Month: September 2019

Gergely László – beekeeper

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Driving past the village of Zoltán and passing a muddy road, we arrived at the property of Gergely László and his wife. Inside a fence, they had beehives, an orchard, a pond, a chicken coop and a small house. The property was 3/2 hectares and 5-6 dogs were protecting it against bears.

Upon entering the property, we were met by all the dogs, next we were invited to join Mr Gergely to his 8-sided pavilion, which was located next to a pond being replenished by water falling down from a wooden chute. Herbs were hanging from the ceiling and they would be turned into herbal teas when time was due.

While my guide was speaking with Mr Gergely, I noticed a slingshot lying on the table. It was used for scaring away frogs and toads, which were eating fish in the pond.

The Gergely couple bought the land, which was a vegetable garden in communist times, 4 years ago and they had to pay for a survey of 20 hectares to get the property registered. In fact, they paid more for the survey than for the land. The water flowing into the pond came from two wells located 600 m from the pond. Both of them contain large pieces of concrete and they are camouflaged in order to avoid sabotage.

Many years ago, a friend tried to convince him to be a beekeeper, but he resisted for several years. Next, he got one beehive as a gift and found that he liked beekeeping. Then, his friend made him receive 27 more beehives. He collaborated with him and learnt from him and other beekeepers, but now his friend is ill.

The first 3 years were very difficult and he had to ask for help often, but he gradually learnt how to do it. After many years of beekeeping, 6 of them as a professional, he can easily survive 30-50 bee stings, but he has to protect his face.

The beekeeping is family-driven: husband, wife, and 2 daughters. He does most of the work, but everyone extracts honey.

Originally both husband and wife were forest engineers with their own timber business, but it didn’t pay off, being heavily influenced by the price of timber. Moreover, an Austrian timber company built a big sawmill nearby and out-competed small producers.

This is the first year they only sell honey, while before they were selling timber and honey.

After a while, Mr Gergely let us see him inspect his beehives. He only used a hood with netting to protect his face, while we had protection for our upper bodies. While he was showing his beehives, opening some of them, he went on talking about beekeeping.

Mr Gergely has 100 beehives here and 130 close to forests, 30-50 km from here and they would be brought home soon. The mobile bees are released near or on meadows from July to autumn and they can pollinate any type of flower. He needs one person to help him load and unload the beehives and he has to go twice to fetch the beehives because there is too little space in his car.

There were a lot of empty racks, but they would be filled with the mobile beehives.

The season starts in Feb-March, April when the bees start collecting pollen, mainly from flowers, depending on the vegetation in the area. This year, they had been collecting a lot of pollen from linden, but not so much from acacia and rapeseed.

2019 was a bad year for beekeepers in this area because of a cold, rainy spring, but the rest of the year had been good so far.

He sells minimum 2000 kg and maximum 7000 kg of honey a year. He always wants to ensure quality. His golden rule is to apply no additives and no sugar.

He says that beekeeping is not an exact science, you need experience and attention to detail and you have to accommodate all situations.

He has mounted a scale below some random beehives in order to measure how much honey the bees are producing, while all other weights are estimates. There may be more, the same or less than the ones which are weighed.

Experienced beekeepers have 200 beehives, 100 stationary and 100 mobile. After some time, they have to make the mobile bees stronger by means of the stationary ones.

Pesticides are a problem and the beekeepers want the government to enforce a ban on pesticides for rapeseed when the flowers are blooming, but they aren’t listened to.

He has a dilemma regarding the consistency of the honey: in about 1 of 40 jars, the honey crystallises , while the others stay liquid and he doesn’t know why. Those who want to know more about honey crystallisation can watch this video.

He feeds sugar and water to the bees in winter, but they are also eating honey in order to survive.

Varroa causes problems for the bees and he treats them with medicine. If it doesn’t work, they make herbal teas for the bees.

The bees are stealing from each other, strong bees from weak ones. He’s trying to minimise the problem by using a small opening in the weak beehives.

Honeydew is a valuable type of honey, but he hasn’t been able to make it.

1 kg jars of honey are very popular and they are selling all of them.

In case of a cold February and a mild March, the bees stay with their young rather than going to the outer frames with honey, keeping the young warm. That is, the grown-up bees prefer to starve to death in order to protect their young.

We also walked around the orchard and the kitchen garden. They were growing fruit trees like apple, plum, pear and quince together with raspberry, mulberry, tomatoes and others. Besides, they are growing rapeseed, acacia, lime and sunflower.

Mr Gergely’s wife fed the poultry and the rabbits during our visit.

He’s fed up with city life, he wants to be self-sufficient and live here and get water from a well. However, he has no mains electricity. The area, being surrounded by fields, is quiet and peaceful and there are no neighbours nearby.

They have a house in the village and they want to sell it. Regarding electricity, they can get get mains or use solar power with batteries, which must be changed every 6-7 years. Mains electricity is more convenient, but it has a high initial investment.

Their eldest daughter studies to be a vet. She gets offers to work abroad, but she wants to come home and help her father. The other daughter goes to high school.

Mr Gergely kindly gave me 1 kg jar of honey.

30/09/2019
Dániel Tibor – cheese-maker

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Mr Dániel Tibor is apparently being a well-known man in Romania, having been on national TV and having visits from Prince Charles yearly!

In the past, they ran a guesthouse, but it was too much work. They bought their first cow 25 years ago, then they had 6-7 and now they have 18, 14 of which are giving milk, producing 100- 150 litres of milk a day. 8-10 years ago, the local county council arranged a cheese-making course and they both attended it. In fact, they had been experimenting with cheese-making before the course. Mr Dániel said that they learnt little at the course, but some theory was useful. Moreover, it was necessary to practise cheese-making outside the course. Now, they rise at 4 in the morning, milking the cows morning and evening and they are doing everything themselves. They make 22 types of milk products, some of which include:

⦁ cheese with pumpkin seeds
⦁ cheese with cumin
⦁ smoked cheese
⦁ cheese with mould
⦁ cheese with charcoal
⦁ fresh white cheese
⦁ cottage cheese
⦁ yogurt

In fact, Mr Dániel and his wife have developed their own palette and they are very proud that they can sell most of their cheese.

In addition to selling cheese to customers in Romania, they also export cheese to Israel and a contact person organises the export.

The Dániel couple has one son, who is 25 years old and he’s working in an agricultural council, helping farmers. He hasn’t decided if he wants to continue their work because he’s busy with his own work.

They are in touch with Mr Fülöp and they think he has too much to do like doubling the number of cattle in just 2 years.

Visiting the Dániel couple early in the morning, we were invited into their kitchen where they had prepared a wide variety of cheese. While we were tasting the cheeses, Mr Dániel talked about their farm. Having tasted a wide selection of cheeses, all I can say is that it’s a pity the Dániel couple live so far away from me, meaning that I won’t taste their cheeses for some time. Anyway, it’s perfectly understandable that their cheeses are so popular because they were just delicious.

The dairy was located in the kitchen in the basement and the storeroom for cheese was located nearby.

After the cheese-tasting, we went outside to have a look at the cows, but to my surprise they were all inside a barn. On my question of why, I was told that it was because of bears, the nearest good pasture was 12km away and the cows could get hurt walking there. There was another pasture nearby, but the quality was low.

I’ve been to farms like Eiker farmhouse dairy where the cows were free to go outside or stay inside, but most of them stayed inside. Maybe farmers have been breeding animals, which require little exercise? Maybe the cattle which was too energetic wasn’t allowed to breed? However, transhumance, meaning man bringing animals to the mountains in summer and to the valleys in winter, has been practised for millennia worldwide and there are certainly both hills and valleys in this area. Anyway, even cows which are outside, like at the Milk mine, hardly get any exercise. They just walk from the barn to the pasture and back again, a walk which requires a couple of minutes. Else, they go grazing or lie down, ruminating.

The likely explanation for the delicious cheeses are what the cows are eating. For instance, Mr Fülöp said that the buffaloes needed to eat hay in winter in order to produce good milk.

During our visit, we could see that Mr Dániel’s wife was heating aubergines in a wood-fired oven and she had picked a lot of rose hip. Her husband accompanies her when she’s picking herbs because of bears. In addition to selling cheese, they also make jams and herbal teas for sale.

In general, the biggest problem is to get workers because so many have emigrated. Unfortunately, this is a problem for many of the producers we have visited.

We followed Mr Dániel a short distance from where we could see a big pile of hay required for one year’s consumption. While outside, we could see that the farm was surrounded by steep hillsides and deciduous forests and we could see rolling hills on the other side of the village.

Mr Dániel plans to apply for a grant to make work on the fields more easy, but more mechanisation can only contribute a little to work on the farm.

30/09/2019
Visiting a sheepfold in the Tarcău mountains, part II

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My guide and I went back to the sheepfold in the Tarcău mountains, doing our last trip in reverse. Passing the Gyimes valley, turning left a a crossroads, we passed lots of houses whose properties extended up to a deep river valley. Turning left again, we drove along a creek and we passed several bodies of water together with more creeks. Arriving at the place we were last time, which my guide knew we had to pass, we could see one shepherd guarding a flock of sheep. Going further, we passed more creeks and former river beds, which showed that lots of water had been flowing there. At least, there should be enough water in this place.

Since there was no mobile phone coverage, my guide stopped the car after some time, then we started walking towards a hut with a big flock of sheep nearby.

Approaching the flock of sheep, we were met by several guarding dogs, which obviously didn’t like our presence. Anyway, their job is to protect the sheep against anyone who wants to hurt them, meaning that they were just doing what they were supposed to. All of the shepherds we met last time seemed to have been replaced by new ones.

Fortunately, my guide spoke with the shepherds and told them about why we were there, that is revisiting the sheepfold and talk to the couple who were managing it, the shepherds quietened down the guarding dogs.

The shepherds told my guide that the Borosan couple, who were managing the sheepfold, would be returning in about an hour. After about 4 hours, a horse and cart with a driver and one man walking were approaching the sheepfold. It was Gabor Borosan and his son, both of whom would help with bringing the animals to the lowlands the next day. They would start in the morning and arrive in the evening. The son of Mr Borosan told my guide that he wasn’t sure if he wanted to run the sheepfold and his father said that he had two more years before he could be a pensioner. In the meantime, he had to have something to do, but he was unsure if he would want to return to the sheepfold. Earlier, he had been enthusiastic about going to the sheepfold in spring, but tired in autumn. It seemed like he had to wait till next year before he would decide what to do.

The shepherds had moved house some hundred metres and they had even set up a new one. The old house was inhabited by some other shepherds, who would also bring back their animals the day after. Another reason for bringing back the sheep, in particular, was that they were fond of mushrooms and they could strike out on their own into the forest, searching for mushrooms.

Next, sitting on a hill above the sheep, the dogs let us in peace. Actually, this area consists of wide and rolling hills, which are covered by grass where ruminants like cows, sheep and goats keep them open, while spruce trees are growing more or less everywhere else. Being next to the sheep, it was possible to hear them cutting the grass with their teeth, moving continuously because the remaining green grass was very short. In addition, the bells of the sheep made a soothing sound, which made it a very peaceful, pleasant and harmonic experience. Some ravens were flying over us, making their characteristic sounds. In such pretty and quiet surroundings, it was easy to forget about the rest of the world.

When the sheep were grazing down in the valley, some of them were moving at walking pace, while others hardly moved or were lying on the ground, supposedly ruminating. This led to that the sheep and a few goats spread out over a large area, say 300 m times 100 m. The shepherds had to ensure that the sheep kept together, which mostly seemed to go smoothly, but sometimes they whistled and even shouted to make all sheep stay with the fold.

At around 1 p.m. all of us went for lunch, presumably not necessary to guard the sheep all of the time. We were given delicious home-made ricotta by the shepherds and we had enough to to eat. Actually, it was too much and I gave some of it to one of the guarding dogs, which ate it in one go. Thereafter, it seemed like both the shepherds and the dogs were resting, the shepherds inside their hut and the dogs spread like white dots on the meadows. Finally, one of the shepherds, maybe the second-in-command, ordered a shepherd to tend to the flock.

A dog lay down on the ground and a shepherd stroked its chest with his foot and I suppose this is the most caress the dogs can get. They are guarding dogs and live a very hard life.

The shepherds hadn’t noticed any bears, but wolves had been close and one sheep had been taken by them. In addition, two of the shepherds had been attacked by bears and one of them had survived because he had 10 guarding dogs and his brother to chase away the bear.

We didn’t see any cows this time, but last time they were roaming freely, only coming home to be milked in the evening.
Just before we should go, Mr Borosan offered me to stay another night at the sheepfold. Not having brought warm clothes nor a torch or a sleeping bag, being surrounded by hostile dogs and being the only person who couldn’t speak neither Romanian nor Hungarian, made it an unpalatable choice.

Besides, milking of the animals had already stopped, making it less desirable to stay another night. Next day, the shepherds would bring back all their animals, about 500 sheep and 70 cows. Apart from any animal which was limping, all the other ones would be walking for about 10 hours to get home. After having come down to the lowlands, they would walk along country roads back home. Next, the day after, the owners of the animals would reclaim them as we saw on our way back from the sheepfold when we passed two groups, each with two sheep, which they were bringing home. The shepherds told my guide that it was common to let the animals stay outside on fields in the lowlands for about a month, next they would be brought inside barns.

On the way back, the flock of sheep we passed in the morning and the shepherd were still where the Borosan sheepfold was located two years ago, else there were several meadows, but no grazing animals apart from a horse. Several wooden buildings were in various states of decay.

Just like last time, young people don’t want to be shepherds and it’s easy to imagine that all the meadows will turn into forests in the foreseeable future.

29/09/2019
Elfruct – fruit press

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Mr Jánó had back problems due to office work and he needed a change. 4 years ago, he decided to do something practical, setting up an apple press and growing blackberries and raspberries. His company is legal, taking no shortcuts and he’s expanding his business gradually. Last year there was a record apple harvest, but not so good this year. In fact, when we arrived on a Saturday, there were only two sacks of apples, which were waiting to be turned into apple juice.

Upon arrival, two young men or boys from a local school were also present. They were doing practise at the apple press, getting away from the classroom.

5 different types of juice without any preservatives or additives are produced at this combined fruit and vegetable press:
70% apple, 19,5% parsley, 10% celery, 0.5% lemongrass
90% apple, 10% ginger
90% apple, 10% sea buckthorn
85% apple, 15% pears
55% apple 35% beetroot carrot

All of them are, in general stored, in a 3 litres bag-in-box, but they also sell bottled juice. There’s a storeroom in the cellar where Mr Jánó stores blackberry wine made from his own blackberries.

The boys opened the sacks with apples and emptied them into a bathtub with water. Next, they stirred the apples to get rid of dust, then scooped them up by means of a perforated tool and laid them in a container with a hole at its base. Next, they pushed the apples into a funnel, which led to a machine that crushed the apples, letting the pulp end up in a big box below the fruit crusher.

There were two apple presses driven by water pressure. A big tank with hoses, one to each press, provided water to the the presses and served as a reservoir when compression of the apples were finished. When fruits should be compressed, water was pumped into two rubber balloons, expanding their volume. When compression was finished, water was pumped out again.

Before compression could begin, perforated metal cylinders were laid around each rubber balloon. A cloth was laid inside the cylinder and the pulp was laid inside the cloth.

One boy put the cloth around the pulp and packed it tightly on the top, then he put on a lid and attached it tightly. Next, he applied water pressure and apple juice started flowing out of the press, being collected in a gutter at the base of the metal cylinder and passing through a filter into a container from which it was pumped into another container. From there, it was pumped into a pasteuriser where the juice was heated to 82.5C. After having been cooled i a heat exchanger, it was pumped through a flowmeter where the owner filled up bag-in-boxes, 3 litres in each.

When the pressing of the pulp was finished, either of the boys disassembled the press. Next, both of them lifted the pulp inside the cloth and put in a wheelbarrow. Thereafter, they removed the cloth and rinsed all the parts of the press.

A lot of pulp and liquid was falling on the floor and either of the boys was scraping the floors often, pushing it into drains in the floors. They also sprinkled the floor quite often.

The work was repeated until l the almost all of the apples had been compressed. When the wheelbarrow was full, one of the workers brought the wheelbarrow to the combined blackberry and raspberry orchard and emptied the contents on the ground. Before, Mr Jánó gave the pulp to farmers, but now he uses it as compost in his orchard. After about 2 years, it is turned into soil.

After some time, a family arrived with about 100kg of grapes. Then, the boys put a grape machine on top of a huge bucket. Next, they poured the grapes into the machine which crushed the grapes. When it was finished, they carried the the pulp inside and poured it into the apple press. Mixing it with the remaining apple pulp, they made a combined apple and grape juice, which the family could bring back soon afterwards.

26/09/2019
Berri chocolate

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Sandor Szilveszter is a young chocolate maker. He likes chocolate and his parents gave him chocolate. He worked in a multicultural chocolate factory in the UK and he saved money in order to go to a workshop for chocolate-making. While being there, he got a passion for it from the instructor. He can call the chocolate factory in the UK for advice.

He was in Hungary and France, visiting chocolate factories and some of the people working there gave him advice on how to make chocolate. He lives at home, having the first floor for himself and he makes a living from making and selling chocolate. He said that it provided a good opportunity for his creativity, making chocolates and packages.

Like Galffis, he makes personalised chocolates for companies, weddings, anniversaries, etc.

During our visit, a machine was mixing liquid chocolate by letting a wheel somehow lift it upward from a vessel (maybe because of adhesion), then letting it fall down through a chute back to the same vessel, forming an infinite loop. This machine is called a chocolate tempering machine and it is used for making the chocolate crisp and smooth.

He put a small plastic bowl below where the liquid chocolate was falling down and filled it partly up. Next, he poured its contents onto his marble workbench where he used two spatulas to pick it up and put it back in order to avoid crystallisation.

When the still liquid chocolate had got the consistency he wanted, he poured it into two adjacent moulds, then he hit it against the workbench in order to get rid of bubbles and make it fill all voids. Finally, he put dried fruits on the surface of the chocolate and put the chocolate in a freezer.

For those who want to know more about crystallisation in chocolate and even more, can watch this video.

He has a lot of chocolate types, like a lactose free chocolate, red chocolate with strawberries, chocolate with mint and lemon and chocolate with garlic and onion, Christmas chocolates with oranges and nuts, etc. Naturally, he has white, milk and dark chocolate.

He has many wishes like going to markets with his chocolates, making chocolate with brandy, focusing on development, expanding his business and preparing a big inventory for Christmas.

From Easter to summer is a quiet period, meaning he can do experiments. Instead, from September to Christmas he’s selling much. His products are mostly used as gifts.

25/09/2019
Jánosi bakery and confectionery

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In the village of Ciumani, we visited the local tourist office where a young woman was working. She obligingly showed us the way to the Jánosi bakery, which was run by a woman called Jánosi Veronika.

15 years ago, her husband died when he was 50, she was alone with two children, girl and boy, and she needed to survive and provide for the children. She was a housewife and she knew how to make bread. Luckily, she owned some potato fields, but she needed help with picking the potatoes. In return, she gave the workers homemade bread with potatoes and they liked it.

Her mother and grandmother gave her recipes and she started a bakery in the middle of the village. She had a small oven and she made bread twice a week. Now, they are making bread every day except Sundays.

During our visit, she used a pizza paddle to take out breads from the wood-fired oven, next she laid them on a bench where 2 women were knocking and scraping the crust of the freshly made breads in order to get rid of the burnt parts.

The guide from the tourist office told us that customers arrive when the bread is just made and several arrived during our short visit. Besides Mrs Jánosi has customers from the village and even customers from nearby villages.

The ingredients of the bread are wheat flour, water, yeast, salt and potatoes and the bread remains fresh because of the potatoes. We were given fresh bread with homemade jam and it was delicious!

When we were enjoying the fresh bread, the workers started making a cake called Hájas tészta, which is made by flattening the dough, apply pig’s fat evenly on the surface, fold the dough, apply another even layer of fat and fold the dough again. Bake it in an oven and add plum jam after it has finished. By doing the folding together with compressing several times, the finished result resembles the consistency of a Danish pastry.

Afterwards, they made gombóc, which is a Hungarian plum dumpling. My local guide gave me the following spoken recipe: make a cut in a plum and remove the seed, fill it with a mixture of cinnamon and sugar, put it on a small piece of flat dough, fold the dough around the plum, put it in boiling water and take it out again.

The workers start making dough at 3 in the morning and they can go home at 10 in the morning, but this day, they were working longer. All the workers are in family and Mrs Jánosi’s son and daughter-in-law will take over the bakery in some time.

Mrs Jánosi prefers quality and not quantity and I suppose that philosophy will govern the bakery with the new owners too.

25/09/2019
The milk mine – mining the farmer’s life

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We were passing through the village of Suseni, looking for a specific house number when we found it. It looked like an ordinary brick house with a fence along the road. It certainly didn’t look like a farm at all from the road. We entered the property and an elderly man showed us where we could find the owner of the farm, Mr Bányász József.

He invited us inside the kitchen where he served us cheese and coffee. Before, he called himself an artificial farmer because he was only talking about agriculture, trying to convince everyone to be a farmer. He was told to stop talking and start working himself as one. He spent 5 years convincing himself that he could be a farmer and now he’s a full-time farmer. 5 years ago, he was a director of an association, he quit, people told him he was stupid and he lost prestige because people prefer money to a lowly life as a farmer. Anyway, after 5 years as a farmer, he thinks it’s a good life.

He calls the farm The milk mine because he’s mining the farmer’s life, trying to show others how farmers who treat their animals and their land well are working.

Mr Bányász is a thinking farmer and here are his statements:

His main objective is to live as his great-grandparents would have lived if they were living now.

He’s trying to live as closely as possible to nature.

He and his family are not reinventing things, and they try to conserve as much as they can.

He considers the domestic animals as partners, not just subjects. If they are ill, he feels ill too. He tries to understand them, how they are thinking, always trying to help them. He wants others to think of animals like he does. He emphasizes that the domestic animals ARE his partners.

Unfortunately, most farmers look at domestic animals as a way to make money and not as partners. You don’t just keep animals, you also need to know all aspects of animal husbandry.

He says you can’t buy life quality.

He’s not looking for profit, just to have enough to survive.

He’s getting inspiration from traditions.

His way of thinking is different from the other family members.

He says art is pain and a farmer’s life is hard.

He considers art, dance, folklore as a higher form of hardship. For outsiders, folk dance is just dance, but the performers give out pain through dance.

He’s making “simple” cheese, and he would like to know more about milk chemistry, bacteria etc. He would study more if he were young.

He doesn’t go to markets, you must come to him and talk to him, if he likes you, he will sell you cheese, if not, he won’t. He has a stable customer base. He gets emails from Bucharest from people who want to buy his cheese. He replies that they have to come here and talk to him first.

His mission is to tell everybody what needs to be done.

He’s talking sincerely about living in harmony with nature.

He thinks nature doesn’t have enough resources and we need to consume less.

The whole family is trying to be independent, producing as much as possible for themselves like vegetables, fruits, bread, milk and cheese.

He’s bartering cheese for vegetable oil, sugar, salt, etc.

He’s eating meat from animals, he hasn’t resolved yet how to treat them as partners and eating them, it’s a compromise.

He doesn’t want to be a vegetarian, but he’s reflecting on it. Pigs, chickens, hens and turkeys have been slaughtered here. Male cattle have been sent to the slaughterhouse, but never dairy cows. He sells male calves to others, which is not a solution. Instead, he leaves the problem to others.

Dairy cows live their natural life and are buried here.

He doesn’t like the agricultural system in Romania, but he doesn’t work against it.

After having presented his thoughts and opinions, he invited us to have a look at the farm.

This farm has an extension of 15 hectares.

There are 3 generations living in the same house and all the family members are working on the farm except his son. He will graduate as an agricultural engineer soon, but he doesn’t want to run the farm as his father. He needs more money, but maybe he will change his mind with time.

They have good quality livestock and they have 9 cows of which 5 are milked. The cows produce 180-200 litres of milk per day, giving about 10 kg of cheese.

We went inside a barn where there was the milking place for the cows. While the cows are eating from a trough, a chain is placed above their necks. Next, they are milked by a machine and the milk is pumped to the dairy adjacent to the milking place.

During our visit, calves were eating freely from the trough, while a one week old calf was living in a separate place.

The cows are inside at night, lying on hay next to the milking place.

Next, we went to the dairy where a worker called Tamás was making cheese. In fact, he was pulling a mass of curds out of a copper tank by means of a porous cloth, then he put it in a wooden mould.

We were also shown the cool storeroom where the cheeses marked with the date of production were maturing on wooden shelves. In addition, there was a saltwater bath for the small cheeses. By letting them stay in brine, the salt kills bacteria, adds taste to the cheese and aids in expelling whey.

Next, we went down towards the meadow below the houses. We passed a big wooden structure, which had been designed by students at a local university and built by local people, but it was still missing roof and walls. It would be turned into a community hall next year.

There were some hay cylinders inside the wooden structure, but Mr Bányász said they are expensive. His father-in-law prefers haystacks, which they can make themselves. Actually, we passed two big haystacks on our way to the meadow.

The meadow which belonged to this farm were surrounded by other meadows, while we could see the village in the distance. Scattered trees were growing and the daughter of Mr Bányász followed us, telling my guide that there was ground water below the meadow for both the trees and the cows.

She works very hard, she has studied photography and likes applied arts, she wants to go abroad and have time for herself and she wants to study more. Her brother wants to work here with workers and modern machines.

When we went out on the meadow, we passed one cow which was alone. Going further, we met the rest of the cows, which apparently liked to stay together.

There is a hierarchy among the cows, they are pushing each other, even using their horns. One cow was dehorned because she was hurting the other ones. One cow had scars because she wanted to advance in the hierarchy, but didn’t succeed.

The cows had been born on this meadow, they could be outside all year if they wanted to, but they could also go inside if they preferred and they were milked in the morning and the evening.

The cows are made pregnant with artificial insemination. There is a catalogue with bulls and Mr Bányász selects the bull which is most suited to each cow.

On our way back to the house, we passed a yard with poultry and a turkey, a very common sight in Transilvania.

25/09/2019
Galffi Dezső – designer and chocolate maker

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We entered the café of Galffis chocolate and asked the salesclerk to tell Mr Galffi that we had arrived for our appointment. While waiting, we could have a look at his café, where customers could have any coffee or tea they wanted together with all the standard chocolates made by Galffis. We could also watch videos from various exclusive resorts together with relaxing music.

Anyway, when Mr Galffi arrived, he was immediately available for an interview. Starting with the videos, they were generic for making people relax and groups of customers or companies can have workshops in the café. He uses his last name together with an s at the end, which interestingly signifies genitive in both Norwegian and Hungarian.

10 years ago, he worked for his father’s company, but he didn’t like it and he wanted to make a living from chocolate. He did this by buying cocoa by means of his salary and making chocolate at night. Next, he started selling chocolate on a Friday and on Sunday he had five times as much money as much as when he started on Friday. He reinvested the money in chocolate-making, quit his job and started making chocolate full time.

He’s a self-made man, he did all by himself in the beginning and he started from nothing. His motto is that if you have something good, someone will want to buy it.

Although he had hardly any money when he started, his attitude was that all problems are solvable, he needed to find the persons who wanted to buy his product and he needed to know how to make it. In order to learn how to make, sell and serve chocolate, he visited chocolate manufacturers.

Actually, he set himself three targets before founding a chocolate company:
1. Know the history of chocolate, where does it come from and where is it going?
2. How to make it.
3. How to sell it.

When he started selling his chocolate, his customers liked it, but they thought it was too expensive. In order to counteract their opinion, he has kept the same price for 10 years, selling more chocolate with time because he’s able to produce more.

Mr Galffi is both an artist and a director and he designs chocolates with labels for anyone as long as they are willing to buy a minimum amount of 50 kg of the special chocolate. He thinks chocolate is more than food and he wants to create feelings like: the taste of cold, sunshine, forests, Hargitha county, tourism, Romania, clean air in Transilvania or whatever his customers might prefer. In addition to designing chocolates, he’s designing labels and packages on his computer in his office about 5 minutes walk from the café.

He’s got an order from the Romanian government for which he’s making a special design. During our visit in his factory, we could see special designs for a telecom conference in Budapest, Bosch Engineering Center, Danubius Health Spa Resort and World Championships in Budapest. I must admit that I think this is pretty impressive for a young man of about 30 years of age!

Now he has 7 employees, he opened this café in 2019 and it was designed by himself and a colleague. The company has a flat organisation where everyone can do everything and the director can replace everyone (one at a time) in time of need.

All the chocolate made by this company is natural and no additives are used. He buys dried berries from producers and he uses a lot of them on his chocolates. He buys cocoa from importing companies because his company is too small to buy direct.

His company produces white, milk and dark chocolate with a cocoa content from 35% to nearly 100%.

In addition to designing chocolate, labels and packages, a lot of time is spent talking to his customers. He didn’t say anything about directing the company, though and I forgot to ask about it.

We also visited his factory, but since we arrived in the afternoon, there was no chocolate production, only a female employee who was packing chocolate.

The café is located next to a rather busy road and there is space for customers both inside and outside. Moreover, there is parking space for some cars.

I really hope he will succeed in going on designing chocolates, labels and packages, enriching the world at the same time.

24/09/2019
Fülöp Szabolcs – buffalo farmer and cheese-maker

Map reference

Photo gallery

We had to go early in the morning to be able to meet Mr Fülöp in the village of Székelydálya (H)/Daia (RO) at 7 in the morning. We were waiting for him when he arrived in his car, blinked the headlights and turned back to where he came from. Driving more or less offroad, we arrived at a shed where some buffaloes were waiting patiently outside a wooden shed, while others were being milked.

He was given some buffaloes by people who gave up raising them. Some of them had been roaming freely and never been milked. Before milking them, they tied the hind leg to a pole and the tail to the hind leg and let their calves stay with them to calm them down. Moreover, they were given an injection of a muscle relaxant to loosen their muscles.

Before milking, they were rinsing the udders with water, next the buffaloes were milked by hand. When they had finished milking, they carried the bucket to a container with a filter and poured the milk through the filter.

Each buffalo had to be followed to the milking space, even those that had been milked before.

The calves resided in a separate pen and they were led one by one to their mothers when being milked. Since each buffalo looked quite different from everyone else, Mr Fülöp and a worker knew which calf belonged to which buffalo.

The milking place consisted of a shed, it was located above the village and it was surrounded by rolling meadows and a few trees.

In addition to Mr Fülöp, the worker and two adolescents were milking the buffaloes, each of them sitting on wooden chairs. An audio recording of the milking and a dissatisfied buffalo can be heard here.

It seemed like the men always used force to get the buffaloes to stand where they needed in order to be milked, while the youths obtained the same without. It may have been because the young ones got the buffaloes, which had been milked before and were used to being milked, while the men were milking the buffaloes which hadn’t been milked before and were semi-wild.

There was an electrical fence surrounding the buffaloes and small groups of horses and some buffaloes, which may have been too young to produce milk, were grazing outside the fence.

A suckling calf kept suckling even when its mother lay down on the ground.

Some of the buffaloes were ruminating, moving their lower jaw sideways continuously.

When all the buffaloes had been milked, they were let out with their calves and they could go wherever they wanted, but they seemed to prefer to stay in the area.

Next, we followed Mr Fülöp back to the village where the worker got off at his place and the youths, actually his eldest children, presumably went home for breakfast. Next, he went to an abandoned building where his family had a small dairy. There, he emptied the fresh milk in a copper container and turned on a natural gas heater in order to heat the milk to about 40°C.

Having made the necessary preparations, he could present himself. He started studying theology in 1997 and he did youth work for the bishop. He had been a Presbyterian priest for 13 years. His wife is Hungarian and they have 5 kids, two of whom were milking the buffaloes. The three eldest were home-schooled, while the fourth child went to school and the fifth one was a baby. It’s a small community, but it can’t support a priest and his family. Anyway, it’s a good place for their children to grow up. 80-90% are Hungarian-speaking and there is an 800 year old church in the village. He has chosen this lifestyle because he likes it.

It was love at first sight, not necessarily requited, when he saw buffaloes for the first time and he started raising them 12 years ago. A friend from Hungary wanted to milk them and a local man had 50 buffaloes for sale. He worked as an interpreter for his friend and he was given some buffaloes at the sale. Later, he bought 10 buffaloes, which had been milked and he was given some buffaloes by people, who didn’t want them any more. They hadn’t been milked before, they had calves and he was paying the former owner 1kg of cheese per day.

Hay is best for the buffaloes to make good milk and 500 cylinders of hay are ready for the winter. The buffaloes are hardy animals and they can stay outside all year, but he will let them stay in a former communist building this winter.

Regarding cheese-making, he first took out some litres of milk and put it in a container above a separator and separated the milk into sour cream and skimmed milk. Finally, he poured the skimmed milk back into the copper container.

He told my guide that it was a cheese-making course in 2007 nearby and his wife attended the course and he learnt cheese-making from her. He also said that his wife was better at cheese-making than him, but she was attending to their baby.

There is a Hungarian association for cheese-making and its members are making trips abroad to cheese producers. Once they went to Italy in order to learn how to make their own bacteria culture. In addition, a Hungarian cheese-maker lives near his wife’s birthplace and they can ask him for advice, likewise a Swiss cheese-maker.

When the milk was heating up, he went out and brought back buffalo yogurt for use as a bacteria culture, mixed it with soured milk in a tub, stirred it and poured it back in the copper container. As described here, adding soured milk to the fresh milk leads to two beneficial characteristics:
· preventing growth of unwanted bacteria.
· contribute to maturing the cheese and developing taste.

Adding yogurt obtained from the same buffaloes as the fresh milk was necessary in order to make the milk start curdling.

After some time, when the temperature of the milk was as wanted, he added rennet to the warm milk in order for it to curdle or coagulate such that it would form a gel after about 45 minutes. Next he was heating the milk, stirring it by hand, turning off the heat, stirring, reheating, stirring, turning off heat, manually controlling the temperature until he was satisfied.

Then, he applied a metal tool, which is called a harp, to divide the gel into curds and whey. Next, he put his arms in the cheese vat and started collecting the curds in one big mass.

He collected it, put a cloth around it and lifted it up and put it in a perforated plastic container, compressed it manually and put a weight on it, making the whey flowing out of a hole into a plastic container.

During the cheese-making, he told my guide that he wanted to replace the shed with a barn next year, the land has water sources for the animals, even in dry times, he wanted to buy milking machines next year and expand the dairy, no pasteurisation was necessary because the milk was turned into cheese within 2 hours, he felt at home in this village, there were always lots of work to do, he could sell more than 40 kg of cheese at a local market and some of the calves would be sold later.

When we arrived at the dairy, there was one kettle full of soured milk and another one with sour cream. Now, he brought the last one to his workbench and used a sieve to scoop up pieces of sour cream.

Having already covered a plastic crate with a porous cloth, he left the pieces of sour cream in the crate. He repeated this procedure until the kettle was empty. In this way, he made cream cheese.

Finally, he let us taste various cheeses with or without herbs and various stages of maturity. It was a delicious way of ending a pleasant and interesting visit.

For reference, I have been to farms with buffaloes and they have been described here and here. The Romanian buffalo is described here and here.

24/09/2019
Bálint István – jam and syrup producer

Map reference

Photo gallery

On the way to Mr Bálint’s house, a black bear was crossing the road slowly in front of us. However, when we passed the place where it had crossed the road, we couldn’t see it. Anyway, both my guides told me that bears have caused lots of problems for people in the countryside, killing domestic animals. Unfortunately, there is no compensation for the loss of one and bears are protected against hunting.

Having arrived, my guide told Mr Bálint about the bear and he told him that it was a bear which was well-known to the villagers.

Although we arrived in the evening, both mother in her seventies and son in his fifties were busy working, preparing products for going to a market in Budapest. Actually, there would be 2 events the coming weekend, one with a honey producer/beekeeper and another one with his mother.

They produce 34 types of jams and 18 types of syrups and the son was putting a large selection of jams on top of a freezer.

She started making products and going to markets in 2009 and he joined her in 2010.

While the son was preparing jams, his mother was preparing zacuscă (RO)/zakuszka (H), a vegetable spread, stirring a red liquid in a kettle on a wood-fired oven with a wooden spoon. The red liquid consisted of smashed beans, aubergine, paprika, onion, salt, pepper, sugar and honey. In fact, there were tubs with mashed beans and eggplant/aubergine, a basket with peppers and a cardboard box with paprika nearby.

They were both working from morning till night in order to get everything ready. However, all their neighbours were also preparing for winter, making jams, syrups, spreads and so on.

In addition to selling farm produce at markets, Mr Bálint has all the required documentation for selling their products in shops.

They have 7000 raspberry bushes inside the village and they have walnut trees inside a 2 hectares plantation. Outside the village, they have an orchard surrounded by a 2.5m fence. Fortunately, they didn’t have any problems with bears.
Like most people in countryside in Transylvania, they also had a chicken coop with various hen races. Surprisingly, a dog was staying with the poultry. Two chickens, one small and one big were living on the lawn under an upside-down basket.

The property was adjacent to the village church and one of the walls of the church formed a wall for the property of this family as well.

Last, but not least, they were collecting herbs, which they would dry and sell at markets.

23/09/2019
Vass Éva – farmer

Map reference

Photo gallery

When we entered the courtyard of Mrs Vass’ property, we were almost immediately invited into her kitchen where she served us home-made apple cake, but which she called apples with cake. The unavoidable pálinka and coffee were of course also served.

While we were able to eat so much apple cake as we wanted, Mrs Vass told my guide about how she ended up being a farmer. Initially, both she and her husband had full-time jobs, but they were also part-time farmers producing for themselves and their animals and they brought their children to the fields. They gradually expanded and both they and her mother sold farm produce on Saturdays. She worked in a bank and quit 2 years ago becoming a full-time farmer,while her husband worked in a factory. The breakout occurred because of the local council, which organised monthly events where they got lots of help. Before they quit their jobs, they went there 2 times a year, but now they are going there monthly.

There is a lot of hard and wonderful work and it’s become a lifestyle. Their sons are now 25 years old and they will soon graduate as agricultural engineers.

There was a plum festival in the village 3 weeks ago and a 85 year old woman who was always working was stirring the plum must, a job which takes 14 hours to make good jam. Now, she’s dead.

They have 4 cows, 2 stay in the village and 2 are in the mountains. They will come back in October. I suppose they pay a fee to some shepherds to bring their animals with them like we experienced at a sheepfold in the Tarcău mountains.

Having introduced themselves, we were invited outside to to see their products. Although exaggerating, it seemed there were berries, fruits and vegetables in all sorts of places, together with glasses of jam and bottles of syrup.

Big plastic milk churns, having a volume of about 50 litres, were almost filled to the brim with vegetables, various plastic containers were full of blueberries, apples and so on. In the middle of the courtyard, there was a big metal tank with an apparently homemade machine, which was stirring a boiling mixture of fruits. Next, Mrs Vass emptied a tub with de-seeded plums into the mixture. My guide told me that she was making plum jam. One tub was full of tomatoes and another was almost full of red peppers, while two aubergines were being heated on an open gas flame. In fact, they are growing more than 20 types of fruits and vegetables, selling a little of everything.

A young woman, who we were told was a relative and who was studying in Budapest, was de-seeding plums by hand. Only family members are working at this farm and they aren’t able to produce more.

When we had apparently seen all their products, we were invited to go with father and son in their car, first to get an overview of the village, next to go to the family’s orchard. Having crossed rather rough and steep roads, we could the see the village surrounded by meadows and forests. Next, we went up various steep roads to get to the orchard, which was surrounded by a high electrical fence because bears like to enter the orchard. In fact, Mrs Vass’ husband used to stay in the orchard from dusk till dawn and he had a radio turned on, pretending that there were several people inside.

We passed lots of apple trees in the orchard, but they also had some plum trees, 700 all in all. The plums were sweet like honey! They were also growing vegetables. Actually, it was a tranquil, secluded and lovely place and we were invited to eat as much apples and plums as we wanted.

This autumn had been dry and it was a good harvest for plums and apples, but not so good for grapes, apricots, blackcurrant and raspberry.

Since they have cows, they have to do haymaking, but they are also collecting herbs for making herbal tea at the same time.

When we came back to the house, Mrs Vass invited us to have lunch with them, but I felt embarrassed getting so much and returning so little that I asked my guide to say no thank you. Later, I met a young woman who told me that this was common among Szekler people!

At least, we were offered several glasses of jam, which I accepted with relish.

23/09/2019
Pálinka Jamy – brandy producer

Web site

Map reference

Photo gallery

We went to Pálinka Jamy where Jamy derives from the first names of the children of the family, in the town of Odorheiu Secuiesc where we were met by the owner, Rezső Szőcs. He told us that their company was located in a house from 1918 and it was founded in 2005. Having a large veranda, a well-lit cellar with tanks containing various types of fruit mash and the ground floor with an office, the distillery, a tasting room and a packing room, all seemed clean and newly refurbished. It’s a family-run company, that is, it’s run by Mr Rezső and his wife, while their children go to school.

His grandmother was the boss in the family and she stayed for 48 hours in the distillery, controlling the pálinka to prevent mixing by the distillery workers. His father used old technology to make pálinka and he didn’t enter any competitions.

Mr Rezső told us that brandy was forbidden in communist times, but people made it anyway. However, it was of low quality and people kept everything. Unfortunately, the tradition has continued such that people still use poor-quality fruit for making pálinka. Instead, they use the best fruit for pálinka in order to show everyone that they make high quality pálinka.

Since this town is located in the Hungarian-speaking part of Romania, Mr Rezső and his family are part of Szekler society, who is characterised by knowledgeable, hardworking people, never giving up, a sense of honour and Hungarian spirit.

Having sort of grown up with pálinka, Mr Rezső wanted to start his own distillery. Both he and his wife have attended distillery courses. They met a designer, who’s selling stoves and boilers for distilleries, in Hungary at one of the courses. Helping them helps him too and they can call him when they need help. They have visited many distilleries in order to learn more and they have bought a new automated distillery from Kothe destillationstechnik in Germany.

We were first shown the cellar where there was equipment for rinsing fruit and berries and de-seeding fruits like cherries and plums. Upon arrival, all the fruits and berries are rinsed to get rid of dust and impurities, but also natural yeasts to be able to control fermentation themselves. Unfortunately, he has to pay for the complete weight of the fruits even though he has no use for the seeds.

When the fruits and berries arrive at the distillery, they have to stay in the shade because they are fragile and fermentation will start in the sun.

They need 30-40 tons of fruits annually, it’s a good region for growing fruit, but it’s difficult to get enough berries.
They want to give the residues to farm animals, but the farmers say no. So far, they have used it as compost, instead.
In the next room, there were several stainless steel tanks. Mr Rezső told us that they had bought them second-hand from a dairy and they used them for fermenting the fruits and berries.

During our visit, he showed us how he stirred mashes of cherry, raspberry and Williams pear. All the mashes would ferment slowly at 10-15°C and he didn’t add any sugar.

He uses native varieties of apples, removing the seeds and using the pulp for making pálinka. He’s also using Cornelian cherry, which after having been de-seeded, are crushed and the mash is pumped into stainless steel containers.

In fact, this distillery buys up 32 types of berries and fruits in all and they are producing 17 types of brandy.

They are recording regularly the state of the mash, date, temperature, degrees Brix , etc. They use taste and smell to decide if the fermentation has finished and they measure degrees Brix, which is a measure of the sugar content of an aqueous solution, by inserting a small amount of the mash to be tested in a hand-held measuring instrument through which one can look.

This video shows how cherries are picked by hand, transported to the distillery, rinsed, de-seeded, fermented, pumped to the distillery and turned into pálinka. For reference, another Romanian distiller is described here. When the mash has fermented enough, it’s pumped up to the distillery where it is heated to 78 °C and the resulting vapour is made to pass a heat exchanger, which condenses the vapour into liquid and ending up in a bucket. They carry the bucket to the next room where they pour the contents into a stainless steel container. The initial alcohol level is 90%, but by adding tap water, they lower it to 42%. A short video showing distillation in a simplified way is shown here.

When we had been shown the distillery and the production room, the labels, the bottles and their medals, it was time to start tasting their products.

While being offered pálinka when one visits someone in Transilvania is like being offered coffee in my country, the tasting was way different from what I’ve been used to. In the first case, we are offered homemade pálinka, which is poured into a shot glass until it’s full. Next, it’s expected that we drink all of it in one go. Instead, Mr Rezső used tulip glasses made for pálinka and he just served a tiny amount in each glass. Finally, we were not expected to swallow all in one go. Instead, we should taste it and enjoy it slowly.

Mr Rezső talked a lot about pálinka competitions and the first time they entered a competition with a plum pálinka, they didn’t win anything. However, they have won a silver medal for another plum brandy and they had won several medals from Quintessence.

We were told that they work very hard to win medals at the competitions, but that they consider their competitors as friends. A friendly competition, in other words.

Like all pálinka distilleries, they are only making pálinka in autumn when fresh fruits and berries are available. The rest of the year they are marketing their products.

After having tasted several of their pálinkas, among them raspberry and plum, it was time to say thank you and goodbye.

23/09/2019