1930: Snepele

I arrived at Snepele in June, 1930. I first stayed at Strautmali because the outgoing manager had not yet left.  Passing through Riga, I went shopping. I bought a dark blue suit, pale slacks, and white shoes, which were the latest fashion.  And I had my record player.

I started work the next morning.  I found the factory in a very bad condition, only 750 litres could be processed in one hour. The butter churn was worse, it had to be run 3 times to produce the butter and held only 300 litres.  All this was driven by petrol motors.  The factory had 3 cream collection points, the closest only 6 kilometres away at Ingas, the next 10 kilometres away at Ranki district, and the third was Zaleniekos at Turlava district, 12 kilometres away.  At the factory, apart from the manager there was only one other worker- the cleaner.  I was young and full of energy so I got to work.  The most urgent job was to find a new churn.  The new type of cream cooler was there but not installed.  In newspaper advertisements I found a larger churn in Vidzeme at Saviena near Madona.  I went to have look at it and found it was suitable.  It turned out that the manager at Saviena was my previous manager from Valena.  Apart from the churn it was handy to also be able to get an aluminium cream container for the culture.  I bought both. 

With this equipment it was better arranged.  It was good at Snepele that the manager had to keep books only for the technical records, eg.  butter made, butter dispatched.  All bookkeeping for payments was done by an accounting assistant - Rozkalns.

In Latvia, when changing jobs you had to register at the district council.  There I met Zanis who had also just come home to Ingas, having come back from 3 years of navy school and travelling on ships.  He had a commission on private ships and wore a fancy hat and two stripes on his sleeve.  I was dressing in the latest fascist fashion: black shirt with rolled up sleeves, artillery trousers with a blue stripe, and short artillery-type of boots.  I knew Zanis by name and introduced myself and told him that I was the new manager at the milk factory.  He had also heard about me as next door to Ingas was Biezaisi, a prosperous farm where my cousin lived. Zanis and I became instant friends.