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In the past decade, more than a quarter of Switzerland’s family farms have gone out of business. Those that remain find creative ways to generate extra revenue.  One such enterprising family leases out their cows during the alpine summer grazing.  What do you get out of the deal?  Visitation rights, if you are willing to drive up into the Alps to visit your ward. In early summer, Swiss farm families herd their milk cows up to the Alps for summer grazing and cheese making.  A couple years ago I stumbled onto a cow procession and still smile fondly at the memory.  Every herd in the valley was on the hoof that day, while I watched from a small roadside guest house.  Whenever a herd passed, and families own maybe six to twenty cows, the waitress ran out with a tray of drinks.  Inching past the cows as I drove away in my small European car, eyeball to eyeball, the cows seemed as big as me.

“Who wants a cow that ends up on a plate?”  I asked.

I’d rather have a longer term relationship with a cheese producing cow.  Plus, you get your choice of cow colors:  chocolate brown, dark brown, black with white spots, and plain old black. 

The Swiss, being a contractual society, specify the cow’s name, birth date and ear tag number on a contract written in German.  Best I could tell, in addition to visitation rights, I can buy twenty-two pounds of reduced-cost cheese.  For a higher price, you work on the farm for a couple hours moving avalanche boulders or digging post holes.  Who pays more to do manual labor? 

Whichever lease package you select, if you get there by 5:00 AM you can lend a hand with the milking at no extra charge.  If you take kids along, it is an experience they will remember long after you burned their dung-stained jeans.  Best of all, you help prolong the Swiss farm way of life.  That reason alone signed me up. 

We decided to make a weekend of it.  My niece, Marcie, was visiting from Maine and our young Swiss friend, Jackie, looked forward to meeting Pinga, my rental cow.  We’d studied her picture on the laminated “zertifikat” returned with the contract; she was a brown haired beauty with soulful eyes.  Pinga’s rest-of-the-year owners sent a letter announcing that Pinga, along with her colleagues, would take the march up the mountain mid-June. 

Nowadays, the “march” up is done by truck.  Otherwise, the cows are too tired to produce milk of high enough quality for premium cheese.  I am told they love to summer in the Alps, having eaten all the grass in their valley pastures.  Not only is it cooler, but the grass is sweeter and contains more nutrients….all good news for cheese lovers.
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If you like, you can accompany your cow at the end of the summer when they make the more traditional march down the mountain on hoof, adorned with flowers on their heads and giant bells clanging loudly.  The farm family, dressed in embroidered vests and shirts with poufy sleeves, use sticks to guide the bewildered cows down the steep path. Even in a car, our trip to the closest town with a hotel took hours longer than expected.  Bit scary, too.  Guardrails and pavement were the exception; hair-pin turns the rule.  It would have taken me days to walk it.  Rolling into the town of Axalp, our first sight was the charming Hotel Chemiheuttli.  A dream for girls of all ages, we were staying in a life-sized music box shaped like an alpine chalet.  Five minutes later, we were off to explore the town.

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Six minutes later, the girls wondered what else to do. We had been to the general store where they tried on knit hats with cow horns.  At the tiny post office, we saw a sign announcing opening hours from 11:30 until 11:40 AM Monday to Friday.

“I want that job,” said Marcie. 

While we picked wild flowers, we could not get over the air.  When I lived in America, I breathed smog air, humid air, and regular air without smog or humidity.  In the Alps the air is not just colder, but a completely different kind of air.  It must be fresh air.  That part in the Heidi book where the German girl convalesced in the Alps until she walked away from her wheelchair seems a stretch, but there is definitely something special about alpine air. 

The next morning, checking out of the hotel, I asked how we could find Alp Oltscheren and was given a quizzical look. 

“Are you sure you want to go there?” he politely asked.

I explained we were visiting my rental cow.  Aha, he knew the family; he had also leased a cow. 

On the hand-carved wooden reception desk, he spread out a hand-drawn map and proceeded to highlight a combination hiking trail/road path.  Forget a town as I had thought – we were looking for a pasture.  Forget street signs and forget landmarks.  There was no way to tell when the road path veered off to become just a hiking trail.  You would figure it out when the trail narrowed to a point that necessitated backing out.  As we left the hotel on our great adventure, I saw sympathy in his eyes when he glanced at the girls.  Kindly, he offered to call ahead to let the family know we were on our way, but in that look he thought our odds of finding Pinga were nil. 

Several hours later we came to a hut and I hopped out to ask where we were.  They were even more amazed than I that we had arrived.  As I went inside to get acquainted with the adults over an alpine snack of dried meats and fresh creamy cheeses, the girls joined the local kids search for the herd of cows wandering out in the pastures.  A white-haired boy with a heart-breaking grin sat behind the wheel of a battered car.  As the girls climbed in the back, I noticed he had to peer through the steering wheel to see out the windshield.
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“Um, how old are you?” I asked. 

He said he was thirteen. 

“Thirteen?  How long have you been driving?”  I asked.

As he jerked the car into gear and splattered mud in his wake, he hollered out the window, 

“For as long as I can remember.”

After the cows were pinpointed, while we trudged up the muddy, cow dung path in the rain, thinking what I wouldn’t give for a pair of goulashes, I asked why the cow bells varied so much.  Some were huge and ornate, others were paltry in comparison.  The cow-meister explained that each bell produces a different sound and they must give each cow the same bell every year.  Otherwise, if a cow hears her bell worn by another cow, a fight breaks out.

“You only make that mistake once.” he said grimly.
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On the trip out, Jackie told Marcie about her last visit to a Swiss farm when one of the cows chased her down to lick her salty skin.  When we got to the pasture where the cows were grazing, Marcie got close enough to pet one and examine its tongue.  After that, she kept her distance but it proved not to be an issue.  On the contrary, Pinga was camera shy.  Marcie managed to get only one picture of me with just three-quarters of Pinga in the frame.  My cow moves astonishingly fast considering she never stops eating.  She literally eats on the run.

Our visit included a stop at the cheese co-operative. Several of the families built a cheese producing facility much larger and more efficient than they could have supported alone.  During the short alpine season, the cheese meister works seven days a week, making one thousand cheese wheels weighing ten to twenty-two pounds each.  One of them has my name on it.  Otherwise, they sell to a few markets and by word of mouth.  Their livelihood comes down to cheese.  Pinga pulls her weight. 

Late in the afternoon, we reluctantly bid aufwiedersehen.  Didn’t we want to move a few boulders or maybe dig a few post holes before we rustled up the cows for the evening milking, they asked?

“Oh no,” I laughed, “I got the cheaper plan where we just visit and eat.”

On the way back down the mountain, even with the smell of cow dung steaming from our clothes, we agreed it was a wonderful adventure.  Half way down the mountain Marcie decided, “I’ll bet that is where the word comes from; a person with a cowlick looks like they just got licked by a cow.” 

The following are previous articles that Bonnie has written for the magazine:

Retire In A Wealthy Nation ~ Switzerland ~ By Bonnie Burns
My Swiss Bank Affair ~ Opening An Account
First Read Manufacturer's Instructions - Moving Day In Switzerland
Thanksgiving In Switzerland ~ Turkey Day
Christmas In Zurich - New Toys And Old
Prehistoric Underpants - The Iceman Of Bolzano, Italy

To contact Bonnie Click Here
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