„Cling, cling...cling, cling, cling...muuuh!!!“ As Daisy is walking in she is looking around to see who is already there. She recognizes Lea and Fiona in the far back. Also Inge, Efeu and a few others have just found their place and are ready to give their precious white. Their spcaces are tidied up so that after a long night, that was full of rich and tasty grass, they finally can relax. But before that can happen, they are happy to share their milk with us.
This is a short overview of a usual moring at the Grubenberg Alp, Berner Oberland, Switzerland. Alp is the word for a grassland farm with cattle in the alps. Mostly high up, steep hills, great views, no traffic, hikers and lots of manual labor. How I got here is another long story and if you remember my last report. Then you might ask why I am not working with some kind of surfboard?! Well, because their products wasn’t actually ready to be released and a couple of planned events got cancelled. So I had to jump off that sinking ship. In between I worked a couple of days in Munich and while I was there I recieved a mysterious call from Switzerland. The next moring I had decided to come and work for 2 months and after a few days I found myself in here at the Alp in 1800 m. I was lucky that my first week here was sunny and heaps of new impressions caught my attention so that I could dive right into it.
Being present up here isn’t very difficult if you allow to let go. The usual world down there is miles and miles away. What is happening in the world seems funny, sad and and in the same moment just like it is. Just like it is. Nothing more or less. The last couple of years I didn’t milk any cows, but after the first day I was back in the barn and I squeezed the milk out of them. If your are a vegan, this was a joke and just take it easy. Even though milking is always milking, the circumstances are always different. For example my first experience in Canda 2012 wasn’t as pleasent and relaxed as here. For the cows and for me. Here in Switzerland the quality of the endproduct (Alp cheese) is highly important and therefore the cows are treated really well and people are really caring for them. It is knwon that factos like wellbeing, feed, handling, hygiene, environment and health have an impact on the quality of the milk. In my opinion milk from corn silage feed cow doesn’t taste as good as hay milk, where cows eat only fresh grass from the alps. Also cows that don’t feel well, are stressed and have no free space will give a different type of milk. My collegues know all 45 cows by their names. Which is impressive and it shows their deep connection they have to them. So the animal hasn’t just a number and is factor for production like a tractor. Animals are beings, we give them names, they have emotions and we recognize certain characterisitcs. Long story short, we have relationships with them. Sometimes we are angry with them and another day we are happy to have them around. Back in the days we (humans) had different relationships with horses and cows. They played important roles of our daily lifes and were not just a summer vacation encounter in the alps during a hike. We were not annoyed by their smell. Actually we were happy to have them in our houses. Otherwise it would have been cold. And even if we don’t remember it could be that our genetics still store that kind of information somehow (the relationship thing). Why have they been drawn away from us. Because we developed machines and still compare them with the power of a horse and many of us love them like a horse. But they are actually dirty, comfortably, are costly and in some cases they kill. Some of us assume that technolgy will help us to rise above our physical limiations and after our biological evolution comes the technological?! I don’t think that is the way to go in the long run. Technology is fine and helps us lot (to make things worse) but it is not the ultimate and only solution. As it is material matter and (I think I have written this already) if we do not succeed to change from within and work on ourselfs...the age of technology will be just anohter age and then there comes something else (who knows). We have many relationships to everythings that surrounds us in our everyday lifes. Maybe some awareness could help us to understand things better in our lives. Dino (15 years) the boy who is working here with us said today. Some people come to the alps and they do not pay attention to the eagles, trees and mountains. He really hit the spot. Awareness.
Now I got a bit lost and even though I hope you enjoyed reading this.
Here are a few facts about the farm in the alps werer I am working. We have 45 cows to milk (twice a day) and the belong to nine different farmers from the valley. Farmers from the valley have always brough their cows in the upper mountain areas during the summer months June till early September. From the milk (700-800 liters daily) we produce cheese and most of it is already sold if the quality is all right. Then a part of the cheese goes to the farmers that brought two or three cows up here and the rest stays with the alp family (Ueli, Heidi, Martin). The life here is quite simple and so are the facilities to produce high class cheese. Hope you have already tried swiss alp cheese. It has roughtly 50 % fat and the taste depents mostly on the microorganisms which are used to transform milk to cheese.
Hopefully I am able to learn more about the cheesemaking process in the next couple of weeks so that I can decribe a few more details.
See you then and I wish you a great summer!
What could this be?
