Aufrufe
vor 5 Jahren

XtraBlatt Issue 02-2018

  • Text
  • Krone
  • Machinery
  • Forage
  • Straw
  • Farmer
  • Contractor
  • Dairy
  • Bales
  • Agricultural
  • Cows

INTERNATIONAL 1 3 The

INTERNATIONAL 1 3 The farmer drives up to the alm almost daily to check his cattle. Since 2017, when the building of some wind turbines resulted in a new service road, the journey and alm work have been much improved. That the herd check is early in the morning is important because, “around six o’ clock the calves usually suckle their first drink of the day and the herd is therefore together, so I can see them all easily. Later in the day, the cattle often lie widely scattered and sometimes out of view.” Yesterday he couldn’t find one new-born calf – but today it trots alert and lively alongside its mum, so everything is fine. COPIOUS RAINFALL 2 The summer morning check means this farmer sometimes covers 40 km by car because, along with the summer grazings, he farms 50 ha own land and 30 ha rented pasture. Not all the 50 cows and calves, or the yearlings, are up on the alm in summer. Some are divided between the other grassland areas lower down, although these are often first used for winter feed production. “Lower” is comparative, however. Visitors from the northern European flatlands 20

would describe their location as mountainous too. For instance, the farm buildings themselves lie at around 1,000 m altitude. “Whereby it’s not really so high or steep around here”, argues the farmer. “The countryside has more the character of the central uplands in Germany. At least we find this area represents the more idyllic part of the Alps,” enthuses Peter Smolana, who had just the day before my arrival completed hay turning on some 4 ha of meadow. “Mostly, we manage to bring home a second cut of hay each year, usually giving a harvest of around 60 round bales. However, this year in June we wouldn’t have believed that we’d manage that. In May and June there was unusually high rainfall.” Whereby normal precipitation here is 1,200 mm/y. “But we’d almost reached that total by mid-year.” There’s a positive side effect: forage growth in 2018 has also been unusually vigorous. Experience has shown that the 80 ha greenland produces, along with the aforementioned hay, about 750 round bales of silage. This year brought 25 % more. “As well as the beneficial rain, just as positive an effect was to be seen through our dressing the fields two years previously with carbolime followed by reseeding. This has brought us 10 % more yield now”, reckons the farmer. The number of forage cuts is mostly very different from meadow to meadow. On around 30 ha three forage cuts are usual. In October there follows aftermath grazing. On another 25 ha Peter Smolana usually manages two cuts. The remaining grassland areas are managed under 1 Baling on steep slopes demands great experience in operation and careful positioning of the completed bales. 2 A multi-enterprise farm with high work requirement. Despite this, Eva and Peter Smolana are happy with their little paradise in the eastern Alps. 3 The name says it all: the Hotel Koralpenblick (Koralpen View) (r.) offers fantastic panoramas of an idyllic landscape. Up on the mountain, the summer alm grazings lie under the wind turbines. 21