GROUNDED Live - 2026: Jo Lawson & Dan Hunter - The Gardener & The Chef

Welcome to a new season of GROUNDED Live. This season features presentations recorded at GROUNDED Festival 2026, held over two memorable days on Yan Yan Gurt West Farm in Victoria, Australia. Each episode captures the ideas, stories and practical knowledge shared by the farmers, researchers, chefs, practitioners and thinkers who came together to explore healthier landscapes, healthier food systems and healthier communities.

In this conversation, Brae gardener Jo Lawson and chef Dan Hunter explore one of the most important relationships in food: the connection between the people who grow it and the people who cook it. Together they discuss collaboration, creativity and the occasional tension between the paddock and the plate, offering a thoughtful look at how great food begins long before it reaches the kitchen.

GROUNDED Festival is a cross between a farming conference and a food festival, held on a different farm each year. Every festival is unique, celebrating the people, landscapes and food of its host region through an inspiring line-up of speakers, local producers and hands-on learning.

With multiple stages running concurrently, GROUNDED brings together science and technology, ancient wisdom and fresh thinking. It provides a respectful place for lively discussion, an audience as interesting as the speakers, and an excellent menu of local food, drinks and music, all on a beautiful, regeneratively managed farm.

Each year, we record many of the presentations and make them freely available as the GROUNDED Live podcast. We hope you enjoy the conversations.

Thanks for listening, and if you enjoy this episode, we'd love to welcome you to a future GROUNDED Festival.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:05

G'day there, I'm Matthew Evans, and I'm the founder and curator of the Grounded Festival. And what follows is the Grounded Podcast. Now this is the audio that we capture from the speakers in the tent, live on the debate unedited. And I hope you enjoy it. I'm the Chef by Trick, and we run a Pack Plate restaurant, I guess, for one of the better terms. And so I love this connection between the people who grow the food and the people who cook the food, whether that's a home cook or a chef. And this session's called The Gardener and the Chef, and we've got this amazing restaurant local to the site for Grounded 2026. Brave. And so I've got Joe Lawson the Gardener talking with Dan Hunter, the chef, about that connection.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

All right, we're here, everyone. Good morning. Thank you for joining here in the Aragum Town here at Grounded. I want to start by acknowledging country. Thank brother for his incredible welcome this morning and the smoking ceremony. I want to start by acknowledging and pay my debt respects to Elvis Past and President of this place. I thank them for their ongoing protection both here and acknowledge the resilience of the community here, seeing recent challenges in the landscape of fire and drought. I know our indigenous communities talk deeply to country and know the hurt, and they know the hurt, but also know the solutions. So I think that's important. I also want to thank the Stuart family. And if you see them around, please go up and say thank you. Uh, it is a big deal to open your farm up for all of this to happen. So please say a big thank you to them. But so too, do I also want to thank them for their connection and appreciation to local mob of this community and the heart they put in to hold the space here. And lastly, to the organizers and volunteers for Grounded, this day has definitely become a must for Australian farmers. So if you see any of those people wearing those shirts, please thank them as well. Some general housekeeping, similar to what Matthew said, please ensure your phones are off or on silent during the talk today. We're recording the session, so if you do want to ask a question at any stage, make sure you grab a microphone before you ask. If you want to have a yarn at any stage, feel free. Go right ahead. Just if you can make sure you're not just at the back of the tent to interfere, just go off and have a coffee or something. And lastly, on housekeeping for those sessions that have authors, uh, and I'll let you know the books are for sale at the bookshop, which is just across there. Um and go and find the author so that they can scribble on the book for you. I'm sure you'd appreciate that. Um, also want to take a moment to thank our sponsors, particularly the major sponsor, Upper Barw and Landcare Network, and the Yarragun Tent sponsor, Kringomite Catchment Management Authority. A big thank you to them. And lastly, there's those bingo cards around. If you haven't got one, go to the front uh counter and get one, and you can go in the drawer for that $1,000 prize. Alright, so our first session today is called The Gardener and the Chef. I'm not sure about the order or the process behind that, but that's a session we've left with. Uh Bray is a world-class and internationally recognized Altways restaurant, organic farm, and offers boutique accommodation. They've held the highest ranking of three hats from the Good Food Guide for over a decade since a guide's inception in 2014. For over a decade, the Bray team have clapped to the rhythm of the local landscape to complement and nurture and give back to the landscapes and people. Today we're joined by both Joe and Dan, the gardener and the chef of Bray. Hence the title. Joe has an incredible amount of market garden knowledge, running our own business for six years, with a wealth of experience across biodynamic and organic systems across Australia, the US, and Italy. And Dan is the co-owner of Bray, a very well-awarded chef, like very well awarded, uh, and blends his values and ambition through meals to nourish us. His debut book was released in 2017 entitled Bray Recipes and Stories from the Restaurant. And hopefully it's available at the bookshop. So make sure you get a copy. And Dan will scribble in those as much as you'd like. Today, Dan and Joe will give us a background to the Bray story, flipping both sides of the coin to share their thoughts on opportunities and constraints in navigating the complexity of finding the hidden personalities of cuisine from soil to stomach. So, Dan, over to you to start us off.

SPEAKER_11 4:35

Thanks, Josh. Thanks everyone for making time this morning. Um, and obviously, thanks to Matthew and the grounded team for having us. Obviously, we know it's a team, nothing good is done by a single person. So um we can see there's a big group of people working very hard to make us all comfortable today. And obviously, thanks to the Stuart family for having us. It's um a real pleasure to be here on this property. Um it would have been good if we had that intro before we came up with what we're talking about. Oh no. Look, it's um I think um the synergies between between Bray and Grounded as a festival. Um and it's probably a little bit unusual for for a chef to be speaking at a at a farming and agricultural sort of shindy. Um but I think what makes what we do at Bray and Grounded so similar is the types of things that we that we measure ourselves by. Um I was just looking and speaking with Matthew over the week, and um, you know, I think at Bray we imagine a world improved by restaurants and hospitality. Um and it's a place where our commitment to innovation and sustainability and our own growth leaves our team fulfilled every day uh and the environment and our community in a better place. Um and through the integrity of what we do at Bray, we hope to leave things better. And I noticed that um one of the key parts of the grounded festival is to to work out ways to leave things better and to make things better. So I think that's it's real the real synergy between between our restaurant and and this festival. Um so Matthew and asked Joe and I a little bit to to share with you the synergies um and complexities that we share while working together as a chef and a grower in what is, to be honest, a fairly high profile and high detail environment. Um with sort of small windows of of what we're aiming for, you know. So um, so yeah, so for those of you who don't know, um know the restaurant, it's um it's just very close to here. It's only about seven or eight minutes if you go the rifle butts road, um, back to Biraguara. Um and it's a 20-acre farm. Uh it's a small restaurant, so to speak, in the terms of you know, what you might see in a city. It's only a 30-seat restaurant. Um and 20 acres is a small farm for many people here. Obviously, it's almost like a patch of dirt, but it's a big farm for a for a restaurant. Um essentially, what we do there is um we have vegetable gardens, um, a large kitchen garden, which um Joe will go into later. Um, fruit orchards, olives. Um, we have 10 acres which we dedicate to grain production. Um from that grain, we've been able to make beers, make beverages, we use for milling and bread. Um we have large uh native plantings, which is really important in an organic system. Um we grow the food from a sustainability point of view, we grow the food um organically using biodynamic methods where appropriate. And essentially we're just trying to grow the very best things we can for uh the restaurant. And you know, funnily enough, we're probably not going to talk too much about what we do in the restaurant because it's almost second to what we do on the property. Um, the restaurant sort of exists because of its ability to source and produce um the very highest quality vegetables mainly that we believe we can that we can source. Why do we do this? Um I've been working kitchens now for 30 years. Um I've been working outside of a city now for 20 years and running gardens or production facilities, so to speak, excuse me, um for about 18 years, um both here and in the Grampians previously. And I think I worked in Spain for a few years, and one of the things I noticed when I was working outside of a city for the first time was um the quality of the products that I could access um when working very closely with at that time external farmers. And then when returning to Australia, I realized that at that time the only way to do that was to get involved in uh personal production, so to speak. So um Joe's been with us for three and a half years, um but the properties we've had been on the property for 13 years and and started the project um prior to her to her being there. I see Tom in the background there. Tom used to work for us as well. Hi, Tom. Um so yeah, I mean, you know, what are we what are we doing at Bray? Like, what are we doing day-to-day? I suppose. Um and and of course, if there's something of interest to you, just yell out because I think maybe there's some questions in there that we haven't considered and we'd love to know about. Um but essentially we're working 12 months of the year. Um, we're working with, I don't know what we'd just say the garden size is. Yeah, kitchen gardens about half an acre. Um there's approximately 300 fruit trees on the property. Um and you know, just reacting to a very pre-conceived, pre-programmed considered environment um to produce a cuisine for the restaurant. Um and I mean I'd maybe Joe could have a bit of a chat about how she sees that working.

SPEAKER_09 10:43

Hello. So I'll just introduce myself a little bit and talk about the work that I do at Bray, and I would love people to jump in with questions. Um, I've been there three and a half years. I came in with about 10 years of market gardening experience under my belt at that point. Uh, early started was really mostly volunteering, so like woofing on farms overseas was how I first got an interest in working as a market gardener, but then did quite a bit of early training um at a farm outside of Canberra uh called All Sun Farm. And a lot of market gardeners in my sort of cohort did training or work there uh, you know, about 15, 20 years ago. At the time I was working there, they were selling exclusively to restaurants. And it was a market garden that was very much straight out of the Elliott Coleman playbook. It was, you know, um standardized beds that were permanent, uh, movable polytunnels, and really like intensive growing of high-value crops. Uh and I suppose for me that was a really good early education in growing crops like Rodicchios, really good heirloom tomatoes, some things that are quite chefy, like short at the time, shoshido peppers and cucamelons and spring garlic. Um, so learning how to grow those things and also how to harvest them, the post-harvest handling, you know, how to uh present things in a way that chefs would like. So that was my early foundation, and that set me up quite well, I think, um, as a grower. From there, I moved to Apollo Bay and started a small-scale market garden. And I did try to sell to chefs down there, but there was not much of a restaurant scene. So, you know, with the benefit of hindsight, I think I wasted a lot of time and energy and didn't really make any money. Um, you know, but I sort of clung on to it a little bit because they were the only clients that I had that wanted purple basil and you know, were like really impressed by my tomatoes. Uh so that was nice. Uh I mostly did a Veggie Box CSA. So, you know, people were paying me in advance to grow their vegetables, uh, and did farmers markets on weekends. Um six, seven years in, you know, I'd I'd always been, I suppose, aware of Bray as a restaurant in the region, but I had gone and dined there for my 40th. Um, and I do remember like sitting in the standing in the car park with my friends afterwards, and um, you know, we were all going, well, that was the best restaurant meal we'd ever had. It was amazing. And it was, you know, that combination of the food, the service, you're in a beautiful building on a gorgeous property, and seeing all the food production happening around you, there's a sort of a synergy to that that makes it an incredible experience, in my opinion. So, and oh, I'd been really nosy and like poked my probably opened some doors, but I wasn't supposed to open and looked around the garden and went, this is really interesting, and I wouldn't mind having a go if I ever got the opportunity. So, about 12 months later, the head gardener role was advertised, and I inquired uh and made that shift to working there. And I would say I went in with a reasonable amount of confidence about the vegetable production because that was my background, uh, but had no experience professionally in orchard management, or um of which there's a lot, there's hundreds of fruit trees, they've all been trained in different ways, they all need slightly different things. Um, there's also really extensive ornamental gardens, there's berries, there's all these things I had just hadn't really touched. Uh, and I probably my first 12 months there, I thought I'm gonna be able to delegate these things. You know, there's other people on my team who know how to do this. And after about 12 months, I very much realized I needed to be able to do all of them in order to be able to train people and supervise them properly. And so I had a bit of a learning curve on all of those things. Um, so I mean, in terms of what my my job looks like, you know, there's this extensive kitchen garden. We're growing hundreds of different crops, herbs, edible gardens. I keep making the herb garden bigger, whether Dan approves or not. Um I just keep adding an extra couple of beds every year and sort of squeezing in another couple of time varieties. Um there's all these fruit trees, there's the berries, there's the uh you know, olive groves, we do all our own propagation. So there's a lot of coordinating and scheduling of all of these jobs, managing a small team, working very closely with the senior chefs. We're harvesting daily, and I would say for most of the year, about 50% of my job is harvesting to very, very specific requirements. Um getting into really granular detail on that. I write an email once a week, which is this is what we have coming up, this is what's finishing, this is what we have in. I say in abundance, but that means I've planted too much beetroot. Please, please, will you take some beetroot?

SPEAKER_12 15:43

Sometimes some of them subliminal.

SPEAKER_09 15:46

That's advertising. Um and um and I give them a bit of a snapshot of everything that's happening in the garden and and literally a spreadsheet of everything we have available and the rough quantities I think we have it in. There's usually what? 120 things on their minimum, yeah. Um, and that gets printed off to me daily, and we harvest for the first half of every day, starting very early in the morning. And the shorthand that you've developed around that's quite, I mean, for me, it's the size of a pinky, the size of a thumbnail, um uh sharpie, spyro, uh pencil. Um, so things that you know for the way you want things on the plate is very specific. Would you like to talk a bit about that?

SPEAKER_11 16:36

I guess that probably raises an interesting point where we differ, so to speak, from from um the typical the typical um purchaser, let's say, uh kitchen chef, um, someone buying from the outside market, um that is even when working very closely with with a few growers, so to speak, um, and often from different regions, like not working so closely with their own very, very tight um microclimate or their their own region. Um, if you're in a city, for example, you could work very closely with with two or three growers, um, but they could be in three different parts of Victoria. Um, they could be, you know, three hours in every direction from from the city or two hours at least, you know, if you consider Mornington, Central Victoria, the Otways, you know, it's there's a combined travel time of you know up to seven, eight hours to get product to the door, you know. So um, in that sense, uh one of the ways in which we've developed is to to ensure that we're working very, very closely with with our sites um and our knowledge of what's possible um on that on that piece of land. And that's obviously always changing because you know seasons are varying widely. You know, there's not just like a little bit of a change of the seasons, like just a totally different season to last year. The last three years have been all over the shop, summers particular. Um but obviously over time, over 13 years and and with varying levels of expertise, and right now with having Joe with us and and being, you know, um very competent, very knowledgeable, very skillful, um, very interested, and also very um interested in restaurants, like in the outcome of the product, that allows for a communication to occur that's um very precise. Um and it's not always it's not always for a dish in mind. You know, it's not like we're not on the sketchbook designing the size of vegetables and then coming up with with dishes before we've seen it. It's it's more so having a pantry available um and having a really tight um understanding of each other of what's what's possible, um, and then growing a pantry each season to then stimulate the creativity um to produce the dishes that end up in the restaurant, or um to make use of surplus to be seen in the restaurant in future seasons. And I think one thing I said to Jo in the last couple of weeks, which um I know she's been repeating on the garden tours, is that you know at Bray you visually eat the current season, but on the palate you're eating multiple seasons all the time. You're not always eating just exactly what you see. You're obviously we're we're we're we're using up what could be considered a surplus or overgrown items, or or even sometimes specifically growing things to to put in the pantry to ferment or to make into powders or or various things that sit for up to five, six, seven years sometimes that sits underneath of what you see on the dishes. So this this what you're seeing in the garden, what's happening in the garden day to day is is is the current season, but you're always eating a multiple seasons when you're eating a prey. Um so yeah, I suppose you know um there's a there's quite a difference between a typical market garden and and having the market garden on site. You know, I don't heard Joe talk about going to market with really beautiful things in Apollo Bay and often being left with them. Or or being or being having people having people want specific things, you know, like the the pantry's small. Um yeah, and I think you know, at Bray, I mean a typical market garden, I believe, is you know, for space and for the cost is is and for and to make sure they're selling is growing maybe 40 to 60 crops a season. Um and I know in Jo's first year she commented to me that she sort of thought it'd be easy when she got there, and it was 160 crops on the list, and um it's not in excess, it's not it's not like over the top, it's just it's just what's required to to facilitate a cuisine at that level, you know.

SPEAKER_09 21:27

So, you know, growing for market, you know, in a more conventional market garden, um for people wanting veggie boxes or or to buy at a weekend market, um, you do have a much more limited range of crops, and you really need to meet people where they are as eaters, which is, you know, for the most part not very experimental. And I used to have a rule when I did veggie boxes, which is no more than one weird thing. You know, you can you can do a bunch of radishes, but you can't do a bunch of radishes and a kohlrabi. Like you're it's just not it's not how people cook, it's not it's not how people want to. Think on a Wednesday night about their dinner. Um, and I, you know, always ri one of the reasons I like growing for chefs is that they want you to grow the interesting things. They want you to grow the heirlooms and the things that are aesthetically interesting and flavorsome and that often have the interesting stories behind them as well, which add is adds this whole other layer of meaning. You know, it's the seed saving, it's the things that came in in someone's suitcase in the 1950s. And you know, I really enjoy that sort of culinary and and social history around food as well as a grower.

SPEAKER_12 22:34

That's what we've done more recently with anywhere.

SPEAKER_11 22:40

You know, because a lot of that a lot of a lot of um delicious vegetables, not just not just the weird things, you know, a lot of things that have uh a lot of culinary value, they're not in the marketplace, you know. Like that's becoming more, it's becoming more common today as as as more as farmer markets are bigger, you know, um, as look, to be fair, as as more recently in the last decade, as as a lot of growers have been working closer with chefs and seeing things and then seeing them spill out a little bit into um into society, so to speak. You know, I think having food shows on TV, it's it's giving a wider a wider selection of of product, which is nice. Um But I suppose it's you know a lot of the seeds, they're not in the country. We have such biosecurity, you know, measures in Australia that a lot of the a lot of the things you see on your travels or you've or we've worked with in other countries, it's either a very watered-down version that really doesn't have much in the way of flavour, or is difficult to grow, just fails. Um, and then seeds, you know, this there's a pack of 10 seeds and it's four years old, and it just doesn't germinate, you know. So um there's been numerous vegetables in the last few years where we're almost shepherding them through a couple of seasons to get a tiny crop to then get something that we can serve, you know. Yeah, and that I don't know, there's for us, there's huge value in that, you know.

SPEAKER_09 24:29

Um and I suppose getting back to some of the other reasons for for growing to chefs um and and the specificity of what we're doing, um, you know, I think there's a real pleasure in that. It's it's not for everyone. We have people on our team sometimes who, you know, when I do get asked to pick you know 120 perfect shiso leaves that have to be a very specific size because you're putting them on the plate in this particular way, and none of them can have a hole in them. There are some people who either can't or won't do it because it just makes them want to jump off a bridge, you know, like it's really that it's it's lucky they've had winds.

SPEAKER_12 25:07

They're a little more ordered.

SPEAKER_09 25:09

Like it it it some of it's so precise and so fiddly and requires a lot of patience. Um, but I genuinely enjoy doing it. It scratches an itch for me. I really I like the little fiddly things. Um so so there's that, but I think also as a grower, I would say there's something about seeing being part of that creative process where you you're you're you're growing the raw ingredients and seeing a chef transform them into something that sort of surprises you in its creativity or its depth of flavor or its precision. There's something really rewarding about that. So we do really enjoy that type of work. But you know, developing some of these very obscure crops, Dan really likes to give me like a detective project where he'll say, I think sometimes quite casually, you know, we'd really like it if you grow this, and then I have to, I'm going online. There's not a single grow, and you know, there's nowhere to get the seeds in Australia. I get on the phone to people, we'll be sent seeds from like one obscure grower in Tasmania who's the only person who's got the seeds for this particular leafy green we want to have. Then it can take me a couple of years to learn how to grow it because I don't necessarily have any one you know local to mentor me through you know the growing process for some of these very unusual culinary plants.

SPEAKER_12 26:31

Some of them can they never they never they never. But it's not that they haven't, it's just having you know them.

SPEAKER_09 26:40

It's so common to buy a packet of seeds and have nothing come up, you know, from from little seed companies that you know have old stock on their shelves of these obscure culinary plants. And because they're so obscure, you know, they're not replacing those seeds. Yeah, sometimes we'll trial things and you know they don't go on the menu.

SPEAKER_11 27:10

Yeah, we we I mean saddle milks, if you take a walk in that forest over there, you'll probably see some later. Um they've started popping up recently. Fungi on the property we don't grow. Um uh truffles um there's some in the Otways. Um there's more um outside of the Otways, but still locally, and there's we work with the I mean this is bizarre, but like a private, a private grower of truffles from Skeens Creek who um has a small um a small area of hazelnut trees on a farm in Skeens Creek that doesn't sell commercially, that we take the full crop each year. Um so we're not putting the trees in, you know.

SPEAKER_07 28:17

So what percentage are are external inputs to what percentage is everything on your plant that you produced on your plants?

SPEAKER_11 28:26

Yeah, I mean, um so meat, seafood obviously we it's all external. Um and then you know, Braiser Vegetable Farm. Uh I would say, I mean, it's you know, we're not we're not putting it through a spreadsheet, but but in summer, like this time of year right now, um this week, let's say, it's it's well over 90% of, you know, we might buy we might buy five kilos of fat juicing carrots to make a veal stock rather than take up the ground to grow them. And we might buy uh at this time of year 15 kilos of a nice specific organic potato to do something that's not available right now and takes a lot of space. Um, but really like it's just it's it's it's sometimes embarrassing to call a veg guy to drive to Bira Gara to deliver a bag of parsnips, you know, like it's and we sort of we we sort of basically try not to use those things um and have a menu that's more reflective of of who we are. And even in winter now, like and you know, the this is sort of going back to the comment I made before about the preservation sort of program that's occurring. Even in mid-winter, um we'll be serving stuff from previous winters or previous, you know, warmer seasons that have been preserved in some way as a baseline for some of the dishes. And the dishes are quite reductive too. Like it's a long menu, it's not like it's not meat and five veg on every plate. It's it's often, and this working this way allows us to do this. It's it's highlighting and spotlighting and putting you know a big light on very specific singular ingredients and developing dishes around that, and then a menu around that, um, to highlight the work that occurs outside, basically, and these rare, these rare things that we're interested in?

SPEAKER_01 30:43

Hello? Um, yeah, I'm just curious. I know that like chefs and growers can speak quite different languages and they have different stresses and different um challenges or focuses. So I'm curious with the success of Bray needing for you guys to be on the same page and working so closely, how have you, Dan, kind of cultivated a culture at Bray where you are understanding each other and speaking the same language and kind of working across the restaurant and garden?

SPEAKER_11 31:11

Um being like super flexible to to and not and not not expecting things to be how you see them, but reacting to the variables in a positive way, so to speak. Like I don't think like the cuisine that we serve is very natural looking, it's it's very precise, and it's it might be you know not necessarily lots visible going on, but deep flavours. Um and therefore I'm really interested in those variations within nature, like that not everything has to be a hundred times the same. It's we might do the same work, but the aesthetic might vary even on the same table, even a table of two might have things that look slightly different. And I think looking through the plates through the lens of nature is very important, you know. It's very rare that all the trees are exactly straight, and that's aesthetically very pleasing that they're not. And so if everything's square on the plate, it's not very nice. Um, so having that having that ability to see possibilities within what others may see as a blemish is important, and knowing that we that we're able to do other things and just put that piece of food on a plate, but let's say not manipulate, but you know, change what something is, change its texture, change its use, use it as a seasoning, do something different with it to then um to give value to it. Um and I think you know, we talked about this this week. It's just the communication is super important and flexibility is super important. Um, and having someone that's running the agricultural side of things who loves eating in restaurants is super important, you know, actually. Um, so that's you know, I think Joesn't walk too often at the possibilities of things. Like, you know, she said I said say things casually, but you know, that's just how we that's how we discuss things. And it's like um, but we're both very precise in in in the way we work, you know. The garden's got very straight edges and it's very nice. I like that, you know. Um so it's it's almost like it's a bit of and I mean I just feel like I'm a passenger sometimes, if you're not like hearing Joe talk before about the project, it's like I'm just there to like throw glitter on things at the end, almost, you know, like it's it's it's setting up an environment to allow the team to do their work and then just reacting to that in a way that's that's positive for for the outcome and the I guess for the restaurant, you know.

SPEAKER_08 34:11

Hello. Um just a question with the um how was the soil health of the land when you first got to it? Um, as in was it uh poor sheep farming country? Yeah. So it's poor poor so the soil health was pretty lacking.

SPEAKER_09 34:27

I mean was I mean when I came in, there'd been a kitchen garden in that place for in in place for eight or nine years. No? Oh really? All right, four years. Um so there'd been some significant soil improvement done already. Um, but it's it's it's sandy soil that has a bit of a tendency to sort of collapse on itself. So we're extremely gentle with it. We don't do any tillage. Um, we're not completely no-dig. I I like to gently fork the soil to relieve compaction. Um we can get quite heavy rainfall in spring.

SPEAKER_12 35:02

Um we do quite yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 35:08

There's the the drainage is just interesting, I would say, across a small site. Um, one of the things coming in in my first year is we I I I did whip the compost making program into shape. So we make a very good uh green waste compost out of um the garden waste and we're on a closed loop system with the kitchen. So we get all that food waste. We make a pretty decent compost that we can use as a mulching layer. I also make a BD compost once a year. We're gearing up to do that at the moment. Our neighbours are sheep farmers, and I go and clean out their shearing shed and make beautiful hot compost. Um, other than that, we do a lot of cover cropping, particularly over winter. Uh, where we're putting out 500 and other biological activators. Um, and I think, you know, working on such a small site, you know, it's like every bed is different. You sort of get to know them in this really almost intimate way over a number of years, where you go, that one's that one needs a rest. You know, that one's looking premium. We should put our high value crop in that. So whilst we're doing crop rotations, um, it's all a bit in my head. Uh, and I'm pretty I'm I'm I'm fairly loose with it because I like to be opportunistic. As soon as a crop goes out comes out, we put something in, either a cover crop or another cash crop.

SPEAKER_12 36:24

Uh and that's um like repeated small crop. Yeah, it's not like ready for delighted crop.

SPEAKER_09 36:33

It's like we're just a couple of gum clock, because they want radishes this big and they want 120 of them every single week of the year. You know, I'm planting on a on a weekly schedule for a lot of the baby things. Um, and so there's things coming in and out very quickly uh in some beds. So we do keep things moving around, uh, but yeah, there's a big focus on soil health. No, no, no, no, they're not. I've planted five different varieties with different days to harvest.

SPEAKER_08 37:10

So sorry, just to follow up on that. Um, so I'm curious when you were in Spain and you were looking at the rural gardens, did you find that they were using different types of fertilite fertility type of methods that you were like, yes, I want to incorporate that when you came out to this area and said, Oh, you know, it's it's poor soil, I would like to bring it up to where I can, you know, create uh delicious types of nutrient-dense type of vegetables.

SPEAKER_11 37:38

Yeah, honestly, when I when I worked in Spain, I was just in you know, in awe of the variety of product coming in the back door of the restaurant. We I worked in a in a a rural restaurant that was surrounded by farms, much in the same way we do now. Um, and the neighbors were growing things for for the restaurant. It was in the north of Spain, in the bus country, and everyone in that area was working in a biological way, so to speak, you know. So it was very healthy, and there was obviously, you know, compost systems going on every farm. And and but I wasn't paying a lot of attention to it at that point because I didn't really understand it. I just saw you know product. Um, and then when returning to Australia, um was in Melbourne quickly for a brief moment, and then ended up in the Grampians for six years, and uh it was at that time when I was equating distance from market and growers to okay, we have to get organized, and then at that point starting to do my own research into I guess soil health and what you know, how to build flavour in food um through through its inputs or through its you know, the house I grew up in, basically. Um and yeah, I mean coming to then six years there working that way and then coming to coming to the Outways and taking over a farm um that did have some production on site at the time, um, but was really ready for for a bit of a a kiss and a hug, so to speak. Um and then yeah, I mean I think you know it's the the property itself, it's on a slight incline. There's quite sandy soils in areas, there's a clay base really close to the surface. Uh it's only about 90 centimetres down in some places. Um, so water goes straight through and then starts pulling up. Um so obviously, in the time I've been there, it's been about building soil structure um and building health for for the food. And I think, look, I think, you know, this, I mean, as you know, if you there's lots of people here that grow vegetables, but um it's ongoing. We haven't got there, we won't, um, because we're pulling out food all the time, which requires us to be putting in all the time um to maintain that quality of food that we're we want to take out. But I do feel like in the last couple of years we've seen we've seen a bit of a lift-off um in terms of visual quality, which is not something necessarily that we always talk about, but really stunning food coming out of that environment, um, and then noticing a depth of flavour, um, which is just it's beyond, you know.

SPEAKER_03 40:39

Hi, as a um quirky vegetable breeder, um a couple of weird questions for you. Uh what would be your dream crop to grow? Like just whatever you like. And Dan, what would be your dream crop to cook? Are we talking mango flavoured parsnip? Like, no limits.

SPEAKER_08 41:02

You do you want to go first, Mel?

SPEAKER_11 41:04

I've got I've got a dream crop that I that I do cook, which I don't um it's not it's not strange, but it's it's unique. And it's um my uh Weiss family's from Calabria, and um they have an heirloom bean in their family, which we just call Mel's beans, um, to yell, and he just calls it yellow bean. Um it's a flat, it's a flat yellow bean, looks like a uh Roman bean. Um seen them around, but I've never tasted anything like it. And we've just got them on the this we're probably gonna run out this week. That's probably the end. Um this is a this is an heirloom in in my wife's family. It came over with her grandfather or someone in the family. Um it's the village there from Toretti, which is in Calabria. Um, it's just north of Reggio in the mountains. And you know, this is a migrating family after the war, nope food. They bought this bean, they love the beans, they love beans. Um, her grandfather just used to have a garden full of different beans, and her old man gave them to me and to us 15 years ago. Um, and we've been seed-saving ever since. And each year we put them on the menu, we do something different with them every year. Um, and Mel's her dad, Mel's my father-in-law, and we just call them Mel's beans, but they have this quality which is um they have a starch content, which um I've never seen in any other legume anywhere in the world. Um and when you when you boil these beans, um, they go really soft and they release a starch like a potato. And when you when you stew them, you can stir them like a risotto, we can cut them up and stir them like a risotto. We've been doing that this year with some mussels. Um, and they let go of cream in the same way when you cream rice and you add dairy to it, and they're fucking unbelievable. Um, and so I that thing for me is really the king of the vegetable world. It's phenomenal. It's got sentimental value, like of getting emotional talking about it, and it's got culinary purpose, which is just beyond anything you come across.

SPEAKER_09 43:28

Um, I mean, just very briefly, I think for me the crop that I enjoy growing the most is the tomatoes. I think it and it's the aesthetic pleasure of them, basically. It's getting to grow like 22 to 30 different varieties every year. Um, they've all got these interesting little histories and stories behind them, so much colour and variation. And such a chance. And when you get a good crop and when you harvest like a huge tray of them and you have all of those colours laid out, I yeah, that's the best feeling.

SPEAKER_11 44:06

They look like they weren't going to make it. They look like there's where are these things, you know, like and and we do invest space, let's say, uh, into tomatoes. Um, and over time, you know, I think one thing that we probably haven't touched on, but over time, even though we grow a lot of varieties of food, we've reduced down to our needs, so to speak, or to what we're comf comfortable with and confident about. And each season we have one or two things that we, you know, we want to trial. Um, but essentially we're we're we're going, you know, this year, one pumpkin, that's it, red curry, done. Um, this year tomatoes much less than last year, much less than the year before. You know, like it's yeah, because they're delicious. It's only the best one this moment, you know, like it's and and I think the tomatoes this year, like we I mean, we probably peaked, but we peaked last week, tomato season, you know, like like it just went like that, and everything just set perfectly for the first time this season where you cut through. There's no seed visible, it's just walls of like flesh, and the depth of flavor is phenomenal, and that's you know, and then this week's warm, so we may go again, you know. But it's just been um four or five weeks ago. It's a bit like what's going on with this crop, Joe? Like, you know, you can blame it for the weather as well. We had a frost uh two days, three days ago. There was Monday morning, there was frost.

SPEAKER_09 45:44

There's no damage in the garden. So uh questions?

SPEAKER_06 45:48

Yep, thank you. Is it are we going? Yes, thank you for your presentation. I work in school kitchen garden programs, right? Which is about offering our students the full uh garden-to-plate experience. And I'm very always interested to learn, I suppose, uh the creative dialogue that you two engage in around Joe, what you like to grow, what works well for you in your garden, um, and then what you like to use in the kitchen, uh, and your scheduling, um, how that communication works. You mentioned a spreadsheet. So, yes, how you're letting Chef know what's coming up, uh, how much um flexibility there is within that. Are you doing annual scheduling and the and the kind of changes that may have occurred over the years to that?

SPEAKER_09 46:31

So we sit down several times a year to do planning, and a lot of that is sort of retrospective. That's a process of going through what worked, what didn't work, what did you like basically, or not like from the previous season. What did I grow way too much of? What are the things I can scale up? Um, so you know, we get into fairly granular detail on those things multiple times a year, usually at the end of the season, and we're sort of looking retrospectively. I use that to inform the next season coming up because I am working six to eight months ahead of things being on the plate. Um, you know, that's just how long some crops take to grow, but also we're sourcing seeds and growing seedlings and doing all sorts of development. Um that's the sort of the big picture, and that's mostly Dan and I. Uh on the on the sort of more week to week, um how would you describe that Dan from your perspective?

SPEAKER_11 47:26

Um I don't know, week to week we're in it. You know, week to week. What's the what's the specific day? Uh daily. You know, like it's it's yeah, this is that flexibility thing. This is the same, this is the same topic. It's like just being just like we don't I don't think we try, although we're you know, we're talking a lot about planning being ahead, record we record everything, we're communicating through spreadsheets, there's things to the you know, the number. Um because that's working that way is what allows it to function, you know, because we're we're not just two people involved in this. There's there's other people harvesting, there's senior team in the kitchen. We also have a beverage program where we're making beverages from from the garden as well, so front of house is involved as well. So there's literally the whole team is like community, like this spreadsheet goes out to I don't know, 15 people every week. Um and then it's only one to two people who fill it in. Um, but everyone's seen it, everyone can comment or have access to stuff that's if it's required from a development and creativity point of view. Um, but then the week to week is you know, we have the menu set at the start of the week, like on Sunday night before we leave, we'll check the bookings, we'll know the numbers, Joe will know that. We'll fill in the first pick of the week, which is done today. Um, a few things done on a Tuesday, but essentially Wednesday. We open on the Thursday. Um we've determined the menus by this afternoon, and then we off we go. Um and then, you know, then we'll see the variation in in the in the supply when it returns to the kitchen, and we'll be making decisions on the fly for the whole week. You know, like and it's like and it look like it's gonna happen this week. Like, you know, we've had some very we've had really key dishes that we've like we've really liked. I mean, the shiso leaf come up before, but I mean we did a duck with shiso leaf this year, and it was phenomenal. And um but you know, the other thing on that menu was um like overgrown yellow beetroots that have been preserved and dried and then rehydrated so they're chewy, then pickled in mustards and wrapped up in a shiso leaf with some duck from Grad Ocean duck in Port Campbell. Um 7k is that way. Um, so you know it's um but the shiso leaf is well, I mean, we did a two week, we do a tour with the whole team every two weeks. So the whole kitchen team, front of the house team, does a walk through the garden on a Thursday morning every fortnight. Uh we did that last week. Joe said last week this is it for Shiso. Um, we'll do the menus today. We've got ducks dry aging, they're ready to go. We need something. That's it. Um I'll be looking myself to make sure, you know, because when you get desperate, you find things. Um and then the males beans we talked about. There's a handful of those left this week, but that's been a dish on the menu for uh six weeks, you know. So like there just comes these points, and unfortunately, they tend to all come in the same week. But these are key, these are key like glamour, bray-specific uh vegetables and dishes that we can't source anywhere else that we've grown on site that have real value to us and for our guests, and they just go. And so you've just got to go, okay, what else you got? You know, and that's why we're always having making sure there's a there's a pantry to to move, and that's that's where the that's where the creative side, you know, I guess that's that's eventually where I come into the picture because I'm not really in the picture in the garden, but it's about observing, know it's coming, development, and then bang, let's go, you know.

SPEAKER_01 51:57

So yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 52:05

Yes, yeah. There's that figuring out what are the crops that are gonna grow best on the side. I I'll add to what Dan was just saying a little bit, which is a huge part of the communication for my job is communicating when things are at their best and when there's a critical mass of them. So it's a useful quantity for them and not like an annoying like little container of peas. You know, it's like, oh, we're gonna be picking up they they I take those things up and they're snacks for the kitchen. Um, what's really helpful, uh, you know, because if everything was just ending up on the restaurant menu, that there would be waste, there'd be significant amounts of waste. What's really helpful is that there's different places that the the the produce can go within the business. So some things are going on the plate in the restaurant, quite a lot of things are going into the accommodation catering. And that's a little, a little bit more rustic. You know, you use slightly different things for that, you know, the cos lettuces, and there's pickles and terrines, and um, you know, some things get sort of diverted from the restaurant into the accommodation. Then there's also a really large staff meal once a day, and that is a great clearing house for me, honestly. Um I it and there's a little bit of a hierarchy of how I'll pick things. So, you know, the for the plate in the restaurant, it'll be like one tiny perfect little lettuce leaf per guest, which fills a takeaway container this big. You know, two weeks later, those can be harvested for salad for staff meal or for an accommodation salad. Um, so you know, as things get larger, or even you know, in terms of the staff meals, a little bit more damaged, we can sort of send things those ways. Um but yeah, it's it's sort of it's really about I'm in and out of the kitchen all day, every day, delivering the produce, and that's where a lot of the communication happens as well as in written form. Yeah. Thanks.

SPEAKER_05 54:12

Of all the love and attention and care that you put into things, Joe, is there one crop that does your head in to grow and you're really not a fan of it?

SPEAKER_09 54:20

Um I mean, I think the thing is it's a different crop every year. It's like you get you think you've you've nailed something and then you get really humbled. Um, like this year, it's felt like there was an incredibly short growing season for a lot of our summer crops. Um, or or even like a really short like window of opportunity to plant things, and it was late. So a lot of the the sort of conventional timing of putting summer crops in in November, December didn't work for us this year because we had a cold, wet, windy spring followed by extreme heat. So, you know, cucumbers were an absolute nightmare. And I think I got about a three-week decent harvest, and you still think they weren't very good. So um, you know, I think I picked about two lemon cucumbers off the lemon cucumber patch. They just it was like a failure to thrive, which I think is climatic and not actually to do with soil or water. Nothing to say about my cucumbers.

SPEAKER_12 55:24

No, I'm just saying but it has like it's um you know the it's what what can you do?

SPEAKER_11 55:37

Like you know, like it's it's not don't put all your desire into one place, you know. Like it's it's again like the cucumbers, you know, it's a it's a it's a sign of season and you want them, but they just weren't there, but we're over it, you know, like it's it's okay. And but and interestingly, you know, like it was that season was this stupid spring, maybe a traditional spring, actually. Like it, you know, we we're not we're not used to it. Like the wind was a bit much, but it does get wind in spring, but there was rainfall and Birugar it does get rain in spring. Um but it was just followed by extreme heat and and really hot December. Um, and it just torched, it just torched those young summer crops. Um, but then when they started fruiting, uh, particularly with the cucumbers, what we noticed was like something visually looked okay. It was like, oh thank God for that. Um, but there was a there was a chalkiness and a texture and no moisture and like just this really weird uh result. So there's there's something to see. It's like, oh look, there's a crop, and then there's actually nothing there. So um yeah, that's just that's life, isn't it?

SPEAKER_04 57:00

Hey Joe, as a uh as a foodie, you must uh really relish in uh the whole process from planting the seeds to seeing it worked with you know some of the you know in one of the best venues in in in uh in Australia. Uh through that intimate process of working really closely with uh with Dan, what's your biggest takeaway? Um obviously you've had 10 years of of uh market gardening and doing it in a in a different format, but in this format, what's been your biggest takeaway? And I'd I'd be really interested in your take, Dan, and and having that close experience the opposite way.

SPEAKER_09 57:34

I'm not getting any cooking tips. Like the things they do with the produce really surprise me. Um you're you're you're juicing my capsicums at the moment. Like and making a miso that won't be on the menu uh in the restaurant for two years. Um so I suppose it's it's I've learned a lot about how some of the ingredients can be used. I've also learned about uh such a raft of new ingredients. We grow so many things that I hadn't been exposed to previously as a grower. Um and that's that's really interesting for me. You know, it's like a it's like having to figure out a little puzzle every season. So it's been a continual education, actually, about culinary plants and um rare and unusual ingredients and how chefs can use them because it is surprising and it's so such a world away from anything you choose to do as a home cook, you know, putting your tomatoes through a coffee filter for two days and um adding some robust tea or or some kelp. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 58:39

Yeah, it's sometimes terrifying what they do with your produce, but uh yeah, it's a really lovely uh like loop, and uh yeah, I think it just feeds off each other.

SPEAKER_11 58:49

Yeah, I think um look, I think uh you know, working working so closely with um your own production facilities is like it's the ultimate, isn't it? Like from a from a creative point of view, um uh and a quality point of view. Um I just don't think like I personally can't work in another way now. Obviously, I've done this for so long um that that when it doesn't occur anymore, like I'll just have to go surfing, you know, I guess which is not terrible, but you know, like it's it's I just can't imagine like I don't even know what other chefs do. Like I've just I've got no idea honestly, like I just I can't I just can't imagine the way in which they they make the food because I I don't know how you do that from a distance, you know, like um and I think I think the benefits for us is um the precision in what in what we do. Like I think I think things are very clear at Ray, like it's even though Joe's talking about doing things in a new way or unusual or or unexpected or whatever, that's you know, that's that's what you hope for in a in a creative environment, that you'd see things that are new. Um it's still food, so it has to be delicious. So we're we're that's the main thing 100% of the time that is this delicious. Um but yeah, I think being being so close and to be so heavily stimulated um and have access to you know the seasonal variation and watching like nature perform and outperform itself um is is just key to what we do, and I just I just can't imagine a way that that that is better, like not for me anyway, you know. And I think you know, obviously working with Joe has been it's an absolute pleasure, and it's it's certainly you know like the organization um with her expertise is just really just lifted off, you know, because we are a farm, you know, we we do farm and we we aren't just in the kitchen, we are reacting to nature as it changes and moves, and trying to to be you know influenced by but but do it in a way that's that's true to the to the even though we're juicing capsicons, we're still making it taste like capsicon, you know, like it's we're we're enhancing things through this bounty of of of perfect products um that I just don't think um others have had a chance to understand like the the the power in that, you know, like it's just it's everything.

SPEAKER_10 1:01:54

Dan, I think you mentioned 10 hectares of grain of four hectares, 10, yeah. Can you tell us what you're growing?

SPEAKER_11 1:02:03

Uh yeah are you using it? I mean over time, over predominantly wheat, predominantly wheat, which is predominantly for our bread program and um and for for pastry, um, but predominantly hard white wheats actually grow really well in our area, and predominantly wheats, um modern wheats. Um you know, we've always found the heritage in wheats to be difficult, and we're not we're not necessarily skilled up as grain farmers. We we we contract, we get, you know, we prep the ground, we get someone to sow, someone to harvest, all of those things. Uh we mill on site uh in the kitchen for that when we when we have grain. But across across, I mean, probably started growing grain maybe four or five years into the project, and in that time we've grown uh rye, barley, various forms of wheats. Um we've made beers on three occasions. Um we've malted grain, which is currently a benchmark for um distilling. Um and we grow bread wheats to to make bread, which is a big part of what we do in the restaurant.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:30

So apparently we're time, and apparently there's a competition going on about how that everyone can applaud. So please give your absolute biggest applause for Joe and Dam.