Meet our farm founder, Olivia Burke.

Olivia Burke, the blue-eyed, blonde-haired, super mum, is the face behind a new Adelaide Hills project called, Kitchen Farm, proudly dedicates her expertise and a lot of time to enhancing the lifestyles of residents in Adelaide Hills communities.

For nearly 20 years, Olivia has led the energetic and enthusiastic Marketing and Sales department of the Burke Urban Groupwith a firm guiding principle that “doing good is good for business.” Foremostly, Olivia’s time and passion is channeled into truly (no lip-service here) building what she hopes to be one of the most resilient communities in Australia, if not she says, “maybe even the world”. Of course, she is talking about the award-winning Newenham Estate in Mount Barker.

Olivia joined the family business in 2003 starting as a trainee project manager and marketing coordinator, before growing into her current role. Throughout her time at Burke Urban, Olivia has worked across many of their projects from the award-winning $40 million project in Ascot Waters, Western Australia, to the north-facing beach shacks in Black Point, Yorke Peninsula.

While her resume would suggest she’s nothing short of an overachiever, Olivia is just doggedly committed to making a difference in residential communities. At the forefront of her mission is helping build resilient communities which she believes comes through a thoughtful customer care approach, strong communication, community development, events and activation and a multi-faceted placemaking and flexible urban design approach. Her strategy underpins every element of each project that she works on, particularly at Newenham.

Olivia brought the project to life with the humble vision to support the wellbeing of the Newenham community under the guidance of Kym Burke’s (her father’s) visionary leadership and with the support of an amazing team and like-minded investors. Their efforts were awarded at the 2020 Urban Development Institute Australia SA Awards with a Best Residential Development and Marketing Excellence award for the project’s “Designed for Wellbeing” marketing model.

Olivia says, “by leveraging our many successes and knowledge in place-making and community development, we take our experience and insight to the next level with Newenham Adelaide Hills…I believe Newenham is our most exciting project to date – this beautiful setting promises to set a new benchmark in urban design and lifestyle, enhancing the wellbeing of everyone who calls it home.”

Kitchen Farm, which is to be located on a massive eight hectares of land within Newenham, is Olivia’s recent visionary achievement. She admits that it has been quite a journey to get to this point of being confident enough about the vision and model to present it to the public.

Olivia doesn’t have a background in food production or hospitality, so has had to draw on the expertise of external collaborators. Recently, Olivia met Kym Ormond from Port Adelaide Food Gardening and she explains with excitement that “all of the pieces of the puzzle have started to fit together now under his guidance. I am so excited to be able to launch this grass roots project to the public. We want to bring in people to share this journey with us from the ground up. Visually, there isn’t much to show yet in terms of outcomes, but by the end of this year there definitely will be. We hope people will want to collaborate and support us on this journey. In fact, we are inviting people to a launch event called ‘Meet the Farmer’ on April 15th.”

Whilst Olivia states there isn’t much to show in the way of outcomes yet, Kitchen Farm Pantry has been operational for 18 months. This may have been a bit of the chicken before the egg, but this rustic café was set up to start to provide coffee and locally sourced treats to the community. 

“In the future, our vision is for the whole community to be able to share wholesome and naturally grown paddock-to-plate experiences including farming education, community tours, programs and workshops, and true paddock-to-plate dining at our Kitchen Farm Pantry”. 

Behind the scenes, Kitchen Farm has also been working with hills-based disability service provider Community Living Australia (CLA), since October 2022, and the Newenham Green Team to get elements of the farm up and running. Together, Olivia’s Newenham Green Team and CLA clients have planted over 1000 plants in Newenham’s verges to create a bio-diverse environment, as well as propagating thousands of seedlings and plants, built nursery benches and generally have had a good time. Together, Kitchen Farm and the Green Team are actively working towards ethical, long-term food production and sustainability through the successful integration of community and placemaking in a greenfield residential development.

“Later this year, we will also be able to share the first stage of Kitchen Farm which is approximately 3 acres of productive garden for a variety of edible plants, natives and cut flowers, greenhouse tunnels, and a hardening shelter,” Olivia explains.

And to add to her impressive portfolio, Olivia was also recently appointed a new member of the Executive Council to the Urban Development Institute of Australia (UDIA SA) with an aim to help the growth of their initiatives in the South Australian property sector.