Along with husband Iain, Hayley Pember-Calvert is co-owner and General Manager of Leonards Mill, (Second Valley, South Australia) and describes herself as “mother, wifey, guidance counsellor, taxi, coffee maker, wine pourer, menu tester, marketing, front of house, social activist, community conscious, country girl, chardonnay lover and butter enthusiast.” Hayley tells us about their fantastic permaculture gardens and autumn menu.

The restaurant has its own permaculture gardens. What sort of things do you grow here, and what are the benefits of keeping your own garden? We are located in a unique cool mountain micro-climate in the Adelaide Mediterranean biome; this means we have the opportunity to grow a huge variety of plant species just within our own backyard. Specifically we have been building a stock of perennial herbs such as lovage, garlic chives, rosemary, karkalla and different mint species.

At the moment as we are coming into the cooler months we have just done a large planting of tatsoi, kale, parsley, silverbeet, rainbow chard, pumpkins and have had an abundance of figs, zucchini and rhubarb this season.

Permaculture specifically focuses on creating closed loop sustainable systems and a productive garden that mimics natural wild systems. This is perfect for us as we can create our own compost from kitchen scraps using our small chicken flock that in turn helps feed our fruit trees and garden beds.

The biggest and easiest advantage is how fresh the produce is, the produce is literally picked within a twenty metre walking distance from the kitchen door. There isn’t any wait time in transport or waiting period before it makes it to the kitchen.

As the system itself is still in its early days we have a bunch of different ideas to improve. These include expanding our kitchen garden to almost double its current size, rejuvenating our stone fruit orchard, introducing more native plant species to the property for wild habitat, running workshops around what we do in our garden and increasing our composting systems.

You recently welcomed in a new head chef, Konny Putkin. What kind of flavours and cuisines will he bring to the Leonards Mill menu? Konny has been classically trained in haute French culinary cooking but spent the last six years in Australia using local ingredients. Now with a focus on using whole animal, nose to tail and using only local produce, the flavours of the Fleurieu Peninsula are prevalent.

Autumn is rapidly approaching for our Southern-Hemisphere restaurants. Are you introducing a new menu? If so, what kinds of dishes can we expect? We change our lunch à la carte menu approximately every six weeks so we will have a new menu soon. One of the new autumn dishes will be a fluffy gnocchi with a local rabbit ragu, goat's curd from the Adelaide Hills and our own horseradish leaf pesto. Our garden will hopefully be bursting with tatsoi, kale, parsley and pumpkins so all those will feature as well.

Is there a staff favourite that reappears on the menu time and time again? Definitely! It is our beef tartare dish. It has been reinvented with the seasons but it is very special to the staff here. The majority of the dish comes from Second Valley with the beef coming from seven-hundred metres from the Mill and then all the herbs and vegetables come from the Mill itself or a farm down the road. It is so fresh and vibrant and it truly encapsulates the flavours of Second Valley and Leonards Mill.

You are passionate about sourcing local produce. Can you talk a little about why this is important to you and what steps you have taken around this? We hate when you go somewhere and they only have sirloin or porterhouse steak on the menu and it never changes – what happens to the rest of the animal? When you buy direct from people and you know their names and see their faces and the love that they have for what they do and produce, you can taste the difference. We know first-hand that the lamb, beef, pork are free range and see the farms, we can see the grass they eat and how they are treated. There is too much wastage in our world while others are starving so there is no excuse why we shouldn’t be using whole plant, veg, fruit and animal. We want to support the ‘little guy’ and use the entire produce, whether that is a whole animal or a carrot or beetroot from root to leaf. Sourcing direct from local farmers is a lot more work and time and effort but we have spent the last year building up relationships and word of mouth, someone always knows someone else that has a different vegetable that we might like to use. We don’t ask our producers to grow anything specific, it's more about what works in their soil, what do they want to grow and what can they grow. We are always on the lookout for local producers and at the moment all our meat and fish proteins come from a twenty kilometre radius of Leonards Mill.

What else are you working on in 2019? We will be adding to our ever-evolving garden, and we are hoping to add more permaculture workshops and classes with our permaculture god Kym Ormond. We really just want to keep growing and learning as a restaurant family and telling people why we do what we do!

Is there anything else you would like to add? We love what Truth, Love & Clean Cutlery is doing by shining a light on restaurant sustainability and making people aware of the impact that restaurants have on the environment, economy as well as the local communities and people.

Hayley Pember-Calvert with husband Iain and son Gillan