Alpine Life, a glimpse of grass harvest time

view this morning from our hotel room looking towards the Gletscher and the house across the river and, what … another beehive, will have to investigate further so we have seen the locals working the fields the past 2 days now. They need the tall grass as winter supply for their cattle ( which are now currently grazing on the higher grounds ) so they have been cutting the grass the past few days as they knew they had warm weather coming up so the grass could dry, and rain is forecast for tomorrow , so now the grass has the raked up , nice and dry now, ready to store for winter, this guy here, is doing the old skool way and has along way to go, and my friend Hermann, who runs the Tux Tourism office has invited me to come to his farm to document the work involved but first another look at these bees next to the hotel and another type of hive heading to Hermann’s place, just past the chairlift look at all that grass that needs to be collected first another look with the 400mm towards the Gletscher and the runs I skied back in January/February ok, arrived at Hermann’s and there he is, taking up a tractor load new skool way, with a big leaf blower taking load to barn up the ramp in he goes dump it and back out to go get another load the old skool way of drying, pine branches would get staked in the ground and the long grass spread over the branches so they are stored after use ( re-use recycle ) getting the blower old skool way, the rake new skool way, the blower combined , they make a good team look at how steep the farm is good leg exercise ( no wonder they’re all good skiers ) then Herman with the fork pushing the mounds together working with a view all hands on deck, even the little grommets are on board mum’s, dad’s, brothers, sisters, uncle etc.. it’s a big job, it’s steep and very hot today loading up the tractor looks messy from this angle, but they actually have a system in place, where the dried grass is raked into rowsno, I’m not angling the camera to make it look steep, and even though this is an engined tractor, it goes reallllly sloooow up the hill and down as well, low gear and up he goes and new mounds are created again, the backdrop and down he comes again then that long row gets pushed onto the tractor puuuuush all the way to those waiting jaws and on it goes exhausting work in this heat today big pile up drink break another barn at the bottom of this hill and more of the branches stacked ready to be used when needed details detail blocks texture no rest, back to it, it has to be done before the rain comes interesting looking sheep waiting for Hermann to come down again and I have a new friend, how cool are this dogs eyes and again, I spent about 2-3 hours here ( yes, I did a little bit of raking as well ) and Hermann must have gone up and down about 10 times in that time, if not moreHermann has his own loved pitchforkthis is so precious to have in winter for their live stock this whole section done oh, here comes boss lady 🙂 come to oversee how its all going half the crew head up to do the section above the barn and the boys stay down to finish of the last bits chugga chug chug up again nice and slow if only I can show how slow it goes I love the look of this sheep or is it a goat, such a wonderful looking coat happy dog just the last lot on top now how are the colours in the barn, left side is full so now the right side pushed in check out these wheels, that’s from the grass cutter nearly there in again park it dump it pull back The farm house, some stories there no doubt medals wood stacked for winter