Mystery of the farmer's name

The Mitteregbauernhof amid steeply sloping meadows - the buildings date back to the 16th Century

It’s all very puzzling – particularly to a Londoner, living here in an Austrian village.

Why is Embach branded Das gröste Bauernhofdorf Salzburgs – meaning the biggest farmhouse village in the province of Salzburg? The village isn’t big, the farmhouses aren’t big, nor are the farms themselves.

Even more confusing is that local people know the farmers by names quite different to their own.  The names of the farms can’t be found on any map. And why is it difficult for a local to write these names down?

For example Robert Fletschberger is known as The Soxbauer. Or is it The Sachsbauer or Socksbauer?  Erich Winkler is The Emochbauer or Emachbauer. Martin Scheffauer is The Embachrainbauer, or Embachraenbauer.

Magit Geisler, a woman farmer who wields a mighty fence post mallet with ease, is the Grem, or Kräm, or Krem, or maybe even Chräm. More confusing is Gerhard Weissacher who is The Mittereggbauer but no-one knows him as that. Ask for the Brenner and there is no problem.

 

The Brennerbauer, Gerhard Weissacher and his wife Elizabeth..or is he the Mitteregbauer?

The difficulty with writing these names is that of a dialect which is strong enough to be so far from the regular German language, that Germans have difficulty understanding it. The people who can write best in dialect are children whose SMS messages would defy the Enigma decoding machine.

The farmhouse has arched ceilings in what was the smoking
room - the hook was for hanging meat 

The names go so far back into the past that it is hard to see when they originated. Farms, though handed down through generations, have also been bought and sold over the centuries. The Brenner has records going back to the 1760s but the origins of the name are even older.

Farming in Embach is mainly a suckling cow business, raising calves for sale. A handful of the 47 farms in the village also sell milk. Most of the farms have less than a dozen cows, the biggest has about 70. About 40 are needed to support a family, so most farms have at least one family member going out to work, fitting the farming around the employer’s working hours.

The village sits amid steeply rising meadows, cut for hay to feed the cows in the stalls during the winter. In summer they are high up on the mountains, bells a-ringing enjoying the fresh grass and clambering around in the most unlikely, steep places.

Expensive special equipment and tractors are necessary for the steeply sloping terrain 

Here lies another tale – the “mythical” Sennerin, who minds the alm, makes cheese and butter, plays the accordion and jodels, and possibly has long, blonde, plaited hair. No myth this. This kind of summer farming is still alive and well here.

Our farmers have another important task. They care for the landscape. Without them mowing the meadows, maintaining the forests, hedging, ditching and generally keeping things tidy, Embach and Austria would not be the attraction it undoubtedly is.

On a recent visit to the Provence region in the south of France, the result of farmers leaving the land was, in many places, obvious: neglected fields full of weeds, orchards of dead and dying fruit trees, vines collapsing and a dismal air of decay.

While there are no EU grants specifically for landscape grooming, grants do take account of the steepness of the terrain, the need for special machinery to work the sloping land, and the higher cost of traditional, small-scale, environment-friendly farming, Embach, without the grants, would not be Das gößte Bauernhofdorf Salzburgs.

It is still not quite clear what this means – but, hey! Who cares?

With thanks to The Brenner, the Ortsbauer

The view from Mitteregbauer towards the Berkogel