The alarm wakes us up at 5.45 am every morning (except on Sundays we get a sleep in). We slip into our overalls and gumboots and head to the stall. Thirty-two dairy cows await us in the stall, they have just spent the night in there and it is our job to clean up their excrement.
Dairy farming in the Black Forest is quite different from dairying in New Zealand:
- It´s much less intensive here with an average herd size of around 40 or so cows compered to 350 in New Zealand.
- On this farm it takes about 1 hour to milk 32 cows. There are only 5 sets of milking cups, so each cow must wait its turn to be milked. In NZ with a rotary dairy shed it takes about 1 hour to milk 250 cows.
- Black Forest cows must spend the Winter inside the stall. In the Summer when the cows get to graze in the field the milk is sold as weide Milk (grazing milk). Lucky NZ cows enjoy grazing the fields all year long.
We´ve also been learning about forest management. The Black Forest isn´t really that black at all, in fact, it is an area comprised of well managed forestry blocks scattered amongst farmland. The predominate tree here is Spruce, but at 1000 metres they are very slow growing. Our hosts, and many other Black Forest farmers are phasing out Spruce and planting the faster growing North American import – Douglas Fir. One can expect the Schwarzwald to be dominated by Douglas Fir in 50-100 years time.
On Saturday, fresh trout from the river was smoked in the smokehouse and friends and neighbours were invited for a fish party. We ate a lot.
The next day we thought we would have a break from eating, but it was grillen day at the little lake house.
Our host Micheal says that ´the Black Forest man likes to eat´ and that pretty much sums up what we have been doing in our spare time.
escapegoats 