- Location
- Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
I recall saying something about Italy last week. And for some reason, I seem to have scabbed an invite up onto the Italian Tyrol, to see their alpine cattle. We’ll get back to that bit. I had to get there first.
So flying into Innsbruck, an Austrian city hemmed by jagged peaks, I spent a happy sojourn waiting for my backpack to catch up with me. Somehow it snuck off during a changeover in Frankfurt. I don’t where it went, but presume a ported has already been sent to the Eastern Front, or whatever they do nowadays. Once reunited with my clean sock supply, I ventured South. The Austrian trains run on time, no-one drops litter, they’re all impossibly tanned and fit, and everything is ‘just zo’. Up over a mountain pass in the train, you then start to drop away into Italy. Initially, everything is much the same. You’re in the ‘South Tyrol’, an autonomous region, technically part of Italy. A ‘gift’ from the broken up Austro-Hungarian Empire after the Great War, they still speak a German dialect, and have far more in common with the Austrians or Swiss than the Italians.
Tiny farms cling to the slopes below the treeline. Houses and barns sport wide brimmed snow shedding rooves, each one looking suspiciously like a giant cuckoo might erupt on a long spring at the top of the hour. But drop further down into the country, and you’re increasingly reminded you’re in Italy. Paint peels a bit more, infrastructure is more ragged, and I started seeing the guards catching fare dodgers. In baking heat I turned North East again, back up toward the imposing mountains once more.
Leaving vast apple orchards and vineyards behind on the lowlands, I got on a bus winding up through the ‘Ultendal’, a valley gouged by a long ago glacier. Above a roaring river –icy cold and fed by melt water-, farms cling precipitously to the valley sides. Above the treeline, snow still clings to the mountain tops. The farmers were all fetching in their hay, although describing the pasture as fields would be unrealistic. Grass clad walls would be more descriptive. Most hay is cut with a glorified updated Allen Scythe, little motors chugging away as farmers walk behind the finger bar cutting heads. On my host farm, old Dad was out with a scythe the day I arrived. A lot of the crop is turned and raked by hand with wooden rakes, and every last wisp of grass is gathered. Some is baled, but most picked up in bulk by demountable little forage wagons- with a rear pick-up and riding on ubiquitous little 4x4 flatbed ‘alpine tractors’. Tipped into the lofts on the uphill side of wooden barns, it’s stored in heaps and couldn’t smell sweeter.
The untilled floral pasture is only fed with muck, and once cut, irrigated to grow another crop. It’s neat, tidy, and very nearly timeless. One of my jobs was to walk in front of the mower, carefully searching for baby deer hiding in the crop. The farmers hate to strike them, and take great care not to. Then it was my turn on the wooden rake. And I have to say it works. On slopes you can hardly stand on, it’s easy enough, in the hot sun, to pull the crop down the slope towards a track cut across the contour.
The herds of cows are by necessity very small, although most were up on the top of the ‘Alm’- their word for Alp- for the summer. Some families keep their cows down in the valley all year to milk, but that’s obviously eating into their precious hay ground.
Each farmer also has his bit of woodland, of spruce, pine and outstanding larch. The government forester advises –and marks- trees to harvest, and small sawmill ventures are everywhere. Small scale hydro plants hum quietly, and local food is very much part of the culture - the smoked ham is a delight. The air is fresh and clean, scented with innumerable alpine flowers. Opposite where I stayed, my hostess’s aunt runs a ‘wellness retreat’ or whatever you’d call it. 120 years ago, the likes of Sigmund Freud, Franz Kafka and Rudolf Steiner summered there, and if it was good enough for them, it’s probably good enough for me.
Picking up a few new words of the lingo each day, I worked –and drank- alongside the locals, and ventured further into the landscape and culture. Next week, I’ll take you hand in hand up onto the sunlit alp, and we’ll talk cows….with bells on.
So flying into Innsbruck, an Austrian city hemmed by jagged peaks, I spent a happy sojourn waiting for my backpack to catch up with me. Somehow it snuck off during a changeover in Frankfurt. I don’t where it went, but presume a ported has already been sent to the Eastern Front, or whatever they do nowadays. Once reunited with my clean sock supply, I ventured South. The Austrian trains run on time, no-one drops litter, they’re all impossibly tanned and fit, and everything is ‘just zo’. Up over a mountain pass in the train, you then start to drop away into Italy. Initially, everything is much the same. You’re in the ‘South Tyrol’, an autonomous region, technically part of Italy. A ‘gift’ from the broken up Austro-Hungarian Empire after the Great War, they still speak a German dialect, and have far more in common with the Austrians or Swiss than the Italians.
Tiny farms cling to the slopes below the treeline. Houses and barns sport wide brimmed snow shedding rooves, each one looking suspiciously like a giant cuckoo might erupt on a long spring at the top of the hour. But drop further down into the country, and you’re increasingly reminded you’re in Italy. Paint peels a bit more, infrastructure is more ragged, and I started seeing the guards catching fare dodgers. In baking heat I turned North East again, back up toward the imposing mountains once more.
Leaving vast apple orchards and vineyards behind on the lowlands, I got on a bus winding up through the ‘Ultendal’, a valley gouged by a long ago glacier. Above a roaring river –icy cold and fed by melt water-, farms cling precipitously to the valley sides. Above the treeline, snow still clings to the mountain tops. The farmers were all fetching in their hay, although describing the pasture as fields would be unrealistic. Grass clad walls would be more descriptive. Most hay is cut with a glorified updated Allen Scythe, little motors chugging away as farmers walk behind the finger bar cutting heads. On my host farm, old Dad was out with a scythe the day I arrived. A lot of the crop is turned and raked by hand with wooden rakes, and every last wisp of grass is gathered. Some is baled, but most picked up in bulk by demountable little forage wagons- with a rear pick-up and riding on ubiquitous little 4x4 flatbed ‘alpine tractors’. Tipped into the lofts on the uphill side of wooden barns, it’s stored in heaps and couldn’t smell sweeter.
The untilled floral pasture is only fed with muck, and once cut, irrigated to grow another crop. It’s neat, tidy, and very nearly timeless. One of my jobs was to walk in front of the mower, carefully searching for baby deer hiding in the crop. The farmers hate to strike them, and take great care not to. Then it was my turn on the wooden rake. And I have to say it works. On slopes you can hardly stand on, it’s easy enough, in the hot sun, to pull the crop down the slope towards a track cut across the contour.
The herds of cows are by necessity very small, although most were up on the top of the ‘Alm’- their word for Alp- for the summer. Some families keep their cows down in the valley all year to milk, but that’s obviously eating into their precious hay ground.
Each farmer also has his bit of woodland, of spruce, pine and outstanding larch. The government forester advises –and marks- trees to harvest, and small sawmill ventures are everywhere. Small scale hydro plants hum quietly, and local food is very much part of the culture - the smoked ham is a delight. The air is fresh and clean, scented with innumerable alpine flowers. Opposite where I stayed, my hostess’s aunt runs a ‘wellness retreat’ or whatever you’d call it. 120 years ago, the likes of Sigmund Freud, Franz Kafka and Rudolf Steiner summered there, and if it was good enough for them, it’s probably good enough for me.
Picking up a few new words of the lingo each day, I worked –and drank- alongside the locals, and ventured further into the landscape and culture. Next week, I’ll take you hand in hand up onto the sunlit alp, and we’ll talk cows….with bells on.
