Leaving the guesthouse, I went with my guide and Mr. Albert north of Mircurea Ciuc for some distance, then we turned left, driving on a gravel road towards the area of Madaras. First, we passed fields and meadows, then we gradually entered a deciduous forest. While driving, Mr Albert told my guide that Filtermaiszter Zsolt started a fish farm in this area, but he sold it and moved to his present place. Besides, there were several others who had tried to make fish farms in this area, but they had given up.
Finally, we arrived at the property of his father-in-law where there was a wooden cabin, an outdoor eating place and a fish pond, which had been excavated by Mr. Albert’s father-in-law.
The bottom of pond was covered by a tarpaulin where the surrounding area was on the same level or lower than the pond.
Next to the property, a small river was passing. In order to replenish the water in the pond, a tube was feeding water from the creek to the pond. Mr Albert, totally unfazed by the cold running water, removed some stones below which there was a wooden shield.
Below, there was a perforated metal plate above a concrete tube. Inside the concrete tube, but invisible to us, the tube connecting the the creek and the pond was residing. There was another invisible tube connecting the fish pond to a pond on the outside of the property. In this way, fresh water was passing through the fish pond.
Another requirement for fish to survive is air. In the beginning, water was passing from the tube, falling into the pond in one place only. Mr. Albert noticed that the fish was gasping for air where water was entering the pond. Then, he understood that there was too little air in the pond and he constructed a setup such that water was falling continuously into the pond in three places instead of one. In this way, the flowing water will bring fresh air into the pond at the same time.
In order to protect the pond against predators, it was surrounded by a fence to prevent mink from entering. In addition, blue clotheslines were set up above the pond and a net was stretched out just above the surface of the pond to prevent birds like herons from taking the fish.
The filter in the creek with the intake clogs easily and the same happens with another filter located in the tube above the fish pond. There is also a filter where water is leaving the pond in case of a higher water level on the outside.
The fish are sensitive to environmental changes and the fish farmer has to be attentive.
When it’s raining a lot, silt will appear in the gills of the fish.
If the fish is afraid, it secretes a liquid which makes it slippery.
If the fish don’t escape when someone arrives, they are probably ill. Then, he can close both intakes and where the water is flowing out of the pond. Next, he can apply a medicine for about 2 hours. Afterwards, he can let water enter and exit again, but he has to wait for 2 months before he can slaughter the fish.
Mr. Albert buys rainbow trout spawn from Mr. Filtermaiszter in the spring and he slaughters them in the autumn.
Once, he set up an advert about selling fish, but the response was too high. He pulled the ad and asked people to go to Mr. Filtermaiszter instead.
He only produces fish for his family and some friends, while others are advised to go to Mr. Filtermaiszter.
Mr. Albert uses a dog feeder to feed the fish at certain times, which the fish like.
However, he wants to install a fish feeder which spreads the feed, else the most greedy fish take almost all of it. Besides, he wants to install a LED light, which will light a small part of the pond and attract insects, which the fish can eat.
He threw fistfuls of pellets into the lake and we could watch the fish partly jump out of the water in order to catch the feed.
There are 650 rainbow trout in the pond in autumn and 1200 in summer, but he’s certain he can have 3000.
He was using a net to haul up fish and when he hauled up enough for us, he finished off all of them, then he cleaned and grilled them. Finally, we had a delicious meal in the crisp autumn air.
In fact, he prefers to keep the fish salted for 24 hours to bring out the taste, but it wasn’t possible for us because I was going home the next day.
He needed to drain the pond because it freezes in winter. The next day, he would drain it, slaughter all the fish and put it in a freezer.
We met the owner, Mr. István Szabó, of Kázmér brewery where he lives with his family. He invited us for tasting his Vienna lager in the garden and I must admit I was pleasantly surprised by its rich taste. I almost never drink lager because it’s become a drink, which tastes almost the same everywhere.
Vienna lager was developed by Anton Dreher in Vienna in the 1830s, combining the crispness of lager with the paler hues of the English ale by adding roasted malt in the mash of lager.
The brewery is named after his rooster Kázmér, which lives in the chicken coop in the garden with one young rooster and many hens. He’s the boss of the chicken coop, at least for now.
While we were enjoying his beer, he told us about how he ended up with his own brewery. He studied electronics and after graduation, he worked as an electrical engineer. His first job was to work in automation for a local brewery and he was worked with automating both malting and a pastueriser.
He worked with an Austrian company from 1992 to 2004 and it was there that he learnt how to make beer. Next, he worked as a manager being responsible for investments and he has worked as a brewing manager for Heineken in Mircurea Ciuc and Targu Mures.
He worked for 3 years as a director for Heineken and he had to move wherever the company wanted. He quit in the beginning of 2017 and he has been living from his savings ever since. Brewing beer is a hobby for him, but now he’s starting to make money from it as well.
He started one and a half years ago and he had to overcome a lot of bureaucracy to get a permit for brewing beer and he will get it soon. Unfortunately, he has to fulfill the same requirements as an industrial brewery and he has to accept inspections of his brewery and pay a lot for it. In addition, he has to pay extra tax for producing drinks with alcohol according to Romanian law.
When he quit his last job, he got a kit for making beer from his colleagues. Thereafter, he bought a 25 litres set for making mash from New Zealand. Not being content with its thermal performance, he has put a layer of thermal insulation around it.
Inside the brewery
Mr. Szabó buys malt and crushes it manually in a mill, the beer making machine has an inner porous cylinder and an outer tight cylinder. He pours crushed malt in the inner cylinder together with water. He heats it up and after some time, the water has turned into wort. The mash is given to the poultry.
Mash
He boils the wort, next he adds hops because they add flavour and kill bacteria. Thereafter, he pours the liquid into a fermentation tank and adds yeast. Then, fermentation is done at a controlled temperature of about 10°C for 1 week. After the main fermentation, the beer is matured for another 2 weeks in stainless steel vessels.
Fermentation tank
When the fermentation is finished, he removes the yeast or he lets out the beer. In any case, he pours the beer into containers and stores them in a fridge with a controlled temperature of about 0.5°C. This is the maturing process.
Mr. Szabó makes 100 litres beer a week and he works 16 hours per week. He asked me to calculate how much he produced per hour and that should be 100l/16h = 6.25 litres of beer per hour.
He starts making new beer while another batch is fermenting, he’s reinvesting all profits, he’s selling his products to friends and he sells a lot to doctors in Bucharest.
He wants to sell beer in bottles to a pub, bringing the bottles back to his place, removing the labels and washing them himself. Then, he can ensure that there is always fresh beer in the pub.
He will make draft beer later.
Some Romanian beers had good quality in communist times, but after 1989, Romanians discovered beers from Western Europe. Big breweries arrived, a price war erupted and in order to survive there were two possibilities:
1. develop a less lossy production.
2. use less ingredients, turning the beer into water beer.
Craft beer started being developed at the same time with aroma and content, but it’s too rich and tasteful for many people.
He wants to make something in the middle between water beer and craft beer.
He follows the German clean law for beer-making using only water, hops, malt and yeast.
He glues labels to his bottles by means of milk. Then, he can wash them off easily after the bottles have been returned.
He’s willing to exchange 4-6 bottles of beer with a bottle of good wine
He has three compost heaps, each one one year older than the others and all of them are fermenting and producing heat. After three years, he transfers some of the finished compost to the two other ones and he uses the rest as fertiliser.
During our visit, it was obvious that we were visiting an engineer: from modifying the beer-making set, the temperature-controlled setup for maturing the beer, the chicken coop and the compost heaps. This is a man who likes to solve problems and he does it in a practical way!
We met Mr Szilard Fazakas outside his family’s house, next we entered the workshop located next to the house. It had been a stable, but he had converted it into a workshop with tiles on the floors and the lower walls.
Having passed his office, we entered the workshop where there were some idle machines together with a chocolate tempering machine constantly moving liquid chocolate.
When he should start his company, Mr Fazakas was wondering about a brand name and, at a family reunion, he discovered the name Krausz, the last name of his great grandmother. She had two daughters and the name disappeared. He thought it was perfect and catchy, immediately calling his company Krausz chocolate.
Spots of cocoa butter are visible on the surface of the chocolate if not done correctly, a phenomenon, which is called crystalisation. An interesting video about crystallisation can be watched here. Mr Fazakas wants the surface to be shiny, smooth and brown, which he obtains by extracting liquid chocolate when it has the correct temperature.
Pouring chocolate mass in a mould
He used a ladle to put liquid chocolate in a mould with symmetric voids, laid it on a shaker and let it be shaken for some time to get rid of bubbles and make the chocolate even before he scraped away the excess chocolate with a spatula. Next, he poured the contents of the mould into the chocolate bath and put it in a freezer.
Letting excess chocolate leave the mould
When he took it out again, the voids in the mould were covered with a thin layer of chocolate.
Next, he put some walnut cream in a plastic bag and shaped it into a piping bag, cutting a small hole in the thin end.
Walnut cream in a cone-shaped plastic bag with a hole at the base
He laid walnut kernels in each void of the mould covered by chocolate.
Putting walnuts in the voids of the chocolate
Next, he pressed walnut cream on top of the walnut kernels, filling the voids.
Putting walnut cream on each chocolate
Finally, he took chocolate with a ladle from the tempering machine and poured it over the complete mould. Thereafter, he scraped away excess chocolate, put it on the shaker and scraped away more chocolate. In the end, he put it in a freezer.
He also laid blackberries from this village on the surface of a still liquid chocolate lying in a mould.
Mr Fazaka’s philosophy philosophy is to be a local producer, producing as much as people want to buy, but quality is more important than quantity. In fact, he spent 6 months to create a palette. Fortunately, there is a low health risk when making and selling chocolate.
Once, he should make 5000 chocolates for the pope’s visit and he had to make a mould, a recipe and packaging. Unfortunately, the representative from the church was bargaining so much that he had to compromise on quality, meaning that the chocolates didn’t measure up to his high requirements.
Another time, he made a mould for a coffee shop, but it was too complex and chocolate was remaining in the mould when he should extract it.
His greatest challenge is the packing machine, which he bought new, but it melts the chocolate and he can’t use it. Anyway, he has a Hungarian packing machine, which is 80 years old and it works well.
He bought the shaking machine first, but it can also be used as a tempering machine. He’s planning to reuse it together with the old packing machine. He wants to make chocolate with dried plum in this machine where the chocolate will be carried on a conveyor belt and be cooled down by means of air blowing over them.
He also needs to follow up printing companies tightly such that they make labels according to his wishes.
He’s selling his products under another brand name in supermarkets and it gives him more profit. He also sells his products in flower shops and wine cellars under his own brand name. He prefers to have as many sellers and retailers as possible because he only wants to be an entrepreneur, experimenting, designing and producing chocolate. In fact, he wants to sell both chocolate, ice cream and cheese.
Mr Fazakas started making and selling ice cream in 2010 and stopped in 2018.
He buys cocoa from Italy.
He has a golden rule: never rinse the moulds with water. Instead, he melted chocolate in a mould with hot air, then removed the remains with a cloth.
He studied at a university in Cluj and he learnt chocolate-making there, but he prefers this quiet place to Cluj. It’s a good place to grow up for his children and his family can get what they want from Mircurea Ciuc.
He got an EU grant for startup companies and he gets help from his parents.
Before VAT was 20% for all products, but now its 9% for food such that he can earn more.
We went to the the butchery of Nagy Géza, which looked liked any house from the outside. After about 80 visits to small-scale producers in Romania, the one thing they have in common is that they are unpretentious.
Having entered, we were led to a room where three men were cutting up pig’s meat with knives. Surprisingly, they didn’t wear gloves. In fact, there was nothing that protected them them against severe cuts!. When I asked my guide about it, the man in in charge said that they only would use safety gloves if they had to. Fortunately, they hadn’t had any accidents so far.
The butchers at work
Cutting meat with razor-sharp knives, working methodically in silence, everybody knowing exactly what to do, they made it look easy, but that was because they were so good at it. One tragicomic thing about this was that there wasn’t even a first-aid kit where they were working, while the women, who were preparing food, had one!
All the premises looked clean, there were tiles on the floor and on the lower part of the walls. Likewise, the workers wore clean clothes and clean aprons.
Thighs of pigs were hanging from the ceiling and the workers were cutting them up, sorting meat and fat into plastic boxes. The skin was put in a separate box, fat in another one, the best meat was separated, while the lowest quality meat was for sausages. Separating bones and meat was done quickly and easily.
Cutting meat
They have to work hard to satisfy demand because many people like their products even though they can buy cheaper meat products from big factories.
Freshly cut meat
The boss learnt the trade from his grandfather and his brother. In fact, he was part of a family who had been butchers for generations.
Lard
Those who want to be butchers need to start when they are about 16 years old. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any apprentices at the moment. In general, adolescents don’t want to do this type of work. There is a training course for budding butchers, but it is difficult for beginners.
Now they can buy equipment like special knives in a shop nearby, but before it was difficult to get the knives they needed. Likewise, before they didn’t have a refrigerated car, but they have one now. They deliver meat products to customers within a 60km radius.
The nearest slaughterhouse is 60 to 70 km away.
There are 8 workers here and it is a family company. They want to expand it and turn a former barn into a butchery.
One of the workers work here part-time, else he works as an organist and sings in a church. The other one has small children, boy and girl, but they are too small to work here. He will try to persuade them as they get older. The wife and daughter of the boss work in the kitchen.
There is one big butchery with which they have good relations. The owner of another butchery died, one of his workers have bought it and wants to run it. Else, there are plenty of small producers, who operate illegally. They slaughter a pig and cut it up at once in an ad-hoc operation.
Before, the man in charge worked with cow and calf meat, but not any more. Now, he only works with pig’s meat and he doesn’t want to mix types of meat. He doesn’t like horse meat and he doesn’t want to work with it. Some of the villagers ask him to cut up sheep or cows, but he does it only for them and never under his brand name.
They have a smoke room for smoking their products and a cooler room for storage. They let the meat mature for a month by hanging from meat hooks in the cooler rooms. This is costly for the butcher, but good for the quality of the meat.
Suspended cold cuts
Some meat products are smoked and some are dried and smoked.
Smoked meat products
Moreover, some meat was lying in brine where the salt in the brine enters the food leading to that bacteria are killed.
Meat in brine
They make meat products like salami, bacon, black pudding, cold cuts, sausages and ham.
Before we left, the man in charge kindly served us a collection of their products. Black pudding was not for me, else it was delicious.
Attila asked me what kind of small-scale producers I would like to visit in his area, then I mentioned a bakery or a confectionery. After some phone calls, he had tracked down the confectionery of Mrs Anna Olah Nagy.
Before, the locals came to her with ingredients and asked her to make a cake, but often it wasn’t enough and she had to add some. Moreover, they didn’t pay since they had brought the ingredients, but she got tired of it. One day she set up a sign on the gate that cakes were for sale and people started buying them.
She learnt baking from her mother and grandmother, who still helps a lot even though she’s 92 years old.
When we visited her, she was making a cake with pig’s fat called Hájas tészta. The finished cake resembles Danish pastry with its airy consistency.
Inside a cakes called Hájas tészta
She flattened the dough with a rolling pin and hit it with the same utensil.
Rolling the doughHitting the dough with a rolling pin
Next, she put fat on the dough and spread it out over the whole surface.
Putting pig’s fat on the dough
She folded the dough in a certain way, folding it on the long sides, then on the short ones until she had made a block of dough.
Folding the dough
Finally, she put the fat on top of the dough and put it in a plastic bag, letting it rest for about 20 minutes.
She would do the same three times and it takes 4-5 hours to make this cake.
Fortunately, she was making two of this cake on the same day so we didn’t have to wait long before she did the same procedure again. Then, small bumps appeared on the surface and she told my guide that it was a sign of quality.
There should be two weddings in the weekend and 60 kg of cakes was required for each wedding.
This is her only job and she’s working at home.
When she makes cakes for weddings, etc. she starts on Tuesdays or Wednesdays and finishes on time on Friday or Saturday.
She showed us a cake with marzipan flowers. In fact, she makes marzipan and shapes it into flowers.
A finished cake
She also makes cookies and cakes without orders and advertises them on her facebook page and people are coming to her confectionery to buy them. There is also a small shop with products from small-scale producers in this area and it’s possible to buy her products there.
She has two children, one son in Switzerland and a daughter in high school. She helps her mother in summer holidays.
Her family has a guesthouse in the mountains and they also have some pigs, which they slaughter for meat for themselves and their guests. They also take the fat, which is located near the stomach of the pig, and use it for making Hájas tészta.
The house is located near the main road passing through the village of Ghimes-Fáget near the Antal guesthouse.
Before we left, she generously gave us a lot of the cakes she had been making earlier in the day.
I went back for another stay at Attila’s farm. The children had grown a lot since last time and a small girl had been born since last time I was there.
The kitchen garden near their house had potatoes ready for picking and a man with a horse should plow the potato field, but he didn’t arrive.
In the evening, I followed Attila to a pasture where some cows and calves were grazing. All of them came when he called, the calves jumping and running, being playful and full of energy. He had bought two calves from Tirol and they should be more robust against diseases than the local cattle.
Playful calves
The cows went inside the building where Attila chained their necks, gave them cereals in a bucket, tied the tail to the hind leg, cleaned the udders with water and milked a small amount from each udder into a metal cup. Later, the contents would be given to the pigs.
Milking a cow
Next, he milked the rest into another bucket, pouring the contents through a filter into a stainless steel container each time he had finished milking a cow. Thereafter, he did the same procedure with the other ones.
Milking a cow
The cows were busy eating the cereals while being milked, even licking the bucket when it was empty. When all the cows had been milked, he let them out. In fact, they would stay outside all night inside an enclosure. The next day, they would be allowed to go other pastures.
Next, we went back again to a place where he had a bull to which he gave hay. Then, he entered the pigsty where he fed 4 pigs cereals, potatoes and pumpkins from the kitchen garden. Finally, he let them out such that he could clean it. Like the calves, the pigs also seemed very content when they were let out, running inside the courtyard.
Going for food
There were three types of potatoes, one red and two light brown or beige. They didn’t use any pesticides, but it had rained a lot and there was blight on some of them. Anyway, two of the potato types were good, while the third one was not good. The potatoes with blight would be given to the pigs.
On our way back, a horse was pulling a log being aided by a man who was using a tool to loosen the log, while another one was leading the horse.
A horse pulling a log
After sunset, I followed Attila’s family up on a hill above the village, listening for rutting deer. Unfortunately, I didn’t hear any deer, but Attila did. Obviously, his listening is better than mine.
The next day, his father’s cows were used as beasts of burden. He brought them to the kitchen garden and attached a yoke to their necks such that they had to stay side by side, added a piece of rope to be able to pull them and attached a plow to the yoke. Then, Attila led the cows and his father was plowing, everything at walking pace.
Plowing a field by means of cows
Using a mixture of encouraging commands and light strikes with a stick, Attila made the cows pull the plow, seemingly a very easy task for them, as potatoes were continually being exposed by the plow. When they reached the end of the field, his father detached the plow and Attila made them turn 180 degrees, making them ready for another round. The whole process was repeated until all the fields had been plowed.
Plowing a field
At last, Attila and his father were picking the potatoes by hand, sorting the big ones for eating, the middle ones as seed potatoes and the bad and small ones for the pigs. The amount of potatoes were enough for their families and the guesthouse.
Picking potatoes
Next year, the field with lucerne would be replaced by a potato field and vice versa and maize would be planted along the length of the potato field, like this year.
Various vegetables lying on the sides of the fields seemed to be irresistible to the cows, which ate whatever they could get with relish. Actually, they were always trying to eat whenever it was possible, in particular one of them.
When the plowing had been done, the cows were attached to some farm equipment and they were fed withered maize and turnips growing along the potato field. The hungry cow looked very content as it was eating the maize.
A hungry cow
Inside the courtyard of Attila’s family, a couple of ducks were roaming freely and a rooster was crowing from morning till evening inside the chicken coop.
It has to be mentioned that this village is acoustically interesting. During my short stay, in addition to the happenings described above, I could also hear people mowing hay, grinding their scythes, horses pulling wagons, cows being let out to graze in the morning, ravens, etc. I would like to come back and do field recordings. In the meantime, it’s possible to listen to these ones.
We arrived at about 6 in the morning in pitch darkness at this farm. Somehow we met Jonas, who we followed into the barn where he fed the kids, while a big male was in a separate place. Next, we entered the dairy where a young local man was milking the goats.
The goats moved up a short ramp where they could only turn left to the milking machines. Each goat found its place and started eating fodder. Next, a metal bar was lowered over the necks of all of them. The worker attached pumping devices to the udders and started the milking machine. After some time, the oldest goat at 10 years old, was trampling to show that she didn’t have any more milk.
When the udders of the goats were empty, some transparent plastic containers through which the milk was passing also turned empty. Then, the worker removed the pumping devices and hung them up on a railing. Then, he opened a gate such that the goats could walk down another ramp, next he closed a door such that they couldn’t return. The same procedure was redone until all the goats had been milked.
After he had finished the milking, he emptied the remaining milk in a hose into a container with the rest of the milk. Next, he rinsed all the equipment and carried the container to the dairy. There, Jonas poured the milk into a stainless steel container, turned on heat and waited till it reached about 40°C. Next, he added liquid mould, rennet and a liquid which increased yield. That is, it turned more milk into cheese. Thereafter, we went for breakfast.
The companies, which are producing milking machines, didn’t want to give Jonas a quote. One company had a subsidiary in Bucharest and they sent him a quote, but they didn’t want to come here. In the end, he connected all mains electricity and plumbing himself to the dairy. Finally, the company was willing to send two technicians to his place and assemble the milking machinery.
He brought goats from Belgium, but it was very difficult to get them registered by the local vets, although inspecting goats is easier than cows. In the end, he had to bring the vets to his place and bring them back again when they were finished.
He has 14 milking goats and 8 small ones, which were born this year. In addition, he had slaughtered 2 male goats. He thinks 24 goats would be enough since the milking machine can accommodate 12 goats only.
Jonas told us that the goats stop producing milk in winter and they start producing milk again about 1 March. He’s using this period to work as a freelance engineer on ships, being well paid and saving money for the rest of the year.
He spent the summer haymaking, doing manual mowing only and he took part in all stages of it because buying hay isn’t an option.
The hillsides above the farm have lots of flowers and they smell like an organic, herbal tea shop. This is good for the goats because they are what they eat and, of course, for the cheese. He mowed the grass on the hills above the house, put it on tarpaulins and pulled it down to the house, making haystacks, else he would have to hire a horse, driver and cart and freight it here.
Several farmers are mowing grass to receive subsidies although they have no animals and they throw away the grass.
Before it was easy to mow someone’s land where he left 2/3 to the owner and took 1/3 himself, but not any more.
Some owners come to him and ask him to mow the land and pay him for the work, but he needs workers. It’s simply too much work for one person. Since fewer people work the land, lots of hay is not cut any more.
Many people between 20 and 50 work abroad, doing work, which Western Europeans don’t want. This means that Jonas has problems getting workers to help him.
Some local people earn a lot of money in Western Europe, then come back and spend it, but they don’t want to work here.
When Jonas and his wife Katalin first came to Mircurea Ciuc, he looked for an engineering job, but none was available. Since he had always liked goats, he decided to be a goat farmer instead. First, he had to ask his neighbours within a radius of 100 m if they would accept that he started a goat farm and all of them accepted, but only one could sign his name. Jonas had to sign for the rest.
However, he can’t get a subsidy if the land is not registered. That is, he needs to prove that he’s the owner of the land. The land around Mircurea Ciuc was registered during the communist period, but the Gyimes valley was ignored.
As described here, lots of land was divided among family members into small plots before the communist period.
Jonas told us the following regarding registering of land:
⦁ When a surveyor appears in a village, he is often surrounded by those who are most greedy.
⦁ Some people claim they own land they don’t own when the surveyor appears. Many people are illiterate and are easy to fool.
⦁ A quick survey method had to be abandoned because so many “smart” people were claiming land from their neighbours. In addition, if one sibling stayed at home and the other ones were away, he could claim all the land as his.
⦁ People who work at the land registry in Bucharest work very slowly regarding registering land in the Hungarian-speaking part of the country.
⦁ Lots of land has been registered in the Romanian-speaking part.
⦁ The Romanian government was imposed by the EU to register all land within 2018, but many parts of the Hungarian-speaking land are still not registered. The Romanian government wants to register uninhabited land in order to increase quickly the amount of registered land, but it won’t help people where they live. Unfortunately, registering land where people live is more time-consuming.
⦁ Jonas and 5-6 other farmers have formed an association to speed up registering of their land.
After breakfast, we went back to the dairy where a young local woman was cleaning and working as an assistant for Jonas. He transferred the curds to porous plastic buckets by opening a valve at the base of the stainless steel container and letting the contents flow out. Next, he laid the buckets on a metal table with a hole through which the whey could escape.
He added dried nettle to the curds in the two porous buckets and mixed it thoroughly with his hands. Next, he added peppers to two other porous buckets and mixed it with the curds again.
After he had mixed the curds with dried herbs, he added more curd and mixed everything again. Thereafter, he put on lids on all the buckets and put pressure on them. Later, he would release the pressure and turn the buckets upside down. Next, he would lay the cheeses in salt water. The day after, he would put them in a cool room for maturing.
While Jonas was making cheese, the young woman was making ricotta. When he had removed all the curds from the stainless steel container, he emptied the remaining whey into a kettle. By heating it, white flakes of curd started appearing on the surface of the whey after some time. When there was enough curd on the surface, she used a sieve with a handle to lift it up and put it in a perforated plastic basket, letting the remaining whey flow out and the ricotta remain.
When she wasn’t making cheese or ricotta, she was cleaning and after both making cheese and ricotta was finished, she cleaned everything, which had been used.
As regards making soft cheese, Jonas told us that some whey should stay in the curd, the cheese should be laid on a metal grid, it should be turned upside down twice daily. White mould should start appearing on the surface of the cheese after 2-3 days. If not, it is probably not suitable for human consumption.
One of his cheeses was full of small holes resembling somewhat a Swiss cheese. I asked him why it looked like that and he said that it was something the goats were eating.
Jonas told us that demand is larger than supply. He delivers his cheeses to a vegetarian restaurant in Mircurea Ciuc and to a burger place in the same town.
According to Jonas, city people think cow farmers are better than goat farmers.
He told us that EU funds are much easier to get for big farms, but very difficult for small ones because there is a lot of paperwork, which has to be filled out. Big farms can pay someone to do it, but it’s not possible for small ones.
One day, inspectors, who were extremely meticulous, came to him without warning, but they couldn’t find anything apart from some paperwork, which had to be finished within a certain time.
They asked him the usual question: where does the water come from? From the hills above the farm. He had to provide a water sample, a milk sample, a bottle sample and a cheese sample to them. Everything was analysed and found to be ok. In the end, he asked them why they did it and they gave him a white lie. He said he didn’t believe them and finally they admitted that envious people in the village had sent them. He almost gave up the farm after the inspection. Fortunately, he’s still raising goats and making goat’s cheese.
The local high school wants to send pupils to local companies for practise because they are tired of reading and sitting in a classroom. Only Trifolium Kajo, the ski slope and the dairy can employ young people, though.
Jonas had two adolescents here and he tried to teach them about his farm, asking them questions about the dairy to test if they had learnt their lessons. He also let them drive a small tractor.
There should be a cheese conference in Bucharest the week after our visit. While there, he would present his problems in public.
His cheeses are not bio-certified products, but they are good enough. There is too much paperwork to get them certified as organic products.
Jonas and Katalin accept and accommodate volunteers from WWOOF Romania as described here.
A wwoofer from Belgium was present and a couple from Australia would arrive later. Now, he needs help with building work, before he needed help for mowing.
He also said that he had bought a house not far away from the farm. He wanted to rent it out and he had hired a carpenter to refurbish it. Unfortunately, only one German family had staid there this summer.
The house is on registered land and it has space for 9 people. He had kept an old apple tree near the house although the carpenter wanted to cut it because he said it was in the way when he was working. He showed us the house too and it looked very modern inside.
Surprisingly, he was refurbishing the barn himself as if he hadn’t enough to do before.
For those who want peace and quiet, lovely scenery and good hiking terrain, it should be an excellent choice.
Last but not least, he always wore a hat during our last visit, while this time he showed us what was remaining of his unruly hair!
