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.

Hut to Hut Hike

July 24: We just returned from 3 days/2 nights in the mountains doing a hut to hut hike. We started in the town of Mayrhofen which is a home base for lots of action in the Zillertal Alps. On Monday we drove about 20-30 minutes south to the Schlegeisspeicher (which is a dam). We parked the car and headed out on our hike. There had been a rock slide in the area which blocked the route but we were able to pass by having a construction worker take us through the area where the workers were clearing the rock. We walked on a fairly flat section around the dam which was a beautiful blue color and into the valley. All around us were green mountains with high, jagged peaks, many of which were snow covered or had glaciers on them. We reached a point where we finally started ascending. The kids were carrying their own packs this time but we tried to keep them light. There were so many beautiful waterfalls all around. The hike was steep and we had some complaints but the kids forged ahead. We took a lot of breaks and ate a lot of snacks. After about 3.5 hours on the trail we arrived at the Furtschaglhaus hut at 1:30pm. We checked in at 2:00pm and had a long time to just chill at the hut. We rested, played cards on the deck, explored the river, rested, read, etc. One unusual event happened during our down time at the hut. A hiker had fallen when a rock he was on gave way and crushed him. He managed to get down to the hut with help from his group but he was all bloody on his face and they called a helicopter to take him out so we got to see the helicopter come in and land and the hut and take off. We ate big bowls of spaghetti bolognese and then got in bed early, around 8:30. We had a room for 8 people that we shared with two Finnish hikers who were very nice and quiet.

Tuesday morning we woke up and got packed up and had some breakfast on the deck of the hut. It was chilly in the morning before the sun came over the peaks. We started hiking at 8:30am and were quickly shedding layers as the day heated up. We knew we had a long and difficult hike ahead of us. We started a 3 hour ascent over a 9,000 foot peak. We stopped many times to admire the beauty surrounding us. We spotted sheep, marmots, waterfalls, we walked through snow fields (only two weeks ago this route was still closed due to too much snow). We had to scramble up rocks and finally made it to the peak called schonbichler horn at just over 9,000 feet. We stopped for a long rest and then began the descent to the valley below. We walked along a nice ridge line and passed through many snow fields. We had a bunch of snow ball fights and took a lot of rests. We could see the hut we were headed to from the peak. The kids did such a great job. No complaints, no whining about their backpacks, and they just kept trudging. Molly and I had a mantra to keep her moving about "how do you eat an elephant?"..."one bite at a time". We finally trudged into the hut at 4:24, exactly 8 hours from when we started. The sun was strong and we all had sun burn on our right arms. The Berliner hut is one of the oldest in the Alps and is so grand. It is much larger than the rest of the huts, there is this enormous wooden dining room, a beautiful deck with a raging river, two roaming pigs that the kids had fun with and beauty as far as the eye could see. It was really something to behold. We had a room to ourselves which was great and delicious food to fill us up after a long day. We played all sorts of board and card games, rested, walked around the property and got in bed by 8:30-9:00.

Wednesday morning we had breakfast on the deck and hit the trail around 9:00am. We had an easy descent on a nice, smooth, wide trail which was a nice relief for our feet and knees after a long, rocky descent the day before. We got to the bottom of the trail in under 3 hours. James got a ride back to our car and came back to get us. We scrambled back up the trail a ways to a beautiful waterfall area in a gorge that ran alongside the trail. Everyone (except me) went for a dip. Then we drove back into Mayrhofen to grab lunch and checked back into the Guesthaus Zillertal. We vegged for a long time as the day was unusually hot then we took the kids to the alpine slide for awhile. We went for another quick dip in the very fast moving river then headed out to a farewell dinner in town with Jon as he is leaving very early in the morning. The week with Jon has absolutely flown by. He is returning the car to the Munich airport tomorrow so we will back using the trains to make our way west to the next farm. Not sure what wifi will be like there but I fly home on Aug 1.