Imagine knowing exactly where the milk, cheese, yoghurt, meat or potatoes you eat at home come from. Or better yet, you yourself have partially contributed to the production of the food on your table through physical labor Whoever grows their own vegetables, fruits at home or has home-grown eggs thanks to their chickens, knows very well that such ingredients have a completely different energy than those bought in the supermarket.

And because we can’t all live in separate houses surrounded by gardens and meadows, we’re happy to share our produce with anyone who doesn’t have the opportunity to grow or raise it at home.

Officially, it is called community supported agriculture (CSA). Thus, the farmer and the final consumer become partners. A farmer who has regular buyers can better plan his harvest, and the consumer knows where his food comes from and what processing cycle it has gone through.

But since the name KPZdid not fit our purposes, we decided to call this mutual community involvement the Friends of the Farm Club. And how does it work?

Engagement

What you get from us

More and more people are struggling with poor digestibility or directly cow´s milk allergy. They are therefore looking for alternatives to keep dairy products in their diet.

Milk from our farm is sourced under strict and relevant organisations controlled technological conditions. The animals are fed healthy food from our own organic production. In the production of organic cheese all raw materials come from organic farming. The goats spend a large part of their day in the environment of grassy pastures in the hills of the Beskydy Protected Landscape Area.

Goat’s milk is nutritionally very similar to cow’s milk, yet it has several important characteristics that set it apart:

• Ubichon 50 was identified as the substance responsible for the main beneficial effect according to the research. It improves the overall condition of the organism, strengthens the immune system, harmonise the nervous system, improve chronical skin and digestive disease.

Your health is important to us! Come and strengthen and consolidate it at the ZERLINA farm.

Sheep breeding has a strong tradition in Wallachia. That makes sense! The once harsh living conditions here required the inhabitants to dress really well. Sheep’s wool is one of about a billion other miracles of nature

Sheep wool products absorb water so they can wick moisture away from the surface of the skin. This keeps a person dry and warm, at the same time acting as a “temperature regulator” and maintaining a stable body temperature. Isn’t that great? Functional material from nature and we wear and develop synthetics…

And what is this merino wool? It is an extremely fine wool produced by a breed of domestic sheep known as Merino originally from North Africa. Thanks to sailors, traders and travellers, it has made its way to Australia and New Zealand, where most of the world’s current production is concentrated. Here, the sheep live free-range on mountain ridge tops where the climate is harsh. Merino wool is softer, more resilient, longer lasting and less itchy. It has even better insulating and antibacterial properties than traditional staple wool. Merino wool clothing and accessories are ideal for outdoor use, as a base layer or as clothing for small children. Mothers of forest nursery children could tell…..:) Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Because of all these wonderful properties, we decided to offer products made of merino wool, which does not come from the Czech Republic, but is processed by the Czech company SURTEX. In the farm shop you can buy gloves, socks, leg warmers or socks. But we do not forget about products made from classic Czech sheep wool, for example from our colleagues from the sheep farm under Radhoštěm.

“It’s early in the morning. It is still dark, as the darkness is slowly receding, but the sun has not yet risen. The snow-covered farm reminds me more of a phantom from fairy tales than a real building at this time.  This atmosphere is enhanced by the omnipresent peace and silence. There is a similar atmosphere in the stable. The brownies are still lying down and only Rika is quietly greeting me with a growl.

I´m gonna hear something else. The sound goes from the back part of  stable. I’m curiously going to check it out. And there,  In the corner under the hay, two newborn baby goats and their proud mother goat look at me.

For a moment I just stand there spellbound. The bigger from  both baby goats clumsily get up and look for the much needed life-giving milk. The mother goat licks him carefully. The other goat, perhaps disturbed by the sudden departure of its sibling, quietly purrs. Its mother answers its call quietly and it, encouraged by her call, follows the sound uncertainly. Soon he joins his sibling and they are both feeding for the sixth time.

I’ll let the new family stay with the other goats for a while. And then I’ll move them to a separate box so they have proper privacy. While writing new additions to the stable diary I suddenly realize that on 19th February begins the Year of the Goat.

In  Chinese culture, the goat is a symbol of motherhood, peace, tranquility and harmony. And as I observe the new family, I must s just agree with this……”

I didn’t start to vaguely suspect that I wanted to go into farming until I was well into my thirties. And it happened, as sometimes happens, that a man happened to be in the right place at the right time. Maybe because of the memory of the Tatras mountains I decided to move myself and my children to Wallachia. Buying an old homestead was not a problem at that time – the fact that it was sold with seven hectares of land – I was a bit puzzled – what am I going to do with it? And here´s the question and the answer didn’t take long. If in Wallachia, then in the Wallachian way and the first 5 goats conquered seven hectares of pastures.

Soon it turned out that they would not be enough and so I reinforced the group with myself with a scythe and kids with rakes, in a nice Wallachian way, we started in the morning and finished in the evening. But it was not enough, so I reinforced the group with a horse with a hoe, and a car with a trailer for hauling hay. When we figured out that we were going to tear the horses down and cook the car that way, we added a tractor with tools, a hay baler, and a sidecar behind the tractor until we finally had all the equipment to maintain the pasture. And seven hectares was not enough for that.

Gradually we began to gain ground. One hectare, two hectares, until it was 50 hectares today. In between, the first 5 kids multiplied to 7, the next year to 15, then to 25 and finally to the almost 50 dairy goats we have now.

Of course, it didn’t all go as smoothly as described here. There were failures. The first time I tried the cheese, the curds leaked through the sheet with the whey. There was wet hay, a sick goat, a stray ram, a broken tractor, and we already had a fire. At the beginning of my farming career, I thought I would solve the problem and be done with it. So I disposed of the wet hay, made new, dry and scented hay, and wonder of wonders – the goats ate the hay over the winter. And new ones had to be made, and the tractor had to be rebuilt, and repaired again, and so it goes on and on on on the farm. One becomes a true farmer only when one becomes part of this cycle, when one is present to face the challenges of weather, technology or simply fate.

Ivana Christina Hermann