Dairy Farm

We left Mayrhofen and after taking four trains and a bus (Jon drove the car back to the airport) we arrived in the town of Gaschurn in south eastern Austria. Kristian met us at the bus stop and drove us up the mountain to their high alpine home where they live in the summer. Local farmers move their cows up to higher altitudes in the summer and Kristian and Veronica tend to them, milk them and make cheeses and butter to sell. They live up in the mountains from early June to mid September. When we arrived on Thursday afternoon there was a front porch full of people eating and drinking. They had friends staying for the night, visiting “neighbors” from another farm as well as the two young women who are woofing for the entire season. We talked for awhile with everyone and then went out to bring the cows in for the afternoon milking. They just take long sticks and drive them back to the farm by staying behind them and yelling ‘hup’ or ‘hey up’ at them. At this farm the cows all go into the stalls and get chained up while they are milked. After the evening milking they let them out for a few hours before bringing them back in to sleep in the barn at 9pm. We ate dinner, brought the cows back in and then sat around outside while Kristian and one of their friends played guitar before calling it a night.

Friday we had to be at breakfast at 6:30. After we ate some bread and jam we went out to muck the cow stalls. You shovel all the poop into a wheelbarrow and dump it into a giant underground hole in the cement. Then you use the hose to clean the decks off. After that Veronica asked us to come help in the dairy. On Fridays they have to take their products down to the valley to sell at the farmers market so there is a lot to prepare. Also, hikers are able to stop at the house to have food and drinks so you always have to be ready to serve guests. In the dairy room James and I helped bang the cheese out of the molds they had been sitting in. Then Veronica asked me to wash all the cheese. In the special room where the cheese sits on wooden shelves to age they brush it every few days to add salt and to remove any mold as well as to flip them over. I was alone in there for a few hours washing probably 80 wheels of cheese. When you are working in the dairy you have to wear big white rubber boots, a white waterproof apron and a shower cap. Lastly we did a lot of dishes. There is always a lot to clean up in the dairy room.

Saturday was not supposed to be nice weather but it ended up being alright. James and I started our day with mucking the stalls (they call it “misting” so they call us the mister masters). Then we went up and down the road cleaning out the drainage culverts of all the sand and stones washed into them. After a delicious lunch of crepes we took a nap during the rainy afternoon. Then we headed to the fields to weed these plants that can be poisonous to the cows. This is our job whenever we don’t know what to do. We did that until dinner which was sausages and veggies. Veronica made dough for the children to make bread on the fire place like we had at that bbq in Bavaria. Then we all played a game they call ‘werewolf’. It’s like survivor where people get killed and accused of being the werewolf.

Sunday. Today was a rainy day. We mucked the stalls then I went into the dairy room to help separate the milk to fat free milk and cream using a centrifuge. Julia was able to come into the dairy to observe and help a little bit. Then we cleaned everything and scrubbed the floors. Later in the day Molly got to help make cheese. We would dip buckets into the huge vat and gently press the liquid out and then add the chunks of cheese to the molds.

James and I are concerned there is not enough to do here to keep us entertained for a whole week or more. They’ve got two kids (Julia -8 and Lisa-4). Julia plays w the girls and can speak some English which is great. But we are not allowed to help with milking and the dairy is only sometimes and usually a lot of dishes and only a little bit of cheese making. We haven’t been given many other tasks to do We can certainly weed more but we are considering if we should leave early from here. They family it very nice and this is a beautiful and interesting place to spend some time. But apparently more woofers are arriving this afternoon so I can’t imagine there being less work than we have now. Once all the kids get a chance to help in the dairy we might make an excuse to leave early. Monday the weather was heavy fog settled into the valley but it wasn’t raining. We mucked the stalls and then we made butter. Casey came into the cheese room with me finally. She’s been staying away due to the smell. The machine that churns the butter is cool and you just pour the cream in and wait until it turns into butter. They call it R2D2 so Casey immediately loved that. Once we have butter we drain out the butter milk and rinse the butter. After we put it into these wooden molds and line it up to go into the freezer. The kids all got to help as we made two batches. After lunch James and I went on a hike up to the cross you can see with Casey and molly. It took about 1:20 to get up and unfortunately was cloudy at the top. We came back down in time to drive the cows in at 4:00. We did some odd jobs like repairing screens and washing the aprons as well as all the dishes from the butter. We had soup for dinner and stick bread over the fire again.

On Tuesday we mucked the stalls and then just got cleaned up and ready to leave. Kristian drove us down around 10:00 and ended up taking us all the way to Bludenz to catch a train. James and I weren’t sure where to go and thought we’d spend the night in Lichtenstein just to say we’d been there but in the end we chose Bregenz, Austria which was a 45 minute train ride. We wandered around and found a hotel which gave us free passes to a swimming area. We walked a very short way to the place and swam in Bodensee. It was a beautiful day and we were happy to relax (not to mention swim as we hadn’t showered at all at the farm). There were rafts to swim out to, piers to jump off of, swimming pools and water slides. We spent a few hours there then showered and walked to town for dinner. The festival house on the water was performing the opera Rigoletto tonight and town was packed. The theatre is right on the water and the stage and set is actually on pylons in the water. It was so cool. We ate and watched the sun set over the lake then took in a few minutes of the opera from outside. Tomorrow we go our separate ways. I head to Munich to fly home and James and the girls head to Zurich to spend a few days before they fly to Portugal to meet his parents.