Can anybody explain what the random huts in the swiss landscapes are for? Whenever I try searching for an answer I am instead shown houses for sale in switzerland

34 comments

  1. Lots of variety.

    Some are used by alpine shepherds doing alpine transhumance; some might be hidden army bunkers or other army buildings.

  3. I was on a tour of Jungfraujoch yesterday where the guide explained that these would have been where farmers stored summer hay until winter when it could be brought down on sleds to feed cattle. He said these days they’re sometimes turned into summer vacation camping homes as most high fields now have roads or other access to bring the hay down without sleds.

  4. Most are farm or equipment buildings. Some are huts people live in on the alps in the summer. Some are “refuges”, village buildings people can rent to host parties.

  5. The little wooden ones used to be hay barns to store cattle feed over the winter. Now some are still used that way, some are abandoned. A minority of them are converted into little holiday shacks.

  8. Wenn die huere russe uf d idee köme, bis in d schwiz welle z ko. de gsehsch für wa die huere hüttänä sind ! 😉

  11. These huts have several functions: First they serve as temporary shelter for smaller animals like sheep and goat during summer. So, they can find shelter on rain and thunderstorms.

    They are usually close to a water source and have often an underground tank for manure. This allowed farmers to collect manure closer to the fields where it was used. You didn’t had to transport all from a central storage.

    The huts also have compartments to store dried grass and hay over winter. Farmers collected the hay there in summer and transported it if needed in Winter to their farmhouse by a sledge.

    Nowadays, most time farmers store there some equipment or just leave the huts as decoration even they have no real use. Most of the times foxes or wild animals use it then as shelter.

    So, while the hits are not much in use anymore, they are still kept. They are cheap in maintenance, can still serve some purpose sometimes, and building new ones is an administrative nightmare. Therefore, they are kept in place. And usually just make the whole farm look nicer.

  28. This is where they compost nosey tourists. (source: people in the know)

    The official line is for herding.

    I am guessing this is where the gold is.

  31. It really depends, it’s either safe places to rest for hikers or huts for farmers when they come to these great expanses of nature for their cows or sheeps.

  32. Changing rooms to put your beach wear on. Because Switzerland has no beaches, they substitute fields for beaches.

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