August The Month of la Pachamama

August is the month when people of the Andes in South America celebrate ‘La Pachamama’ (or mother earth). The celebration consists of making offers to the earth to acknowledge past harvests and in hope that future ones will be prosperous.

For many, August also becomes a time for new beginnings. The change in season brings for us a chance to put away the winter wolleys for another summer and for those of us who let purselves go abit over Winter a chance to get the body back into shape. This year to celebrate another good year and looking forward to more, La Pachamama have a special on our Kraus Gaucho yerba mate tea. Gaucho is a strong flavoured organic loose leaf tea that will taste great in a tea pot or in the traditional way.

We have already informed the winners of our give aways from the food show, so if you missed out thanks for participating anyway.

Carnaval 2009

check out this footage of Carnavaal in Jujuy, Argentina. See older blogs for written word.

Organics Expo Melbourne 2009 and the Auckland Food Show 2009

La Pachamama, Julio 2009!

We had a working holiday this July and in the process met some fantastic people from the organics industry of Argentina, as well as prominent figures such as the Embassador and Trade and Commerce representative from the Argentine Embassy in Australia. It was exciting to see so many great innovations coming from Latin America and to learn about our compadres across the ditch in Australia. We will talk more about that another time. Almost as soon as we arrived back in Aotearoa we were straight into another year at Auckland the Food Show.

Another big hi to Gold Medal Wines (see their blog here:http://chileanlegend.blogspot.com/). Their delicious wines helped us balance our mate intake. For those we met at the show we'd love to hear your comments on our blog - or if you'd like to give your feedback on our products (all welcome) do so here.

We have learned so much about organic food this month. The nonorganic sector's reaction to organics, sustainability and accreditation and of course the healthy benefits for consumers of natural organic products. I came accross a very interesting article in the Ecologist magazine (which recently made the sustainable shift from print media to e-books). The article is about organic procurement and discusses a great success story about organic procurement policy for public schools

in Italy. In stark contrast to the recent back-paddle on healthy kai legislation in NZ's parliament. La Pachamama wants to be the one making these types of decisions easy for busy people who want more than a caffeine boost out of their hot tea.

In line with this, we've put up a new voucher. If you cite this blog when you contact us we will give you a sample of our tea. Don't forget to tell us if you prefer loose leaf tea or tea bags!

Make sure that you are subscribed to our newsletter as August is a special month for La Pachamama...

Danny & Gaby

La Pachamama, Organic Yerba Mate