Throwing a cat around, munching on sour cream sprinkled with sweet vanilla sugar, lounging on the back of a dog, feeding a cow, splashing about in the mud – just about the most perfect ways to spend time when you are a four-year-old with a lovely grandma. Mrs. Irén Szabó was looking after her granddaughter Zita when we visited her, and she told us that her most important job was to hold the family together. Customers from as far as Kecskemét have come here to buy the dairy products of the Szabó family, who are also responsible for refilling the milk vending machine in Balatonlelle with fresh milk.
Living on the Kishegy of Balatonlelle, the Szabó family have been growing corn, oats, wheat and sunflowers and raising cows for a long time, but the family farm has had a new product since last May when they started milking their cows. Since then the Szabó family has been refilling the milk vending machine in Lelle with fresh milk every day. A litre costs HUF 200, and usually there isn’t a drop left by the time the new supplies arrive.
The milk that is left is used for making curd cheese, sour cream and cheese, and if you are lucky the family will have some treats left for you to buy when you come for a visit to the Kishegy yard. You’ll get a litre of sour cream for HUF 800, a kilogram of curd cheese for HUF 1,000, a kilogram of flavoured cheese for HUF 2,200 and a kilogram of the unflavoured kind for HUF 2,000.
There are currently eight dairy cows producing milk for the farm, as three have recently given birth, but the family keeps a total of forty-eight cows. Irén is proud to say that all three of her children have found a job on the family farm, and they have managed to divide the myriad of tasks among themselves based on who likes to do what. It makes sense because one person simply wouldn’t be able to handle the huge, hundred-hectare farm grounds with all the horses, rabbits, goats and cows. It is obvious that grandma is responsible for a little bit of everything, and she absolutely revels in having seven grandkids around and only getting positive reviews from her customers.
The room where we sit down to talk to Irén is filled not only with the smell of fresh curd cheese, but also with show jumping and coach driving trophies, all won by her middle son. Irén tells us stories that are a testament to how much satisfaction she gets out of the farm, and the idyll is only interrupted by complaints about the weather this year. “We have lived here since I was a little girl, but we have never seen so much rain,” she says, smiling even when she surveys the rain-drenched soil. This is the only way to do it right, no energy is wasted on moaning. And it has been proven by British scientists many times before that fretting will not make oven-baked pancakes any better either.
