Grown on the land, crafted by hand
We are Lorraine and Cathy: two friends and neighbours on the same road in Upper Lansdowne on the NSW Mid North Coast, and both landscape gardeners by trade. We each have an empress tree growing on our land, so when it came to naming our little business, the empress tree felt like home.
Our logo shows two women joined beneath a tree, drawn in a Russian folk style. Cathy's inspiration was her Russian grandmother, and the two women are us: friends, side by side, growing things together.
Between us we keep European and native bees, cattle, chickens and seven worm farms, all surrounded by farmland and forest. Everything we make grows from those roots. We sow, grow, forage and gather from our land and its surrounds, then handcraft it all in small batches. Raw and real, wholesome and seasonal, made with care.
Here are a few snapshots of how our produce makes its way from our garden into your pantry.
Sown in our beds
Every season starts with seedlings tucked into fresh beds of compost, fed by our worm farms.
We mulch everything with straw to keep the soil cool and the moisture in through our hot Mid North Coast summers.
From the chilli patch
little beak pepper
We grow all sorts of chillies, from gentle to wild. They go into our chilli salts and our hot chilli sauce.
Beetroot, straight from the ground
Our beetroot gives our Beetroot & Dill Salt its beautiful pink colour.
Herbs, and flowers for the pollinators
Feathery bronze fennel, for cooking and seed.
We plant flowers among the vegies to attract pollinators. Here a hoverfly visits one of our paper daisies. Hoverflies, bees and other helpful insects keep our garden healthy.
Seasoned with the seasons
And at the end of the day, it all comes back to the table: here's our salt finishing a bowl of homemade ramen. We flavour and smoke our salts in small batches, then pack and label every one by hand.
Sown, grown and packaged with care.
Lorraine & Cathy