Alm
Milking, making cheese and butter, checking fences, moving animals, clearing scrub.
Farming & sustainability
The annual cycle of a mountain farm
A mountain farm doesn't have an even year. It has four very different ones – and depending on when you come, you see a completely different farm.
01 · March to June
Spring: everything depends on the snow
Winter doesn't end on a date, but where the snow retreats – and that shifts by up to four weeks from year to year. As long as the land is still wet, little happens outside apart from mending fences, repairing paths and looking at the damage winter has done.
Then comes the drive up to the alpine pastures, staggered from early May to late June depending on altitude. Traditionally it is oriented on St Urban's day, 25 May, and runs until St Kilian's, 8 July. Before that come at least three weeks of transitional feeding so the rumen adjusts, plus hoof care and parasite treatment. The old rule for the right day is still the best: one third of the Alm green, one third brown, one third white.
In many regions the drive up is blessed – the prayer is for an accident-free alpine summer, and that is meant literally. Afterwards there is often a shared Alm breakfast with bread, butter, cheese and Speck. The bells the animals wear are working equipment: in fog and rough terrain, you find a herd fastest by ear.
02 · June to August
Summer: two farms at once
This is the most strenuous time, because two things run in parallel. Up on the Alm there is milking, dairying, clearing and looking after the animals. Down in the valley the hay harvest is underway – in the mountains usually two cuts, in good locations three, the first between late May and late June depending on the weather.
Hay harvest
Mowing, turning, windrowing, bringing in – and always against the weather forecast.
Bergmahd
In July and August. One cut a year, often by hand, and the hay has to be carried off.
Schwenden (clearing) is the work you see least and without which the Alm would not exist: green alders, dwarf pines, matgrass, thistles and nettles are pulled out, cut off, mowed and dug out so the grazing area stays open. The traditional date is St James's day, 27 July; at lower altitudes organised clearing days start as early as mid-May. Without this work, an alpine pasture disappears under scrub within a few decades.
If you are on a farm in July or August and have the impression everyone is in a hurry: that's true. In haymaking weather, the day counts, not the week.
03 · September to November
Autumn: coming home and laying in stores
The Almabtrieb is not a single day but a wave. On the high pastures, some drives happen from mid-August because the grass stops regrowing. The festive drives announced as events mostly lie between early September and early October – in Tyrol often on the Saturdays around 12, 19 and 26 September.
Then stores are laid in: hay and straw under the roof, silage covered, potatoes and beets in the cellar. The animals come into the barn, and the time begins when, for the first time since May, you sit down in the evening again.
For you, this is perhaps the best time up top: the trails are dry, the air is clear, and from about 1,700 metres the larches turn golden within roughly two weeks – that depends on the sunlight, not the temperature, and so arrives on time even in mild autumns.
04 · December to February
Winter: the time when the farm renews itself
From outside, winter looks like rest. From inside, it is the time when everything that has to work in summer is prepared: servicing machines, repairing fences and equipment, processing timber and firewood, bookkeeping, funding applications, planning for the next season. Feeding and mucking out happen twice a day, every day.
Felling happens now because the vegetation is dormant: the wood is not in sap, has a lower water content and becomes more dimensionally stable. The frozen ground allows gentle work without everything being compacted, and snow makes transport easier.
And winter is the time when letting carries the most. The animals eat and give little, hardly anything is sold – what comes in often comes from the other sources of income.
Out ski touring or on snowshoes: wild animals switch to energy-saving mode in winter. For a chamois, energy demand rises three- to fourfold between calm walking and flight; grouse flee up to 400 metres – three or four flights a day can get an animal through the winter, or not. That is why wildlife rest zones exist, and why they are no harassment.
05 · Honestly speaking
What you as a guest don't see
The annual cycle as it appears in brochures is the pretty half. The other belongs to it too: almost all mountain farms in Austria are part-time farms – someone drives to work in the morning and does the farm before and after. The alpine summer is holiday time for half the family, just working. And whether a farm continues is decided not by the landscape, but by whether there is a successor.
That is why letting doesn't appear in this section as a side matter. It is one of the sources of income with which a farm gets through the winter – and thus part of why the land is stocked again the next spring.
If you want to know what actually happens during your travel period and which time is worthwhile for what, that is in the seasonal calendar – month by month, with the matching accommodations.
Once more, briefly
Frequently asked questions about the annual cycle
When is the drive up to the alpine pastures?
Between early May and late June, depending on altitude and snow conditions – shifts of up to four weeks are normal. Earlier on lower pastures, later on high ones. There is no fixed date, because the weather decides.
Can I help out at the farm?
With some hosts yes, with others no – it depends on insurance, farm routine and whether there is time. Ask beforehand, not spontaneously in the barn. Watching is almost always possible; working along is the exception.
Why is wood felled in winter of all times?
Because the vegetation is dormant: the wood is not in sap, is drier and more dimensionally stable. Add the frozen ground, on which extraction damage is lower, and the snow, which makes transport easier. And in winter the farm has the time for it.
When is it loveliest up top?
That depends on what you're looking for. Blossom and the drive up in June, working alpine pastures and dairying in July and August, clear air and larch gold in October, real quiet in November. The seasonal calendar goes through it month by month.
Read on
Seasonal calendar
What happens at the farm and when it is actually quiet up top – month by month.
Why the Almabtrieb is a celebration
The adornment is not decoration, but a message you can read.
Direct marketing
Why around 30,000 farms sell directly and what still counts as a primary product.
You run a farm and let on the side?
Then you know the weeks when both happen at once. We set up the letting so it fits into your year – not the other way round.