Next: Austria, again!

Our next farm, that we're currently at, was literally a 20 minute drive from our last farm. About a third of the way around a mountain (the Grimming) and we were there!

We really loved the description this farm had on the WWOOFing website... they seemed like lovely and loving people, who treat their animals (mostly cows) with respect and dignity. This was pretty important to us. The kids, when we asked them about what they wanted to do and learn about on the farms we'd be visiting, all said they wanted to learn how to take care of and treat animals well. We're for sure learning that here.

Yup, those are the faces of guys who had to get up early!

What do we do every day here? We're up early to milk the cows and make breakfast. Then an hour of homeschooling. Then a mix of projects and work until lunch. After a short lunch break then back to work. It's definitely more work here compared to the last farm, but that's just how they are. There's always something that needs to be done, and we're here to help! Every day I collect the apples and pears that have fallen from the trees in the orchard. My husband is the all'rounder that is busy with tasks, from milking the cows to helping build a small seminar house. The kids? They're all over the place. Helping round up the cows. Cooking. Cutting wood for the seminar house. Collecting chicken eggs and locking up the ducks at night so they don't get eaten by wild animals.

The kids climbing up into one of the apple trees.

While we've been here two calves have been born. And just today three chicks!

And we got to name the new baby cows!

And this guys name is: Cock-a-doodle-doo. Long story.

Everything is new here, and an adventure. Things are explained to us and the kids, and we have the feeling we can ask about just about anything so we can learn more about how they run their farm, why their building a seminar house, how they preserve and store foods for the winter, etc.

They have a great website too: sonnenhofseebacher.com

And we got the opportunity to spend a week on their Hoch Alm- a log cabin up in the mountains with stunning views and a wood burning stove. It was like a working vacation because we had some jobs to do here and there, but could enjoy even more stunning views while doing so, sleep in and in general take it easy.

While we were up there, they came up with a big animal transporting trailer (no idea what the proper name for such a thing is) and we helped to round up the cows to be brought back down into the valley. That was quite an adventure. Two of the seven cows were from a neighbor - and one of them just totally got spooked and broke away from all the rest. We had just got them all pretty much to the small barn where we would then corral them into the trailer. And she just made a run for it. They still haven't been able to find her! But all the cows from the farmer here were loaded up into the trailer and driven back down to the farm. Whew! Once they were all loaded up and the work was done the farmers all drank a beer to celebrate.

We'll be here on the Sonnenhof Seebacher for about another month. They asked us if we wanted to stay a bit longer because their next WWOOFers cancelled on them. We thought about it and agreed. By the end of November we'll be heading south though. We've got a farm in Greece we can stay at and help out at for a while. It's a long drive down though. We'll stop maybe in Croatia on the way, and visit friends in Albania. Then - a winter in Greece. And hopefully we'll be hearing soon that the Green Card process is moving along and we can head to Frankfurt for the final processing, but who knows. We haven't gotten any news from them.