A high-altitude farm on the Amoser Alm of Austria which welcomes farm-holiday volunteers keen to learn rural skills and help out in exchange for food and lodging.
By Verena Wolff
When the vacationers’ arms start getting tired, it’s a good sign that midday is approaching. The sun is beating down from the sky and the air is humid, especially along these forest paths in Austria where Himalayan balsam, goldenrod and the summer lilac are growing rampant.
The city slickers are using their vacation time to clear these invasive species away in a European variant of the farm holiday: doing rural work without pay for the sheer pleasure getting your hands dirty.
“These plants are not native to our forests,” says Lukas Rinnhofer, a ranger in Austria’s Karwendel national park in the Alps. One of his jobs is to make sure they don’t spread in the hamlet of Kranebitten, which lies west of Innsbruck.
Helping him is the group of volunteers, weeding purposefully through the forest. “This is often the only approach to take against invasive species that are trying to take away the habitat of native plants,” he says. Even if mauve lilac gives off a pleasant fragrance and draws bees and butterflies, it’s not an appropriate source of food for insects.
“The summer lilac can overrun forest clearings full of native species in a short time,” says Christina Thurner, a Kranebitten resident. She works to protect local species and spends her free time ripping out neophytes, the specialist term for non-native species. She’s good at her job because she knows where the invaders live. Getting to the balsam — characterised by its rounded roots — and uprooting it means fighting one’s way through blackberry bushes.
”It’s already blossoming. That’s dangerous, because then it will go to seed,” noted Rinnhofer. The plant’s stem looks like a thin rhubarb stem and is easy to uproot. Walking through the woods, it’s not unusual to come across giant stacks of the weed, waiting to be picked up for disposal.
Moving on through the woods, one comes across a rocky outcrop and, in a crevice, bushes of lilac. Volunteers are cutting it down and collecting it. The ranger climbs up the boulders to get at some branches growing up there. On his way, he keeps coming across wasps’ nests, beetles and even a centipede.
“This way, you can tell that nature is still, generally, intact,” he says. Such trips to help keep habitats natural are open to both Austrians and foreign tourists. Special preservation sessions focus on the neophytes, but also on ways to maintain biotopes, renew paths or keep an eye on river banks. Preserving the Alps in general is always a focus of the programme.
Events can range from setting up a fence in a pasture to building a watering trough for animals to clearing away landslides. Those interested in helping the Alps don’t have to limit their work to one day, or even to the Tyrol region. Lowland Austria offers similar immersion experiences in one of Europe’s loveliest regions.
Jessica Raisch usually works in a doctor’s office in Munich, but right now she’s taking a break in the high-altitude Amoser Alm region near the village of Dorfgastein, in central Austria.
“I wanted to work in an Alpine region and be a shepherd,” she says. That means she’s busy in Amoser Alm milking cows — making cheese every second day — taking care of a petting zoo and helping out passing hikers and bicyclists. Thursdays are special up here. That’s when Margarethe Roeck, also known as Grandma Greti, fires up the old wood oven and starts making bread dough in a giant tub early in the morning. All it takes is a little yeast, some rye, spices and sufficient elbow grease.
A group of assistants kneads and kneads the dough, then leave it to its own devices for a while.
At noon, the children take over. They get to make shapes with the dough: whatever strikes their fancy. Oma Greti then takes their tiny loaves and puts them in the oven. After a little while, the children are lined up on wooden benches, happily munching upon their creations. In the meantime, she’s pulled together 40 loaves of 1kg each, each needing an hour in the oven.
As afternoon comes, only a few straggling hikers and mountain bikers come through. And then it’s time for the mountain’s chores. City girl Jessica sleeps in a simple room at an elevation of 1,075m. She only goes down into the valley for special needs.
“That’s exactly the way I wanted it,” she says. Anyone who doesn’t want to commit themselves to this lifestyle for an entire summer or just wants to get a taste of what it’s like to live without Wi-Fi and television has their choice of mountain farms to visit for just a few days.
There are all kinds of offers for work in the field or the stalls. Others give you the chance to make butter, yoghurt or bread.
In Wachau, in Lower Austria, volunteers help maintain the Jauerling natural park. People can learn how to care for the mountain forests, Danube wetlands, stone terraces, orchard groves and pasture lands. What’s special about the Wachau project is that its volunteers are young people from all over the world who come there to help and learn while staying at a local school.
English is the chief language at the camp. Project groups are paired with local experts. Indeed, all across Austria there are farmhouses belonging to WWOOF, the Worldwide Opportunities On Organic Farms. This global movement of volunteers who want to help at organic farms in exchange for food and lodging also helps people gather knowledge about managing land and gardens naturally.
Similar farm holidays are available from New Zealand to the United States to South Africa. The volunteers’ labour is valued, says Hermann Sonntag, who manages Karwendel, organising volunteer programmes. It’s fun for tourist and locals to get involved and do something meaningful for nature, says Sonntag. “And, on the side, they learn something about the uniqueness of nature.” — DPA