Not only does the Farm Museum show furnished houses on its premises but it also grows types of old horticultural crops. In the Middle Swabia group of buildings there is an area that is dedicated predominantly to the growing of cereals. The fields are farmed according to the improved three-field crop rotation system. Traditional cereal, root crops and flax are grown in the Museum’s fields and around the “Middle Swabia” buildings.
Historic Gardens
There are eight delightful gardens at the Museum. The kitchen gardens that belong to the houses are a major attraction for many visitors due to the variety and mixture (vegetables, flowers, medicinal herbs) of the crops that have been grown in these small domains. Each garden containing the herbs, vegetables and plants that would have met the needs of the rural household.
We grow several heritage varieties of vegetables, like parsnip, chard, carrots and beans.
Swabia is all so an orchard paradise. In between you see growing over 100 varieties of heritage fruit trees, apples, cherries and plums. Unique attraction is the trellis (treillage), an living architectural structure. The museum shows how to train apples as espaliers for a space-saving way of growing fruit on a wall or fence.
Traditional farm animals
There are “Zaupelschafe,” a very old Swabian breed of sheep that is otherwise extinct in Swabia nowadays. The museum also owns some “Oberländer Noriker”, cold-blooded horses which were used to cultivate steep terrain in Alpine regions.”.
Visitors, too, can find the “Schwäbisch-Hällisches Schwein”, a pig descended from the Celtic-Germanic pig and the “Allgäuer Original Braunvieh”, cattle that were once common in the foothills of the Alps. The "Augsburger" is a very rare breed of poultry, that was developed in Augsburg, Bavaria in the 1880’s. The "Augsburger" comes mostly in a black color-variety. The bird has a red face, white earlobes and slate-blue legs. The most unusual trait is the comb, it looks like a crown.