Alpabzug - hiking down the mountain with 20 goats

It is mid-September, the days are getting shorter, it is getting colder and the grass is mostly eaten up: the goats can feel it, it is time to go back home. The 2 shepherds Marcus and Steffi have decided with all other farmers which day is best and everything is prepared. The farmers will hike up to pick up their goats and take them home. It is a big day, after 100 days up in the Alp, surrounded only by mountains and goats, the time has come for Marcus and Steffi to pack up and leave the hut, close it down for the long winter. It will be fully covered in snow for several months.

On this special day, we are welcomed with a delicious breakfast. They have added color and decorations on the goats. The biggest male now has silver and blue horns.

How much did I actually see of the Alpabzug of our goats? Not that much after all: the goats were too fast. Nicole and Michael were both leading and closing the herd with the help of Sam their super sweet and overexcited Border Collie dog. But Lauren and I just couldn't keep up (which would have meant almost running down the steep mountain) so we just got the very beginning of the descent with the goats, seeing how fast excited they were, yet still staying in a pack pretty well.

Arriving down, the goats were already happily in their pasture (in the fence we had prepared the day before with Nicole) eating up all the leaves and bark of the bushes and trees that they had not eaten up in the Alp.

In the meantime, Steffi and Marcus brought down the other goats through another route to another village for the other farmers. They came back to our village to hang out with us next to the goats for a coffee break in the sun. Next steps for them: hike back up and spend the next few days dismantling parts of the barn and hut and closing down everything for the winter.

For us down in the village, we now had milking to do! The goats cant just stop being milked, even though they give much less milk then earlier in the summer. So it is now for us to do, now that they are here. This time I managed to milk much better, I almost got the technique right and could milk one goat almost fully and another one just halfway until it decided it had enough and ran away. Lauren and I probably milked about 4 goats in total while in the same time Michael milked all 14 others. That's what a decade of practice will do!

Next challenge for tomorrow: milk better and faster so that the goat doesnt get tired of me.

Big day for the goats today! 

 Delicious breakfast prepared for the occasion

The hut and the barns that will partly have to be dismantled for the winter 

The dry toilet by the hut

Best way to keep the milk fresh when you don't have a fridge: ice cold alpine water bath 

Some goats decorated for the big day

The goats running down the mountain, Michael and the dog Sam making sure no one goes astray 

Goats hiking down, staying quite well together in their pack - I lost them after that, too fast for me!

All happily in their new fence, up high in the back round is where we came down from 

Devouring the bushes