Aug 25, 2009, 13:50 GMT
Berlin - Lots of cats, 20 dairy cows, 10 pigs and 30 chickens make up the livestock at Pia and Walter Muench's farm in Hochberg in south-western Germany. Three generations of the family live on the farm; the grandparents, Pia and Walter Muench and their children.
During the summer months the Muenchs have visitors taking part in the 'Albhof Tour,' a tour that takes participants from farm to farm in Germany's Swabian Alp region in the sate of Baden-Wurttemberg, teaching how farmers, beekeepers, shepherds and fishermen live and work.
'We don't want to give the impression of a chocolate box lifestyle but to show how we really live with all its nice - and sometimes not-so-nice - sides,' says Pia Muench.
Pia Muench is standing with a group of visitors in the farm's cowshed and asks 'How much food does a cow need every day to produce 20 litres of milk?' Her guests shake their heads. 'Then shovel as much hay and straw together that you think a cow would need,' says the farmer as she hands each tourist a pitchfork.
The answer is up to 40 kilograms of food per animal in the form of grass, silage, hay, soya, and mineral supplements.
'Our Albhof Tour is more than a holiday on a farm. Our guests get to experience a lot,' explains Pia Muench. Among the activities are butter churning, honey harvesting and making fresh pasta.
In total 16 farms around the town of Reutlingen are taking part in the tour. All of them are connected to each other by a well signposted network of walking and cycling routes. Tours can be custom designed or booked as a package through the tour operator Tourismusburo Reutlingen.
One of the tours on offer is tailored to suit more experienced cyclists. The '10 Farm Tour' is in five stages and covers 60 kilometres of pasture land and forest between Muensingen and Zwiefalten.
Overnight stays are on farms, in small countryside guest houses, cycling bed and breakfasts or simply on the floor a hay strewn farmyard shed. You can even spend the night in a restored shepherd's hut.
The route continues through the sparsely populated landscape to a beekeeper, to the Muench's cowshed, to a fish farm and to an egg producing farm in Zwiefalten-Soderbuch.
Rainer and Anita Bendel run the farm where they make fresh pasta and egg liquor. The Bendel's tour explains everything you need to know 'from the egg to the pasta' and every stage in between.
The Swabian Alps are also home to buffalo that produce milk used in Helmut Rauscher's buffalo farm in Hohenstein. Rauscher recalls that the buffalos arrived when three farmers sitting together one winter Sunday decided that the animals would be well suited to the snowy conditions.
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