When the Katerina Moschou decided to move from Athens at Paros and fix it Parion Cheese Factory, seven years ago, she had a dream that she managed to realize with sacrifices and a lot of work: to make traditional cheeses with milk from local goats and sheep that she raises herself, which she feeds exclusively with food that she has grown in the fields of the island. The situation in Paros since she started building the cheese factory, in which she invested her entire future, has changed dramatically.
After the end of the quarantine, the excessive development of tourism and sloppy construction make life very difficult for people involved in agriculture and livestock. The primary sector is under threat, and not only in Paros. The conditions on the islands are becoming more and more suffocating and soon there will be no areas for cultivation, while the livestock units in areas that were once deserted are now under construction because tourist accommodation is being built around them.
And they bother. The noise, the smell, the dust are bothersome. Katerina’s scream of agony that went viral in the last few days, even if it doesn’t refer to anything specific, is a scream of agony for a situation that will soon be irreversible. Because if there is nothing local for the tourist to see in a few years, no local flavor to taste, nothing that is unique and everything becomes a vast, homogenous Disneyland, why would he come to the island in the future?
“There is no more land to cultivate, we are looking for a field to plant barley and we cannot find it. And we put in barley, which becomes dry and doesn’t need water, but the water we save will fill a bunch of swimming pools.”
“I was born and raised in Athens, in Moschato, but I am originally from Paros,” he says, “my mother was born and raised on the island, in Marpissa, and every summer and Easter we came for vacation. In fact, I have memories and images of the island from there. I stayed in Athens until I was 34 years old, then I left, and have been living in Paros for seven years now.
When I graduated from the Agricultural University of Athens, Department of Animal Production Science, I was lucky enough to work at DELTA on milk. After two and a half years I was given the opportunity to go to Cyprus, I was sent to the Vivartia group, where I went as the director of quality control. I stayed there for three years, and in addition to bottling fresh milk, we also made yogurt and cheese. In Cyprus I had very direct contact with the cheese part.
The creation
The Parion Cheese Factory I started making it in 2017 when I came to the island, before there was nothing. My grandmother and my mother’s brothers had animals, and I remember them making cheese in the cauldron, with wood. I liked this very much as a process, many times I went to take out the cheese, to fool around, to taste. When I was in Cyprus, I decided not to return to Athens, but to come to Paros and try my luck. I came back in 2014 and for three years I tried to organize and build the cheese factory. The works were completed in 2017 and in February 2018 I got the license to operate.
I started the cow’s milk cheese factory, which I was buying. However, since in the Cyclades in general there have always been goats and sheep, and these were essentially used by our grandparents, I decided to make cheeses only from goat and sheep milk. They had cows on the islands like mules, to pull things, to plow, they didn’t eat their milk. Until the 80s, it was not exploited on the island, it was not made into cheese. My husband’s grandmother still doesn’t eat cow’s cheese, she hates it.
And because I think that in goat and sheep milk they are much more intense the tastes and smells, and at the time of the corona virus, then, in 2020-21, I started to make my own herd of sheep and goats. I got sixty goats and ten sheep from the locals and now I have my own farm, with about three hundred sheep and goats. Right now I only have goat milk, which is what I produce.
In other words, I have built a vertically integrated unit, we produce the animal feed, in the Plain of Marmaras, and because they are grown here, due to the climate and being close to the sea, they also give more flavor -he eats the animal, and all these aromatics that he eats also pass into the milk. At the cheese factory, I make graviera, graviera in Parian olive oil, sour cheese, goat yogurt, fresh mizithra, dry anthotyro and tulumotyri. My husband, a native of Parian, helps me with the fodder; today they are wrapping bales.
In the seven years that I have been here, many things on the island have changed dramatically. I am not retrograde and in no way did I say to go back, I too live from tourism, like most of the island, there must be progress, but the situation is getting worse and worse for a rancher or a farmer.
The ‘17 when I came it was the tailwaters of the financial crisis and people were gathered in general, but in the last two years there has been a “bang” and many buildings, villas are being built, at a very high speed, I hear that permits are constantly being issued, and maybe this should be examined, because the island is now taking another turn.
It’s not just a problem for Paros, obviously, it’s for all the Cyclades and all the islands, but the conditions have become very difficult for the locals. Add rent, transportation, fuel, how difficult it is to find workers, because it’s not just the salary, there are no longer houses for someone who is not from the island to stay. Also, the old shops are closing because most people prefer to rent their shop to be quieter. This means that people come to the island who are not from here, and of course they don’t have the sensitivity to look for and put local products on their menu – few do – because they don’t care, everything is just budget, how much I have, how much I want to withdraw and that’s it.
“It is reasonable, local products in each region are more expensive. And it’s not just that we produce on an island, where the production costs are higher, the quantities are also small in a local cheese factory, not comparable to a dairy industry”.
It makes sense, local products in each region are more expensive. And it’s not just that we produce on an island, where production costs are higher, the quantities are also small in a local cheese factory, not comparable to a dairy industry. We used to come from Athens to the island and wait to eat at so-and-so’s family tavern, to see them, to greet them, to welcome us for coming, because that meant summer on the island, there was a warm, beautiful climate.
This will soon be gone. All the local food will be lost too, and if you don’t preserve the local cuisine, in a few years what will the tourist come to find? This is not only a problem of Paros, it is a general problem, not only in the Cyclades and the Sporades, in general there is this shift, the primary sector is difficult…
THE My livestock unit is about two and a half kilometers from the village, Marpissa, and three and a half kilometers from the sea. While it is a rural area and the town plan that exists allows all kinds of agricultural activities, it also allows rooms, villas to be built, so there is a mess there, because unfortunately these two do not go hand in hand.
One hears of too many incidents all over the island in which someone is disturbed by a rooster, by a fig tree that hides the view, by a reedbed, by the one who has a vegetable garden and turns on the engine to water it, so I think that sooner or later, if continue at this pace to build everything even here, which is a rural area, ehpossibly some tourists will be disturbed by my activity. But where should we go?
It’s not a personal problem, mine, I haven’t been particularly bothered, but I think when people come to stay here, someone will complain – I start at half past five in the morning to milk, they won’t mind sleeping with the window open to did the northerner come in? It is a problem in general that exists locally and in the Cyclades, and we should all sit down, the public authorities, and let’s see how to fix it or limit it, to change something, because it’s not possible to build everything, it’s not possible to stop these few people, the last romantics, who deal with the primary sector. As difficult as it may be, we also give something by producing. If you eat a local tomato, you will go crazy. Culinary tourism is also a very important part.
I live from tourism, there just has to be a balance, because we are currently building it all. But are we looking to see if there is a road for the car to pass? How will visitors come? How will the garbage go? Where will we find water to fill the pools? All we ask is that they protect those of us who are left in the primary sector so that we can continue.
There is no more land for you to cultivate, we are looking for a field to plant barley and we cannot find it. And we put in barley, which becomes dry and doesn’t need water, but the water we save will fill a bunch of swimming pools. This year it rained very little and we are concerned about what will happen this summer. In August when everyone will leave we will be left behind, what will happen here?
I’m not an expert, I just stated my complaint without having anything against anyone. The people who build have a permit, since the law allows it, they are doing well, but if tomorrow they don’t like the island, they will sell and leave. This is my home, this is my life, I can’t leave here, and I have to defend this place, not from them, in general. I hear how many nice things, how many customs are no longer done because they don’t allow us to and I feel sad…”.
The Chamber of Cyclades recently submitted a file to the Ministry of Culture to make Cycladic cheesemaking a protected element in UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage. “There are 106 cheeses recorded in the Cyclades, and the auspices of UNESCO will prove that they have always existed as a historical fact, that they have always been engaged in the primary sector and the production of cheese products in the Cyclades,” he says.
“I consider it very important that they be registered in the intangible cultural heritage of UNESCO because it will help us a lot. When they came to videotape the testimonies about the cheeses to file the file, I thought it was very important, because in a few years there won’t even be any testimony about them, the way my island is going everyone will give up. And it’s a shame, because I love Paros and its inhabitants, I want my daughter to have only good memories when she grows up, just like me.
There is no PDO product in Paros, I had started the effort a year and a half ago and will continue it, because I came to Athens to give birth and with the labor and caesarean section, everything went backwards. The Union of Agricultural Cooperatives of Paros is also trying to get some product certified, I don’t know if it will be PDO, PGI or something else, but I would very much like to succeed.
Even if it becomes a PDO product, but if there is no field to cultivate to feed the animal and you bring feed from Thebes, then what is the point of saying it is local? Local for me is a philosophy that I have in mind and that guides me. It is not possible to plow the field and be disturbed because the plow raises dust…”.
www.pariontyrokomeio.gr
The article published in LiFO print.
Tags: Paros District Moschou protect left deal primary sector
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