Swiss herds head for the Alps

Alp processions bring traffic to a halt on many country roads in early summer Keystone Archive

Between mid-May and mid-June, thousands of cows are herded or trucked from their winter stalls in the Swiss valleys to their summer pastures in the Alps. With each herd goes a dairyman, who spends the next four months making cheese.

Today’s “Sennhütte” – the alpine summer-house where the dairymen or “Sennen” and their assistants live – usually has electricity, running water and perhaps even a bathroom, while the cowshed has a milk machine and the dairy, the latest in cheese-making equipment.

Although they enjoy more comfort than their predecessors, today’s Sennen still work 13 or more hours a day, seven days a week. Nevertheless, most of them consider an alpine summer to be the highpoint of the year.

Bernhard Fankhauser’s family has been herding cows from the Emmental to the top of Rämisgummen for one and a half centuries. Every summer, as boy and man, he walked 30 kilometres with his family and their few dozen cows to the Alp.

Second son takes over

For the past ten years it has been his second son, Hans, and his family who have summered on Rämisgummen. The older couple misses the alpine life. “It’s a feeling of space,” says Fankhauser. “You’re not hemmed in up there.”

“And we had so much fun,” adds his wife. “With the children and apprentices we used to play cards all evening or sing and play the accordion. There was no TV up there then!”

Today, as for generations, a Fankhauser alpine summer yields great 16-kilogramme wheels of cheese. A good summer means 500 cheeses — the product of around 90,000 litres of milk — together with butter, cream and “Ziger” or fresh curd.

In the days of Fankhauser’s grandfather, cheese was made over an open fire; in Bernhard’s youth, the fire was closed and the kettle mounted on an overhead track that allowed it to be shifted away from the heat. Today, a simple knob regulates the modern, steam-generated heating system.

Method hasn’t changed

But the method hasn’t changed, even if the equipment has. Every morning – and sometimes twice a day – 600 litres of milk are heated in an enormous cauldron, bacteria and rennet are added, and the milk is stirred and “combed” into curds.

At just the right moment, the Senn lifts the curds out of the pot in a length of cheesecloth and presses them into the forms that give each cheese its shape.

Christoph Grosjean, an agronomist, made cheese this way when he spent four months in the Valais as a cowherd and Senn. An association of farmers in Erschmatt had a centuries-old right to summer their livestock on Bachalp, and they hired Grosjean and two of his friends to mind their cows.

“We were up every morning at four, and two of us went out to fetch the 40 cows,” remembers Grosjean. “By September it was pitch dark then, and we always had a terrible time finding a few of them.”

“At seven we finished milking, and then we made cheese until noon. Mid-afternoon we had to fetch the cows and milk again, so we often weren’t done until eight.

Gruelling work

“If we had lost a cow or wrecked a batch of cheese, it would have been a financial disaster,” he adds, “and the work was gruelling. But we still managed to have a great time!”

Giorgio Hösli shares Grosjean’s enthusiasm. Although his field is computer graphics, he has spent 13 summers as a Senn in canton Graubünden. Today he runs a website for people working the land in the Alps like himself. One of its services is linking potential dairymen with Swiss farmers who need them for the summer.

Hösli’s wife, agronomist Barbara Sulzer, was a hired hand for eight summers. “I loved the work because of its completeness,” she explains. “You were part of a cycle – grass, cows, milk, cheese – that repeated itself again and again.

“Working and living so closely with the other herders and cheese-makers teaches you a lot about teamwork — and about yourself!” Sulzer continues. “And then there are the Alps! You see them in all weather, and the beauty is indescribable.”

by Kim Hays