Daniel Cismas: While on a quest to find purpose and identity for ourselves, we decided to become farmers and work the land.
Since 2009, Daniel Cismas has been managing, together with his wife Tincuta, the Topa organic farm in The Saxon Villages Area of southern Transylvania. The land belongs to the Foundation for Cultures and Ecology, and the Cismas family manages it as a family farm.
I’m trying by all means and through all the farming activities to maintain the rich biodiversity of our land, the soil quality, and the natural resources.
We understood that our connection with our ancestors must and can only be restored if we apply it in our everyday activities, the traditional ways of working the land and taking care of the animals while respecting and considering the environment we live in.
Daniel & Tincuta view organic farming as a necessity. It is the way to produce healthy food, and it protects soil quality.
Ferma Ecologica Topa is a family affair, managing 40 hectares of certified land, a well-kept balance between grasslands, gardens and arable land, growing not only grains, fruit and vegetables but also producing fodder for the dairy cows, pigs, chickens and other small animals they raise here.
The family also cultivates one hectare of Damask roses, renowned for their fine fragrance, to make jam and tea. 25 % of their income comes from a rose jam.
Working with healthy and traditional recipes, the farm produces and sells, mostly directly from the farm to the consumer, a wide variety of products such as dairy products (semi-hard and fresh cheeses, simple or with garden herbs, milk, sour cream, yoghurt), vegetables (tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, onions, garlic etc.), dried plants for teas and various preserves (jams, syrups, pickles and vegetable spreads).
The family cooperates with other organic producers like beekeepers from the village of Topa. Thus they use an integrated business model based on simple yet effective principles.
From the very first day, the Cismas family’s main objective was to keep and enhance the land’s diversity, adapting traditional farming practices, and keeping the land in small parcels of a few hectares each.
One of their primary methods of maintaining the rich biodiversity is to keep the rotational grazing as seasonal as possible and only do so on some small dedicated parcels.
Grazing parcels and the ones destined to be used as hay meadows are located on the slopes of the hills, while arable fields are in flatter areas near the right Tarnava Mare river bank.
As for the conservation practices carried on these parcels besides the rotational grazing, we also rely on applying manure as a natural fertiliser and mowing only after specific dates to allow the plant seeds to develop and spread.
The key to continuing this land conservation process is to involve the younger generations in specific activities, which is why we set up protocols with the local schools in our area. The children can visit the farm and learn more about our activities and the principles of organic farming and its practices, the importance of their food choices and the role they hold as consumers in shaping and sustaining one type of agriculture or the other.
If I had to give helpful advice, I would tell people always to mind their actions, as farmers, people living in the rural areas, or just as plain beneficiaries of the agro-products, to better define their priorities in the short and long term, and to have a complete comprehension of the terms and words they come across, as so not to become confused and act on a wrong information
