My passion and purpose is working together to bring personal and planetary change through the interweaving of relationships. Relationships with nature, relationships within society and the relationship we have with ourself. This is Future-Steading at Tanglewood.

Future steading is at the core of how we live and engage with the world around us. It’s about showing up each day with intention—nurturing our relationship with the earth, with ourselves, and with our community. Future steading focuses on what’s best for today and tomorrow, for both people and the planet.

Simply put, future steading is a holistic philosophy that revolves around our connection to soil, soul, and society. These three areas, while helpful in understanding our mission, aren’t separate entities. They are deeply interconnected, and together, they shape a sustainable and flourishing future for all.

Future steading is more than a mindset; it’s a practical approach to decision-making. Every action we take today has an impact on tomorrow. By consciously nurturing these relationships, we contribute to a richer experience for ourselves, the community, and the environment.

We embody this philosophy in everything we do at Tanglewood, from growing our own food to building eco-sustainable homes. Our motto, “learning, growing, caring, and sharing,” drives our commitment to creating a space where we can all flourish together.

What’s happening now at Tanglewood Farm

Big Announcement: Woodland Cottage is now home to our first in Intern in Residence. Rachael has journeyed from Washington State in the US to spend roughly 3 months learning and contributing on the Tanglewood farm. 

So what is she up to on Tanglewood?

Soil

Spring planting

Protection of early seedlings from late frost

Harvesting young broad beans

Clearing out winter garden beds and enriching with organic material

Ongoing reduction in fuel load in preparation for fire season

General tidy up to make it safer from snakes

Clearing storm damage (chopping and mulching trees that have blown over)

Ongoing Weeding

Ongoing mulching

Building a swale in the orchid

Revamping chook and duck enclosures

PitPat, our duck, is currently sitting on her eggs for spring hatching…watch this space for updates!

Having strong intergenerational interaction and friendship which support the Tanglewood motto of learning, growing, caring and sharing is a constant source of joy.

From our point of view, not only has the time flown since Rachael took up residence in Woodland cottage, but our lives at Tanglewood have been incredibly enriched by her presence. She is thoughtful, intelligent, respectful, hardworking, and willing to learn. She brings a gentle and curious disposition to all she does.

In her spare time Rachael is also currently writing a book, knitting some throw rugs for Woodland cottage and providing logistical support for ADHD individuals struggling with overwhelm and task paralysis.

As with all our interns, our top priority was to find out what Rachael wanted to learn and what was her level of experience with working with the land.

Having established this, we then tailored the internship to meet her needs and to shape a program of learning for the coming weeks.

As with all learning, it’s a 2-way process. Rachael brings her own strength and understanding to the table at Tanglewood. Including exceptional organizational strategies (three cheers), a love of making shrubs (drinking vinegars) and knitting.

Leonie "Ruth" Acland and Rachael Massey focusing on the soul of our future steading journey

Rachael’s internship is half way through. She’s had opportunities for…

• Mentoring in composting and pruning

• Farm visits including an alpaca farm, Brogo permaculture garden, permaculture market garden Jerrabut market garden

• Participation in the maintenance and repair of the zip line and children’s railway line (made from upcycled trampoline parts)

In addition, Rachael and Ruth have also been recording episodes of the podcast they co-host : ADHD Women Exploring the Neuroverse. This was started to provide the opportunity for late diagnosis women to share their stories, learn more about neurodiversity and build community.

Are you an enthusiastic gardener, Permaculturist, or someone passionate about organic food security and sustainability?

Do you identify as a futuresteader, focused on living in a way that benefits both people and the planet?

We are excited to be setting up an internship opportunity at Tanglewood, where future steading is at the heart of everything we do. If this sparks your interest, we would love to hear from you!

*Now Accepting Intern Applications for 2025*

The Tanglewood Sign welcoming you to the permaculture internship at Tanglewood Farm. Visitors, students, and interns are invited by Leonie-Ruth and David Acland's permaculture farm.

Who Are We?

We are Leonie-Ruth and Dave. For the past twenty years, we’ve been co-creating a space at Tanglewood. As futuresteaders our focus is on healing and regeneration of soil, soul, and society so that we can all thrive and flourish together. Read More

Over this time, we have enjoyed the reciprocal richness and mutual benefits of building relationships with people who have visited and worked alongside us, as well as with the broader local community. (Read what they have to say about their experience with us in the testimonial section below.)

The Tanglewood motto is ‘growing, learning, caring, and sharing,’ which is the lens through which we make decisions and live our lives. We have broad experience in different living situations in Australia, PNG, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Tanzania.

We deeply care for people and the earth, and that’s why we embrace the future steading lifestyle-living in harmony with nature, reducing waste, growing our own food, and giving back to the land and others.

For Leonie-Ruth’s bio Read More

David is a country boy who worked for many years for government agencies in Australia and PNG as a geologist, specializing in near-surface earth materials (including soil, subsoil, and groundwater) and their relationships to landforms. He has been a futuresteader for many decades with a variety of interests and contributions. He ran a handyman/gardener/music teacher business for 9 years during a period of professional “time out.”

He has owner-built three houses, studios, cabins, and sheds, incorporating solar passive and eco awareness aspects far ahead of his time. He is always on the  lookout for useful recycled materials for garden structures. As a dedicated futuresteader, he’s passionate about solving the earth’s carbon store problem by single handedly spreading truckloads of wood chip mulch.

The People of Tanglewood Permaculture Farm. Leonie-Ruth and David Acland teach farming sustainably, permaculture agriculture, and chare their homesteading garden

Where Are We?

We have been lovingly treading and tending Tanglewood which is on Ngambri, Ngunnawal, Ngarigu land for twenty-five years. Tanglewood is located a few kilometers from the well-equipped, small rural town of Bungendore, NSW, just outside Canberra, Australia.

Map showing where Bungendore is in relation to the rest of Melbourne and Sydney. Tanglewood's permaculture internship is hosted on the farm in south east coast of

What Are We Looking For?

We are looking for fellow futuresteaders to share the experience, and contribute to the daily running of our permaculture-inspired garden-a place rooted in future steading principles.

We offer accommodation suitable for a couple, work pair, or single individual, though it is not particularly child-friendly.

The internship model allows you to contribute to the direction and content of the daily tasks and vision at Tanglewood, while gaining mentorship and space to develop your future steading skills.

A reasonable level of physical fitness is required for the variety of garden tasks we share.

Our hospitality is warm, generous, and genuine.

The Opportunities to Learn Are Extensive and Include:

Permaculture practices

Futuresteading concepts

Regolith geology and its application to permaculture

Building structures of all sizes and functions

Drawing plans

And most importantly, upcycling, and repurposing with creativity and flair

Starting Date

Applications accepted now for our next intern in 2025. We have a large amount of flexibility in the dates and the usual duration is around 2-3 months.

 The Setting

The setting is idyllic and your accommodation is in a brand-new cottage (Woodland Cottage) nestled amongst established gardens and adjacent to the planted coppicing woodland.

Scenes Across Tanglewood Permaculture Farm.

Our Vision

It is our hope that this experience will be mutually beneficial and give you, as an intern, a taste of what’s involved in keeping a future steading-inspired permaculture smallholding thriving. You will be working synergistically and generatively with the land and people at Tanglewood. Through our networks, there is the potential to create ongoing opportunities for you. Read about some of our community engagement here

You will have an initial taste of small-scale community living, with the expanded opportunity to continue engaging with others day-to-day in a regenerative environment, so that all flourish—aligning with the core principles of future steading.

What we offer :

Woodland Cottage at dusk
Accommodation in Woodland Cottage
  • New, carefully designed, solar passive build that is double glazed and eco friendly
  • Set in mature planted woodland with a private courtyard garden 
  • Fully furnished 
  • A well-equipped kitchen/diner; laundry/bathroom; and sitting room
  • Bedrooms: one large, one small
  • Heated by a Morso wood burning stove (wood and an ample supply of kindling is sourced from our coppicing woodland)
  • Water is rain water (with separate tap for drinking water)
  • Mains electricity with solar input
  • Woodland Cottage can accommodate two singles or a couple
  • Numerous vegetable gardens
  • A polytunnel
  • An orchard-apples, pears, stone fruit, a few citruses, fig, pomegranate, persimmon and mulberry trees
  • Chooks and ducks
  • A young hazelnut grove
  • Planted coppicing woodland
  • Seasonally
  • Includes home preserves as available
  • Reading the land
  • Designing and building structures
  • Seed collection 
  • Pruning
  • Planning/planting
  • Propagating
  • Rotating/resting garden beds
  • Companion planting
  • Composting
  • Worm farming
  • Ideal timing if you have completed a PDC and now want to know if the working with the land is the life for you
  • Ideal opportunity if you love gardening and want to know more about Permaculture
  • Join Leonie-Ruth in the kitchen for next level ‘garden cooking’ including
    • Options to learn how to cook directly from the garden with the fresh harvest of the day
    • Balancing meals to optimise bioavailability of nutrients
    • Unleashing your kitchen creativity
    • Cooking with colour and texture for fabulous taste
  • Enjoy refreshments and a mid-day meal on the days you work
  • Seasonal opportunities to participate and explore the myriad ways of preserving surplus produce and live abundantly
  • Let’s co-create and collaborate and see what unfolds…

Organic Harvest from Tanglewood's Permaculture Farm

The organic produce from Tanglewood's homesteading garden. The Acland's companion growing and permaculture agriculture.

"Garden Cooking" with Leonie-Ruth from Tanglewood's Harvest

Meals and preserves made from the homesteading garden at Tanglewood permaculture farm

What We Expect:

  • For a couple or working pair: 4 days (total between two people) per week engagement and participation with the management and care of Tanglewood. Single, three days per week
  • Hours roughly 9 to 4 with a break for morning tea and lunch, seasonally adjusted as necessary
  • You will need your own transport (sadly cycling/walking into town is not advised due to safety issues) 
  • A desire to learn, grow, and share
  • Good work and community ethic
  • Appropriate clothing including strong work boots, wet weather gear
  • Sun protection
  • A respect for the principles of earth care, people care, fair share
  • A large dose of curiosity and a dash humour
  • Non-smoker(s)/vaper(s)

The Animals and Pets of Tanglewood Farm

The Animals you will meet during the permaculture internship at Tanglewood Farm.

Applications

Applications accepted now for March 2025 and ongoing thereafter (Initially 2–3-month internships offered). Apply Here …

Leonie-Ruth Acland and David Gibson playing a violin and guitar on their permaculture farm, Tanglewood.

Testimonials

Emily and Yoann (Burgandy, France)

Our relationship with Leonie-Ruth and David began when we house sat Tanglewood and its animals. Then, we were invited to stay on guests for the remaining of our stay in Bungendore. During that time, we did a permaculture design for their house (our first and only, so far!!). We have since returned to France but continue our friendship by email. Tanglewood is always in our hearts!

We have a very good feeling about all our discussions while we stayed with Leonie-Ruth and David. They are people who really want to do well, with this unconditional love that, to me, is the only thing that can make life better for everyone. I don’t remember all our chats, but I know we all learned from each other and there was no ego war, it was all about going in the same direction of a caring for the Earth, caring for the people, and a good deal of fair share…

At Bungendore in general, I got involved in this community of people fighting for the power to have good and healthy food, with the Bungendore Farmer’s market, the Food Sovereignty Alliance that had a meeting in the area at the time, and all the people we’ve met. Leonie-Ruth and David are definitely going in this direction as well, so spending time at Tanglewood was for me part of this project of getting food right back in our gardens rather than in the supermarkets.

My partner and I were very touched when Leonie-Ruth and David invited us to share the Christmas meal with their families, although we still did not know them very well. It was important to them that everyone could share Christmas as a party with a community. I still have the beautiful handkerchiefs that I received that day and thus think of Leonie-Ruth very often.

What would you say to someone thinking about spending time there? I hope you will have as much fun as we did, as much pleasure as we did being part of Tanglewood. We could talk about all topics with them, there was no moment I was ill-at-ease. To us, they are beautiful human beings who really have an understanding of what community means, and who are definitely involved in making a better world.

Tanglewood is a place that we really enjoyed, and it has a human size, compared with a lot of places that I have seen… Which is, I find, reassuring, when one has a good team to work together, to have this feeling of  “yes, we can do it!” 

I particularly love the different rooms that Leonie-Ruth has created in the garden (I secretly hope I can manage to do that at my place someday…). And the trees, all these trees that are already very big… The landscape at Tanglewood is beautiful to me, which is also very important.

Also, I find that having animals around is always nice, not too many, but enough to have this feeling of being part of a whole (now that there are chickens and ducks!).

Are you ready to get involved now? Go! 🙂

Merren (Canberra, Australia)

The time spent at Tanglewood with Leonie-Ruth and David has been a great learning, collaborative, and social experience for me. They are resourceful, creative and hard working. They use permaculture principles to create and maintain their beautiful property.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time spent at Tanglewood, through the changing seasons, with something always going on, and the sense of freedom it gave me.  I’ve shared many delicious meals that have been prepared with produce grown on site, and enjoyed the culinary creativeness of Leonie-Ruth. I have an ongoing friendship with Leonie-Ruth and David and get back for visits to Tanglewood whenever I can.

Maple (Bungendore, Australia)

I found out about Tanglewood from a mutual friend who was volunteering there. Small communities are good for word of mouth! I started out as a gardener working for mutual benefit but very quickly became friends with Leonie-Ruth and David. 

Tanglewood is about building community and giving back to nature. It gave me the opportunity to spend time working in the garden alongside beautiful people. Meeting Leonie-Ruth and David has given me the courage to grow within myself and to understand what I am passionate about. I learnt about cooking from garden to plate and have fond memories of simultaneously chatting and cutting apples and plums with Leonie-Ruth.

I am thankful for the opportunity to work with and connect with Tanglewood.

Josh (Canberra, Australia)

Tanglewood was a great opportunity to get experience in a larger garden and build some practical skills. I was also living in an apartment in the city at the time and Tanglewood was the perfect change of scenery.  I really enjoyed the time at Tanglewood. Tasks varied and included, building (the tool shed designed by David) learning skills from an expert; forging intergenerational friendships; planting veggies and general garden maintenance. Every time I went to Tanglewood it was a lovely mix of socialising, physical work and discussing future plans. I especially enjoyed the mornings I would get there early enough to have a cuppa and do the cross word with Grandma Audrey.

Our relationship has changed over time and remains strong. What began as a working relationship has developed into a trusted friendship (David let me borrow the ute!!). I now have a garden of my own. Leonie-Ruth and David have been very supportive, helping with advice and seeds etc. I do a lot of building around my house utilising the skills I developed at Tanglewood.

 I think it is really worthwhile to spend time at Tanglewood. Leonie-Ruth and David have great knowledge and skills and are very keen to share with others. I think Tanglewood and their connections with the wider community is also a great avenue to explore new skills and opportunities for work or leisure activities. 

Sage (Warburton, Australia)

My time at Tanglewood, though short, was very sweet. I was met warmly at the door, settled in with a bowl of home-made (and home grown!) crumble and a cuppa. We shared many laughs in the garden, over meals, local adventures and musical evenings. I had the opportunity to connect with the broader community at the Southern Harvest markets and visit the local op shop extraordinaire!

The land at Tanglewood is been beautifully and creatively tended and it was a privilege to get to learn from such skilled hands.

Tanglewood is a sanctuary for those of good honest earthbound hearts, interested in living in reciprocity. 

Emily M. (Canberra, Australia)

How did I get to be at Tanglewood? My partner worked there once a week after hearing about an opportunity for work through Southern Harvest. We were looking at ways to connect to a community of local producers as we were in an apartment and not able to grow much. I’d always loved my big backyard as a child and enjoyed the space and connection with nature which Tanglewood provides.

After a day’s work we came away with an eclectic variety of produce that we always enjoyed finding new ways to prepare without wasting any part. I loved every visit to the property and enjoyed the conversations and friendship that formed; talking about gardening; dogs; teaching; tea and cooking both out in the garden or around the kitchen or table for tea and lunch. The friendship we have with Leonie-Ruth and David is so treasured, they came to our engagement party.

I remember sitting at the table sorting lavender we had just harvested while David’s daughter and Leonie-Ruth were cooking in the kitchen and we chatted about bringing an appreciation for nature into schooling.  It is something that I, as a teacher now, have hoped to instil in my class and I think about discussions at Tanglewood often when considering it.

Tanglewood is a wonderfully diverse property run by two knowledgeable, kind and caring people. It is a very lovely place to be inspired and feel connected to nature. I would highly recommend spending time at Tanglewood.

Katie (Sydney, Australia)

My relationship with Tanglewood has been replenishing, educative, inspiring. Over my time there, I not only learnt practical skills (e.g. fruit tree pruning) but because of the low-fi face to face nature of daily life, I was able to engage in deep conversations while on long walks and also to enjoy wonderfully nourishing food, most of it straight from the garden at Tanglewood. 

During my time at Tanglewood I particularly cherished the opportunity to see nature change through the seasons, the ebbs and flows of life and relationships, fostering deep connections to a place and its people (and animals!) and having the opportunity to get to know two such amazing people who are a step ahead of me on life’s journey in terms of parenting and ageing.

I made a big leap in going to Tanglewood and that step reaffirmed my belief in leaning in to change. Because Leonie-Ruth and David were so welcoming and pleasant, I was able to really de-stress and slow down.

I have many fond memories of Tanglewood:  

  •   Coming into the drive on a late winter afternoon and seeing the light on
  •   Opening the door to Jester wagging her tail and the friendly welcome of the humans
  •   Being in front of the fire on a winter evening, daydreaming into the flickery flames, and of course the daily quiz at the big table.

I think if you want to experience a place where you can grow most of what you need and you want to slow down and learn or exchange ideas on doing this, Tanglewood is perfect. However, if you want to keep all the accoutrements of modern life such as 24-7 Wi-Fi and Netflix, this is probably not the place for you! Tanglewood invites you to slow down, stop and smell the (many) roses and untangle from the fast pace of modern convenience and consumerism with soulful people (and chooks – did I mention the chooks!! They are so divine).

Mark (Bungendore, Australia)

I have had a relationship with Tanglewood for over 10 years and seen it develop into the verdant productive small holding it now is. I initially started out doing specialised gardening activities such as pruning the orchard and building dry rock walls.

My time there has seen many changes in the property with the strong permaculture ethos running through all that is done there. I have enjoyed the community feel when at Tanglewood: working and teaching skills with others; sharing morning tea and occasional meals with volunteers and visitors alike. David and Leonie-Ruth have become firm friends.