Locally owned | Schneider family

Buffalo dairy products from Stefi & Mihaela

The Schneider buffalo grazing freely on rich farm grasslands above the village. Photo by https://www.facebook.com/lucidvof

Ever since they met, Stefi Schneider and his wife Mihaela have wanted to raise buffalo.

"When we were first married, 24 years ago, we had two buffalo calves. But Stefi had to work abroad, so we sold them. Five years ago, we decided to reintroduce them to the village, and today we have nineteen! Our herd is growing!"

Stefi with his oldest son Mihai repairing a disc cutter under the shade of the courtyard vine.

Stefi with his BCS self-propelled sickle bar mower.

The Carpathian buffalo is a water buffalo. On hot summer afternoons, these inquisitive creatures may be found wallowing happily in a muddy water hole above the village. Since last year, the family has rented some 15 hectares of high meadowland, which they have cleared of rampant acacia and fenced in for their animals.

Robert and Mihaela collecting snails on a wet, blustery day, not to eat themselves to be sure, but to sell to Italians.

Stefi is one of the very last Saxon-speaking inhabitants in the village. He and Mihaela have three children. Robert and Mihai help their father with the animals, and Eveline helps her mother look after the aimals at home - pigs, rabbits and chickens. This year Eveline is away in Germany, working as a carer. Together, they manage the family's not so small smallholding, supplying their friends & neighbours with delicious creamy milk, cheese & yoghurt, all made from their buffaloes. 

When Stefi and his eldest son Mihai are not working on the land, they are making new oak barns or repairing the wooden roof beams of their neighbours' houses. Stefi's latest masterpiece is a magnificent oak barn at Copșa Mare 122, which now serves as a guesthouse, the very first in the village to be owned and run by a local farming family.  

For more about local families in the village, www.copsamareguesthouses.com