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Tag: cheese

  • Sárig Attila- farmer, part II

    Picture showing the farmer leading two cows
    Leading two cows

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    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.

    Picture of playful calves
    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.

    Picture showing the farmer milking a cow
    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.

    Pictureof a the farmer milking a cow
    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.

    Picture of pigs going for food
    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.

    Picture of locals letting a horse pull a log
    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.

    Picture of the farmer plowing a field by means of cows
    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.

    Picture of the farmer plowing a field
    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.

    Picture of the farmers picking potatoes
    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.

    Picture of a hungrry cow
    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.

  • Dániel Tibor – cheese-maker

    A selectiion of cheeses made by Mr. Dániel

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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

    Fresh white cheese

    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 wasn't in operation durig our visit

    The chesses are stored in a cool, dark room to let whey exit and mature the cheeses

    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.

  • The milk mine – mining the farmer’s life

    Grazing cows on a meadow

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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.

    Lifting up cheese mass from a tank full of whey

    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.

    Preparing to compress the cheese inside a porous cloth

    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.

    Romanian haystacks

    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.

  • Skarrbo farm

    Holdng up pieces of curd

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    Since Biologisk dynamisk forening announced a course on making unpasteurised cheese not far from where I live, I naturually joined up. The course was being run by Markus Koot who had learnt cheesemaking from his father.

    Before we arrived, Markus poured soured milk amounting to 1.5% of the total volume, into a cheese vat containing 120 litres raw cow’s milk at 29°C. He told us that adding soured milk has two purposes:

    – prevent growth of unwanted bacteria.
    – add important enzymes, which contribute to maturing the cheese and developing taste.

    Enzymes are complex proteins that cause a specific chemical change in all parts of the body. For example, they can help break down the foods we eat so the body can use them.

    After a delicious lunch, we entered the dairy where he told us what he had done and that he would next pour rennet into the milk, amounting to 25 ml per 100 litres milk, in order to start coagulating or curdling.

    Rennet is an extract from the fourth stomach of young ruminants, such as cows, goats, and sheep. It contains a number of enzymes that are designed to help these animals digest their mother’s milk, and when added to milk, it will cause the milk to coagulate, forming the curds and whey that are so essential in the cheesemaking process.

    Thereafter, he heated the milk to about 38°C, which is required to promote growth of the wanted bacteria, by means of hot water in the walls of the cheese vat. Next, we should wait for the milk to coagulate and form a gel, which would take about 45 minutes.

    During the waiting time, we went to the barn which was located next to the dairy. About 5-6 cows were inside the barn, eating hay, while one tiny calf was standing alone. However, after a short time, its mother entered the barn and started staying with her offspring. The cows at this farm are a mixture of several more or less rare races  among others Jarlsberg cattle in Norway and Markus told us that the cows are good mothers, they take care of their offspring, they bear calves on their own and they can stay outside all winter having fur to protect them against the cold. The calves stay with their mothers for 6 weeks, then they are separated but allowed to see each other. After 6 more weeks, the calf is brought to a shed where it stays with other calves until it’s sexually mature.

    After our visit to the cows, we paid a visit to the hen house where about 250 hens were laying about 150 eggs per day. Next, we went back to the dairy and looked into the cheese vat. The milk had turned into a gel, that is it had curdled. Markus cut it with a knife, next he lowered it below the cut and turned it around such that it was parallel with the surface and lifted it up gently, making the cut look like an apple from which a spherical wedge had been cut out.

    Next, it was time to cut it in 6 equally sized parts from top to bottom by means of a knife. Therafter, he assembled two metal devices called harps above the cheese vat and lowered them into the milk. Having started a machine, the harps started rotating, stirring the milk continually. After some time, he stopped the harps momentarily in order to check the state of the curds, that is the milk proteins (casein) tangle into solid masses. As always in cheesemaking, it’s necessary to separate the curds, which will be turned into cheese, from the whey , which forms the liquid part of the milk. He inspected the curds by lowering hs hand in the warm milk and collecting curds. Next, he brought them to the surface and squeezed them together. In the beginning, they were too soft and he started the harps again, but after some time and more sampling, enough whey had been separated from the curds that we could proceed.

    Next, one third of the whey should be released and two thirds of it should be replaced by water in order to make the cheese less sour and more limber. Since he started with 120 litres of milk, he wanted to pour out 40 litres of whey and add about 26 litres of water in order to make gouda cheese. By placing a metal filter inside the vat in front of the release valve and opening it, only whey was let out while the curds had to stay. The whey was let into a couple of containers and it would be given to the calves afterwards.

    After having stirred the mixture some time, it was time to take out the curds and transfer them to porous plastic baskets. Next, we should compress the curds in order to let out more whey. At the same time, the collection of curds are turned into cheese mass. Later, we should turn the cheese masses upside down and compress them again. Actually, Markus would turn them upside down some times more after we had left since we only stayed from 12 to 4. Thereafter, he would dip them in floating wax in order to protect them against mould.

    As shown above, the curds, which have been collected together in plastic baskets look very different from cheese. In fact, they have to be matured or ripened before they are turned into cheese. Next, we entered the storeroom adjacent to the dairy where cheeses were lying on wooden shelves, being stored at a high relative humidity of about 80% and a low temperature. In addition, a cheese was being stored in brine, which is used to harden the crust, adding flavour and conserving the cheese. Mould was growing on some of the cheeses, and since we were attending a course, we were allowed to clean some of them by means of running water and a brush.

    Markus told us that the cheeses have to mature for at least 3 months, but he doesn’t sell them before they have ripened for at least 6 months and maximum 1 year.  As explained here,  cheese ripening is “characterized by a series of complex physical, chemical and microbiological changes” that incorporates the agents of “baceria and enzymes of the milk, lactic culture, rennet, lipases, added moulds or yeasts, and environmental contaminants”.

    After the course had finished, we could buy whatever we wanted from the farmshop next to the dairy. There, we could buy products like meat, cheese, eggs, yogurt and raw milk straight from the cows. I almost never drink milk, but if I had to, I would have preferred raw milk because it’s so tasty and it has a fatty consistency. Of course, this requires cows which are in excellent health and total cleanliness in order to avoid dangerous bacteria.

    This farm has been run by Markus’ father since 1991 and Markus and his brother took over the farm in 2016. It’s a biodynamic farm and it’s located in a lovely area near the town of Holmestrand. If you call in advance, Markus can set aside products for you or you can buy them at select shops in Oslo like Ekte Vare and Mølleren Sylvia.

    Markus arranges cheesemaking courses occasionally as shown on this Facebook page.

    As for those who want to make their own cheese, there are many web sites, which offer advice. If you live in Norway, you can buy dairy equipment from Ystebui. Anyway, as one of the participants, who had already been making cheese for some time, said: “Making cheese is easy, but making the same cheese every time is very difficult.”

  • Agrotourism Ondarre

    Grazing sheep

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    While we were visiting small-scale producers in the area of Idiazabal, we stayed two nights at the Agrotourism Ondarre on the outskirts of the town of Segura.

    Both the grandfather and the father of Eneko Goiburu, the present owner of the farm and inn, had worked as shepherds all year, spending summers in primitive mountain huts without any facilities apart from running water. Nowadays, Eneko carries on the farm and makes cheeses as they did, but he also runs an inn, which is naturally most busy in summer, in the farmhouse. As a memory of his ancestors, there is a small ethnographic museum next to the inn where we could have a look at various tools for farming, making cheese, handling wool and turning it into clothes, etc

    In order to attend to the inn properly, the sheep graze on pastures near the farm, instead of staying in the mountains in summer as was done by by his ancestors. Besides, a group of four rams were grazing on a separate pasture next to the farmhouse.

    The sheep are milked daily and sheep’s cheese is still being made manually as it has been for ages. The finished cheeses are Denomination of Origin-certified Idiazabal cheese.

    This summer, Eneko and his parents, Félix and Maria Carmen, have been invited to the 2016 Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington DC, USA, where they will demonstrate how to make and smoke cheese, besides carding wool, spinning, knitting, and more.

    In order to show us how cheeses are smoked, a way of flavouring and preserving cheese, Eneko put some firewood in a big metal bucket and lit a fire. Then, he put nettles on top to produce as much smoke as possible, Next, he put the bucket in a chamber and locked the door. Above the chamber, there was a small room with shelves where the smoke would enter. Having put in some cheeses in advance, he closed the door to the cheeses and let them stay inside for a few hours. Before smoking, the cheeses are whitish, while they have a warm yellow hue afterwards.

    How to make cheese

  • Garoa farmhouse dairy

    Making cheese

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    We arrived at the Garoa farmhouse dairy in the village of Zerain where we were met by Jon Harreguy. Inside, he was turning sheep’s milk into cheese. In fact, the milk had already been turned into curd and he was about to divide it into pieces by using an instrument called a harp, really a rectangular metal shape with vertical metal threads and a handle. Passing the harp through the curd, it is divided into small pieces such that the solid parts, the cheese mass, can be separated from the liquid parts, the whey .Afterwards, he put two vertical and perforated plates in the vessel containing the curd, letting one of them be stationary and pressing the other one against the former. In this way, the cheese mass would remain, while most of the whey passed through the holes in the perforated plates.

    Having finished this task, he used a knife to cut the cheese mass into cubes whose sides had a length of about 12 cm. Beforehand, he had put porous cloths into cylindrical containers, into which he put the cube-shaped cheeses. Next, he put a small label on the top of each cheese mass in order to ensure traceability. Then, he wrapped the cloth around the cheese mass and put a lid on it. Finally, when all the cheese mass had been put into the cylindrical shapes, he put them in a device where they were subjected to constant pressure to press out more whey.

    Shortly before having finished the cheesemaking, a neighbour of Mr Harreguy arrived because he was raising a few pigs and Mr Harreguy filled up a container with whey as feed for his pigs. Some cheeses were lying in brine in order to get rid of whey and to kill bacteria and we also entered the storeroom where cheeses were maturing. In order to get rid of even more whey, they have to be turned around daily.In addition, mould may easily start growing on the surface of the cheeses such they have to be cleaned occasionally.

    Originally, Jon Harreguy and his wife Martina had been renting a farm, but 10 years ago they decided to move to Zerain and buy this farm, starting from scratch and building the farmhouse dairy later. He studied to be a shepherd, while she studied agriculture. From spring to July, a mixture of about 280 Latxa sheep graze on a pasture located near to the Garoa farmhouse dairy. In fact, this breed together with the Carranzana breed are the only ones, which are accepted for the Idiazabal cheese label.

    The sheep are milked by machines at 8 in the morning and Mr Harreguy makes cheese daily. After 10 July, he brings the sheep to Igaratza, in the Aralar mountain range by car. He pays 250 euros per year for staying in a mountain hut with all modern amenities and 1 euro per sheep per year. He stays with the sheep for 5 months, that is until November when he walks the sheep back to the farm where they stay in a shelter in winter. In school holidays, his wife and children join him.

    Before we left the farmhouse dairy, Mr Harreguy let us taste some of his cheeses, all of them delicious and tasty.

    Afterwards, we went a short distance to a pasture where his sheep were grazing on a hill, which was located next to people’s houses.

  • Szász Rózsika and Arpad – farmers

    szasz_farm_w500

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    Having visited Zita Tofalvi in the morning, later we went to visit Rózsika and Arpad Szász because they also live on the high level plain above the town of Corund. Both of them grew up in this area, but he worked for many years as an electrician in mines before getting a pension. Then, they lived in Corund before buying this farm.

    The farm is located in a beautiful place, surrounded by wildflower meadows and deciduous forests, a neighbour was passing on a horse-drawn cart, songbirds were singing, a cuckoo was calling and no cars were passing. A rural idyll!

    Since they were expecting us, we were served a wide selection of their home-made cheeses and bacon, while we got pancakes with urdă cheese  with mulberry jam as dessert.

    Having eaten, we were free to have a look at the farm where a group of hens, normal ones and Transylvanian ones with naked neck, together with a rooster went around pecking until they got fed cereals by Ms..Szász, who also had to tempt one hen and her chickens inside a coop with tidbits. One single guineafowl, which I was told, was used as an alarm in case birds of prey were approaching, was also roaming freely, but some poultry is taken by foxes or birds of prey anyway.

    Three pigs were also being raised at the farm and they need to weigh about 220 kg when they are slaughtered. That is, they weigh much more than pigs, which are raised commercially, when they are slaughtered. While the pigsty was being cleaned, the pigs were let out one by one and they seemed very happy, eating grass and walking around the courtyard freely.

    The Szász couple had 6 cows, all of which were grazing on a communal meadow, while a cowherd was looking after them, They were milked in the morning, then they were let out and they would walk with cows from nearby farms to a communal meadow and come back in the evening. During our visit, Mr Szász followed them home the last stretch, but when they reached the barn, each cow knew which cubicle to go to. Finally, both husband and wife milked them, while one male calf just had to suckle his mother’s teats. Having finished, he was hardly controllable and he was let out such that he could jump and run as much as he wanted, looking very happy.

    Besides, the cows on this farm go outside twice daily to drink water from a spring in winter, making them in good shape and ready to go grazing in spring.

    Having finished milking the cows, Mr. Szász brought the fresh milk inside the kitchen where it was poured into a container through a filter. Since they got milk twice daily, Ms. Szász had cheese mass in various stages on the way to become mature cheese. She grated cheese mass made the day before and put it in warm salt water, then she formed the grated mass into a clump, which she rolled into a sausage on a bench and tied it into a braid, She formed other parts of the grated mass into a flat piece which she extended, finally turning it a rose, showing us she is a real artist.

    Regarding sharing of work, he does the repetitive task of churning butter, while she does the demanding task of making cheese with more or less complex shapes.

    Some of the cheeses were mixed with oregano, cumin or walnuts and some cheeses were smoked in a small smokehouse next to the farm.

    They also have a wood-fired bakery oven where they bake bread filled with mashed potatoes once a week.

    They had three dogs and three cats, but unfortunately one dog had been taken by wolves the preceding winter.

    Since winters are harsh and long in this area, they have to collect a lot of hay in order to feed their animals throughout winter. They only use cow dung to fertilise their fields because they can’t afford artificial fertilisers.

    They grow potatoes and vegetables in a small garden near the farm, they have pear, apple, walnut and plum trees and they make rose hip and mulberry jam.

    The pigs looked far from weighing 220 kg, but when they do, there will surely be a busy time after having slaughtered them. Then, the whole carcass will be turned into sausages, cold cuts, hams, etc.

    All in all, it seemed like they took very good care of their animals and that that both man and animals were living in harmony.

  • Sárig Attila – farmer

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    Attila Sárig lives in the village where he was born together with his Hungarian wife Reka and their young son Benedec. Like all or almost all houses in the village, their property is not visible from the gravel road passing through the village because it is hidden by high fences and a big gate. The gates were probably meant for letting a horse and cart pass through, but nowadays it could also be someone’s car, which should pass through it. During my stay, it felt like there were as many horse-drawn carts as cars passing outside. The village is surrounded by hills covered by meadows full of wildflowers and deciduous forests, making it ideal for those who want rural settings in a beautiful place.

    Having entered the gate, there is a small house in which the Sárig family have a combined kitchen and dining room for themselves and for their guests. There is also a small house divided in two where one part is the living quarters for the Sárig family, while the other one is the combined bedroom and bathroom for their guests.

    The Sárig family slaughter their own animals and they make almost all their food themselves. Having been their guest for two days, I can attest to their delicious and genuine food – a real culinary pleasure.

    Just outside their property, there is a communal garden where each family have a plot for growing vegetables and both Attila and his wife spent lots of time there tending their vegetables. Moreover, Attila’s parents have a small farm outside the village where they have six cows, 2 of their own, 2 of Attila’s family and 2 of his brother’s family. When we arrived, the cows had been let out by Attila’s parents to go grazing and they had left fresh milk from the cows in a container. Actually, the cows are milked in the morning before they are let out to go grazing, then they return in the evening when they are milked again.

    Attila made a fire and put a pot with the fresh milk above it. When the milk was hot enough, about 35°C, he poured rennet on the milk and waited about 30 minutes in order to let the milk start curdling. Then, he used a knife in order to cut the cheese mass into small parts (dairies use a device called a harp to obtain the same thing) before he started stirring the cheese mass continuously. When he could gradually feel that the cheese grains were becoming more solid, he put a porous cloth into the mass, collecting the cheese grains carefully inside the cloth. He joined the corners of the cloth and lifted it up, put it in a container with an opening. through which the whey could flow and fall down in a bucket. Next, he put the cloth in a large metal ring and compressed the cheese mass in order to let the whey flow out and finally he put some weights on it in order to press out more whey.

    The remaining whey was reheated and he used a utensil to collect two dishes with cheese, the cheesemaker’s soup. – a real, tasty treat. Finally, he extracted the rest of the cheese mass, which is called ricotta because it is heated twice, and poured it into a porous cloth. When everything had been extracted, he hung up the cloth with the ricotta such that the whey could escape.

    Having finished making cheese, Attila used a scythe to cut some nettles which he mixed with a part of the remaining whey and gave it to a sow which lived next to the cheesemaking cottage. The rest was collected in bottles in order to give it to the pig at their house.

    Attila prefers to sell his cheeses to someone he knows because there are so many rules if he sells them at markets and he has to pay for lots of paperwork.

    Attila’s family also grow vegetables at the second farm, but wild animals like deer and wild boar enter the garden. They have set up an electric fence around it, but he also plans to set up a wooden fence.

    Having hiked back to the village via another path, we went to a small meadow where Attila asked me to help him bring some haystacks inside a barn because it started raining. Of course, we had to do it the Romanian way, which consisted of putting two poles below the haystack before carrying it inside. The thick end of the pole had to be inserted below the haystack first and it had to be lifted occasionally in order to create some space around it, then pushed again until it passed below the whole haystack. Although the haystacks looked small, they were surprisingly heavy.

    Attila and his parents have a house in the village where they want to set up an agricultural school. They want to teach everyone how to grow vegetables organically. He thought it was impossible until he went to an agricultural school in Sogn, Norway where he saw that students of all ages really wanted to learn about organic agriculture.

    Attila and some locals arrange a haymaking festival every August and about 20 participants were expected at the festival this year. The guests would be housed in various places in the village and they would mow different kinds of meadows, ranging from lowland ones near the village to highland ones in the mountains.

    For those who want to know more, a journalist from National Geographic has written this article.

  • Rueslåtten farmhouse dairy

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    Having already bought delicious cheeses from Rueslåtten farmhouse dairy at the local farmer’s market, I presented “slow pix” to Jarle Rueslåtten at the next farmers’ market and he agreed to let me visit him and his family near the village of Hagafoss. There, they live in a house overlooking meadows, the Halling valley and snow-covered mountains on the other side of the valley.

    Upon arrival after about three and a half hours, Jarle invited me to join him and his cohabitant Rakel for lunch where we were served their own dairy products, amongst others a well matured cheese slowly turning into liquid. As expected, Jarle told me that a well matured cheese is a good cheese.

    None of them grew up on a farm, but Jarle’s mother had grown up on Rueslåtten and he had spent many happy summers there. Having reached adulthood and graduated from a farmers’ college, he and Rakel continued managing the farm, which had been run by two of his uncles until about 2006. Having taken a cheesemaking course run by the indefatigable Pascale Baudonnel in 2005, a French-woman who has taught many Norwegian farmers how to make dairy products, at Sogn agricultural and horticultural school, they started making cheeses for sale in 2013.

    After the hearty lunch, we entered the farmhouse dairy which, for obvious reasons, was located in the same building as the barn housing their 16 cows together with some calves. Inside the dairy, lots of cheeses were maturing in cool and humid conditions, while various tanks and types of machinery were not in use since it was a Sunday. Besides making cheeses from the milk from their own cows, they also buy milk from a local goat farmer, enabling them to produce goat’s cheese as well.

    The following cheeses are produced at this farmhouse dairy:

    • Chev Kubbe – goat’s cheese shaped like a small log.
    • Kubbeost – round soft-ripened cheese covered in a white mould.
    • Lord Garvagh – named after Lord Garvagh and his son. The father was hunting and fishing in Norway from the 1860s onwards and he built several hunting lodges in the mountains. His son hired a local man, Lars Leine, to build another hunting lodge, which is called Lordehytta.
    • Salad ost – a type of feta cheese.
    • The following cheeses are smear-ripened: 
    • Mjuk Halling – soft cheese.
    • Vesle Velten – small, cylinder-shaped, firm cheese.
    • Store Velten – big, cylinder-shaped, firm cheese weighing about 13-16 kg.

    All of these cheeses are inspired by mainly French cheeses, but Jarle and Rakel also want to make traditional, Norwegian cheeses. In particular, they want to start producing a cheese called gamalost, meaning old cheese. As described in this article, gamalost is good for your heart. Fortunately, the aforementioned Pascale Baudonnel also advises those who need help with developing new cheeses via Norsk Gardsost.

    Note that all of the cheeses made at this farmhouse dairy are not pasteurised  and not homogenised.

    After our visit to the farmhouse dairy, we went outside in order to have a look at the cows, consisting of 3 races: Telemark cows, Jersey cows  and Norwegian Red.

    Spring has been cold and late this year and the grass on the hilly and stony terrain just above the farm was quite short. Since it was also raining, the cows preferred to go to a rack loaded with hay, but Rakel told me that they really preferred to get inside instead of staying outside in the rather cold weather.

    In summer, the cows are brought to a mountain farm where they keep meadows from being overgrown by trees and bushes. In fact, Jarle and Rakel are renting a mountain farm which is located about 75 minutes away, but they have bought another one much closer to their farm. After having rearranged it according to their wishes, they will let their cows stay there instead.

    A popular science article in Norwegian shows that mountain plants contain a high level of antioxidants, antibiotics, natural flavouring substances and pigments. When the cows eat mountain plants, their milk will have a high level of antioxidants, a more healthy distribution of fatty acids, while the high level of pigments make dairy products yellow. Besides, it’s good for the cows having a varied diet, the cultural landscape is kept open and it also breaks up the daily routine of the farmers.

    The rest of the year, the cows eat grass and hay together with concentrated feed. The amount of hay grown at Rueslåtten is not sufficient to feed the cows such that they also buy hay from their neighbours. Since winter is quite long, the animals are also fed concentrated feed, but with as much local content as possible since Rakel and Jarle want to avoid importing feed for their animals as far as possible.

    The cows are artificially inseminated by veterinarians, while the farmers themselves take care of births of calves.

    Besides producing various types of cheese, piglets are raised at Rueslåtten from spring to autumn. Then, they are slaughtered and turned into pork and ham. It’s also possible to buy veal from the farm.

  • Vargiu goat farm

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    Going from the town of Pula, we drove through a large pine forest planted by man during the fascist era in Italy (1924-1943) when large oak forests together with indigenous plants were cut down in order to provide wood for building railways. Anyway, the forest we’re passing through is pretty, with lots of green pine trees, valleys, and reddish granite peaks.

    Having arrived at the parking space, we have to cross a small, dry riverbed before arriving at the goat farm at the top of a hillock. The view from the hillock is beautiful with a valley below and hills on the other side of the valley covered by bright, green pines in contrast with scattered, reddish columns of granite emerging between them and a brilliant, blue sky overhead.

    Just below the hillock, in a clearing illuminated by the sun, a flock of goats is passing through a gate in the fence surrounding the farm, while the owner of the farm, Efisio Vargiu, talks about raising goats. In fact, he started following his father raising goats when he was a small boy, first for fun, since because he wanted it.

    However, his father wanted to gradually reduce the number of goats and instead start cultivating a vineyard on his property along the alluvial plain  of Santa Margherita di Pula.  Instead, Efisio wanted to increase the size of the flock arriving at a total number of 500 goats.

    Fortunately, Efisio is being helped doing this difficult, but captivating work by his son Giuseppe, both of them determined to continue the family tradition.

    Nowadays, the size of the flock has been reduced to 190 individuals, all of whose names both Efisio and Giuseppe know by heart due to the affectionate tie between man and animal. The goats have names like: Cerexia, Bellina, Scamminada, Sposixedda, Scriana, Rubidosa, Anixedda… where the x is pronounced liked sh in e.g. ash.

    Only an affectionate shepherd can remember 190 names and recognise the appearance of every animal of the flock, but it’s only through this mutual bond that they can work in harmony. Efisio says that he’s born for this type of work and he has never regretted his choice of work. Evidently, this activity should be sustained and even increased. Unfortunately, Efisio asks rhetorically why the politicians aren’t able to see and understand how difficult it is to even find a spare shepherd. In particular, he doesn’t understand why he has to pay for a concession to the state for using an area for letting his animals graze. This activity is heading towards extinction and as he mentions with bitterness: “We are very sad when we know that our animals are roaming freely in the forest for which we pay a concession. The goats are scared and put in danger by hunters who can use the same area without paying anything. They are free to walk around, shooting wild animals for sports, while we are working in order to make a living and to maintain a demanding and irreplaceable human activity.”

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    Today, father and son have arrived relatively late at the pen because at this time of the year the work is light, consisting of letting the goats enter the pen and feeding them what is required to complement the nourishment of the animals. The adult goats are all pregnant, leading to that they produce no or very little milk. Fortunately, both father and son are able to demonstrate that they can milk their goats by hand although the amount produced is minuscule. However, when the kids are born, the goats are milked since they produce more than their kids need and the milk is sold to dairies. However, the main income is given by the number of kids, which are born and survive. Both father and son have to be very attentive and help the goats in case of difficulty with the births. Naturally, the relation between man and animal gets even closer when the births are occurring.

    According to Efisio, in addition to remembering all the names of the goats, a shepherd must also be able to recognise all the kids, which get the same name as their mothers.

    In addition to having a mutually affectionate relation between man and animals, a shepherd also must be able to identify when the bucks are ready to mate (from June to September) and has to record the date when every goat has mated with a buck. From conception to birth takes 5 months minus 5 days, making Efisio and Giuseppe very alert when full term is approaching. In particular, if the goats are grazing far from the pen, a birth can be fatal for either goat or kid or even both of them, which would entail a major loss for the shepherds. Having recorded the date of conception, they can be present when the goats are about to give birth.

    While explaining these details to us, Efisio watches smilingly his son because he’s so proud of him. He has an extraordinary ability to help the goats if they have problems giving birth to their kids, in particular when the kid is positioned awkwardly, Efisio says.

    In spite of all the attention Efiso and Giuseppe are paying, sometimes a kid will be born far from the pen. In such cases, the goat stays with its kid, which has to rise up and walk to its mother in order to suckle. For the first three days, the kid’s paws grow rapidly more robust, but mother and kid stay together in the same place, else the kid can easily be killed by predators if it is left on its own. Then, when the kid is strong enough, they both walk back to the pen with the kid easily crossing rough terrain.

    During the first 35-40 days of the kid’s life, it lives inside the pen and sleeps inside a small room made of wooden boards and lying on a bed of branches with dry leaves, protecting it from the cold and from predators. Every 24 hours, in the morning, the mother returns, letting her kid suckle. Unfortunately, the kids, which represent the major income of the farm, are destined for the market, while only a minor number of them are allowed to join the flock. A product much sought after is rennet, a typical cheese which doesn’t require any processing. It’s obtained by extracting the stomach of the kid after having suckled its mother for the last time just before it’s slaughtered. This type of cheese is smoked and sold together with the meat of the kid.

  • Quesos Ugala farm

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    Going south from Bilbao towards the small village of Zaballa, the landscape changed from more or less fertile to quite dry. Having arrived at the village of Zaballa, it seemed like time stood still with stone houses looking like they were built in the Middle Ages. Having met Mila, she invited us into her house. There, she told my guide that she and her husband are both veterinarians, they had studied in another part of Spain, but had decided to come here to live and work. There was also one other couple, both veterinarians, who had joined them.

    After a short break, we headed out towards the barn with the young goats, all of them brown and black. After a quick look and having met Mila’s husband, Xabier, he let them outside. Then, he walked in front followed by a long row of goats and his wife behind. After having covered a short distance, the animals were let inside a pen where they could do whatever they wanted.

    Having released the young ones, we passed the pig Porky on or way back. Obviously, he was fond of Mila who caressed him like a dog.

    Then, we went to the barn with the adult goats, 3 males and about 80 females. The females were pregnant and they were about to stop producing milk. Of course, they would start producing milk again when the kids are born in February and March. A room next to the barn was equipped with a milking machine and the farmhouse dairy was about 2 minutes drive away.

    The adult animals were also let out. Xabier brought his backpack and led them in a single file across some fields in order to let them eat grass, but also lavender, juniper, and gorse, all of which add taste to the milk. However, since this is a dry area, they aslo have to be fed cereals.

    Instead, we went to the farmhouse dairy where we met Berta who was busy making cheese. Inside were various metal tanks containing milk, one of which was being heated. Having obtained the correct temperature, she added vegetable rennet in order to separate the curd from the whey, but the milk needed to rest for 24 hours before she could start separating them. In any case, the farmhouse dairy, the tanks, and the utensils all looked squeaky-clean, a requirement for all food producers.

    They produce the following: aged cheese, cottage cheese, and cream cheese besides yogurt. They are sold direct from the dairy shop, various food fairs, and select shops in Bilbao.

     

  • Håøya nature workshop

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    From the beginning of June to the middle of August you can go by boat from Aker pier in Oslo to Håøya, an island in the Oslo fjord, in about an hour. Having disembarked, follow the gravel road until you reach a fence which you follow till you reach a wooden construction. On your right, you can see a clearing about 50 metres away. Proceed to the clearing and you’ll arrive at Håøya nature workshop, a cooperative consisting of a cook, a dairy technologist, and a goat farmer. The building in which they work and sell their products have no running water and no electricity, meaning that this is really a work of passion.

    Due to changing use of this lovely island, former meadows have gradually been turned into forests and in order to counteract this, the goat farmer Helge Haugen has brought his Kashmir goats across the fjord from Sætre and let them graze the northern part of the island the last two years. In fact, Helge started breeding goats because he bought an overgrown farm and needed goats to open his property. Having worked with cheese for many years, the cook Yngve persuaded Helge to start a temporary goat farm on the island in order to produce goat cheese. However, the goats had never been milked, and the first trials started in February this year. After a lot a of work, most of the goats are willing to be milked by both female and male volunteers. Having finished the milking, the milk is brought about 50 metres to the house inside of which is a small dairy where rennet is added to the milk in order to separate the curd from the whey. The curd is laid in small, cylindrical containers with holes such that the whey can flow out and be collected in a bucket. Once a day, the whey is used to bake bread in a wood-fired oven. Since the milk is not heated, their cheeses are unpasteurised and very tasty.

    The cheeses, having about the same size as an ice hockey puck, are for sale at the house of the cooperative, and to select restaurants and shops. Customers can choose between freshly made or mature cheese besides having them covered with crushed juniper needles, cuckoo flower or charcoal.

    Having an appointment with Yngve, he readily showed me the dairy and their products and willingly let me taste their cheese, bread and apple juice., a wholesome meal indeed. Having talked about their enterprise, we walked to the milking house, that is the wooden building I passed earlier. Helge, being a practical person, had built it on his property, freighted it in parts to Håøya and assembled it. The goats walk up a ramp, then they will put their heads through some openings in a wall in order to reach what they like, while they are being milked at the same time. After milking, they are allowed to walk down a second ramp such that more goats can be milked. Unfortunately, milking times were early in the morning and late in the evening, while the arrival and departure times for the boat required that I had to stay one night on the island in order to see it.

    While the female goats and their kids are free to go near the house of the workshop, the male goats consisting of two bucks and some which are castrated are living on their own in two separate areas on the northern part of the island from April to October. There, they are welcome to graze whatever they find in order to open the landscape. I entered their enclosures and tried to find them without result. Anyway, Yngve told me that they had seen them by going near the island by boat and calling for them.

    Having returned, I found the goats and the kids on a meadow, busily eating grass and leaves, while some of them were ruminating or sleeping.

    Visitors arrived occasionally at the house of the cooperative, tasting the products and buying whatever they wanted. Approaching the time for the boat’s return to Oslo, I had to say goodbye to Yngve while he was preparing to receive another group of guests.

  • Farm and guest house Su Sattisceddu

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    Traversing the lowlands of Campidano and driving on the country road between Luras and San Nicolò d’Arcidano, we arrived at the family-driven farm and guest house Su Sattisceddu. Mauro, the eldest son, was expecting us and he kindly showed us the way to the farm, situated a short distance from the guest house, where his father Giuseppe is raising sheep.

    Before, this farm was occupied with selling cheese and meat, now they produce and sell milk to a cooperative called L’armentizia moderna located about 30 kilometres away in the region of Guspini. However, they prefer selling rams selected for breeding. In fact, select sheep raised at the farm are shown at national fairs.

    Mauro, being an expert on Sardinian sheep, explained together with his father, the characteristics of a good Sardinian sheep include: completely white fleece without any stains, long and even woolen fleece, no horns and a perfect line of the lower back.

    Having showed us the the way to the farm and explained how to judge the characteristics of sheep, he left and let his father Giuseppe show us around the farm.

    First, he showed us a group of sheep, inside a fence, which were preparing for birth and to which he gave some cereals in order to show us that the sheep get their required daily food rations in a trough. Instead, regarding alfalfa and hay, Giuseppe leaves it inside the fence, letting the sheep eat it whenever they want.

    He also showed us the milking room where food is distributed evenly in a trough, then the sheep are allowed to enter, but they have to put their heads through a rack and when all the animals have arrived, the farmer locks the rack such that the sheep have to stay, facilitating the milking.

    Moreover, Giuseppe explained that sheep need to eat continuously 24 hours a day, and like us, they need a varied diet. Thus, in addition to the grass they are grazing, they are fed hay, straw, etc. It’s also important to give them concentrated animal feed such that they don’t lack any nutrients. Usually, the food additives consist of seeds and legumes like beans mixed with a pulp of beetroot and cereals like barley, all of which are cultivated by Giuseppe. This highly concentrated mix is mainly given to the sheep in winter when the meadows run out of edible plants and the sheep are most vulnerable to diseases. That is during the period when the sheep are pregnant, when they are bearing lambs and the succeeding period of lactation.

    In fact, it’s very important that the sheep, being ruminants, consume the right quantity of chewable fibre, fundamental for the health of sheep.

    Giuseppe also showed us some fields sown with seeds which would give rise to plants most suitable for grazing by sheep, among which are ryegrass, Egyptian clover and sulla, the last one being much appreciated by animal breeders. In fact, it is used as fodder of prime quality, containing lots of nutrients and being rich in proteins. It’s drought resistant and, being a legume, it captures nitrogen from the atmosphere and gives it to the soil in which it is growing. Thus, it is often used between cultivation of plants which only extract nutrients from the soil.

    Being shown around the farm, we saw several meadows where the sheep could graze. Giuseppe sows the meadows some time between October and December such that there will always be a meadow on which the sheep can graze.

    Giuseppe has been a sheep farmer for many years and he’s very passionate about his work, bringing forth an activity which was started by his great-grandfather and he really hopes that his children will do likewise.

  • Farm and guest house Su Grabiolu

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    The farm and guest house Su Grabiolu is located in the countryside between Siamanna and Villaurbana. A flat rock with an inscription of a fawn was placed next to the entrance to the farm of Giovanni Busìa and his wife Michela Murgia. Together they manage the guest house, an educational farm, animal husbandry and a farmhouse dairy. Upon arrival, Giovanni invited us inside the guest house and started telling us the history of Su Gabriolu. His ancestors had mainly worked as shepherds at least since 1800 originating from Barbagia and being natives of Fonni. He told us about his grandfather and his great-grandfather who arrived at Siamanna in 1880 with his family bringing almost nothing. Almost all men from Fonni practised transhumance, bringing their livestock to places with more or less fresh grass, meaning that they mainly moved their animals into the mountains in summer and into the valleys in winter. His great-grandfather was the first to buy land in the early 1900s and to build a small shelter for provisions, for storing cheese derived from sheep’s milk and protecting the sheep. His grandfather built a house for his family in the same place and his father built another and more comfortable one, both on the same property where Giovanni is continuing the activity started by his great-grandfather and where he has built the houses constituting the present Su Gabriolu and extended the property together with his wife.

    Today Giovanni has a few hundred sheep, some donkeys, horses and pigs, a farmhouse dairy, a large property on which is cultivated fodder for the animals and various machines and vehicles for working the lands. Briefly, a multi-functional enterprise, a very big change during about 130 years.

    I have visited various farms in Sardinia, seen how they cultivate fodder for the animals, how they are bred, how they are milked and how the milk is turned into cheese, but there is one thing which distinguishes Su Grabiolu from the other farms and that is production of sheep’s cheese without lactose. The idea of shifting from producing conventional cheese to cheese without lactose came to Giovanni when he realised that selling milk to the big dairys wouldn’t pay him what he needed to make a living nor making cheese for supermarket chains.

    Both he and his wife talked with persons who didn’t eat cheese because of lactose intolerance (the inability to digest lactose, a sugar found in milk and to a lesser extent milk-derived dairy products). Having discovered that nobody else were producing cheese without lactose, they decided to start doing it. Gradually, Giovanni succeeded in lowering the contents of lactose to less than 0.01% reaching an important goal because the number of people having lactose intolerance is increasing , leading to an increased demand for high quality, digestible cheese.

    Giovanni uses raw milk, meaning that it has not been pasteurised or homogenised,  for making this type of cheese. Thus, the milk has only been warmed up to about 40°C in order to make cheese. The cheeses are aged for at least two months in order to make inactive any dangerous microorganisms occurring in the raw milk.

    Naturally, producing cheese from raw milk sets very high requirements to hygiene, but this is compensated by the organoleptic properties derived from raw milk, giving the resulting sheep’s cheese a characteristic taste and aroma. Another distinctive trait of this cheese without lactose is that it is made with vegetable rennet, while the majority of cheese is made with animal rennet. The vegetable rennet is derived from a mold, and according to Giovanni, it makes the taste of the finished product more intense. Using a vegetable rennet makes the cheeses acceptable for eating by Muslims, but Giovanni also plans to get his cheeses approved as kosher food within 2014, making them suitable for sale in Israel.

    Giovanni is a very determined person who wants to make his products conform to the requirements of the highest quality and he has made a consistent choice: cease production of high quantities and replace it with high quality. He has changed the fodder of the animals from using concentrated animal feed with added vitamins and chemicals with more organic produce, rich in cereals and grass like tall fescue, which is good for soil conservation, and clover, which fixes nitrogen, reducing the need for synthetic fertilisers. In fact, having shifted the fodder of the sheep,they produce milk having a low level of cholesterol and Giovanni will probably succeed in getting his cheeses be certified as having a low quantity of cholesterol during 2014.

    For the moment Su Grabiolu sells its products mainly in Sardinia, but they are really trying to export them as described above, selling them on-line and to fair trade groups.

  • The Cuscusa farm

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    The farm of Michele Cuscusa is situated on a hill near the village of Gonnostramatza.  His ancestors were mostly shepherds and peasants raising sheep and goats. His father was a shepherd doing transhumance, that is moving mainly sheep to the mountains in summer and to the lowlands in winter, and arrived at Campidano for the first time on horseback. In 1979 he and his family decided to move to Gonnostramatza and buy a property of 109 hectares and increasing it gradually. Michele and his brothers were entrusted with looking after flocks of sheep at a young age, making them good sheep farmers.

    Now the Cuscusa farm extends to 168 hectares and renting 70 hectares of fertile terrain particularly suited to raising sheep and it is well provided with whatever is required for running a farm like shelters for the animals, a milking room, a room for sheep-shearing and a farmhouse dairy for producing organic cheese from raw milk.

    Michele Cuscusa and his 3 brothers are cultivating fodder, maize and alfalfa or lucerne organically with the objective of improving the selection of the sheep at the farm with the inherent advantage of better cheese and in the course of several years due to only letting sheep with good qualities breed with high quality rams, the sheep of this farm all have pedigrees.

    The Cuscusa farm is continually expanding and it is really a multifunctional enterprise: in addition to raising sheep and goats, they are also raising pigs and horses with which they arrange riding trips and they have a large restaurant where they serve their guests courses from the farm.

    Michele is a man with lots of passion for agriculture and he told us how, during the boom in the 60s and 70s, peasants were advised to leave their farms in order to work in factories. Instead, he remained a farmer and he is convinced that industrialisation in Sardinia has led to very little, whereas agriculture is still wide-spread in the whole island.

    Being a very active man, Michele told us about an interesting experience of his by letting two young Japanese men, Yiuchiro e Yoichi, work as apprentices at the farmhouse dairy. Obviously, they wanted to learn how to make cheese in a small dairy from a master cheese-maker.

    What Michele has found very interesting is the interaction between two different worlds, on the one hand the Japanese, most of  who know very little about cheese and how it is made, on the other hand the Sardinians who have been farmers and shepherds for ages.

    The Cuscusa farm has a close bond with an Italian-Japanese organisation, which is called The vegetable garden of dreams or l’Orto dei sogni, which receives groups from Japan. Moreover, Michele participated actively in a yearly festival for good food at Siddi, called Appetitosamente.

    Michele has also participated as speech holder at Siddi Wine Festival regarding how to make cheese. He has organised, among other things, a seminar on the low price of milk and he has held a speech at a Slow Food event in Oristano regarding cheese-making.

    He is also the chairman of a major wine producer: Cantina di Mogoro.

    Our impression of the Cuscusa farm was that it looked well integrated in the area, they are always trying to diversify their production with particular attention to making high quality products, but always connected to the traditional, pastoral way of Sardinia.

    We thank Michele for his hospitality and for setting aside time for us.

  • Farm and guest house Archelao

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    The visit at the farm and guest house Archelao started with having lunch where I could taste various typical dishes from the traditional Sardinian kitchen, among others pasta, olive oil, red wine, meat, cheese, fruits, vegetables, conserves and sweets, all of them prepared at the nearby farm and kitchen.

    After lunch, which was kindly offered by Mr. Sandro Dessì, we were shown around the farm, starting with the citrus grove and the fruit grove from which the guest house receives fruits for making jams of pears, apples, oranges, apricots, plums, etc. Even though the cultivation is not organic, they try to limit the use of pesticides. If their fruit trees are attacked by insects, they ask for help from a body whose purpose is to help agriculturists in Sardinia (LAORE). Some of their employees will arrive, identify which type of insect is degrading the plants, and advise which type of pesticide to use in order to eradicate only the harmful insects, and not the useful ones. In addition, Mr. Dessì tries this approach only in case of a strong infestation, and most importantly, only apply pesticides to flowers or fruits which have just appeared. Thus, when the fruits are reaching maturity, the residues of the pesticide, which in general disappear about 10 days after having been applied, are negligible at the time of harvest.

    Afterwards, we went to the enclosures where their animals live like calves, donkeys, pigs, and some horses. According to Mr. Dessì, the breeding is entirely organic, feeding them only barley, wheat, beans, peas, and maize all of which is bought from other farmers and milled at Archelao. We also passed a field on which were grazing sheep and goats from which the farm gets milk for producing fresh, aged, and semi-soft cheeses.

    We also visited a small slaughterhouse in construction, highly wanted by Mr. Dessì such that the animals are slaughtered at the farm and avoiding unnecessary transport.

    Next, we were shown the storerooms where the products of the farm are conserved and transformed by storing. In addition to wine, cheeses, hams, fruits, jams and olive oil were stored in the same room. A peculiar characteristic of this environment was the aroma of the fruits, which according to Mr. Dessì would pass their aromas to the hams and the cheeses, giving them a certain sweet and fruity taste.

    This farm, like many others in Sardinia, receive children and the main purpose is to let the youngsters approach and become aware of life at a farm through educational itineraries and personal experience. Knowledge of the life of farmers is diminishing and Mr. Dessì and his collaborators hope that educational and fun activities at a farm will lead to that this knowledge will not be forgotten, but rather appreciated.

    Some of the educational itineraries which are offered by this farm include:

    • The colours of nature
    • Leaves
    • Discovering tastes and smells
    • Irrigation of the fields
    • Fighting parasitic insects
    • Animals at the farm
    • The milk cycle

    At the end of our visit, we passed a building in construction, making the farm seem to be expanding, in particular due to the enthusiasm of Mr. Dessì and his collaborators, all of them capable of running and bringing forth an enterprise this large in a creative way.

    In other words, Archelao has convinced us. A particular gratitude goes to Mr. Dessì for his hospitality and availability. He has shown to be an attentive entrepreneur, not only regarding the farm and guest house, but also to his collaborators, really trying to do sustainable development as an alternative to the capitalist market and ever-growing consumption.

  • Farm and guesthouse “Casa Atza”

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    Casa Atza is located in the village of Bauladu about 10 kilometres from Oristano. The family, who is owning it, received us warmly and after the introductions we decided to go to an enclosure within which they were raising a group of Sardinian cattle just a short drive from the guest house. Upon our arrival, Mr. Jose Atza opened the gate and let us enter the enclosure where there were some Sardinian cows, a calf which was suckling, and a docile bull. Jose and his wife told us that some of the animals are slaughtered, while some of them are used as dairy cows, whose milk the wife uses to make a typical cheese called Casizolu for this area.

    Having returned to the guest house, Ms. Atza described the complex procedure for extracting must from cactus pears, a dense and dark syrup with a sweet and spicy taste and intense fragrance. The must, which is obtained by prolonged cooking (about 9 hours) of the pulp and juice of cactus pears, is mainly used for making various types of sweets.

    She also told us that the must of cactus pears has replaced the must of grapes whose recipe according to some elderly persons has been known for at least 100 years.

    The cactus pears are collected in September at a time when they are mature, then they are peeled, squashed and cooked such that the seeds are released from the pulp, while the juice is extracted by means of gravity.

    Having extracted both the pulp and the juice, the second and very long cooking at low heat will take place. During the cooking, ingredients like dried orange peel and wild fennel are added. In fact, she uses oranges which are collected from their own citrus grove which is about 140 years old. The oranges have a very rough and uneven skin, but they are very juicy and sweet.

    When the must has obtained a certain density, the cooking is stopped and the must is left to cool off before being bottled and conserved in a cool and dark place where it has a shelf life of 2 to 5 years. Each September the women of Bauladu collect cactus pears in order to make must for another year.

    We really appreciated the generosity of Ms. Atza who had made typical and very tasty pastries based on the must of cactus pears.

    She also prepares other Sardinian sweets with nice names like ziddinas and pardule besides sweets based on almonds for visitors at the guest house. They also offer meat from their own cattle, extra virgin olive oil and the cheese called casizolu.

    Casa Atza was founded in 1993, it is known for the hospitality of their hosts, it is surrounded by beautiful scenery, the guests are meant to feel as part of the family, and our stay was indeed pleasant.

  • The Catean farm

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    The Catean family lives in the lowlands in the village of Rotbav about 20 km north of Brasov. There, they have a dairy where they produce cheese twice daily, while their horses live in a stable a few kilometres northwards, and their sheep stay on meadows a short drive from the farm. Early in the morning we could watch cheese being made more or less manually, first by pouring milk from a milk can through a filter into a large container, then heating the milk to about 40°C and adding rennet to separate the cheese mass from the liquid. After waiting about half an hour, it was time for separation where the cheese mass was lifted by hand into a wide, open container with an opening in one end and being oblique such that the liquid could flow out and being collected in another container. Putting the remaining cheese mass in a porous cloth, and compressing it in various ways, even more liquid was ejected. Finally, the dairy workers tied the cloth tightly around the cheese mass and put wooden boards and weights on the top in order to get rid of even more liquid.

    The three sons of the Catean family, Silviu, George and Ionut, have taken university degrees, but all of them prefer to stay at their parents’ farm. One of them told my guide that it is in their blood to be farmers, and they can’t help it. However, they are running a profitable farm and their products are renowned for their excellent quality.

    All the brothers are members of Slow Food Brasov, and they have been actively participating in a project called Transhumance 2013 where 6 shepherds and a flock of sheep too young to produce milk walked along the whole of the Carpathians from Romania to Poland, via Ukraine, the Czech republic, Slovakia and Poland, a distance of about 1400 km. Actually, transhumance is as old as the hills, often being practised by farmers living in the lowlands bringing their livestock to the highlands in spring and back again in autumn. Besides, nomads have gone wherever there was food for their animals for millennia. However, due to border controls, passports, etc. this has more or less stopped, and it is to be hoped that their project will be an annual event.

    After having paid a visit to their beautiful horses residing indoors due to the strong heat, we went by horse and cart to their sheepfold. Walking on a gravel road, the horse brought us to a sheepfold, while her foal was walking next to her. There, they could both eat as much as they wanted, while we were visiting the sheepfold. It seems like Romanian sheepfolds are organised in more or less the same way, with an outer fence and an inner one located next to a shed where the shepherds are milking the sheep. The sheep enter through two openings in the shed, before getting milked by one of four shepherds. It was unbearably hot with no shade, but the sheep were waiting patiently, and the horse was sweating heavily. How man and animals survive, I have no idea, but probably the horses and the sheep best suited to the heat have been selected for breeding since ancient times. Going back again in a horse-drawn cart, we passed a nest of storks, 3 chickens and one adult. How they survive the heat is another mystery.

  • The Cizmas farm

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    After having left Sighisoara on the way to Brasov, we turned left and arrived soon after at the organic farm of Dan and Tincuta Cizmas in the village of Topa.

    We were met by Dan Cismas, who invited us to enter a room where he and his wife Tincuta display some of their products, like jams and herbal teas. The jams were in hexagonal glasses, while the herbal teas were packed in plastic bags with labels made by Tincuta’s cousin.

    Their farm is certified as an organic farm and having 34 hectares of land is enough for self sufficiency. Dan said that the locals only cultivated corn and potatoes, but he wanted to be a model farmer for other people in the village and he said that if you intend to have an organic farm you need to constantly improve your way of farming and always be willing to try something new. His goal is to make farmers running conventional farms to convert to organic farming.

    The family has 4 children, two sons and two daughters, and his youngest son repairs their tractors and other machines.

    The family also cultivates one hectare of Damask roses, renowned for their fine fragrance,  in order to make jam and tea. Dan proudly told my guide that 25 % of income from the farm comes from rose jam.

    They collect many medicinal herbs for tea and they are also growing vegetables in greenhouses. They sell their products in Bucharest and Brasov where they have 20 families to which they deliver jam and tea once a week.

    They have 15 cows and a few goats from which they get milk. Three times a week they deliver milk and cheese to families in Sighisoara, and they deliver milk twice weekly to select families in the village of Topa.

    The Cismas family produces 4 to 5 types of cheese, among others a cheese called telemea – salted cheese with herbs. The family cooperates with other organic producers like beekeepers from the village of Topa, and Dan barters milk and cheese for honey.

    They have two solar-powered driers and a big one with electrical power where they dry herbs for herbal teas, but also vegetables that are cut in small pieces and mixed with salt.

    Dan has been co-president of Eco Ruralis, the national association for small-scale organic and traditional farmers, and he’s doing all he can to prevent landgrabbing in Romania.

    The family receives extra subsidies for organic farming. They also have volunteers from many countries who stay at their farm for some months in order to help them.

    Here is an article about the farm.

  • Sheepfold near the village of Budesti in Maramures

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    Having passed the picturesque village of Budesti in Maramures and driving on a gravel road for some kilometres, we arrived at the dwelling of a group of shepherds. Since they were outside looking after their animals, we could at least see that these guys were very practical, having made chairs and tables using trees from the forest in order to make life a little easier. Actually, they were residing at a sheepfold, which we had passed on the way to their house. Approaching on foot, we were met by a bunch of rather fierce livestock guarding dogs, and all we could do was to wait until one of the shepherds arrived. Having been “liberated”, we could finally approach the sheepfold.

    The sheepfold was located in a lovely place, being surrounded by hills and forests, and situated on a meadow. The shepherds were busy milking the sheep and a few goats, while one guy made the sheep enter the shed where they would be milked. Having milked all the animals, they brought the milk in cans and poured it into a large wooden barrel. Heating the milk and adding rennet, the milk was ready to be separated into cheese mass and liquid after about half an hour. Lifting the cheese mass out of the barrel and putting it into porous pieces of cloth which were hung up, the compressing of the cheese mass which were always done in the small dairies we had visited, was replaced by using  the force of gravity only.  After having made the first set of cheese, they poured the remaining liquid into a big pot and heated it on a wood-fired oven.

    After lunch, they stirred the liquid continuously until a thin layer appeared on the top. Having removed it, it was time to get hold of the ricotta cheese. That is, re-cooked cheese. Having placed all the ricotta cheese in a porous cloth and hung it up to dry, the remaining liquid was poured into a round trough where the dogs hungrily slurped it up.

    In the end, the shepherds let out all their animals from the enclosure and started bringing them to the lovely hills surrounding the sheepfold.

    Next to the enclosure, there was a primitive hut made of sticks and plastic in which one of the shepherds would sleep at night since wolves and bears are certainly able to attack their animals.