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June 2008 Landtasia Customer Information Bulletin
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Greetings Natural
Grass-fed Beef Lovers
This is the first Landtasia Customer Information bulletin.
It contains information about pricing changes and information of customer interest pertaining to the expansion and operation of Landtasia Organic Foods and the Landtasia Ranch. I hope you find it informative.
Our Prices to Rise July 5th
No doubt you are acutely aware of the incredible rising price of fuel and food going on all around the world at the moment. We agree with you that it’s pretty shocking. This week we paid $1.90 per litre for diesel to power our farm equipment, pumps, vehicles and delivery transport!
Regrettably we are going to have to adjust our pricing upwards to take up these higher costs. As a courtesy to you, our good customers, we want to give you 30 days notice of the price rise in order to let you plan how to best manage your nutrition budget and to take advantage of our policies that can give you price protection for the rest of this year.
Effective July 5thour prices will rise by 10% for whole sides and by 12% for the quarter-side packs. This table sets out the price change per kilogram.
Produce Item % rise From > To
Whole Side +10% $14.48 > $15.92
Life’s Good +12% $19.48 > $21.82
Healthy Family +12% $11.49 > $12.86
Prices still include free home delivery.
Policies to Help Your Organic Food Budget
You may be aware from our website of our economic policies to encourage the creation of a special bond between our farm and our customers. Two such policies (‘Second Order – Same Price’, and ‘Forward Orders – Same Price’) allow you to lock in prices at today’s rate for a period of six months.
‘Second Order – Same Price’: If you are yet to make your first purchase of Landtasia Natural Organic Beef, when you do, you will lock in the price for your second order (for up to six months) at the price of the first order. So if you order before July 5th, you may order again before January 4th 2009 at the same price.
‘Forward Order – Same Price’: If you have already ordered from us more than once before, then this policy will help you hold today’s pricing levels by placing a firm order now for delivery anytime up to January 4th 2009.
You may use these policies to keep a lid on your certified organic food costs, while other people are facing significant price rises or are accepting a lower quality of produce.
We know it must seem odd that we have and honour such policies, especially in the face of rising costs ourselves. But we believe there are swings and roundabouts in every loyal relationship. In return, we would welcome your recommendation of our produce to your friends and colleagues to help expand our operation overall.
If you have any questions about the price rise or how to best take advantage of our two price protection policies, please call Edwina Fitzgerald on 02-6238-0565 during normal business hours.
Order before July 5th
and Lock In Current Prices
Until January 2009
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Apple Harvest Trial Run
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Horticulture Manager, Dimitrie Kourtis
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Landtasia’s certified organic apple orchard had a test run harvest this summer and produced exceptional quality and very good quantities of apples for its first year of fruiting.
Horticulture Manager, Dimitrie Kourtis and his colleagues, carefully managed the orchard this year to balance the young trees’ physiological development with fruiting output. At the start of the season the team reduced the number of buds by about two-thirds. That allowed for enough fruiting to test for quality, while not overburdening the young branches.
The apples were allowed to tree ripen and then were hand picked over a period of eight weeks. Even though the harvest was intentionally managed to be small, we still produced more than 4 tonnes of Pink Lady, Golden Delicious, Sundowner, Jonathan, and Granny Smith apples. The large apples had that old-time genuine apple taste and sweetness, and the apples’ complexion was near perfect; not the compromised look that often accompanies organic produce.
While many Landtasia customers received a surprise sample of these little beauties via courier, most of them were crushed and are presently undergoing fermentation to develop three uniquely Australian premium organic apple ciders. While the apples are primarily for this unique organic cider, next year we will set aside some hand-picked apples for our customers to order at the peak of their freshness.
While it may seem a bit old-fashioned, it can be a lot of fun preserving peak-fresh apples for consumption throughout the year. Here at the farm, Mrs Hill bottled both crisp and stewed apples. She also made several varieties of apple jelly, including a very precious spiced apple version. In weighing up the trade-offs between the time to do the preserving and the nutritional certainty and quality of the food you can then eat throughout the year, the verdict always comes down on the side of homemade – real home made.
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Landtasia Expands Farmlands
for the Future
In March, Landtasia management acquired the historic grazing and cropping property called ‘Kalbilli’ at Mt Fairy, NSW. The nearly adjacent acquisition adds 2,100 organic grazing and cropping acres to Landtasia’s Mulloon Creek based properties.
The new acreage will allow us to add 100 – 200 new customers for our Natural Organic beef in 2009. Kalbilli has traditionally been a sheep and lamb property, and as such will also give us the opportunity to introduce lamb into the Landtasia produce offering, possibly as early as next summer.
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The 2008 Organic Expo will be at the Sydney Convention and Exposition Centre, Darling Harbour July 26 &27.
With more than 250 exhibits, you’ll see a whole range of exciting products and services that may be just what you are looking for to support your healthy lifestyle.
Landtasia will be exhibiting there too! So, please be sure to come by and meet the people who bring you your meat. Our booth number is 144. Hope to see you there!
Landtasia to Trial Heritage Grain Cropping
The Braidwood/Mulloon region near Landtasia was one of the New South Wales colony’s primary wheat and grain production areas during the 19th century. There were several flour mills in the area too. That all gradually changed as the irrigation and dryland cropping areas to the west of the State opened up during the 20th century, and Braidwood/Mulloon settled into grazing and forestry production
With the multiple growing concerns of climate change and genetically manipulated grains, Landtasia is undertaking a trial planting of three grain crops for human consumption. They are spelt, wheat, and buckwheat. All are older varieties that are closer to the quality of grains produced before the selective hybrid breeding that followed the world wars.
If successful, the trial will re-establish the viability of the Braidwood/Mulloon region for boutique grain production. According to Landtasia Agricultural Director, James Hill, aside from the wide open spaces of the west, one of the attractions that moved grain production from the coast was the hotter longer summers that hastened the ripening of the seed heads. However he said, “After travelling through Europe last year, I realised that they are far more wet and cold than we are at Mulloon Creek and yet they produce a lot of grain in Europe. When necessary they dry it in silos. We could do the same.”
Livestock and Pastures Manager, Dennis Northey, is also undertaking the growing out of some century-old seed-bank grain varieties. He said, “We’ve managed to secure from local seed-banks a few hundred grams of pre-hybrid grain varieties, which we will grow out and multiply over a couple of years to give us enough seed to repay the seed-bank and begin heritage flour production for our loyal customers. We are expecting an exceptional nutritional difference between our heritage flour and commercial hybrid flour. We are even expecting that because it hasn’t gone through a hundred generations of trait selection, its original constitutional wholeness may even remedy the modern epidemic of gluten intolerance, because all of its enzymes and proteins are intact and balanced as nature evolved them to be.“
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NSW Lifts GM Moratorium
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In terms of the wellbeing of your family and friends you really need to be pretty vigilant now.
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Remarkably, the NSW government lifted the moratorium on the growing of genetically manipulated crops against the wide public outcry for it to remain. We’ll leave it to you to think about why they would act against the wellbeing of the people, but in terms of the wellbeing of your family and friends you really need to be pretty vigilant now.
This contemptuous act and the failure to have clear and transparent food labelling laws means you need to line up your food sources carefully and try to lock in trusted relationships now.
When it comes to processed foods, and in the absence of effective food labelling that lists every GM ingredient and its quantity, you’d be well advised to assume that any non-certified-organic product which contains soy, corn (maize), canola, ‘vegetable oil’, or their spin-off products such as cornstarch, high-fructose corn syrup or soy-milk, is likely to be genetically manipulated, especially if the ingredients are ‘imported’.
Feedlot meat is particularly prone to have been fed on GM feedstocks. There is no labelling obligation to declare to customers if they had been, and with the drought and shortage of feedstock locally for grain-fed livestock, importations from North and South America are sure to have GM ingredients. A recent study in the UK entitled ‘Silent Invasion, the hidden use of GM crops in livestock feed’, stated that was the case there.
As quality food awareness increases and its scarcity grows, you can draw comfort that each of your regular purchases from Landtasia increases loyalty between you and this farm.
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Landtasia Organic Certification Milestone
While Landtasia has been following organic agricultural practices for several years to grow its chemical-free pastures and rear its Landtasia Natural Beef, a farm like ours is required to go through a formal three year auditing process that certifies that the property and the procedures followed are truly organic. The audit process includes soil tests, personnel interviews, animal examination, and a review of purchasing and OHS records to mention but a few of the test points.
Our certification process is carried out by AQIS approved, Biological Farmers of Australia (BFA), who require that a farm passes their stringent audits for three continuous years before they can be objectively considered ‘Certified Organic”.
An important milestone that comes after passing their audit for two consecutive years, is the designation, ‘Certified Organic – In Conversion’. This also allows the farm to use the special ‘bud’ logo on their produce and in their advertising.
We are proud to say, that earlier this year Landtasia received the Certified Organic – In Conversion designation and expects to successfully pass the three year milestone around November this year.
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