On December 2, 2008 we hit the road early in the morning. Everytime when it’s the time for a trip to a village there is an interesting expectation and some sort of mystery around the trip. It’s the time to get out of the concrete surroundings to the beautiful, albeit sometimes treeless terrain. It’s the time when your eight or more hours of the day are full with sceneries, farms, villages, road and new people.

Our destination this time is Syunik. Through the mountains covered with snow, an expectation that it's going to be freezing and dressed in warmest possible clothes , we discovered a sunny autumn weather, that made our trip much easier and pleasant.

We decided to expose the Civilitas Foundation communications coordinator Anna to a village experience. The result was a couple of upset chickens as Anna was trying hard to catch them =)

The communities we were delivering the milking units this time were Gorhayk and Sarnakunk, a few kilometers from Sisian, which is considered to be the coldest town of Armenia, though Syunik is Armenia’s South.

Gorhayk is our first stop. It has a population of 657 and is 127km far from the regional center. This is not our first trip to Gorhayk as a member of the community Tigran Arustamyan was the first recipient of a milking unit almost a year ago.

Ashtarak Kat has a milk collection center in the community that collects milk from more than twenty surrounding communities on a daily basis.

As we reached Gorhayk, we met Rafik Muradian, the head of Association of Development of Milk Production and the representative of Ashtarak Kat.

With a short greeting we got back on the road to our first beneficiary farmer from Sarnakunk community.

Sarnakunk has a population of 554 and is 120 km far from the regional administrative center.

Sinod Avetisyan became a farmer only 10 years ago. He is still teaching in the community school, but decided to start his farm to make ends meet. He bought his first 4 cows 10 years ago. “Nowadays, if you want to live a decent life you have to work hard” says Sinod, who currently already owns 30 cows and thinks to increase the number of his livestock.

He says he is thankful for the opportunity and that the machine will give him more options. Without the milking unit he had to find more people to hire to help with the milking - a task that is not accomplished easily, as all the “milkers” are already busy and the younger generation neither has the interest, nor the knowledge and the desire to work as a milker. Another issue is the that eventually additional assistance means less income as the milk yield stays the same.

Sinod’s daughter in law Raya Khachatryan teaches Armenian at the village school. She has two children. Her elder daughter, Shaneh, came to see the new purchase of the family.

“I don’t do the milking," Raya says, “teaching the children at school is also an important job, but we have a big farm now, and we already have two people who milk the cows everyday. With the potential to grow additional hand would mean fewer cows. With the purchase of the machine these workers will continue to do their job with the milking units."

With the contract signing right in front of the barn we were ready to set off to our next destination.

But with the traditional coffee invitation we decided to have a coffee break. After short conversation and an overall glimpse on today’s life in Sarnakunk we headed toward our next stop, testing our car on the way.

Ararat Petrosyan, from Gorhayk, has a farm of 12 cows. Almost a year ago he heard that he’s neighbor purchased a milking unit. With a lot of inquiries and deliberation he decided to purchase one too. “I don’t have a big barn, but I try to take care of my animals so that the yield is higher,” says Ararat. “I was told that ventilation is very important, that is why I added a vent hole on the roof and opened up the windows” says Ararat showing us the improvements of his barn, which, by the way was the most “easy to breath in” barn that we have visited, since the start of the project.

His wife, Gohar, says that she needs to wake up at 6 AM with her husband and father in law every day to milk the cows. “I will still have to wake up early, she says, but you know, it’s not easy to manually milk a cow, the manual milking is very labor intensive. Your arm aches the whole day. Now with this milking unit my job will be easier” says Gohar.

As we were in Gorhayk we decided to also visit the initial beneficiary of farmer that has a milking unit almost for a year now. Tigran Arustamian has 10 cows. He says things have improved since he got a milking unit. “I used to pay almost 100 dollars a month to get somebody to milk the cows. Now my family keeps the money, and the quality of the milk has improved. This is also additional income. Ashtarak Kat pays 10% more for a premium quality milk."

With six machines already delivered and our intention to order 40 more we started a conversation on value of the project with Ashtarak Kat’s expert Rafik Muradian.

The most important thing for Ashtarak Kat is the quality of the milk and the machine milked milk better compared to the milk produced by hand milking. It’s cleaner, safer and higher in quality, Rafik says.

Rafik, who has been responsible for Ashtarak Kat milk collection for more than 10 years and knows a lot about the life in rural Armenia says that the biggest problem with milk production is lack of milking specialists. “The generation that knew how to do it, and was willing to do it is older, young girls who marry village residents now, put a condition first: I am not going to milk your cows” Rafik laughs.

The milking units not only improve the quality of milk, but also make life for the families easier, the social aspect is also very important.

Besides, the unit has a huge impact on the farmer’s family budget. If a farmer has 15 cows, he needs additional help to milk them every morning. So he hires somebody and pays about 30-35 thousand drams (some 100 dollars) a month to the worker. That’s a big sum for a family in a typical Armenian village, this sum can now be spent on other family needs, Rafik explains.

With a determination to expand the number of beneficiaries as soon as possible and make some additions to the contract to include some improvements to the barn and animal care practices we headed home.

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