Des Alps in l’Etivaz

Getting into my Swiss traditions this fall I went to the des alps festival in l’Etivaz. This used to be a pretty important festival, the men who had been up in the high alp pastures for three months were coming home for the first time and the women of the village were welcoming them with food and celebration. The cows get all dressed up as they are brought down to their winter pastures and are paraded through the village.

Yes, the cows have trees and fake flowers attached to their heads and it is the men who do the artistry up in the alpine pastures.

The cows wear large bells and the most muscular wear the huge bells.

The men are part of a club (the town is essentially a co-op where they make cheese and sell it collectively) and here is the club carrying their huge bells. They are very proud of these historic traditions and excited that they have been going on for so long.

The bells were several kg's.

There were at least 7 families who were bringing their cows down and they would walk through the town separated by about an hour or so. The town had many stalls set up to sell goods and lots of cheese. For lunch I had cheese which had been mixed or soaked in cream for a day and then deep fried. Pretty tasty actually and deep fried cheese will really keeping you going for a day.

I'm just going to post random picture of cows with flowers now.

Also on display were some farm animals including yaks. Yaks with bells, because the Swiss bell everything. My friend said she was hiking and there were chickens with little tiny bells. I have a quest now, to find the belled chickens.

And I took this picture because I thought it was funny the piglet fell asleep with the teat in his mouth.

We got a tour of the cheese storage building. The farmers make their cheese up on their own farms, but then they bring it to the collective co-op building for aging etc. There is salting tanks and controlled aging rooms and this really cool robot. The room smelled intensely to ammonia which is apparently released as the proteins are degraded and the cheeses age. There used to be a person who would go through this huge room flipping and dusting the cheeses but now they have a robot.

And finally the video with all the clanging of the bells.