Lovemore Fermentary owner Carly Privet is passionate about food and ferment.

Gaining a reputation as the ‘ferment mother’, she’s getting ready to expand her café menu and fermented food range in her North Lismore café.

While she opened the shop nearly a year ago, Carly has been in a battle with the local Council to get her café approved. Finally, she’s jumped through the hoops and she’s ready to expand the café.

“We are a brunch café and want to do a lot more in the kitchen," she told The Lismore App. "We serve the food I like to eat - like things on toast or in a bowl."

The food she serves is organic and mostly plant based, but eggs are on the menu and soon Carly will be serving sustainably sourced wild boar ham from Queensland.

Carly has making food with traditional ferment methods since she started fermenting at home in 2017.

“It’s important that we eat fermented food like yoghurt and kraut and organic veges - it helps the bacteria in your gut to digest your food,” she said.

"There’s a brain/gut connection that we are only learning more about now. Your gut is a compost making the soil that your body’s garden needs to thrive.

"When you eat it, your well being is heightened. I have a lot of customers come in who have been told by doctors to eat this sort of food. They have a hard time at first trusting that its safe for them.”

Carly’s sauerkraut she sells from the shop - and at the Thursday Market in the CBD - is made from cabbage which has been fermented in water and salt for 30 days.

“It’s raw and unpasteurised with a lacto-fermentation method,” she said.

Carly selling sauerkraut at the Thursday Market in the Lismore CBD.

“The pink kraut is the most approachable – it’s cabbage and caraway seeds and it goes with everything. The golden kraut has turmeric, the green kraut has gotu kola.

“We also have salty, crunchy kim chee made with miso handmade in Kyogle.”

And then there’s the macadamia vegan cheese, made with biodynamic nuts sourced from Nimbin - which Carly says is a “labour of love”.

Carly’s journey with food started when she was growing up.

"My parents owned a pub in a rural town in Western Australia and I spent time in the kitchen and went on to work in hospitality in Perth and was a chef in Melbourne,” she said.

“I grew up on fish, chips, coke and ice cream. I struggled with mental and physical health issues, then I read a book about fermentation and started to incorporate fermented foods into my life.

“Then I slowly began to change.”

She went on to study nutrition and developed a love of “simple, traditional food” that could improve people’s health and lives.

After a stint of travelling, Carly found her home in Lismore.

“I bought a house on Terania Street - I feel like North Lismore chose me,” she said.

“There was something bigger cosmically happening and I wanted to give some love back to North Lismore.

“This café is my offering.”

Carly is looking forward to seeing her business grow and expanding her product range.

“It’s like raising a baby – I’m really looking forward to getting it out there,” she said.

Lovemore Fermentary is located at 59 Bridge Street, North Lismore and is open 7.30am until 2.30pm Tuesday to Saturday.