Around 7:30 am we tied up in the town of Breisach. We had planned to go on the Black Forest hiking tour but it was pouring rain so we piked and chose to go to the open air museum at Vogtsbauernhof.
After an interesting drive through parts of the Black Forrest we arrived at the museum. This was a collection of 15th to 17th Century farm buildings most of which had been moved to the site.
There was one magnificent example that was original to this site. The farmhouses here were huge with barns on the lowest level for the cattle; living area for the farmer, his wife, children and servants on the second level, and a huge food storage area on the top level.
An amazing feature of the building was it did not have any chimneys. In the kitchen area, the smoke was so thick they used to smoke meat up in the rafters. As you could imagine, working daily in conditions like this, the female life span was in the region of 35 years.
I was rather taken by this early fridge for keeping the milk cool. Carved out of stone it had a stream running through the base.
We then had a demonstration of how a Black Forest Cake was made then tried a sample.
Hardys’ Travels 