Producers for City Organics

Miellerie means "the house of honey" in French

• Honey produced by Yves Ginat
  
  
  
  • a Frenchman now living in Tasmania
  
  
  • Yves began keeping bees as a young boy in France
  
  
  • brought his techniques with him
  
  
  • his honey, "it is a subtle marriage of French tradition and Tasmanian flowers."

• Miellerie honey is 
  
  
  
  • unprocessed
  
  
  • unheated, thus maintaining the honey's
    
    
    
    • optimum natural aroma
    
    
    • health qualities
    
    
    • characteristic crystals
  
  
  • each of the honeys in the Miellerie range are crystallised, with a smooth, velvety texture that melts in your mouth!
  
  
  • based on biodynamic principles (including essential oils and herbal remedies) to harness the vitality of the bee’s colony
  
  
  
  
  • extracted at room temperature and packaged at bee hive temperature, thereby maintaining the optimum natural aroma and health qualities and our characteristic crystals
  
  
  • Miellerie is currently producing 5 varieties of honey

Miellerie endeavours to explore the Tasmanian landscape and wilderness for endemic floral diversity. We thank the Earth and cosmos for providing gourmet nectars and the bees for their honey.

Yves Ginat began beekeeping as a teenager, growing up in central France, in the medieval capital, Bourges. His mother’s family was from Bretagne, and his father’s family from Berry. Yves extended his education into organic farming before moving into commercial beekeeping in 1998 during which he arrived in Tasmania and it was November 2005 that the Miellerie business began.

Since 2006, Miellerie has developed from working 40 hives to 160 hives during which we have produced 5 different varieties of honey:

• Leatherwood


• Lake Pedder’s Nectar


• Prickly Box


• Blue Gum


• Tea Tree (Manuka)

As apiarist, Yves nurtures the bee community using organic and biodynamic beekeeping practices to maintain health and harmony from the hive to the jar. Essential to the integrity of Miellerie is our trade practice of cold extraction of the honey from the comb to harness the vitality, aroma, flavour, colour and texture of the delightful nectars from Tasmanian native floras. As the seasons change, Yves continues to explore the floral diversity of this beautiful island, Tasmania.

(From the Elgaar Website)

Established in 1986, we are now recognised as one of Australia’s foremost organic dairy companies.

Situated in the valleys of Tasmania's fertile north, our care for the earth is all part of our philosophy of supplying the freshest, tastiest and healthiest food available. Our range includes fresh organic milk (packaged in returnable glass bottles), natural yoghurt, cream, cheese and butter.

We firmly believe that organic farming principles not only take care of the environment, but also produce healthier and tastier food. Skills of true natural farming, with no need for artificial inputs of pesticides, fertilizers and other chemicals are highly valued on Elgaar Farm. Our products are manufactured using only time honoured methods using only the absolute freshest and best ingredients.

Elgaar Farm has, over the years, received many prestigious awards and medals:-

• “Best Organic Farm in Australia” at OFA Sydney 2001


• Champion Cheddar ASCA (Australian Specialist Cheesemakers Association)


• several gold and silver medals at ASCA, Royal Hobart, Royal Melbourne


• various other fine food shows, in recognition of our passion to provide you with premium organic produce

It’s an organic dream for Grace, Susan, Jennifer and Ella. It’s back to pasture for these gorgeous, dewy eyed girls who spend their days in the fresh Tasmanian air with the wind blowing through their hair.

Grace, Susan, Jennifer and Ella are Jersey cows, part of a herd reared organically by Josef and Antonia Gretschmann at Elgaar Farm, near Deloraine in northern Tasmania. The Gretschmann’s arrived in Australia in 1986. Joe was born into a famil of dairy farmers in a Bavarian village where every farmer made their own cheese. Both Joe and Antonia have studied conventional agriculture and initially farmed that way when they took over Joe’s parents’ farm. But they soon switched to organic methods, “it slowly dawned on us that if we kept farming that way we’d keep depleting resources and polluting the ecosystem,” says Joe. “And it didn’t feel right not being able to allow the kids to play in the cropping paddocks because they’d been sprayed.”

The Gretschmanns bought Elgaar farm soon after arriving in Australia and immediately set about converting to a completely organic system of farming, receiving organic certification in 1991. Today Elgaar Farm’s organic produce ranges from milk, yoghurt and cream to mozzarella and hard cheeses.

The Elgaar cows graze in paddocks where grasses are mixed with herbs such as shepherds purse, self heal, chicory and Persian clover. “Organic farmers love them as they have a greater ability to search for nutrients in the soil, so the cows produce tastier milk,” says Joe. Like all the farm’s crops, the pastures are never sprayed with artificial chemical fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides.

The Jersey cows that graze on this green smorgasbord clearly thrive on the farm and enjoy a surprisingly long life. Any ailments are treated with homeopathic remedies, and the Gretschmanns pride themselves on the fact that it is ten years since they last had to call a vet – even then that was just help with a difficult birth.

The average Aussie dairy cow is sold off after five years of milking, but Elgaar’s work for up to a decade. Once they are deemed too old for milking duties, retirement means grazing the paddocks for the rest of their natural life, though they still front up for the twice-daily milking routine – old habits die hard. According to Antonia, one of their cows lived to 38.

During the winter months, milk is limited because many cows are “dried off” to calve in spring; there is only enough milk left to satisfy the regular demand for the farm’s fresh milk, cream, and yoghurt. Elgaar Milk is pasteurized, but not homogenized like most supermarket milk. Consequently, a rich layer of cream rises to the top of each glass bottle’s neck. More than 90 percent of the old-fashioned retrurnable milk bottles are returned for washing, sterilization and reuse, which is extraordinary considering some customers are as far away as Melbourne and Sydney

Buy Elgaar Farm Online