A one-night stand for campers at the organic farm

"Warm welcome! Find a spot for yourself.” Josef Dachauer answers the questioning look with a friendly laugh and a sweeping hand gesture: “Wherever you like.” And so we end up with our camper in the middle of a spacious meadow between the estate and the mill stream.

From the picture window you can see a group of snuggly Galloway cattle and scratching chickens across the water. "Look at the country" goes through my head and that there could not be a more appropriate name for the platform on which we found this special place.

Three years ago, three young people in Austria started thinking about camping and suitability for grandchildren. Leonhard Röser, Karin and Christian Gruber-Steffner founded a start-up in Graz with which they wanted to “bring more sustainability to camping trips” and at the same time create more awareness of “how valuable and important ecological agriculture is for all of us is".

The idea is simple: farms are usually large enough to accommodate guests for a night. The regulation for only one night is due to the legal framework. But it also guarantees that places are not blocked in the long term.

The campers also get to know the variety of farms en passant, experience everyday farming life and warm hosts and, thanks to clever route planning, can obtain travel provisions directly from the producer.

An idea that we liked from the start. All the more so when, while doing research at home, we discovered how dense the network of farms is and how diverse their focus. For a reasonable fee, we become a member of "Look at the countryside" and can use the parking spaces offered by the member companies for a year. Provided there is a seat available. Will it work? Or do we have to search during the holiday season and end up at a campsite after all?

"No problem, you're welcome," Robert Ausserhuber was the first to dispel our concerns when we called. And that's how it will be until the end, when we have long since become courageous and no longer make contact two days in advance, but decide quite spontaneously where to go. Once we thought too long. But the potential hostess put us in touch with a neighbor and we didn't even have to look in the app to see what alternative we had.

In the past, before he took over his parents' farm, he traveled a lot himself, says Ausserhuber, when he shows us in the warm light of the setting sun where we can settle down on the Schöfmanngut. "Now the world comes to me with the campers," he adds, while unrolling the power cable and showing the way to the toilet.

We are enchanted from the start. We have just passed moderately attractive places on the motorway and are now standing on a stately four-sided farm in the Upper Austrian Traunviertel. Grain all around, forest far behind and like a backdrop behind it the Traunstein, which we left on the right on the journey along the Traunsee. Our outing begins between blooming roses, elderberry bushes and a small pond with a pair of ducks, with Vienna as the only fixed point. We choose the route and milestones spontaneously.

We learn how permaculture works, enjoy freshly milked milk for muesli, dream while looking at the starry sky and marvel at how much Tuscany is in Lower Austria. It doesn't matter that it's raining and there's no point in setting up a table and chairs with a view of the hills in the eastern Mostviertel mountains. Clouds hang in the trees and the grass that needs mowing is heavy and wet on the ground.

Jakob Mayer, who has been a fifth-generation farmer with his wife Katharina since 2018, foresees "not an easy hay harvest this year" "Auf der Prinz", where there was a lonely farm high above the valley 700 years ago. Mayer's parents already gave up livestock farming. Today, service tree is the most important product for organic farms in the surrounding area, alongside classic fruit trees and hay. A precious wild fruit that thrives here on sunny meadow orchards.

The so-called "Services Berry Kingdom" comprises 23 communities. You can hike through it on themed trails, join an excursion with explanations or discover the diversity of the tree, which is ennobled as an intangible cultural heritage, with the Mayer family in the "House of the service tree" - from the silky shiny wood to spreads, chutneys and blossom syrup. We sweeten the evening with service tree chocolate and fine brandy and enjoy both even more since we saw how laboriously the thumbnail-sized berries are picked by hand and rubbed from the umbels.

At the Dachauer family in Tattendorf near Vienna, we not only have the premium pitch on the lawn. We happened to come at the time of the big wine tavern, where the seven local producers serve wines and regional delicacies in a cozy ambience under the open sky. Donauriesling, Blumenmuskateller and naturally cloudy grape juice are the first things in our shopping basket the next day in the farm shop of the winery "In der Mühle".

A quick bit of shopping before continuing the journey turns into a nice chat with Josef and Elfriede Dachauer, who are convinced of the “Look at the countryside” idea because they themselves like to travel in a mobile home. And as so often in the past few days, we also hear about the joy of the hosts that people come to them when they don't have time to travel themselves.

Doesn't that bother you sometimes? Elfriede Dachauer says no, laughing while hanging her apron on the hook. "If I don't have time, I don't have to take care of people," she explains. Since the details of free parking spaces are always announced two days in advance, you can be quite specific about whether and when it suits you. Until now, the campers would have reacted quite understandingly and uncomplicatedly. Just like she now gives us a spontaneous tour of the impressive mill museum, in which not only the past of the farm, but of the entire region, comes to life in a very uncomplicated way.

At the end of our journey, we not only know how a historic mill works and what characterizes the types of grain spelt, rye and khorasan cultivated at the farm. We are leaving behind a place that was more than just a pitch. Just like all the other farms that we will still remember at home with one or the other culinary souvenir.

The platform schauaufsland.com is an association of more than 450 sustainable farms and wineries in Austria, which offer members (annual membership 42.90 euros) around 1000 free parking spaces for 24 hours. Electricity and water are often available for a small fee. Usually a farm shop where you can taste the products produced there. Since July, the offer has also been available for Slovenia with currently 50 partner companies (annual membership 24.90 euros). Membership is currently reduced for both countries.

France offers similar offers with the organization France Passion (france-passion.com).

Farms that welcome holidaymakers are listed on the Germany-wide internet portal Landsichten.de. There is also a section for camping.

The summer holidays are just around the corner – they have even started in six federal states. In view of the chaos at the airports and overcrowded trains, many Germans rely on their cars. But there is also a lot to consider.

Source: WORLD / Max Seib