Rural Europe on the move English_chap7_13 | Page 45

6a. 6b. Hay making in alpine meadows : hard work
deserves a special moment of recreation
7. Simone in her herb garden: passing on traditional
knowledge of herbs has become one of her passions
Herbs, health and Heilsame
Landschaft
Interested in pursuing traditional knowledge
preservation further, I began my own herbal business,
TRADITIONAL GATHERING
OF HIGH MOUNTAIN HAY
NATURSCHATZ Kräutermanufaktur, twelve years ago.
The region has a long heritage of female herbalists,
but I was the first local of a new generation who began
studying the use of herbs for health and nourishment.
The special quality of the high mountain hay I guess I was a pioneer of sorts building on the work
is well known. It has always been an essential of the herbalists before me, those who have a deep,
addition to fodder when cows were sick. It still empirical knowledge of local herbs and their uses. Their
is today but also the benefit for human health way of knowing herbs is not about a quick diagnosis
- mainly for the musculoskeletal system - is and easy solution to an ailment, based on cursory
known and well used. In former times this way evidence. Instead, it is based on instinctive knowledge:
of making hay was one of the most demanding often it can be difficult to explain the exact mechanisms
works to do - and mainly abandoned in the mid by which a herbal remedy works, it’s just that you know
1960s. When Manfred Guggenberger started it is right. Legal requirements for fully quantifiable
to mow the Alpine meadows again most of the evidence really threaten this other form of knowledge.
people shook their heads and told him to be ‘am
Holzweg’ - a friendly expression that he is on the
Now though, I see many new herbalists in our region,
women who have done training and education and
wrong path. It turned out that he is a pioneer
instead, his project is successful despite people’s
negative prediction. When nowadays somebody
tells him he’s ‘am Holzweg’, he knows he’s on the
right route.
“Scientific knowledge is vital,
and has brought the human race
immeasurably forward, but it
struggles with the intangible.”
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