheers guys see ya a when I die, I'll live only your smile.
AJ:Oh, for years after, I'll be right there in your laughter.
Sadie:O di
Matthew:I'll live on in your smile For years after, I'll be right there in your laughter. Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah ah.
