Kym Ormond “The Farm Guy” at Kitchen Farm Speaks To AGT About Their Exciting Project

This sustainable 8-hectare land will offer Newenham residents long-term food security with locally grown produce, as well as retail, dining, lifestyle and wellness benefits.

We're anticipating Kitchen Farm will lead the way to making sustainable farmland within residential developments a normal practice in the near future in Australia.

Kym Ormond, The Farm Guy, talks to Aussie Green Thumb about what Kitchen Farm have been up to, what their big plans are for the future, and how the community can become involved.

Kym has brought a wealth of experience to his role at Kitchen Farm, boasting Cart III and IV in permaculture, being on the committee of Permaculture South Australia, being a qualified Le Cordon Bleu Chef and formally having his own nursery.

Watch the video, or read the transcript below, to see how the Kitchen Farm is leading the way for farmland within residential developments in Australia.

Nathan Schwartz:

Hey everyone. Nathan from Aussie Green Thumb here. Today we have a really cool interview for you with Kym Ormond, "The Farm Guy," from Kitchen Farm in Adelaide Hills.

This is a super inspiring project as it is bringing a bunch of ideas to life, such as a nursery and farm-to-table dining, in the middle of a suburban development.

We are absolutely rooting for these guys and looking forward to seeing them grow and become the leading example of farmland within residential developments within Australia.

In this interview with Kym we discuss how to kitchen farm got started and how Kym came aboard the project, as well as their big plans for the future and how you can become a part of it.

Great to have you here today Kym.

Kym Ormond:

Thank you. Thanks for having me. It's really exciting to talk about the project. I think this is the first actual long interview. I think I've done snippets, so I haven't really gone into much detail, so this is pretty cool.

Nathan:

I'm quite excited to hear about it. So, the farm is quite an exciting and new project for the area. Can you tell us a bit more about it?

Kym:

Yeah, sure. I guess why this project is so unique is that Kitchen Farm Adelaide Hills is based within the Newenham Estate in Mount Barker. Newenham is a greenfield development, it's a residential housing area, but within the housing estate, they've allocated eight hectares for farmland, and a bunch of other land is allocated for green spaces and other really cool projects. So, that in itself makes it very unique, and we have a very strong ethos on bringing the community on board with us, and having them actively involved.

Yeah, so that's pretty much the foundation for it. But, there's so much with it. Yeah, we've got the farm, the nursery, the restaurant here, and yeah, we're designing heaps of other really cool stuff with it as well.

Nathan:

Oh, nice. So, the farm's inside the development. So, how's the community interacting with Kitchen Farm?

Kym:

Yeah, that's a good question. At the moment, because we've just started up, where we have a pop-up nursery and within the nursery and that the scheme we've got at the moment, so there's some residents that actively donate their time to help us with it, which we are super-grateful for, but they just really want to see the project take-off.

In particular, there's one lady, Shirley, and I think she's propagated like a thousand plants just off her own bat. Some of those plants, we also deal with the verge plantings in Newenham, and so some of those plants end up back in the verges. Yeah, that's one way.

The other is that we have a project with Communities Living Australia to come help us out at the nursery three times a week. I'm actively working with them and their carers, and they're just amazing people and I'm super-grateful again that they are, one, helping us, but they get their hands dirty and we get to have a really good ongoing relationship with them.

But as the farm progresses, we will start planting that out, we're going to be doing a lot of natives and regenerative work in the beginning, and we're going to ask the community to come join us and plant, if they want to. If they don't want to, that's also fine, but if they do want to get in, then I'll be here with lots of plants.

Nathan:

Nice. Are you guys growing the food for the restaurant?

Kym:

Yeah, at the moment, because the farm project is still relatively new, it's very small-scale, but we have started, so we've got, behind me is the outdoor section for the pantry, and we've got three really massive wicking beds behind us, and then two smaller ones that side.

And so we've just been growing herbs, and lots of tomatoes this season, lots of cherry tomatoes, leafy greens and stuff, so the restaurant, you can just go out, and also when the people come in here to have a coffee or have some food, they can see where we're literally picking stuff from, which is pretty cool.

But yeah, long term, the plan is we'll be able to grow more, and we'll have some land, an agreement with market gardeners where they can lease land here. Yeah, the idea is that we grow produce here to then come back to the farm store.

But in the interim, we know a lot of local farmers, so we've got a little farm store here at the Pantry, and all the local farmers that we've been in contact with, that we want to support, they have an avenue to sell their produce here, which is really cool, so we get to support them.

Nathan:

Okay, nice. Is that open every day? When can people come and visit?

Kym:

Also, a good question. We reopen officially, the Pantry reopens on the 15th of April, and then we'll be open the regular trading hours, which was Friday to Monday, and then the Pantry and the farm store will go seven days, and then the farm and the nursery will be open on every Saturday from the 29th of April onwards, and people can come see me and we can have a chat.

Nathan:

Fantastic. Okay, so it's open quite often, so people can come in.

How did you get into becoming the manager at The Kitchen? What's your background before you came onto this project?

Kym:

Yeah, so I used to own my own nursery in Port Adelaide, which is a different complete other end of Adelaide. I met Olivia Burke, who's the owner of Kitchen Farm Adelaide Hills. And yeah, I basically came up to just have a chat about the project because I was sort of interested in it, and we just got along really well.

She explained the vision and I completely got the vision, and we just started going back and forth about how we could get there. And then it basically just went from a chat to sort of a job interview. And then we went back and forth for probably a couple months, and then my wife and my kids and I, we all moved up to the area and then just started working here. So, it's been about three months, give or take a bit, in the role.

Yeah, it's been really exciting, been really cool to go from that, having my own nursery and working on other market gardeners' garden plots to having this space and all the different projects that we're doing here. And it's tying together all my past experiences.

Nathan:

Yeah. It sounds like it's a great concept. And it seems like you're pretty well fit for the role. Do you know if it was Olivia's idea or if it was the council whose idea it was to have this farmland in the middle of the development? Just like it's so out there for Australia. It's common overseas, but here it's not common yet. So, I'm just wondering whose idea it is.

Kym:

Yeah, well, so I guess it was... Burke Developments, they run Newenham the estate, and they're developing it, and I guess it was the collective team that run that. They decided rather than letting, because there's eight hectares that we couldn't really put housing on, and they looked at alternatives.

 In Europe, particularly the spacing where it is, it's very common to introduce some farmland within communities. And so they saw the benefits that it could create. I guess it does, it adds something to this place that other estates wouldn't necessarily have. You don't really ever see residential estates put farmland within the middle. They might just plant out some native trees, but yeah, it's a completely different route. So, I guess it was them.

Council, I think they're very keen to see what happens and they work very closely with them. I guess it's a really good case study because we want to show that it can be done and the benefit that it brings to the local community and the greater community. There's so much potential, and everyone that I've spoken to about this has gone, "This is such a good idea."

So, to us, I mean, it's almost common sense to us. I mean, in a way, it's uncommon sense because it should be common, but it's not. So, yeah, it's been a collective effort from lots of different people. But yeah, Olivia Burke has been really driving it. She's really passionate about it.

Nathan:

Okay. Yeah, it's a great idea because it's a great way for the community to have somewhere to meet up, to mingle, and have that community at heart in where they live rather than going to the shopping center. You go down the farm and you do some work, you pick your veggies, you go back home, you cook them, you go have a meal at the restaurant. It's the food, the growing to the plate and then having that friendship around it. I think it's a great, great way to get everyone back into the community spirits. I know since all the fencing went from the four-foot fences up to the seven-foot Colorbond fences, no one knows the neighbors. So, having this, where you can then meet people and get to mingle in the community, I think it's such a great idea.

Kym:

Totally. Yeah. I mean, community gardens, they're very unproductive, but you make great friends. Whenever I would go to the community garden, I would do 2% gardening, 98% chatting, and having a good time. And no, you're totally right. Gardens and soil and plants and food, it all brings people together. So, we want to facilitate that, for sure.

Nathan:

Yeah. I have in my notes that you're actually a chef as well. Is that right?

Kym:

Yeah, that is true, yeah. 11 years ago now, I went to cooking school. I basically just finished high school and decided I was going to become a chef, and I really loved food. I still love food. But yeah, I was just really keen on, I don't know, exploring food and getting, I guess, to learn how to cook.

And so I was really fortunate the year that I was doing my course, Le Cordon Bleu, which is a French culinary school, they were opening their school in Adelaide. And so I got, the first year they were running it, they needed students, and I basically got invited to be a part of the course, and I had no idea what that meant, but it was pretty amazing.

It was a really good year of just pretty much amazing fine-dining-cooking expertise being thrown on me. And I was a complete novice. I went into cooking school so bad at cooking. I was like mi-goreng-fried-egg level, and I was like, "I'm a culinary genius." And I went in like that. And yeah, it was probably one of the best things I did.

But I guess I worked in the industry for a long time, and then I had a bit of breaks and went on and off. And then my wife and I went traveling around Australia, and I want to take a break from working in kitchens, and we started volunteering on farms. And that was when I was like, "Okay, this is what I want to do."

And then we volunteered at a farm in Derby, which is in Western Australia. Wendy, the owner, was really into permaculture, and she's just like, "Look, like this is my setup, this is what I studied." And I was just completely converted, and I saw her farm and just how awesome her lifestyle was, and just thought, "I've got to get onto this permaculture thing." Yeah. And that's pretty much it, really.

Nathan:

So, you went from that, then owned a nursery, so you did permaculture there, and now you're running this new, innovative farm in a residential area. That's the way the steps work.

Kym:

Yeah, it's quite cool. The cheffing thing has come really handy because the cheffing world, there's a lot of ins and outs with it, and you need to understand the stresses that chefs are under to produce the food. And there's a lot of bringing the market garden produce to the cafe and to the chef.

Yeah, it's quite a fine art, and actually getting the balance of what's in season and what you can actually provide, to what the chef wants. I think when the kitchen reopens and we redevelop here and get the new commercial kitchen in, I reckon some of the collaborations that'll happen will be amazing. Really exciting about it. Yeah.

Nathan:

Yeah, it's very exciting. So, what's in store for the future of Kitchen Farm? You've got the grand opening happening. Once it's open, what's the vision for the long term for it?

Kym:

We have lots of projects going on at the moment, but basically, so we have a pop-up nursery, so we're going to move onto the stage one nursery, which is our production nursery. So, we're going to start developing that and putting in the poly tunnels and the fencing for that and the irrigation.

Nathan:

At that nursery, what do you plan to grow there? As you said before, natives or you growing vegetables so people can buy seedlings? What's going to happen there?

Kym:

My old nursery was very centered on food, so we're going to be doing that. But yeah, so a big focus on edible plants, specifically plants that can grow in our climate. We live in a Mediterranean climate, but in the Adelaide Hills, we're in a microclimate where it's sort of a cool mountain climate. So, you get a bit of both worlds. We want to have plants that are adapted to this area.

Also, with nurseries, there are getting less and less nurseries that grow plants, which sounds weird, but nurseries tend to buy in stock, or garden centers, I guess is another name. But some places will call themselves a plant nursery, and they order in stock, which is perfectly fine, not judging them at all, but we really just want to grow our own stuff. If we do order in, it's from this farmer, this is how he grows it, and we can tell that story.

But yeah, to answer your question though, we'll be growing fruit trees, seedlings, natives, some ornamentals, indoor plants, succulents, pretty much as much as we can possibly do, but we really want to focus on edible plants first and foremost.

Nathan:

Yeah. Yeah, I think for edible plants, I've noticed a shift in the way people grow food at home, after having COVID lockdowns and there've been shortages at supermarkets, and now you've got rising costs.

I've noticed from our website, that a lot of people go into now, "What can I grow at home just in case it's not at the shops? What are the things that give us a lot of food with a little, not as much effort, just so we always have something on hand?" I think it's a great shift.

I think it's really good, people going back to growing their own food, just their little gardens at home, or you've got garden towers now. No matter what space you have, you can grow some food at home, which I think is a really good shift.

Kym:

Totally. Yeah, yeah. I did notice, I had my nursery during COVID, and when COVID first hit, there was one day when we pretty much sold out of plants. The only thing that was left was aloe vera, and I don't know, cat grass or something, it was just insane. And I was like, "I don't know where we're going to get any more stock."

And then, yeah, we worked it out in the end. But yeah, that definitely shifted. That caused a big shift in people. And even still, more people are constantly getting into growing food, which is amazing, and I want to see more of it. Yeah.

Nathan:

Yeah. Are you going to grow some natives? Are you going to grow some native bush tucker plants?

Kym:

Yes, yes. That's something I'm very passionate about. The bush food industry, there's a lot of work that needs to be done on developing seed-selecting species so we improve crops over time. So, that's something I really want to focus on. We want to have a dedicated native bush tucker section purely for plant propagating, but also so we can introduce it into the cafe and get it out to people as well. Yeah, yeah.

Nathan:

Yeah. We're quite passionate about  Australian native bush tucker, so we're trying to give a lot of information on how to grow it, how to eat it, how to prepare it, which is one of the reasons why we have our website is to get people back into, we're in Australia and there's food everywhere, but no one knows about it. So, it's-

Kym:

It's true, yeah.

Nathan:

... just to educate everyone of what's out there and what you can actually have where you don't need to grow your standard vegetables all the time or your standard fruits. There's just so much food abundant in Australia. It's just how to prepare it and how to look for it.

Kym:

Yeah, totally. Yeah, yeah. There's some things like sea celery, which is a native celery plant. It has a little bit of a stronger taste. It's more like a parsley mixed with a celery, but honestly, that reaches maturity in six weeks, whereas the celery that we buy at the shops takes three to four months to get to full size. So, there's certainly some crops that can totally just be introduced off the bat, and they're just awesome.

Nathan:

Yeah, it's a bit of a game changer, the untapped fruit and veggies which are out there.

Kym:

Totally, yeah. So, much work needs to go into it, and I'm really keen to get that started. Yeah.

Nathan:

That's pretty exciting. What are the other projects that the Kitchen Farm is working on?

Kym:

Yeah, so we've got the nursery will be the next stage, and then we've got this eight hectares of farmland. So, we're working out the water system for that at the moment and how that's going to play out long term. And then eventually, yeah, we're going to sublease that and allow access for market gardeners who don't have access to land.

And then, yeah, we're going to build the cafe here. We're going to work on that some more, put in another kitchen, because we've outgrown our humble little space here. And just, yeah, educational tours, workshops. Man, there's so many things.

There's also another section up the back here with the vineyard that we're looking at working on again. Yeah, so there's lots of really cool, really cool projects. Just yeah. But the nursery, the stage one nursery, getting the production nursery up, that's the next big goal.

Nathan:

Oh, yeah. It's so exciting. So many projects happening, and as they roll out over the years, I can see this becoming a really great hub for the Adelaide Hills, where people just go spend the weekend there, do tours, eat some great food, great wine in the region. So, yeah, sounds like it'll be a really good spot.

Kym:

Exactly.

Nathan:

I think we'll start wrapping up now. I've got a final question. What is your favorite thing to grow and why?

Kym:

Ah. Was that your curveball question?

Nathan:

Yeah, that was it.

Kym:

Yeah. Yeah, that is a bit of a curveball. I mean, I guess growing plants, it's like your kids, you love them all for different reasons. I will say I do have one thing that I'm particularly very proud of. I grow this type of chili.

It's called a Rocoto chilli or a Manzano chilli. 

So, it's a type of chili from Peru, and they're a long-life chili. Most chili plants, they tend to live for one season, whereas the Manzano chili, that lives for 15 years on average, and it grows moreso into a small fruit tree.

I've got six varieties at the moment, and it's this amazing, beautiful chili. It's almost like a small capsicum. It's quite fleshy, and it's very juicy, but it makes an amazing hot sauce, and it's hot like a habanero. So, you get a bit of everything. But that to me is my...

When I was studying permaculture, when I was doing that at tertiary level, I researched that plant, and then when I got seeds for it, I grew it. And then, yeah, it was just this amazing thing of studying it, going, "This thing looks amazing," growing it, and then getting new varieties and seed saving. Yeah. So, I'm really passionate about the Rocotos. That's probably my favorite.

But man, I love fig trees, quinces, I love fruit trees. They're also, I'm big on fruit trees.

Nathan:

Yeah. Oh, that chili sounds great to grow because yeah, we grow habaneros and we love, ever since we went to Mexico a couple of years ago, but habanero chili is pretty much the only chili we eat now and-

Kym:

Ah, cool.

Nathan:

... it's just got so much kick. It's just beautiful in dishes. But yeah, we love it fresh, just with some onion and coriander, and yeah, so now we've got a new chili to try and to grow, so that's-

Kym:

Yeah. Yeah, definitely check it out. It's called the Rocoto chili or sometimes the Manzano, so if you see that anywhere, definitely get it, because it grows really well across Australia.

Nathan:

Yep. Perfect. Yeah, I'll research it after this interview. How will people get in touch with you, get in touch with Kitchen Farm, and find out more information about your opening times and hours and what's happening?

Kym:

Yeah, so we're on social media, all platforms. The handle is "Kitchen Farm Adelaide Hills". You can follow the Kitchen Farm Pantry, which is our farm store and cafe here. You can follow me, Kym Ormond, if you want to follow me. My posts aren't as serious. They're a bit lighthearted. But yeah, so follow us on social media, and if you're in Mount Barker, we're at 164 Flaxley Road. And check out the website and drop by, because, yeah, there's really cool stuff happening.

Nathan:

Okay, perfect. So, yeah, all those links will be down in the notes below this video and on the page. So, yeah, it's been really great having you on, Kym, and finding about your story and how you've come into this great position and what the Kitchen Farm's doing, and how they're innovating the communities in Australia. I think it's really interesting.

Kym:

Thank you. No, thanks for having me on. It's really good to chat.

Nathan:

Yeah, it'd be great to have you back on in the future to hear how the nursery's going and how the cafe now is open and how it's all progressing.

Kym:

Yeah, definitely. It'll be interesting to see if I have bags under my eyes, or if I'm coming in really smiling.

Nathan:

We'll have a before-and-after photo of this interview to one later on.

Kym:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Completely white hair. Yeah, that's really good. Yeah, look forward to it.

Nathan:

Okay, perfect. All right. Thank you very much, Kym, and we'll talk to you later. All right, see ya.

Kym:

No worries.

Kitchen Farm resources:

Website: https://www.kitchenfarm.com.au/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kitchenfarmadelaidehills/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kitchenfarmpantry/