Ebenezer · Hawkesbury · NSW
It began with our own skin.
Maison Jersey is made by hand at Ebenezer, on the river flats of the Hawkesbury, from the morning milk of a single Jersey named Mona. No tanker, no powder tin, no second farm — this page is the whole operation.
The cow
mona.
Everything here starts with Mona.
The maison is organised around her morning. A Jersey with gold-tinted milk — butterfat, beta-carotene, pasture — milked by hand once Terry has had his fill. Around twenty-five litres on a good day, chilled within the hour and in the pot the same day.
Every bar and every jar we make starts in that pail.
Read her storyHer calf
terry.
Mona’s calf. The two spend their days together and their nights apart — the quiet arrangement that makes a morning milking possible at all.
He drinks first, about ten litres, before the maison takes a drop.
Meet TerryThe heifer
vanilla.
An orphaned heifer who shares Terry’s night paddock. She isn’t milked; her contribution to the soap is nil, her place in the herd is not.
The whole team
anya & nassim.
Anya founded the maison and makes everything in it by hand; Nassim co-founded it and does the rest. This started as a household problem: two people whose skin objects to almost everything, and no brand we could find that was natural the whole way down rather than natural on the label. We already had the cow. The rest followed.
Where to find usThe method
Why one cow.
Skin that reacts to everything turns out to be a demanding quality controller.
Ours rejected most of what we tried, so the formulas got shorter until nothing was left but what the milk needed. One cow, one diet, one pasture — and no room for anything we couldn’t explain.
- 25L
- milked by hand
at dawn - 10L
- Terry’s share,
taken first - 26g
- of what remains,
in one bar
hawkesbury.
The place
Ebenezer.
The Hawkesbury has fed Sydney since the 1790s. Ours is a small block on the river flats, where the silt makes the pasture rich enough that the milk carries it — wine people would call that terroir, and we’re not above borrowing the word.
It is also the reason there is no second farm. Everything you have just read happens inside these fences.
The gallery
Life on the farm.
The shot list is written; the camera is next. Swipe through where each photograph will live.
More from the farm, as it happens — Follow on Instagram Read the journal
