Simple Ben Stories

12/08/2025

GIMLET RIDGE || A Holistic Management Journey 🌱 2025 FILM TRAILER 🎞️

https://youtu.be/31hllTFyHeY

Institute of Regenerative Leadership
Regen WA
Savory Institute
Justin von Perger

Filmed near Perenjori, WA, in September 2024, Gimlet Ridge follows the inspiring journey of Rod and Katrina Butler. From the years before Rod took over the f...

27/04/2025

🗞️ Front Cover of the Harvey Waroona Reporter! 😃
Thanks to Craig Duncan for covering the short doco piece we’re doing on Bruce Ivers and his sand dune rehab research and work in the Myalup dunes. To Perth NRM for making this film about regional collective initiatives happen and the folks at Ardross Primary School for doing the hard work!




https://editions.harveyreporter.com.au/ccidist-replica-reader/?epub=https://editions.harveyreporter.com.au/ccidist-ws/wan/wan_harvey-waroona/issues/16655/&_gl=1*s71qmi*_ga*MTE0Njg0Mzc4MC4xNzQ1NzIxODIz*_ga_JYMBC35Q0Z*MTc0NTcyMTgyMy4xLjEuMTc0NTcyMTgyMy42MC4wLjA. #/pages/9

19/11/2024

😂
Sometimes life just hands you diamonds.

I apologise in advantage to anyone who ever comes on a bush walk with me again.
🌳🙃

04/11/2024

🥚 PASTURE RAISED IN WA 🐓
This project is almost a year in the making.

I kept hearing from farmers the throw away comment of how free range wasn’t all its ‘cracked’ up to be. 🐣
This became a common understanding but I still wasn’t sure exactly WHY? 🐓
I met and talked to producers and then felt I had a better understanding. But still the family and friends I talked to were unsure what I was barking on about and what the hell pasture raised actually meant??? 🤔
So I wondered if I wasn’t alone in this quest to understanding… turns out the producers hear it all the time too. It seems general public are getting there but WA is still in its beginnings of the pastured/pasture raised shift.
So with this, we gathered a handful of pasture raised meat and egg producers and suppliers together to help support and promote the message. 🙏
We’ve so far filmed at half a dozen farms, an abattoir, butcher, markets and soon to shoot at a distributor.
It’s all coming together and the end product might grow and balloon into a full on epic lord of the rings 10hr extravaganza if I don’t keep myself in check….
🧙‍♂️




Unison Farms

03/11/2024

🎥 I’ve been on location a lot lately capturing some incredible stories.

(some snaps from origins shoot featured here)

It’s been a whirlwind and an amazing time, but to the detriment of actually getting projects completed. So I’m making a conscious effort to ease back off shoots until the new year.
This will give me more time to edit and more time with the family during the busy Chrissy period. 🎅

Thanks to all the individuals letting me capture their stories this year. You’ll start to see a lot more put out there. Keep a close eye on the campaign too.

PS: To illustrate the degree in how busy this year has been.
I usually get through 3x 4TB hardrives. This year I’m well into my 5th hard drive and we still have 2 months left 😮

13/09/2024

PASTURE RAISED IN WA - 🐓 It’s been a busy day today , and we’ve got the tomorrow morning. It’s been great getting up close to the layer shelters and understanding the different systems in place to reflect the challenges and needs of two properties quite nearby. 🥚 🥚

The common denominator is movement, as with meat birds the stark difference between free range and pasture raised is movement, plus a million other little goodies 🐛

Will be lining up a shoot with next to see how Blythe does it as well and incorporating cattle in the mix. 🐂

if you’re not already following the tag, get around it and find your local producers!

12/08/2024

IF THE STORY IS NEVER TOLD, 🤫
the story never happened. 🤷‍♂️

A quote I’ve absorbed and paraphrased from a client of mine who does consulting for NFPs and Community Centred Orgs. 🌏
He started to noticed the repeat annual struggle 😩 in proving to funding bodies and motivating parties with skin in the game around the success of past and ongoing projects. 🤝
He said to me in passing “Alex, I’ve come to the realisation if we don’t make a video about it, 🎥 it never happened!”. 💨
These words have bounced around in my head for a few years now.
Probably for 2 reasons.
1. They give my profession legitimacy, which is always nice 🙃
2. These words also give me an extra push, 💪 a sort-of mantra when out on a job that requires a story to be captured and retold in the most engaging yet true manner. For occasionally if it’s an event or project that only few get to witness, the video we create together becomes a moment in time that rests mostly on my shoulders to capture. 🎞️

So it’s these words I now take to every project and since doing so I’ve noticed a level of quality 👌 and consistency👨‍💻 in my output that wasn’t there before. 🤓

PS: All of a sudden the parable, “A tree falls in the woods, no one hears it, does it make a sound?” Is making a lot of sense! 😯😯😯

22/07/2024

Recently we had the honour 🙏 to join our friends at in the ritual of processing a flock of meat chickens we went in on together. 🐓
Growing up in the city 🏙️ and still not quite country 👨‍🌾 this was a first for me. After processing the processing I’ve come away with a few thoughts: 🤔

🌏If the general public all had the opportunity to partake or witness a processing day, be it backyard, micro or large scale… Using my own experience as a yardstick… (and the ‘less/more meat is best’ argument aside) I’m fairly certain we would see a drastic shift to less meat but higher quality meat consumed in meat raising systems that respect and prioritise the health of the bird and not $p/kg metrics.🌏

💛By starting the life/meat cycle with the utmost of respect, that respect then can’t help but to flow down into the kitchen and motivates us to do each cut or whole chicken justice, and to be joined by friends and family, strengthening community.💛

➕The nutrient, soil and welfare benefits aside, the simple act of partaking in the processing of an animal that was raised well has implications that I never expected to be so fulfilling.➕

🎥 This side venture and has come with perfect timing as I’m currently in production of a public awareness video campaign for this very subject. Follow the tag for all the updates and content from the legends around WA producing meat and eggs how the nature intended. 🎥

PS:
🦖 I saw Jurassic Park… locking tiny dinosaurs in sheds and cages doesn’t end well for the humans… 🦖

05/07/2024

I recently spent a few days working 🎥 with the Cygnet Bay pearl farm 💎 on the Dampier Peninsula north of Broome. 🐫
What a few days it was, eye opening, exhilarating and humbling.
Each day topped the last and the final day left me surprised in what I came away with as my highlight. 😯
Starting with a range of pearl tours and experiences on land gave me an appreciation for the pearl that I never had before. 💍
Next I got to experience some of the most wild tides of which all on the tour and skipper agreed. 🚤
I managed to capture a cultural tour and documented oyster harvesting at the right moon 🌖 faze with nuanced sustainable harvest techniques that apparently hadn’t been professionally documented in the region in years. 🦪

But what took the cake was making it out onto a pearling boat a few km’s out from Cable Beach, seeing the pearls being extracted was so strange but so impressive and beautiful at the same time. And the cleaning of the pearl frames was an art in of itself. 🪛

What these people are accomplishing through hard labour, detailed fine precision, cultural and historical recall and what the skippers do can only be described as water craft magic… all for a pearl. It’s insanely humbling the range and breath of agri/aqua-tourism that has evolved out of a mollusc 🦪 growing a pretty gem. 💎
Cygnet Bay are doing some amazing things and it was an honour to work with them.
…
Now to edit the content! 🎥

08/04/2024

🇻🇳We’ve been travelling through Vietnam over the past few weeks and a highlight was spent for a day on a bike tour around Hoi An’s farming villages. 🚲 This particular ‘Vegetable Village’ pride themselves on being pesticide, herbicide and synthetic fert-free. 🌱

🐛 The pests are given a ‘hangover’ from a fermented garlic, ginger & chilli mix as to not kill them because 🦜 “the birds need to eat”. The workers have the seeding and planting of the market gardens down to an art with hand tools, burying seaweed, bringing in cow manure and watering by hand with from wells with 💧watering cans. They till the top 100mm of soil to buggery 😮 so probably not a lot of life 🍄🦠
But it’s done in a somewhat gentle deliberate way which makes the process seem thoughtful and down to a science. 🤷‍♂️

They made it very clear that the farmers who work and live here, eat here and raise families here. 🏡They understand the health and environmental risks behind leaching excessive fert and pesticide into their waterways and ground water, 💧 the very water they use to support their livelihood and families. 🥥 The variety of produce is very diverse and leave few reasons for locals to shop elsewhere.🍊🥒🥬

This style of farming is apparently supported and encouraged through education by the Vietnam gov. 🇻🇳 I didn’t ask as to how the government is financially involved with these families as I’m not savvy to the political structure and workings of the communist party gov. here, but the folks in the trenches 👨‍🌾seem to like and be passionate 💪 about this form of farming and enjoy sharing the experience with tourists too. 🙏🌏

05/04/2024

UNPOPULAR OPINION 😳
Occasionally, you see bad actors highjacking the term Pasture Raised. Slipping in ‘pasture’ in there labelling, or adopting loose fluffy phrases without much to show 👎

Go ahead I reckon…
Easy for me to say, I’m not a Pasture Raised farmer.🤓
But hear me out… 🙉

Terms and labels will come and go but transparent good farming practices that put the health of soil, animal and human before all, that is king 👑 And once a farm has earned the trust of a conscious consumer, they have a direct customer for life. 🤝

Now those no-address/ambiguous/transparent-as-a-brick-wall producers 🙃 that run on fluffy phrases with no talk of soil health. They have a customer base that will turn away at the sniff of a price hike or the whiff of a supply drop👋
So don’t be swayed by fluffy terms. 🤩
Follow your farms and producers. 💪
Learn how they produce. 📚
If they put their names and faces in front, and discuss their practices and the effort they’re making for the betterment of soil, country, and community 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦🌏 That’s a bloody good baseline. ✅
If you can’t find the face or family on the packet anywhere on social media = 🚩🚩🚩

📌 In saying all that, labels are necessary to help define what we are looking for and how the system is run. So let’s all use these terms and learn their agreed upon meanings, but we can’t let it stop there. There’s always more going on under the surface of labels and in the Pasture Raised example most of the time there is a whole lot of good.
🐔 🥚 🌱 🌏🙏

📸 ✅

04/04/2024

SITTING ON THE FENCE
📸 A perfect visual representation of regenerative farming practices measured against conventional methods is the classic neighbour fence-line photo. Now it’s almost never black and white like this but we’ve all seen the example, and it’s a powerful one.
The fence-line stands out, to me, for another reason, which looks a little deeper at the consumer who has already seen this example, 🤔knows the benefits, wants to see these producers succeed and more farmers take up soil improving practices… but is still sitting on the fence and hasn’t come down from that fence to completely change their consumer habits.
I’m one of these 🙋‍♂️still not 100% making the best decisions, but can happily say better than a year ago, and we’ll be better next year.
And just like regen practices consumer habits are a constant grind and a constant work in progress.

📸