organic Harz Honey
Harzer Honig
We are in off-season.
The project
Adopt {publicVariety} from the apiary "{farmName}" in {cityfarm} ({countryFarm}) and receive your harvest in the form of {production} at home. The Farmer {farmerName} will take care of your adoption and take its picture. Also, you will be able to download the adoption certificate and, if you wish, plan your visit to the farm. As the production coming from one {variety} is big, the adoption is shared among various people. If you wish to have a bigger share, you may adopt more than once. You do not enter into any long-term commitment: once you receive your harvest and you enjoyed the experience, you may decide to renew and extend the adoption.
What do you adopt?
A bee colony of the Carnica and Buckfast species.
Our bees live in self-made wooden magazine hives from local spruce and pine trees. There are about 60000 (summer) to 6000 (winter) bees per colony. One bee colony produces an average of 35 kg of honey per season.
In order to be able to send you CrowdFarmers a very special, natural honey, we pay attention to a gentle honey extraction. After centrifuging, the honey is filtered without pressure with three different refinements and is not heated above 37°C - i.e. hive temperature - during the entire production process.
Organic farming. You can download the corresponding certificate in the section of seals below.
What will you receive?
The box we will send you contains:
6 x Organic Harz Honey (500g jars)
It is always a mixture of partly spring blossom honey and partly summer blossom honey from the Harz, the northernmost low mountain range of Germany. One of the six glasses is a surprise. Depending on the blossoms of the year, it may be a honey with robinia, honeydew, rape, lime, or sunflowers.
Taste: Our Harz spring blossom honey is light, mild and creamy. The summer blossom honey has a beautiful, dark honey colour, an aromatic taste and a creamy-crystalline texture. They are natural products that reflect the year of harvest and can vary in texture and taste from year to year. The special varieties always have very individual characteristics, it will also be a surprise for us!
Storage: Our honey keeps its quality at 14°C, stored dark and dry for at least 2 years. The warmer and brighter it is, the faster it changes its texture without becoming bad. It may crystallize over time. If you prefer it runny, you can liquefy it carefully in a water bath.
Organic: Since August 2017 our honey is certified according to EU-Eco-Regulation and Naturland guidelines. We do not move with our colonies, but appreciate whatever nature that year brings to the bee’s location. They are grateful that they do not have to travel. Most of the time the hives stand on our fields and we cultivate flower beds such as sunflowers for them.
You receive a personalized harvest - not with the name, but with the geolocation of your bee colony.
When will you receive it?
Please, check the deadline for participating in this project (deadline for adoption) below. As of this date the Farmer will start preparing the orders that are to be shipped.
You may select the delivery date of your box as suggested by the Farmer at check-out.
Why should you adopt?
* Learn who produces your food, how and where. Receive your food in a conscious manner.
* Buy directly from the farmer. Help to generate wealth and better jobs in the rural areas.
* Plan ahead and enable the Farmer to produce on demand. This way we can avoid overproduction and fight food waste.
* Reward Farmers who make an effort to use environmentally-friendly packaging and cultivation techniques.
How does it work?
Meet the Farmers
Adopt and plan your harvest
Let the Farmer and nature work
Receive your harvest at home
Tilmann Dreysse
The story of the farmer Tilmann really begins in 2006 in Australia on an orchard north of Melbourne. Pear harvest - burning sun, 45°C and 14h shifts 6 days a week have, strange enough, awakened his passion for agriculture. Grown up in a family of artists this was rather a surprise.
Perhaps this explains why then it took me so long to finally commit to agriculture and start a farming apprenticeship in 2009. Things went really fast and by 2015 I had even completed my agricultural studies at uni with top marks.
Ten years gave me enough time to create and discard the craziest farming business concepts in my mind. In the end in 2015, the idea of synergistic arable farming with beekeeping was the most promising. I had the feeling noone had pursued it consistently before. It was because of the high ecosystem relevance of this combination that I was enthusiastic and wanted to tackle the project at all costs. My childhood friend Ralph was willing to accompany me as a business partner in the beginning.
Every beginning is difficult. That's why the business was only a part-time job for a long time. At the moment, however, it is growing to the extent that it will hopefully become a full-time business. In the early days of the company I worked in parallel in an agricultural research institute. From 2016 - 2018 I was a consultant for organic farming at Naturland, an international organic farming association. After this activity I founded a second company with my partner Linda in summer 2018 - the dairy Bauer Freigeist. Freigeist is now also part of the CrowdFarming family and you learn about the cows and our dairy products here.
We have designated 2019 as the year of the employee. Ralph said goodbye to the family project and the Harzer Honig project now has a size in which it is no longer possible to do everything alone. New to the team is Tim, an experienced beekeeper who fits perfectly with us. So I finally have more time to take care of you - the CrowdFarmers. We have long been looking for a way to market our great honey through the new ways of this era. The stated goal was to become part of the coolest community on the internet...I think we found it. The CrowdFarming family has a new alumni. Quite a handful of a person - but full of ideas and hard-working...
Tilmann Dreysse
"It's probably a crazy idea to start a farm without your own land. It won't get any easier if the founders don't come from farming families. But there is still a decisive advantage - without any "prior burden", the ideas are free and the possibilities endless. We use this freedom to try things that would otherwise remain unexplored. The CrowdFarming family has a new offspring. Slightly spoiled - but full of ideas and hard-working..."
Harzer Honig
Harzer Honig
Harzer Honig (Harz Honey) is the heart project of me, Tilmann and one of my best childhood friends Ralph. We went to school together and of course, loved causing troubles in our youth. Later we bundled our energy in a much better way and founded a farm in 2015. Ralph recently became a father and is currently focusing on his young family. Meanwhile I take care of Harz Honey and our bees.
We cultivate on approx. 22 ha flowering plants - for seeds, honey and green fodder - for our regional horse owners, and also grow berries. We step in for more biodiversity on German fields and notice the effect of our way of working directly on our fields. Thanks to all the insects, wild bird return to our fields and the hares, pheasants and deer come back as farming intensity and pressure decreases. In addition to honey, we produce organic seeds and this year organic sunflower seeds for the popular creamy vegetarian spreads. As part of an EU program, we also sow local wildflowers, amongst them some well-known as poppies or cornflowers, others forgotten, such as Odermennig, Färber-mayweed, bedstraw, St. John's wort...
Also our berry plantation does not only blossom during the berry flowering season: among the berry bushes you can find mallow, phacelia, lupine, cornflower and much more. The bees from our young colony next door are delighted to always find flowers. The reason for this diversity on a plantation is our participation in the "Netzwerk blühende Landschaften" of the Mellifera e.V. (network of blooming landscapes). Mellifera provides the seeds that partner farms sow and maintain. This increased biodiversity also flows into the spring and summer flower honey.
Our company is located in the eastern Vorharz in the world heritage town of Quedlinburg. Seed production and beekeeping are privileged in our relatively dry and sunny climate due to the rain shadow of the Harz mountains. Our area has a rich cultural history, with for example the oldest house in Quedlinburg built in the 14th century. Also our flora has been anthropogenically influenced for centuries...The foothills of the Harz are characterized by meadow orchards and blooming former rough pastures. A perfect habitat for our bees...
Technical information
Address
Harzer Honig, Quedlinburg, DE
Location