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Tender Styria beef young beef has been organically produced at the Reinisch family farm for more than 25 years. Farmer Birgit Reinisch actually studied history. A portrait of Roman Bruckner.
If you drive up from Deutschlandsberg via Wildbach and Hinterleiten to Osterwitz, you will soon come to the Reinisch Hof, aka Wallner. The farm is located at 1000 meters above sea level and is purely a grassland farm with a large amount of forest. Two other smaller farms are leased to serve as pastures. The home areas are mostly mowed twice and grazed in autumn. Every year, 30 to 35 Limousin suckler cows supply young cattle for meat marketing, own offspring and the sale of breeding bulls.
The company is one of the pioneers of Styrian suckler cow husbandry and the Styria Beef brand. The current sometimes difficult economic situation of suckler cow husbandry is improved by marketing breeding cattle and direct meat marketing. As a member of the suckler cow husbandry working group and the Limousin breeding association, our own results are recorded and evaluated in the best possible way. In winter, the animals are in the animal-friendly playpen and are only fed with their own grass silage and hay.
thesis
The 38-year-old farmer’s wife Birgit married into the traditional business twelve years ago and thus made a radical change in her life. She comes from a non-peasant home near Deutschlandsberg and studied history in Graz after graduating from high school. She even spent a semester at an American Indian Studies university in the state of Montana USA. She wrote her diploma thesis on the way of life of Indians. “On the one hand, the Indians have a very close, almost religious relationship with nature, on the other hand they live impoverished on the fringes of society,” she says from her experiences.
This closeness to nature may have strengthened her later in life as a farmer. But after graduation, there was no suitable job for her studies. So she switched to business and learned everything new. In a plant construction company she was responsible for project management and purchasing. During this time she met her future husband Florian and this resulted in another career change to become a farmer. For the sympathetic West Styrian it was a big change at first – from the city to the quiet mountain farm in a secluded location. But soon the first child was born, and then there was enough going on in the young family. They got married in 2012 and took over the farm in 2014, and their second child was born in the same year. In the years that followed, the young mother was mainly occupied with the children. But as they got older, she gradually took on tasks and competencies in the company.
working day
Today, her working day is tailored to the company and the children. When the children are on the school bus, she goes to the stable. This is followed by housework and business administration, cooking, chores in the afternoon and learning with the children. From 4 p.m. it’s back to the stable. She does all the clerical work for the farm, grants, animal records and all the breeding data and workgroup records. Every two weeks there is slaughter on the farm, so she makes the allocation. She manages the entire sale and packaging of the meat packages for the young cattle that are marketed in-house.
When asked how often she comes down to Deutschlandsberg, 17 kilometers away, she says: “Almost every day!” The children have to be taken and picked up almost every day. There is little time for free time, but the walks with the lively dog have to be done. When the children are older, maybe there will be time for their area of expertise, the Indians, again.
Her wishes for the future are that everyone stays healthy and that the children get on with farming one day. She worries about society’s consumption of meat, because direct marketing has recently been declining and vegetarian food is constantly being hyped in the media and in schools. People don’t see enough how valuable the meat and its natural production is by Austrian suckler cow farmers.
To person
Birgit Reinisch (38) lives in 8530 Osterwitz 28. The farm covers 42 hectares of agricultural land, 60 hectares of forest, 30 to 35 cows, a total of 80 Limousin breeding cattle. Contract slaughtering for companies in the area and direct marketing of Styria Beef young cattle are further business pillars.
Photo: Roman Bruckner
2023-06-28 16:58:28
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