Читать книгу Wanderlust: A Mountain Pasture in the Swiss Alps - Katharina Afflerbach - Страница 6

It happened very quickly, falling in love with mountain farming. And it went the way the best things in life always do: unplanned.

In spring 2013 my friend Kathrin and I donated a few vacation days to Bergbauernhilfe Südtirol (a charity to help farmers in the South Tyrol region) and exchanged our office for a stable. I was looking for a way to spend an extended period of time in the mountains, much longer than with a hiking or mountaineering holiday. It was already clear to me that I was the mountain type and not the sea type. Even when I lived for two years in Hamburg with the Baltic and North Seas practically on my doorstep, I didn’t often find myself at Timmendorfer Strand or in Sankt Peter-Ording.

I had two options in mind: I could either go to an Alp for a season and alternate between milking and shovelling dung and being a farmer, or I could hire out a mountain cabin, a kind of Alpine clubhouse. With the excursion to the mountain farm in South Tyrol I wanted to test option A, whereby the mountain farm was not an Alp, but at least a farm and at least in the mountains. How was I supposed to know if I was even made for farming? I had already seen many mountain cabins from the inside on my tours. But a farm, let alone an Alpine one – never. Maybe getting up early would annoy me. Maybe I'd get tired, of constantly cleaning up. Maybe I'd be wondering what cow had ridden me.

Kathrin and I landed on a mountain farm at 1,430 meters below Plose, an organic farm with goats, chickens and a donkey.

"You come from Frankfurt and Cologne," Farmer Arnold greeted us when he picked us up at the train station in Brixen. "And now you're coming to us," he thought out loud.

"Yes, and we can manage it," we tried to convince Arnold on the way up. Half an hour up the mountain we had time to take turns probing with questions and giving proof of our commitment and drive.

" Hopefully we can make hay this week, now that I have two helpers," Arnold told us. "But the weather probably won't play along. Then we'll go into the wood!"

That was our cue. We two native Siegerland women had absorbed the timber industry with our mother's milk. Well, we rarely liked 35 meter high mountain spruces - neither Kathrin, when she helped her father to make firewood, nor I, when I was there, when Dad and my brothers killed little spruces to build a bridge over the pond on our property. But we could tell of the Haubergswirtschaft, the centuries-old cyclical forest management principle from our homeland.

We started work as soon as we arrived at the farm. Farmer Arnold took the scythe out of the shed to mow all around the house.

"I can do that," I shouted to him, a little over zealously.

"Can you handle the scythe?" he asked.

"Yes, I know that from home," I replied, trying to make a good impression.

But frankly, I'd never mowed with a scythe before. Not even with a lawnmower. I had never actually mowed anything before. Together, yeah, loaded and taken away, that sort of thing. Handyman's work. But mowed? Out of fear for the frogs and certainly also for me, Dad, who hates lawn mowers as a matter of principle and who puts his life on the good old scythe, never let me get involved. Well, the story is quickly told. Every few meters a fence post stood in my way and I could have sworn the scythe’s power steering needed maintenance. I failed miserably. Wordlessly, Farmer Arnold took the scythe from me, and the grass was mown faster than Kathrin and I could see. Then we scraped it together into piles.

After that, it was time for the milking.

"As a child I was often on holiday on a nearby farm here," Kathrin told Arnold, while Arnold showed us the goat stable.

"Did you also milk back then?" our boss wanted to know.

"Sure," Kathrin said, "it's just been a few years."

I preferred to not say anything, because I'd never milked anything before. We listened attentively while Arnold explained to us how his stable worked. There were two areas: the large pen for the dairy goats and the kindergarten for the offspring. 24 goat ladies were to be milked, six at a time, practically in the milking parlour, so that we did not even have to bend down. Arnold lured the first six into the milking parlour with concentrated feed. "Before we start the milking machine, we must milk briefly by hand. That's how we clean the udder." The teats looked tiny in Arnold's big worker's hands. Carefully, I touched an udder for the first time. I came very close to the goat from behind, which was preoccupied with its concentrated feed. Warm, a little bit leathery, but somehow familiar. 'Not so much different from my own skin, just a little rougher and a little firmer,' I thought. While my fingers closed around a teat to elicit a few drops of milk from it, I had to swallow. ‘Am I hurting the goat? I wonder what she'll think of me if I steal the milk that's intended for her kids?'

But there wasn't much time to think. Arnold switched on the milking machine and showed us how the milk was led directly from the milking parlour via stainless steel tubes into a cooled tank. From below we were supposed to bring the calyxes up to the teats and then put them over them until they had stuck fast. As soon as our hands were free, we went to the next goat. When we had milked the first six, we opened the exit for them and drove them into a waiting area, brought in the next six, gave them some concentrate as well, and milked them. Kathrin and I grinned at each other. "Cool, right?" I shouted over to her, and we clapped our hands. After half an hour in the stable with the animals, we had forgotten the world around us. Cologne, Frankfurt, the trouble in the office, what did it matter? Now it was all about taking care of the animals and doing our job. And suddenly satisfaction germinated in me. At that moment I knew exactly what I was trying to do here - it made sense! And I was filled with the warmth and love of the animals. Yes, I know it must sound strange, because I had only seen most of the goats from behind, and I had mainly dealt only with their teats. And goats are not dogs, which align themselves almost selflessly to us humans – quite the opposite, in fact. As affectionate as a cat, as stubborn as a toddler and as unsteady as the proverbial bumblebee in the ass. And yet I was already touched somewhere deep inside and was looking forward to the following days. After milking, farmer Arnold showed us the milk tank and his small cheese dairy. "Tomorrow night, you can help me with the cheese," he announced.

We’d been here just a few hours, half a day and a short evening. But my life was about to change. I was about to change. I'd go home as someone else. I was closer to myself here, on this unknown ground, than all throughout the last few years in Cologne, Hamburg or anywhere else. For some things there would be no more room in my life, for other things a whole, sudden world of possibility. I had catapulted myself out of a gruelling office drudgery in the big city and thrown myself into a daily routine that was primarily determined by the animals and the weather. From now on my diary was out of a job, and my iPhone would be useful to me only as an alarm clock. My new colleagues had four legs and were a lot easier to handle. Instead of a suit I wore a blue overcoat, rubber boots and a hat over uncombed hair.

The next days on the mountain farm flew by. We collected the chickens' eggs from under them, went into the wood with Arnold, looked over his shoulder while he was making cheese, tore down the old henhouse, and saved the fawns from the motorised mower. We sold the homemade organic products at the weekly market and helped our host family with the bookkeeping. Using South Tyrolean eggs, we cooked Siegerland egg cheese, and stuffed chocolate bars into ourselves because we couldn't keep up with the calorie supply. We got dirty, sweated through all our pores, and slept like stones. We did what we had to do, and when we were done with one job, our boss gave us another one. We moved as much as we’d ever moved before in our lives. We were proud - and happy!

As for me, I had caught fire. Suddenly, everything was different! It was clear to me now that my torments in the office were finally over. It was time for me to set my own sails again! I was shocked that I had forgotten my own sense of independence, but also relieved that I had rediscovered it. During my time at Farmer Arnold’s, it was obviously not just my arms and legs that had become stronger. No, the few days of hard work had sharpened my eyes and energised my will. "This is boring!" my inner child had started to shout more and more often when I was frustrated in the office. "But I know how to pull a tree out of the ground with a winch and climb mountains three and a half thousand meters high on my own! And if I can do that, I can do a lot more. Say no, for example. Or stop. Or yes. Or quit.

So with option A, I had hit the mark. Nevertheless, I wanted to be certain and take a closer look at the second potential solution, a season in a mountain cabin. For the summer I booked a tour through the Ötztal Alps, which took our group to several three-thousand-meter peaks. Surrounded by rock and ice, I was fully in my element. As much as I love the forest, my heart is also drawn to the spaces above the treeline. The clear, cold air, the rich emptiness, and the feeling of having made it up here on my own, made my heart jump. But after the third evening in a mountain cabin I knew it was not the work for me. I could as easily cook, serve, clean and make beds in the city. But being outside every day, in wind, rain, sun and snow, experiencing my beloved mountains with all my senses, losing myself in the fog, sighing at cow bellies and falling asleep in the smell of hay – I could only do that on the Alp.

Back in Cologne, I dreamed big from that point on. I soon realised that I wasn't just interested in spending a summer in the mountains. I wanted to do nothing less than turn my whole life upside down! I wanted to be free. Throw aside the terrible job. Break out. Break it all up. Complete a coaching course. Go to the mountain pasture. Go into business for myself. And maybe, if I really liked the Alpine life, I could stay there on the mountain. Because I would have the freedom to do just that.

I can't exactly explain how it happened that I ended up working for a company that suited me exactly zero percent. Maybe it was because I wanted to get away from the job so much that drive to leave was much stronger than my motivation to remain. True, I’d probably thrown myself into the job too quickly, not giving it enough consideration.

I had financed my studies with a stint as a "racing reporter" for a daily newspaper, with internships at Audi, L'Oréal and the Krombacher Brewery, with summer jobs in Canada, Australia and Switzerland and, and with eleven years as a salaried employee. Fate had it in store for me that after my studies I dropped anchor at a river cruise company. I moved into a small apartment in Cologne and started earning money and paying towards my pension. Quite quickly I found pleasure in my work, in the business trips, in being on the road. I got to know many people on land and on water and became more and more industrious. Soon, I knew no more weekends or free evenings after work. Once even a part of my annual vacation had to be paid out to me, I’d got so settled in my hamster wheel. But I was allowed to call myself "Marketing Manager and Press Spokesperson" and see some of the world, participate in important meetings and represent my company nationally and internationally. That first job, which I’d wanted to try out for two or at most three years, eventually turned into a career ladder that I climbed for over eight years.

Next stop: beautiful Hamburg! Now I was entrusted with overseeing the marketing for ocean cruises, and I sailed around the world for photoshoots and press trips on ships of various sizes. But then, tragedy struck. Nobody could have guessed that the Costa Concordia would sink during my time in Hamburg. Overnight our everyday office life with all its little details and rituals - the corridor radio, the gossip kitchen and the meticulous regulation of the smoking breaks - no longer had any meaning. We closed ranks and together gave our utmost to get through that difficult time. It was a matter of honour for us to assist the affected families as best we could.

Well, my time at Farmer Arnold’s came to an end. And then I was back in Cologne , which welcomed me with a cheerful and colourful spirit. In my Veedel (neighborhood), the Eigelstein, I got hooked on the multicultural hustle and bustle and became a regular customer in the Moroccan copy shop, the Vietnamese restaurant and the Turkish green grocer’s. My building’s courtyard terrace developed into a sociable hotspot on warm summer evenings, and I began to build up my new life: the more tenacious my hours in the office, the closer I felt to the heart of the mountains. When my employer refused my statutory educational leave for coaching training, it was not an obstacle, but more fuel on my fire.

Of course I stuck to my plans and completed my training during quiet moments and on bank holidays. In winter I applied to the Aeby family in Switzerland. In spring 2014 I passed the final exam of my coaching education and quit my job, apartment and yoga course. And then I went to the mountain pasture.