Matti's Adventure Abroad: The Hubers (September 24th-October 21st)

My first Swiss host family was the Huber-Bucher family (Dad, Mom, and 3 kids close to my age), located in the village of Mattwil in the canton of Thurgau. Also located close to Lake Constance (aka Bodensee), this lake touches Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. Canton Thurgau is often referred to as "Apple India" by the other cantons as it is a region with many apple orchards. My hosts run a Swiss Brown dairy operation, with around 80 cows. They do this in cooperation with another part-time farmer. He takes care of the cows that aren't milking, and the Hubers house the milk cows. They have one employee that milks the cows twice a day, using the milking parlor that milks six at a time. In addition to the dairy, they also have around 3 dozen organic apple trees which produce apples for apple juice and cider. I contributed around the farm by milking cows, picking apples, working in the garden, doing household chores, and collecting fire wood. My host mom's garden is pretty awesome! She grows much of the produce the family consumes. The garden has: raspberries, sunflowers, pumpkins, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers just to name a few. I even picked flower petals once to be used for tea!!
There are mountains visible from the house, though from a distance. I can see the Santis mountain peak, one I went to the top of during my time with the family. The Hubers encouraged a lot of travel and sight seeing, so during my stay I saw quite a bit of northern Switzerland. I spent time in Basel, Luzern, Bern (the capital), Lausanne, Zurich and St. Gallen, and even ventured into other countries like Liechtenstein, Germany and France. Switzerland is a quarter of the size of Kansas, so travel to other cities and countries only takes an hour or two.