András Vrancsik, who is living on the periphery of the Hortobágy, wanted to show the beauties of agriculture rather than its hardships. The adventurers who visited him were able to work with almost 800 of his sheep as well as with his broiler chickens.
During the Rural Adventures Programme of summer 2011, two urban girls visited plant cultivator and sheep breeder András Vrancsik. The farmer lives in Balmazújváros (Hajdú-Bihar county) with his family, and he is currently the vice-president of AGRYA (Agricultural and Rural Youth Association, Hungary). In 2000, he bought a state-of-the-art stable next to the city, in the Hortobány for keeping sheep, and he has been able to double his starting livestock of 400 animals by now. Since the farm does not have a sufficiently large pasture, he leases approximately one houndred hectares from the Hortobágy National Park. He also cultivates fodder for own use on the 60 hectares of his private land. András Vrancsik said about his aims: “I didn't have great expectations about the participants, I was glad that young people came to me. One of my goals was to show them not the hardships of rural life but rather its brighter side – besides, obviously, that they took their part in manual labour,” And the girls really had a chance to get a grip of the tasks of sheep keeping: one of them tried out hoof trimming, while the other one – Réka Hegedűs – could vaccinate the sheep. “My wife and her family are raising broiler chickens, so the girls could get familiar with keeping not only sheep but chickens while they were here, they were also scything and did a lot of things at the estate” – told the young farmer.
