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Tag: dairy

  • Târnava Mare Agricultural Cooperative

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    We paid a visit to a dairy that was being run as a cooperative of about 500 small-scale farmers. It is housed in the same building as The Butter Factory, which started operating in 1938, and was run as a cooperative until it was nationalised in 1948. It was privatised after the fall of communism, but the production fell steadily and the dairy was closed down in 2010. The Târnava Mare Agricultural Cooperative was founded in 2011 in order to coordinate production, purchase, processing, marketing and selling of dairy products in this area. Production started in 2013 and the farmers of the cooperative get paid 90% in money and 10% in dairy products, which have been made from the cow’s milk they have sold to the dairy.

    The following products are made at this dairy using traditional recipes:

    We were shown around the dairy by the managing director who told us that the buildings were in need of restoration and they kept one truck as spare parts for the other one.

  • 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.

  • Transylvanian buffalo company

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    The Transylvanian buffalo company was founded in 2005 acquiring properties abandoned by Germans in Romania who left the country in 1990 after the communist regime was toppled.

    Originally, Germans were invited to act as a buffer against invasions from the east in the 1200s by a Hungarian king. Forming seven towns, Siebenburgen, and many villages, the descendants of the first Germans, also called Saxons, stayed in Romania more or less ever since. However, the communists treated them badly and most of them couldn’t get out of Romania quickly enough, leaving their houses and maybe even their belongings behind.

    The Saxons were avid buffalo farmers reputedly having as many as 100,000 of them in 1990. However, due to their slow growth, less milk production, heavier bones and having less meat than a dairy cow, their numbers diminished quickly after the Saxons left. Since the local farmers mostly didn’t want to raise buffaloes, the Transylvanian buffalo company could easily buy them from local farmers.

    The grown-up buffaloes are taken out to pastures next the premises of the company. There, they can take mud baths covering themselves in mud which works as a sort of sunscreen for them.

    When we arrived, two groups of buffaloes were being milked at the same time by milking machines, while a large group of buffaloes were standing outside in an enclosure waiting to be milked.

    We also visited the calves which were kept inside in small enclosures, 2-3 calves sharing a “room”. Like all buffaloes, they were very curious, whereas dairy cows mainly ignore visitors.

    The company also have 7 bulls in order to make new generations of buffaloes. They have to be kept separate because they will start fighting if they meet. We were told that they wanted to let two male calves grow up together in order to accept each other later in life.

    We also visited a small dairy in Rupea apparently owned by a sister company called Transylvanian buffalo products. The English-speaking manager, probably a dairy engineer, lived in the same building as the dairy. Due to limited demand, they only worked 2-4 days a week. In fact, we were told to arrive in the afternoon, but when we arrived, the workers were already cleaning the machines having finished the day’s production. The manager told us that he couldn’t foresee when production would take place even the day before.

    The dairy produces mozzarella and feta cheese both of them containing much more fat than corresponding cheeses made from milk from dairy cows.

    Buffalo milk products have been well known in Romania and has been highly appreciated. They are perceived as healthy, natural and tasty.

  • “Si Invernizzi”dairy

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    Gorgonzola takes its name from a Lombardian village with the same name where it was first produced, but no Gorgonzola have been made there for the last 30 years.

    The “Si Invernizzi”dairy, which is located in Piemonte in the vicinity of Milan, is producing two types of gorgonzola, a piquant one and a soft, uncooked one.

    The gorgonzolas which are produced at this dairy have the following characteristics:

    • piquant – the long time of maturation imparts compactness, an abundance of veins and an intense taste
    • soft – a dense, creamy and very tasty cheese

    Whole cow’s milk from nearby farms is freighted daily to the dairy. where it is poured into large tanks before being pasteurized and cooled. Then, a certain quantity of milk is poured into a large, open container and heated to about 30°C before adding rennet, an enzymic compound extracted mainly from calves’ stomachs, together with selected milk enzymes and a selection of fine moulds. The latter ingredient give the cheese its characteristic blue-green veins and its unmistakable taste.

    When the curd is ready, that is when it has thickened to a certain degree, a worker uses a kind of grate with a handle, called a guitar, in order to cut up the curd into small pieces. Having finished this operation, the curd is transferred into a long, rectangular container already covered with a porous cloth covering the whole container. When the curd enters the tank, the liquid parts of the curd passes through the cloth and a diverse set of holes in the tank, while the fat parts are remaining. The remaining curd is collected manually by the workers and put into holed containers, permitting more of the liquid parts called the whey to be expelled. Then, lids are put on top of the containers, before turning them upside down a couple of times during the next 36-38 hours in order to get rid of more of the whey.

    Having finished the above mentioned phase, salt is applied in order to both give taste to the cheese and get rid of more of the whey. Then, the cheeses are brought into rooms with controlled humidity and temperature.

    Next, the cheeses are holed by means of a machine because the holes allow air to enter the cheeses such that the special mould, which was added to the curd, will grow and give the cheese its characteristic taste.

    Thereafter, the soft gorgonzola cheese stays maturing for 2 months, while the piquant one has to mature for 3 months.

    Finally, the cheeses are packaged using a characteristic aluminium foil embossed with the name of the dairy, identifying these cheeses as unique products.

    Production of the cheeses are partly done manually, that is the operations which are done best manually, like transferring the curd into containers, turning them upside down, cleaning the cheeses and packaging are done by hand.

    80% of the finished cheeses are sold in Italy, while the rest is exported.