Day 4: Jura Mountains

Today has been our 4th day in France and we left early this morning to go to the Jura Mountains. The countryside reminds me much of Colorado, with rocky ledges and very green grass and many trees. Our first stop was at a Comte cheese factory and a Montbeliard dairy farm in Bouverans.

This is Taz, the owner of the Comte cheese factory that we got to tour in the Jura Mountains. We sampled some the cheese, which had a very strong taste, and of course we had more wine!

Calves are removed from their mothers moments after birth and they still have a desire to suck so they are given a nose ring with spike to prevent from the suckling.

The beautiful countryside in the Jura Mountains. Everything is very green even though they have been quite dry for the season.

Here is the milking parlor, which is exactly like the dairies in the states.

We had the chance to tour a Comtois horse breeding farm near Maiche. The horses were trained very well and could do many tricks... like the one seen above.

More tricks.

The horse farm that we visited also had a dairy just down the road and here was the huge pile of hay that they stored to feed the cattle.. there were two more storage areas like this.

This was a grapple fork that moved along the ceiling of the building from the pits with the hay in them to the other side of the shed where they cows were fed. It is mechanically operating by someone sitting in it and then runs up and down the building on rails.

Tonight we are staying in a very nice hotel in Alsace. Tomorrow we will traveling to the Dopff and Irion winery and then a tour of the Chateau du Haut Koenigsburg. We will then be crossing into Germany and staying there for the night.