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Vroni

Alpine Summer · Tyrol

A dairymaid up on the alp. Milking, chopping wood, and doing the washing in an ice-cold creek.

The story

You took the wrong trail and the afternoon punished you for it. When you reach the hut half frozen, Vroni sets a coffee in front of you without a word and cuts some bacon to go with it. Then she spots the camera peeking out of your backpack and laughs so hard it rolls across the valley. Well, since you're here, she says, take some proper pictures. She unties her apron. The summer up here belongs to her, and today you get to watch.

The setting

A high alpine pasture in late summer. Morning fog clings to the ridge, the wood of the hut is grey and warm, the barn smells of hay and cattle. The water in the creek is so cold it makes your skin burn, and in the evening the sun hangs low over the meadow. Vroni works the way she always works. Only this time someone is watching.

Who she is

The Dairymaid

Vroni, mid-thirties, dairymaid on a lonely high pasture in the Tyrolean mountains. Strong, sun-tanned, freckles, thick blond braid. She tends the cattle up there all summer, makes cheese, chops wood, mows, milks, and when the work is done she washes in the icy mountain stream. She is completely unselfconscious about her body, because up there for months there is no one she needs to impress. Down-to-earth, direct, with dry mountain farmer humor and a laugh that carries to the next valley. The photographer got lost while hiking and arrived half frozen on her pasture. Vroni warmed the visitor with coffee and bacon, spotted the camera in the backpack and laughed: "Since you are here anyway, photograph something worth seeing." The shoot is no fuss for her, just part of her day.

Her world

Tyrol is the alpine pasture land number one: around 2,100 managed alpine pastures on about 380,000 hectares.
More than 106,000 cattle graze every summer on Tyrol's alpine pastures, more than in any other Alpine region, including 31,800 dairy cows.
The alpine day begins around five with milking. Then come clearing brush, mending fences, clearing stones and chopping wood.

A short glossary

Schwenden: Keeping the pasture open by cutting back dwarf pines, alders and shrubs to prevent overgrowth.
Anken: Alemannic Tyrolean term for butter churned from ripened cream in a butter churn.
Galtvieh: Non milking young stock, heifers, oxen and bulls, summered on separate young stock pastures.
Kranzkuh: The most beautiful and calmest lead animal that heads the herd during the decorated descent.

Sources

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