A Weekend on the Farm

Well, we finally found some time to get away to the beautiful countryside of the Schwaebische Alb! We packed light, threw the tent in the car and headed 45 minutes south to the foothills of the Alps. As we were driving through the villages we notice a farm road that disappeared into the wheat fields - of course, we did a u-turn and went exploring. We ended up at a diary farm in the middle of no where! We stopped and asked if we could camp and we were warmly welcomed.

The farm had 170 head of dairy cows, horses, goats, cats and dogs. We all received first hand farming lessons during our stay to include feeding, cleaning & milking!

As you can see here Madeline and Jack are all smiles when it comes to watching the milking process, but it's a different story when they take part - hands on!

We saw the fruits of our labor the next morning at breakfast with farm fresh milk and cream for our coffee! (However, Jack couldn't get past the fact that milk actually comes from a cow this way - he insisted that it was always store bought!) We had a great lesson on how our foods get to the local grocery!


Next task, to set up camp. We hadn't planned on making a fire, so at the last minute we gathered wet wood, paper and borrowed matches. After many attempts we finally were able to get a spark....and then fire. Elijah we weren't, but we kept insisting that Brad call fire down from Heaven. With a little help from our foot pump (we now call Elijah) we had enough O2 to feed the fire - ingenious, I know! The downfall, if we stopped pumping the fire died.

Jack and Madeline took turns chopping wood, but we decided it would either be Christmas or the ER before they made it through this log.

We weren't sure anymore what was dirt and what was dung, but we were sure to keep our teeth nice and clean during our stay! You might have noticed our "cool" weather clothes - yes, it's still July here in Germany but our highs only reaching the 60's in the day. I'm not trying to gloat for all you who are still suffering triple digits this summer, but we sure are enjoying it!

Along the way we stopped in at the Marbach stud farm, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbach_stud . We were able to see the new foals, practice driving a carriage and cracking a whip!



Continuing down into the Lautertal Valley we stopped in at the Hohenstein Hofkaeserei (organic buffalo farm cheese) http://www.albkaes.de/ . Again the kids were put to work.


This by far being the stinkiest job of all. There must have been over 100 head of Albbueffel (buffalo), plus more flies than we could count!

We bought some fresh cheese, a chunk of bread and hit the road again. This time for some R&R (or so we thought!). We decided to hike up to one of the local castle ruins. On the way the kids found a field that was begging them to come and chase Daddy around in.

What a view from the top!


Our journey home landed us in a glider club watching the gliders launch and land. The kids wanted to know if they could fly this "baby" home rather than taking the picturesque drive!



All in all..... we had so much fun, we'll do it all over again!