With body and soul
Food production has always been a fascinating topic for Wolfgang Schneider. The graduate agricultural engineer specialised in dairy science and spent his professional life in this sector. What has remained to this very day is cheese production, which he now pursues at home. The laryngectomised senior also looks after a small wooded area, his "outdoor fitness centre", as he refers to it with a twinkle in his eye.
Wolfgang Schneider has been laryngectomised since 2021. The diagnosis of "laryngeal cancer" came as a shock to him. "But to be honest, it didn't come completely out of the blue. You notice yourself that something is wrong and it doesn't take too much imagination not to think about cancer as a possibility," he says. This was preceded by almost four years of hoarseness, the diagnosis unfortunately came quite late. Nevertheless, says Wolfgang, he had a stroke of luck in his misfortune, as he required neither radiotherapy nor chemotherapy apart from surgery. Speaking with a voice prosthesis also worked relatively smoothly some two weeks after surgery. That is why he can deal with his illness in a very relaxed manner; it hardly hinders him, he says. " Of course, one or two things no longer work, or only to a very limited extent, such as swimming, singing, laughing, smelling or whistling La Paloma," he explains, "but one can live with that."
When he talks in detail about his own cheese production, one immediately realises how much he is fascinated by food production. He usually processes about 200 litres of raw milk himself (which makes about 23 kg of cheese), all of which comes fresh from the cow and only needs to be heated slightly to about 33 °C in winter. Bacterial cultures and rennet enzyme are then added. Then it's a case of waiting, stirring, cutting, decanting and then waiting again - as described here in extremely abbreviated form.
Making cheese is an art
According to Wolfgang, the true art lies in balancing the differences in raw material, the acidification process or the firmness by adjusting the process parameters. It's like laying tiles, you can also do that yourself. "However, if you then compare the result with that of a professional, you will quickly become disillusioned. But here too, training and practice lead to perfection," explains the expert cheerfully.
His cheeses are essentially hard cheeses, but they don't really fit a pattern. One type resembles a Tilsiter. The other type has a relatively hard, dry surface and becomes more like Parmesan after three months of maturing. He also offers a type of butter cheese with a black wax coating. In any case, it is cheese made from raw milk with a fat content in the cream stage, which is conducive to the flavour. "I only produce for my own use, for friends and acquaintances and, of course, for the dairy farmer's family."
For Wolfgang Schneider, working in his woodland is his private fitness training programme with all kinds of different equipment and plenty of fresh air. His hardest-working helper is motorised, an Eicher tractor built in 1957 with 19 hp.
The forestry work follows the rhythm of the seasons: in winter, wood is felled and processed into firewood. Young wood must be thinned to provide light and air again and to improve stability. In the autumn or spring, reforestation areas are cleared of scrub and new trees are planted. What pleases him most is that he can still manage to do this work at all. Prior to surgery, one really has no idea how much breath one will have left later on, Wolfgang Schneider reflects gratefully.
Wishes for the forest
Climate change worries him. "If someone does not yet believe in climate change, they are definitely not the owner of a forest. I don't think climate change is hardly more apparent anywhere else," says the senior convinced. Of course, there have always been problems in the past, but usually only one or two a year.
Last year he faced all the difficulties at once: game damage, drought, storm damage, hailstorms, bark beetles, ash dieback and, last but not least, breakage due to snow. And finally, we asked him what else he would like to see happen. "I have quite a few wishes when it comes to managing the forest," he replies.
"With regard to our fellow citizens, we should take a pragmatic rather than an emotional or ideological view of the forest, and with regard to legislators, we should not succumb to regulatory frenzy. The experts, such as foresters and forest owners, know best what benefits the forest. My wish to Saint Peter would be that he doesn't repeat the accumulation of damaging events as in 2023, and finally to the Lord that he lets me work my woodland for a few more years."
Wolfgang Schneider
He has been receiving care from FAHL since his laryngectomy and describes it with the words: "Everything is just great!" Wolfgang not only knows how to make cheese, but also knows its historical origins: cheese dairy most probably originated when our ancestors once stored milk in a tube made from a goat's stomach.
And lo and behold, the rennet in the stomach curdled the milk. If one now mixes this curd and allows it to drip off, one basically ends up with a completely fresh cheese.
