Guess how many flowers bloom here

The steep sloping meadows of the Bojernhof are in full bloom. While meadows have been mowed everywhere else - often even several times - everything is left to grow and thrive in peace here. The flowers and herbs sway gently in the summer wind. It is a paradise for insects, bumble bees and wild bees, butterflies and crickets and grasshoppers.

At the Bojernhof, Thomas Christofori has a very small part-time farm with 13 cows. His wife deals with the holiday apartments and rentals. The property is located on the mountain, a steep road winds its way up here, from where the view is simply fantastic. The whole village with the St. Georg parish church lays spread out below. The Unternberg, the Hörndlwand, the Westernberg with their ski lifts.

Bojernhof includes 10 hectares of meadows and 10 hectares of forest. The terrain is mostly steep and difficult to access, making it unsuitable for intensive use. For this reason, Thomas Christofori and his family farm it traditionally, as many generations before them - preserving a unique natural landscape on the side.

About 300 hectares of meadows are extensively and sustainably used in Ruhpolding. 55 hectares of these are so-called litter meadows, wet meadows and grasslands. Their diversity and phased flowering make them valuable habitats. Up to 100 plant species can thrive on a square metre.

This means extensive grassland, like the one at the Bojernhof, is one of the most biodiverse biotopes in the world alongside the tropical rainforest. It is particularly worth protecting because the great majority of land in Germany is used intensively and industrially, often to the detriment of soils, plants and animals.

"We are mountain farmers, we farm very different land and mountain pastures than the farmers in the lowlands," says Thomas Christofori. Now in the early evening, the July heat has abated significantly and there are hardly even any insects about. Because the weather forecast for the coming days is dry with stable high-pressure weather, he wants to mow the steep meadow below the farmhouse, the "Leitn". To do this, he uses a motor mower, similar to a large lawnmower with an attached cutter bar. Thomas has to drive it manually fromright to left and from top to bottom over the mountainside. It's hard, exhausting work. He has to take good care not to slip. Tomorrow night, the grass will be completely turned using a rake, so that it dries out well. If it’s gathered up while it’s still damp, there is the risk that it will fester. In the worst-case scenario, it could even start to burn.

After a second sunny day, the whole family helps out and rakes the dried, fragrant hay down the entire slope to where Thomas is waiting with the loading wagon. It’s then stored loosely on the barn floor. Together with silage, it is used as feed for the animals in winter. "We noticed that they particularly like the taste of the flowering meadow hay," says the farmer.

Because Thomas Christofori, like many other farmers, is involved in the “Flowering Hay Meadows in the Ruhpolding Valley” biodiversity project, he is committed to not mowing his 1.5 hectares of flowering meadows before 1 July and to only using manure in moderation. Litter meadows have to be left until September. This is the only way to preserve the great diversity. If plants and herbs disappear, it’s hard to re-establish them. For his extensive use of flowering pastures, Thomas Christofori receives financial compensation in return. He doesn't like to call himself a part-time farmer, he prefers the term landscape manager, because he makes sure that the biodiversity is preserved and accepts a lower return. “There used to be lots more of these lush flowering meadows, many people only remember them from their childhoods now. This makes ours guests and locals all the happier to see them,” says Thomas.

For today, his work is done. The mowed grass smells fragrant at dusk. In the west, the sun has already long set. And the cows at the Bojernhof can hardly wait to be able to graze the meadow down to its last delicious stalk after the hay has been brought in.