Härdapfel Days

One of Nicole’s closest friends and her husband, Tinu, run a small farm where they’re raising three boys and managing a little patch of land with remarkable versatility. They bulk up cattle for other farmers, fatten a few pigs, grow potatoes, rapeseed, and various vegetables, all from the same modest spread.  And while it may sound like a lot, this mix of responsibilities isn’t unusual here. It’s actually quite common for a Swiss farm to do a bit of everything unlike the sprawling, industrial-scale operations that dominate much of American agriculture.

What allows this kind of farming to thrive in Switzerland comes down to a fundamental difference: government support. It’s literally written in the federal constitution that farming must be protected, to ensure food production and preserve the land, the culture, and the environment for generations to come.  Farmers can receive additional funding not for producing more, but for doing it better, keeping cows on open pasture instead of confined stalls, maintaining wildflower meadows for native pollinators, and embracing methods that prioritize biodiversity and sustainability.

Tinu explained to me (through Nicole, since he doesn’t speak English and I don’t speak German) that this system, while supportive, is also demanding. Every farmer operates under a strict framework of environmental laws, animal welfare regulations, and sustainability rules. GMOs are banned outright, and synthetic fertilizers and pesticides are tightly regulated. He told me that in some seasons, keeping pests and diseases at bay without breaking these rules feels nearly impossible. And compliance is directly tied to whether or not they receive their government support.

This was such a stark contrast to what I’d heard about in the U.S., where I remember listening to an interview with an farmer who described how suffocating his life had become. He said he could no longer afford the land that had been in his family for generations, so he was forced to sell it to a large agricultural corporation just to stay afloat.  The company offered him two options: a short-term lease that basically came with no guarantees or a long-term contract that offered financial security but came with strings attached, embedded into the fine print of the contract.  He chose the long one, thinking it was the safer bet. But in doing so, he locked himself into a completely different way of life.

Though he farmed the same fields, they were no longer his. The land, once an extension of his identity, was now governed by a corporate playbook.  He wasn’t allowed to rotate crops the way he always had or let parts of the land rest to recover.  He had to follow strict guidelines from people who’d never touched soil with their own hands, guidelines driven by spreadsheets, not the seasons.  They demanded high-yield monocultures, the use of GMOs and synthetic fertilizers for faster turnarounds, methods that clashed with everything he believed in.

So he was still farming, working the long days, battling the moody weather, pesky pests, and market volatility.  But now he was locked into doing it under someone else’s thumb and under rules that didn’t care about the land, animals, or even the farmers himself. 

It made me think about how different things have become in the states, where today, over half of all cropland is farmed by someone other than the landowner.  That separation, between the hands working the soil and the people making decisions based not on flavor or nutrition, but rather for shelf life or animal feed, creates a disconnect that ripples through every level of the food system.  Land becomes an asset on a spreadsheet, not a biological living thing.

Tinu also mentioned that many Swiss farmers, including himself, are also forest stewards. With over a third of Switzerland covered in forest, many farms include small woodland plots. That means these farmers are responsible for maintaining trails, thinning trees, preventing erosion, and promoting biodiversity in these areas as well.

In Switzerland, success isn’t measured in gallons of milk or tons of grain. It’s measured in the health of the soil, the richness of the fields and the wellbeing of the animals.  So i was stoked when Die Kartoffelernte (potato harvest) came and Tinu asked me if i would like to join.  

When my alarm rang at 6:47, the sky was still cloaked in darkness. But on the eastern horizon, a soft golden thread was beginning to unspool.  A thin layer of frost coated the seat of my moped and my exhales formed a ghostly cloud in front of me.  The tip of my nose and finger tips stung in the cold as I pulled my hood up and slipped my helmet on over it as I knew even a short 15 minute ride had the potential to feel long with a nip in the air like this it. 

Fifteen minutes outside the city center of Bern and you’re suddenly in open farmland. I parked the moped at the edge of a field and crunched across the frost and crusted grass towards the potato field. At the end of the row, I watched the tractor make a slow U-turn and begin its crawl back toward me. Hands in my pockets, hood up over a beanie, I stood still for a moment and took it all in.

Behind the tractor, the land rose quickly before being swallowed by a thick forest. To my right, a small fenced orchard of apple trees, shared by a few cows whose bells clinked softly as they grazed.  Behind me, a few traditional Swiss farmhouses and beyond them, rolling green hills gave way to the majestic, snow-tipped Bernese Alps, their peaks glowing with the first light of the sun. The air was silent, except for the growing hum of the tractor’s diesel engine and the faint sound of laughter, most likely Tinu’s three boys riding along, helping with the harvest.

Tinu jumped down from the towering potato contraption hitched to the back of the tractor, pulled off his glove, and gave me a warm handshake.  Quickly, he ran to his car, returned with a pair of gloves and handed them to me with a “You’ll need these” type of grin. 

As I approached the trailer, I was met with kind smiles from his wife and a chorus of shy giggles from the boys. I climbed the cold steel ladder and heard a thick Swiss accent ask with cheerful challenge, “Are you ready?”

The air was crisp and the days were getting shorter when I found myself standing on the back of a potato-sorting machine, trundling through fields of the Swiss countryside.  One of Nicole’s best friends owns a small farm where they beef up cattle, keep a couple pigs, and grow potatoes. Autumn in Switzerland means Kartoffelernte, or potato harvest season.

Our job was simple: stand in front of a rattling conveyor belt and remove everything that wasn’t a potato.  The belt we were standing in front of, ran through the heart of a massive harvesting machine, dragged slowly across the fields, whose metal claws plunged into the earth, scooping up everything in its path. All of it was heaved up onto the belt, which came rattling towards us at waist height.  

There were usually five or six of us, spaced evenly on either side.  Those stationed near the front were hit with the full gambit, clods of soil, plant matter, rocks, whole potato plants tangled in muddy clumps. Their task was to grab as fast as they could, tossing out debris and clearing the way so that those further down the line could focus on finer sorting: catching sneaky stones or pulling out rotten or damaged potatoes before they reached the bins. 

The conveyor belt moved at a steady, unrelenting clip. Once a row began, it didn’t stop, unless the sheer volume overwhelmed us. When the belt started to pile up despite our best efforts, someone would hit the emergency stop. We'd all rush to catch up, grabbing and tossing in a flurry of motion, trying to restore order to the chaos. Then, with a mechanical lurch, the belt would roar back to life, and we’d resume. 

Each row took around ten minutes of full-on, focused effort. When we reached the end of a row, the metal claws would lift from the ground and the belt would roll what last bits it had churned up for a minute or two as the tractor looped around, lining up for the next pass, and then we were off again.

The machine housed two hoppers up front. One collected the good potatoes. The other, fed by a series of side chutes, was the dumping ground for the rejects: rotten, green, or deeply split ones. Some were so soft and decayed that your fingers would sink into them like an over ripe peach, releasing the unmistakable stench of soil rot, a putrid, earthy smell that not stuck on your fingers.

It was exactly the kind of mind-numbing, physical work I’d been craving. There was something deeply satisfying about locking into a rhythm spotting, grabbing, tossing. I imagined myself as a sorting robot, optimizing for accuracy and speed. The background noise also helped: the steady hum of the machinery, the pang of rocks on metal, the soft rumble of potatoes rolling past, and the occasional blast of cold wind across your face. When you hit the groove, time slipped by. Before you knew it, another row was done.

Some days were warm enough for a T-shirt and shorts. Others called for layers of merino wool, a hoodie, and a borrowed pair of rubber-tipped gloves. But regardless of weather, the belt never stopped. By the end of the shift—legs stiff, back sore from leaning over—it always felt rewarding. Tangible. Honest. You could see the bins full of sorted potatoes, feel the dirt that somehow snuck under your fingernails.