More than goat milk

Finally, in western Poland, I've found the vegetables! Each day this week, along with the ubiquitous meat and boiled potatoes, Jagoda (my relation -- a second cousin, I think?) has been feeding me luscious, from-scratch soups: mushroom, broccoli, zucchini, and, today, creamy tomato. Yummmm. And, with many thanks to her husband Krzysztof, I've also had a chance to work on a small farm in the region. I'm getting back to my roots in more ways than one.

Wednesday night after dinner, my relatives drove me to Kozka -- an organic farm that produces goat milk, cheese, and yogurt. After arriving, I chatted a bit with the farmers, Jolanta and Norbert, over herbal tea then beers, heading to bed around midnight. At the crack of 6:45, it was time to get up to help with morning milking....

I'm not going to be quitting my day job to become a goat milker any time soon, it appears. Norbert and his assistant, Danke, easily milked nearly seventy goats in the half hour it took me to get through two, never mind that about 25% of the milk that came out of my goats ended up on my pants. Luckily I was able to redeem myself with efficient garden tasks later in the morning -- so much so, in fact, that Norbert declared my thorough tomato pruning and pea crop clearing earned us all a two hour siesta after our fava bean and pork belly lunch. (Lord knows I needed the nap after the overzealous rooster outside my window had gotten going at 3am. Jerk.)

I learned so much from Jolanta during my time there, where she farms, makes yogurt and cheeses for sale, and practices acupuncture and Chinese medicine. She has lived in Lubowo since her father gave her a few hectares of land there as a wedding present in 1980. She and her carpenter husband were simply homesteading until about a dozen years after settling there she noticed their second son was allergic to cow's milk. So they got a couple of goats. Jolanta had studied agriculture in college, but she had focused on plants, so they decided to spend a bit of time in Switzerland learning how to care for livestock. They soon acquired a few more goats, and a nearby supermarket asked if they might sell some of their milk there. Then a few more goats joined the herd as demand grew... It turns out that organic agriculture is quite an anomaly in Poland, but there's been a recent uptick in consumers seeking out what is here called "biological" produce, dairy, and meat. There's still a long way to go, Jolanta assured me, but slowly the country is waking up to the ways conventional agriculture is damaging human health and the health of the environment.

As of 2012, the unique organic farm has been hosting field trips for groups of students from schools in nearby Poznan. Kids as young as kindergarteners come for 3 hours at a time to milk goats (and taste the milk), ride ponies, see a wide variety of fruits and veggies growing, and have a cookout. How cool! As far as I can tell, the farm is the only one in the country offering this amazing farm-to-school opportunity. I hope it's the start of a trend -- have I mentioned the general lack of veggie consumption in these parts? 

When Krzysztof came to pick me up from the farm last night, the couple sent me back with big hugs along with a hunk of their aged goat cheese and homemade black currant syrup. These are my people!