AmericameetsSwitzerland

If you would like to learn more about why hay catches fire. https://youtu.be/jO5W25csxGo Kalberweidli is an organic (Bio), grass fed beef farm located in central Switzerland. Join me as I explore what it's like to Farm The Alps. Thank you all for watching! https://www.kalberweidli.ch/ Ben&Co coffee. Not a paid promotion, just love the coffee. https://www.ben-co.coffee

Kalberweidli is an organic (Bio), grass fed beef farm located in central Switzerland. Join me as I explore what it's like to Farm The Alps. Thank you all for watching! https://www.kalberweidli.ch/ Ben&Co coffee. Not a paid promotion, just love the coffee. https://www.ben-co.coffee

Ben&Co coffee. Not a paid promotion, just love the coffee. https://www.ben-co.coffee Kalberweidli is an organic (Bio), grass fed beef farm located in central Switzerland. Join me as I explore what it's like to Farm The Alps. Thank you all for watching! https://www.kalberweidli.ch/ Manure is spread on fields primarily for its beneficial effects on soil fertility and crop growth. Nutrient enrichment: Manure contains essential nutrients like nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K), which are vital for plant growth. By spreading manure on fields, these nutrients are returned to the soil, replenishing nutrient levels and supporting healthy plant life. Waste recycling: Manure is a byproduct of livestock farming and presents an opportunity to recycle animal waste. Instead of allowing manure to accumulate and potentially pollute water sources, spreading it on fields enables proper waste management and reduces environmental impacts. Sustainable approach: Using manure as a natural fertilizer aligns with sustainable farming practices. It reduces reliance on synthetic fertilizers, which can have negative environmental consequences when misused or overused. Manure application helps minimize nutrient runoff and promotes long-term soil health and productivity. It's important to note that proper manure management practices, including careful application timing and rates, are crucial to avoid potential issues such as nutrient imbalances, odors, and water pollution. Regulations and guidelines exist to ensure responsible manure spreading for optimal agricultural and environmental outcomes

Kalberweidli is an organic (Bio) grass fed beef farm located in central Switzerland. Join me as I explore what it's like to Farm The Alps. Thank you all for watching! https://www.kalberweidli.ch/ Ben&Co coffee. Not a paid promotion, just love the coffee. https://www.ben-co.coffee

Perkins Builder Brothers https://www.youtube.com/c/PerkinsBuilderBrothers https://www.kalberweidli.ch/ Ben&Co coffee. Not a paid promotion, just love the coffee. https://www.ben-co.coffee In the past few videos most of the spring is spent getting fences up getting animals in different pastures and just kind of getting ready for the summer but now that we're moving into the summer we start to transition into getting ready for the winter if you're a cattle farmer in a colder climate like Switzerland a lot of the warmer months are spent Gathering food so that you can feed your animals through the winter it's kind of like that movie Over the Hedge where all the animals spend their entire summer Gathering food for the winter spring that means there's only 274 days left till winter for a farmer it's kind of the same thing a lot of the summer is spent Gathering food and there's a lot of different things that cows will eat but because this is a grass-fed beef Barn they eat grass surprising now of course if you just pile up a bunch of grass in your barn it's going to rot or catch on fire the catching on fire we're going to talk about in a later video so stay tuned the grass has to be preserved so it can be stored until all the winter and there are two main ways of doing this it can either be dried or fermented Eric does both in the next few episodes we're going to be drying grass making hay but today we're going to be fermenting grass and English this is commonly referred to as silage in German it's called silo or maybe that's the Swiss German name or maybe it's neither and I'm just completely mispronouncing it oh boy German now there's a bunch of different ways out there to make silage I'm sure you've seen those funny looking marshmallow things sitting in Farmer's Fields those are silage Bales there's also bunker silos oftentimes they're like a mound with tires and plastic piled on top Cobble widely uses upright silos the ones you've seen earlier in the video I think we just broke a bolt on the machine the head of the bolt should stick up a little bit here and uh keeps this thing from dropping down too low and dragging on the ground um but right now it's broken off so Eric's coming with a new bolt and we'll fix it real quick In den letzten paar Videos verbrachte man den größten Teil des Frühlings damit, Zäune aufzustellen, Tiere auf verschiedene Weiden zu treiben und uns auf den Sommer vorzubereiten, aber jetzt, da wir in den Sommer kommen, fangen wir an, uns auf den Winter vorzubereiten Als Viehzüchter in einem kälteren Klima wie der Schweiz verbringst du einen Großteil der wärmeren Monate damit, Futter zu sammeln, damit du deine Tiere über den Winter hinweg füttern kannst. Es ist ein bisschen wie in dem Film „Ab durch die Hecke“, in dem alle Tiere den ganzen Sommer damit verbringen, Futter zu sammeln Für den Winterfrühling bedeutet das, dass für einen Landwirt nur noch 274 Tage bis zum Winter übrig sind. Das ist so etwas wie das Gleiche, was den Sommer mit dem Sammeln von Futter verbringt, und es gibt viele verschiedene Dinge, die die Kühe fressen, aber weil es sich um grasgefüttertes Vieh handelt Im Rinderstall fressen sie jetzt Gras. Es ist natürlich eine Überraschung, wenn Sie einfach nur einen Haufen Gras in Ihrem Stall aufhäufen, wird es verfaulen oder Feuer fangen. Über das Feuerfangen werden wir in einem späteren Video sprechen, also bleiben Sie dran, das Gras hat es getan konserviert werden, damit es den ganzen Winter über gelagert werden kann, und es gibt zwei Hauptmethoden, dies zu tun. Es kann entweder getrocknet oder fermentiert werden. Eric macht beides. In den nächsten Folgen werden wir Gras trocknen und Heu machen, aber heute Ich werde Gras fermentieren und auf Englisch wird das allgemein als Silage bezeichnet. Auf Deutsch heißt es Silo, oder vielleicht ist das der schweizerdeutsche Name, vielleicht ist es auch keiner von beidem, und ich spreche es einfach völlig falsch aus, oh Junge Deutsch, jetzt gibt es eine Menge verschiedener Auswege Sie sind dort, um Silage zu machen. Ich bin mir sicher, dass Sie diese komisch aussehenden Marshmallow-Dinger auf den Farmer's Fields gesehen haben. Das sind Silageballen. Es gibt auch Bunkersilos, oft sind sie wie ein Hügel mit Reifen und darauf gestapeltem Plastik. Cobble verwendet häufig aufrechte Silos Sie haben es vorhin im Video gesehen. Ich glaube, wir haben gerade einen Bolzen an der Maschine gebrochen. Der Kopf des Bolzens sollte hier ein wenig hervorstehen und verhindern, dass das Ding zu tief herunterfällt und auf dem Boden schleift, ähm, aber im Moment ist es so abgebrochen, also kommt Eric mit einem neuen Bolzen und wir werden ihn ganz schnell reparieren

https://www.kalberweidli.ch/ Ben&Co coffee. Not a paid promotion, just love the coffee. https://www.ben-co.coffee

https://www.kalberweidli.ch/ Ben&Co coffee. Not a paid promotion, just love the coffee. https://www.ben-co.coffee

Learn more about Switzerland's wild life. https://www.kora.ch/en/ https://www.kalberweidli.ch/ Ben&Co coffee. Not a paid promotion, just love the coffee. https://www.ben-co.coffee hello everybody it is a beautiful day today imagine that there's no rain pretty awesome the cows are all sitting here waiting to go outside but the field they're in right now is too small for them all so we're just grazing them half a day and then later on they'll go to their other fields let this small group out we need some extra nets for the field we're going to so we're taking these ones down the Sheep grazed it pretty well and they've moved on to a New Pasture and next we're going to be growing hay on here so we don't need them here anymore we're all loaded up here we've got everything but we got to get this fence done because the Sheep are going to go up there tomorrow this is probably the Farm's steepest sheep pasture and it's probably one of the fields with the highest wolf danger there's a pretty good Forest up above us there the majority of it used to be metal netting but we're switching all to Electric in the second episode I mentioned that Eric had gotten new Nets and I said that these new Nets were for the Wolves this might surprise some but there are wolves in Switzerland when I first moved to Switzerland I knew that there had been wolves in the past but I was pretty surprised to find that they were still here when I think of a place that large carnivores like wolves would live I think of a vast area of wilderness like in Alaska or Canada Switzerland's not that there just isn't that much Wilderness here I mean everywhere you go in Switzerland there are people and there's restaurants on the top of like every mountain now of course not every Mountain but you get my point it just really doesn't seem like a place wolves would live and for a while there were no wolves in Switzerland by the 1950s they had been hunted to Extinction later on laws protecting Wildlife including wolves were put in place then in the 90s a few wolves crossed from Italy over to Switzerland and started Living in 2012 the first wolf pack was documented here the Wolves were back and the return of the Wolves is kind of a controversial thing in Switzerland there's some Swiss that really really like the wolves and there's some Swiss that really really don't now I don't think that wolves are this evil animal that needs to be wiped from the face of the Earth but I think when we sit down and look at the numbers there's some good reason for concern according to Cora an organization that tracks wolf activity in Switzerland in 2012 there was just one wolf pack made up of a few wolves as of 2022 there are 18 wolf packs and another five on the borders with other countries there are 240 wolves living in Switzerland and the problem isn't the number of wolves the problem is the livestock they kill in 2021 wolves killed 853 Livestock in Switzerland alone there is no official number for 2022 but some are saying it's over a thousand that's a lot of livestock it's mostly smaller animals like sheep and goats but there have been some calves and smaller cows killed as well just hit lunch we're gonna move around the cows real quick bring these ones in and these ones in and let the other ones out kind of do a little rotation there

https://www.kalberweidli.ch/ Ben&Co coffee. Not a paid promotion, just love the coffee. https://www.ben-co.coffee hello everybody it is another beautiful rainy day for some reason it's always raining but uh we're gonna be doing some fencing today this time for the cows as you can see the whole Army came out to help a lot of the spring is spent getting the fields ready for the summer cleaning up trees and brush that has fallen into the fields over the winter and most importantly setting up and fixing the fences going way back there weren't any fences at all and someone would follow the animals around all day and watch them kind of like it's depicted in the Heidi movie later barbed wire fencing took over and it's still used today but like anything it's got its pros and cons barbed wire keeps the animals in really well but it's also kind of a nuisance I mean anybody that spent any time in the woods has tripped over an old rusty barbed wire fence at some point in time by the time these barbed wire fences start rusting and falling apart they've grown into the trees and gotten all tangled in the brush it's just a real pain to remove them from the woods so a lot of times they just get left for a number of years Eric's been slowly removing the barbed wire fences on his fields and replacing them with electric we just finished the first field and now we're starting on the second one the first thing we do is replace all of the bad posts you just pushed on the post to see if it's rotten and drop a new one normally the tractor can drive all the way up to right there but because the ground is so wet it'll just tear it up so we parked way down there and we're carrying the posts all the way up here knowing but uh it's working after we've finished checking all the posts we start on one side and work our way around the edge of the field so I always give that important machine for those yeah this is these little things that we're attaching to the posts are called insulators and they just keep the electrical current from grounding these electric fences are easy to put up and take down so every year before the winter they're removed which is good because you're not leaving stuff in the woods but they're also a little bit more fragile than barbed wire sometimes a wild animal might run through one and break it in half or the brush grows up and starts touching it causing it to ground overall they're just a little bit more maintenance you have to check on your fences a little bit more often but I think the trade-off is worth it I personally do not like barbed wire very much every time I mess with it I get tangled in it I much prefer the electric fences it's not a day that I'm normally working but Eric texted me they're gonna bail that extra hay so I'm gonna go check that out get a little footage of that okay we feel balding stuff Arctic um Austin so Eric was saying that this is actually a custom machine it's normally a just a Baler like every other Baler but this whole top part was added on to make Bales in a barn like we're doing today pretty crazy this is the hay that was left over from the winter it still needed this summer but it needs to be cleaned out of The Hayloft so that we can put new Haze it's bailed and then stacked here in the barn later on it will be moved to the barns in the fields the hay has dropped into this Hopper and then it moves on a conveyor belt over drops down onto another conveyor belt and into the machine pretty crazy but pretty creative foreign turns out there were 16 bales of hay left over from the winter if you'd like to watch the next episode subscribe thank you so much for watching and have a good week

https://www.kalberweidli.ch/ Ben&Co coffee. Not a paid promotion, just love the coffee. https://www.ben-co.coffee good morning it's a nice rainy day I'm getting quite a bit of rain here lately and snow up on the ridge is washing away it's leaving pretty quick which is a little bit sad I'm not really sure what the plan is today so uh let's go find out all right so the plan is to do some sheep fencing uh we're gonna be taking the londini here and I gotta find the fencing brand new we're gonna be setting up the fence on this bank right here Switzerland is a small country with lots of steep Rocky Mountains there's a very limited amount of farmland and of that Farmland a much smaller amount would be considered somewhat flat in Switzerland you can't just buy more land to expand your farm a lot of times there just isn't more land to be head for this reason farmers have to use the land they have very carefully to get the most out of it the rain's cleared up a little bit and uh starting to get a little bit brighter maybe it'll clear off completely I doubt it though I think it's gonna pour on me all day at least that's what the weather says ah boohoo I'm gonna get the most out of his land Eric uses different parts of his land for different things farming the flat ground is the least labor intensive so it is almost always reserved for making hay sheep and cows can both go on steep slopes but when you have lots of heavy cows walking on these slopes it tends to damage the ground so sheep take the steepest pastures and cows are pastured on the more moderate slopes and the out this new net has got some rigidity using these plastic like splines I don't know what you called it which is really nice because it keeps the fence from bunching up on the ground this is an electric fence so if the grass is wet and it's touching the electric fence then you lose a lot of your uh electrification but I'm really liking this the question is does it stay or does it just get all kind of bent up like that time will tell it's still raining my boots are uh starting to get wet and I'm out of coffee life is hard but the good news is the fence uh is almost done on this field this corner we're going to leave a section open here for the sheet to come in I think the Sheep are probably going to come over there and then right in here oh yeah so now that this field is done I think we head back to the farm and start working on another field hello okay so it's still raining like crazy so we have a new plan here we are gonna clean out one of the hay Lofts and get it all ready to start making hay here

https://www.kalberweidli.ch/ Ben&Co coffee. Not a paied promotion, just love the coffee. https://www.ben-co.coffee/ when you think of Switzerland you think of the cheese the chocolate the amazing views these Green Fields yodeling echoing Through The Valleys falling asleep to cowbells you think of the Farms farming plays a central role in Swiss culture and Switzerland just wouldn't be Switzerland without it when I moved to Switzerland I couldn't work as a paramedic because I couldn't speak German so I started working for a farm couple widely is an organic grass-fed beef and lamb Farm located in central Switzerland and let me tell you farming in Switzerland is totally different than the us and this year I will be making a series of videos showing you what it's like to farm the Alps thank you there's no better day to start the series than the first day of spring it's not actually the first day of spring but here on the farm it kind of is because today's the day that the cows come out of the barn for the very first time this year during the winter the cows are kept in the barn they have an outdoor patio area but it's just not the same as being out on the field the problem is the freezing and thawing of the winter just turns everything to Mud waiting around in mud is not good for the animals and it's not good for the land either in the spring after the snow melts and the land starts to dry the cows are brought back onto the fields and the valleys Echo with cowbells once again this is a pretty special day and the cows get pretty excited about it thank you [Music] if you've ever had the opportunity to hike around in Switzerland you've probably noticed the cows are mostly fenced in with just a single strand of fencing and maybe you've wondered is that little fence really strong enough to keep in that big cow no definitely not this is an electric fence and if you touch it it'll give you a pretty good zap it's not strong enough to injure the cow but they don't like it either so they stay away sometimes when they get a little bit too excited they just kind of forget that fence is there and just run right through it and then you have cows everywhere and that's not good when cows come out of the barn as you can see they're very excited and this is one of those times that they might run through a fence this is Eric and Barbara they are the owners of Kabul widely and they've basically taught me everything I know about farming in Switzerland to help remind the cows that there's still a fence they put this flagging tape up but there's also some strategy going on here first they only let the adult cows out of the barn these cows have done this multiple years in a row and they know what's going on after these cows have blown off some energy and are a little bit tired they bring them back into the barn and then they release them all again with the cows and this is when things get a little bit exciting foreign s were born in the winter and they only know life inside of the barn they've never been out on an open field like this because the cows have already had a chance to get their excitement out to help calm down the cow thank you [Music] the cows are out of the barn this season has started and so has the series farming the Alps if you'd like to follow this adventure subscribe hit that notification button thank you so much for watching have a good one

A little Chattanooga caving from our recent visit to the USA. I have decided to broaden my horizons and learn to vlog. If you would like to see my other stuff check out America meets Switzerland. https://www.youtube.com/c/AmericameetsSwitzerland/featured

I have decided to broaden my horizons and learn to vlog.

https://www.mountaincart.com/en/verleihstationen-english

the whole van camping thing has become pretty popular in europe and for good reason you can travel all over the place and it's a lot of fun so when i moved to switzerland we bought a van i know it's not much of a looker and it's kind of small but we actually chose a small van for a few reasons we knew we weren't going to be living in our van we just wanted to do like weekend trips with it so it didn't need to be that big and we just wanted to own one vehicle we didn't want multiple vehicles and if you own a big tall van in switzerland it can't fit in parking garages and in switzerland if you can't fit in a parking garage it really cuts down on your parking possibilities so it doesn't really work as a daily driver so instead we chose a small little van the original idea was just to keep it simple and take the seats out put a mattress on the floor and sleep in it like that but then we ran into a couple of problems one if you're sleeping on the floor where do you put all of your stuff and then two i found out that europe doesn't have any 24-hour walmarts with free parking and free bathrooms so where do you go to the bathroom and really this isn't much of a problem but maybe it wasn't a bad idea to have an emergency option so i was going to have to build out the van but then we ran into a problem we bought a passenger van and in switzerland all of the seats have to be in place to have it inspected so anything that i built in the van i would have to be able to remove for the inspection so this is what i've come up with i made a platform using three boxes this way the boxes can be disassembled and easily removed from the van when the bed's not needed part of the platform collapses in on itself making the living room off to the side of the living room is the bathroom it's a little bit small you can either get to the bathroom by opening this little hat store or the entire bathroom can slide out the rest of the space under the platform is used for storage originally my plan was to make some sliding drawers that came out but i scrapped that i decided that the hardware needed to make the drawers would just waste too much space and i'd be happier with just simple storage the platform left a lot of wasted space on either wall so i decided to make these little wing things that come up on either side and then added a mesh pocket for small items like your phone and things like that for the bed i took a foam mattress and cut it into three pieces and then made cloth covers for each piece my uh sewing skills are seriously lacking for privacy we used a bungee cord to make a curtain going across the front of the van it hooks in place when needed and then is easily removed when not needed for the windows we made covers using kind of a dense foam that we wrapped in fabric we then use suction cups to suction cup them to the windows because the foam is somewhat rigid it holds it in place and adds a little bit of insulation because we only use it for a couple days at a time we've chosen not to add any electric and just use battery powered led lights and then use battery packs to charge our phones so far that's worked pretty well there's a tour of our van hopefully you enjoyed it thank you for watching i'm going to get back to enjoying these great views have a great day

For the longest time, I was so confused by Switzerland's speed limit signs. Now after observing the swiss driving in their natural habitat for over a year, I have grasped the complex workings of Swiss speed limits. Here is an American's guide to Swiss speed limits.

This isn't a normal video for me. But it is a video that I have wanted to make for a long time. Hopefully, you enjoyed it. The Warbird website https://warbird.ch/ The book https://warbird.ch/buch/ (Warning)The book is in German. Pictures of the crew and aircraft are the property of Warbird.ch

You could win a Bug A Salt 3.0! Here is what you need to do. Rules 1. Share any one of the @Americameetswitzerland videos. It can be on social media you can send it to a friend, it does not matter just share it! 2. Write a comment on this video using the word "shared". 3 Wait Must be at least 18 years old to enter. Each person may only enter one time. On January 31st 2021 a random winner will be chosen from the comments. Youtube terms of service https://www.youtube.com/static?template=terms

Bug-A-Salt https://www.bugasalt.com Bloke on the range The Truth about Switzerland's Gun Regulations https://youtu.be/FQ1vEo1x9qE Swiss gun law. https://www.admin.ch/opc/de/classified-compilation/19983208/index.html Today we are talking about Christmas. Sort of. So every year lauras family does this secret Santa gift exchange thing where everyone draws a name and you give a gift to whoever that person is. So this year I drew lauras brother and it sounds pretty simple you just buy him a gift right. But it is not that simple. You see I'm the only American in a group of swiss. I’m representing America here. I can't just give him a gift I need to give him a gift that would represent America. So I thought about it and I thought about it before and finely I knew what I need to give him. I'm going to get him a gun. So that sounds pretty simple right you just buy him a gun and you give it to him. But it wasn’t that simple. You see I couldn’t find the gun I wanted in Switzerland, actually, I couldn’t find it in Europe at all. So I looked in the US and I found it with no problem. But then the company that makes this gun says right on their website that they do not ship outside of the US. So how do I get it to Switzerland? Simple I shipped it to my brother and he shipped it to me. So it is now on its way. I love it when a plan comes together. So I know what you are thinking you cant just buy somebody a gun. And you are right you can't just give somebody a gun. And you are right you cant just buy somebody a gun. You also need to give them a gun case. How are you ever going to make it in the outside world if you keep making a fool out of yourself? So then I started looking around Switzerland for a gun case and as it turns out gun cases in Switzerland are very expensive. So then I decided to make him a gun create instead of a gun case. Alright, the box is finished. I was supposed to look rustic and it does. Some of it is intentional and some of it not. Now, all we need is for the package to get here. But in the meantime, let’s talk about Switzerland and guns. Long before I moved to Switzerland or met Laura I had heard that all swiss are required to keep a gun in their house. So when I met Laura I had to know do you keep a gun in your house. The answer was no. But then when I Visited Switzerland her brother came home from the military and he was carrying a full-on assault rifle. Like semi-automatic, three-round burst, fully automatic, full-on military assault rifle. I was a little bit surprised because I come from the gun county of the world and we are not allowed to do that. You see the US military defiantly doesn’t let you take your service rifle home with you and fully automatic guns are very hard to get your hands on. So What is up with Switzerland and their guns? Well, Switzerland is kind of a weird county because they have a lot of people that own guns but very low gun crime. It is because of this that people that really like guns kind of use Switzerland as an example. They say look Switzerland has got a ton of guns and low crime they have low crime because of the guns. On the other side, the people that are not so crazy about guns say. Yeah, Switzerland has a lot of guns but it is theirgun regulation. They have great gun regulation and that is why they do not have a problem with guns. So what are swiss gun regulations like? Well at a glance they are not so different than US gun regulations. Both country’s give their citizens the right to own guns without a permit or a lessens or anything like that. But Buying guns is a whole other issue. In the US you have to have a background check unless you are buying it from a private individual like your friend or something like that. In Switzerland, you also have to have a background check and it is recommended that you do a background check when selling to a private person but it is not a requirement. Both countries allow you to have pretty much the same type of fire arms and both places allow you to have ammunition and to keep it in your house. However, buying ammunition is a little bit different. In Switzerland, you have to show that you can own a gun with a background check or something like that and in the US generally, you just have to show that you are above a certain age. Probably the biggest difference is that in the US carrying a loaded firearm is considered your right. Depending on how you carry it you may have to pass background checks take classes. However in Switzerland, before you can carry a weapon you also need to show that you need that weapon for safety or something like that. Switzerland is a very safe country so there is not a lot of need to carry a weapon so not that many people carry it. Another big difference is where you are allowed to shoot.

Tobogganing/sledding https://www.myswitzerland.com/en-ch/experiences/winter/tobogganing It is winter in the alps. the mountains are covered in snow and it is so beautiful. when it is winter in the alps you go skiing it is just what you do. But you don't ski. is there anything to do in the alps if you don't ski. Well yes, today we are talking about sledding. so normally when you think of sledding you think of walking up the hill in the freezing cold. as you are walking up some kid comes down and takes you out. But not in the alps. In the alps, they have these sledding areas on ski slopes so you ride up the chair lift with your sled and then you ride down basically ski slopes. It was surprising when I first came here and I see these guys go by on sleds. I was like what is going on. That would never be allowed in America but it is allowed in the alps and it is super cool. I am with a couple of other guys over here and we are going to check this out. So basically this is how it works. You have this groomed trail here. it is marked on either side. you just ride down the trail. you can go as fast or as slow as you want to. Ok, so these things are hard to steer. There has to be some sort of technique. But I do not know it. So we are crashing a lot. so pretty much every ski area in the alps has some sort of sledding run like this. This one has these sit skis. Manuel is trying them at it is a lot faster. \alright this is my first time doing this and I have got to say this is a lot of fun. If you don't ski you should try this. even if you do ski you should try it. thanks for watching our video.