The third NEWBIE contest in Bulgaria is not completed yet and Bulgarian new entrants have few days to apply.
The members of the Steering Group and the NEWBIE team were spreading the information widely and waiting for applications of inspiring newbies and believe again it will not be easy to choose the winner. As a journalist of Bulgarian Farmer newsletter said all the 3 finalists of the second contest deserved the first place.
The second NEWBIE winner Mitko Kukundzhiev and his family are very proud of the award and used the award for marketing training.
Mitko Kukundjiev from the village of Yagodina has a small mountain farm at 1200 m above the sea level in the Rhodope Mountain for grazing livestock.
Despite his Bulgarian breeds of cows, sheep and goats are not highly productive, the quality of the milk and the taste make it worth. So he keeps traditional Bulgarian Rhodope cattle and maintains high land pastures.
To add value to the milk production he established a mini dairy in 2015 and now he is proud of his dairy products quality: white and yellow cheese, yogurt and butter. Mitko’s wife Veneta helps with the milk processing. They guarantee that the products are natural, 100% High Mountain Rhodope milk. They love what they do. Recently, they have applied a profitable marketing approach - cooperation with an organic jam workshop and Hotel Mursal. Thus, dairy products as yellow cheese and cheese, breaded or baked, go great with organic jam made of wild strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, dandelion elixir, pine honey with the brand Mursal or sheep and cow's thick yogurt drizzled with organic jams. Tourists could choose them from the restaurant menu, taste how delicious they are and buy for home to keep the Rhodope’s flavour longer. So they combined local agri-food with eco-tourism and sell together dairy and jam products to local and international tourists.
