Oh, I just had to share this with you! Just off the wire. Unreal!
Borscht Cows Return
(PEREYASLAV, UKRAINE) Twenty miles southeast of this historic City on the Dneiper River is the dairy farm of Volter Tsap. His Grandfather Dimitri had been the head of the People’s Dairy Co-Operative of Kiev Oblast when the Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, and now his grandson has spearheaded the return to small farming that existed for hundreds of years in this part of the Ukraine.
Tsap has focused his farm’s activity, The Dobrii Djen Farm, to the production of natural borscht. Taking a page from traditional farmers, Tsap feeds his cows a diet of fresh beets. Hundreds of years ago it was discovered that cows that were fed a diet of beets would regurgitate their cud in a liquid form that became the staple of a local soup… beet borscht.
As Tsap explains it, the beets are ingested and in one of the cow’s stomach chambers, the rumen-reticulum, it is separated into layers of solid and liquid material and returned to the mouth for further breakdown. It is at this time that the liquid is “harvested” from the cow and stored in wooden containers in cool sub-terranean rooms where it is stabilized and aged for six months before it is bottled for commercial distribution as beet borscht. It had been a method that farmers had used for generations, “My Grandfather’s Grandfather made it this way,” said Tsap.
Currently Tsap has 200 head of cattle used only for borscht production or as breed stock. Another 100 head of cattle are used for other dairy purposes, and the farm also has 20 hectares planted to beets. He points proudly to one of the outbuildings as the location where the Treaty of Pereyaslav was signed in 1654 bringing a peace between the Cossack Hetmanate and Poland.
Today production of natural beet borscht from the Dobrii Djen Farm has the finest restaurants and specialty stores knocking on the door to acquire Tsap’s unique product.
When asked about the wider success of his effort, Tsap responded, “it’s the land, it’s the cow, it’s the soup.”
Associated Press–