Pasta production in the Adlerhorst

None of this was ever planned, Didi Klancnik, who runs the Arlitscherhof with his wife Sonja, assures me. Full-time farming and all that. Over 300 chickens in a free-range enclosure. Surplus eggs and pasta production. And so on. But first things first. In 2007, they acquired the farm, which - as the farmer himself puts it - had been run by the previous owners in substandard conditions. No tools, no machines. They worked with oxen. And please note, we are not talking about the post-war period, but the early years of the 21st century. The history of the estate goes back to 1850. Apparently it was bricklayers from the Kanaltal who acquired the land here and erected the first building. The Klancniks, on the other hand, both worked in the restaurant trade in their lives before full-time farming and actually only bought the farm to have a home and part-time occupation in the off-seasons. That was the theory. Sonja's childhood dream had nothing to do with southern Carinthia either. She always wanted to be a wool pig farmer in Canada. Even though she now "only" has chickens, pigs, ducks, geese, sheep and goats, she is certainly living her dream with her husband and their four children Anna, Johannes, Thomas and Katharina.

If you make products here, it doesn't have to be orange liqueur.

Didi, who incidentally trained as a chef, ran a swimming pool restaurant in Bleiberg (Pliberk) for 16 years until 2015. However, now that he is working full-time up here, he has resigned. Not without melancholy, of course. A lot has happened in the 10 years since the Klancniks moved into Lobnig, just above Eisenkappel. When Didi - still running the swimming pool restaurant - was looking for a reliable supplier of Kasnudl pasta (note: Carinthian pasta (koroški krapi in Slovenian) is a thinly rolled pasta dough that is formed into a fist-sized bag and filled with various ingredients), the farmer, who was not averse to work anyway, decided to get into food production himself. From then on, the purchase was secured and the chicken farm at the Arlitscherhof grew and grew. The decision to also stock the farm store with dry goods, i.e. ribbon noodles, soup noodles, spirals etc., seemed logical. After all, there are enough eggs. Klancnik's house philosophy sounds impeccable: everything that grows around the farm is processed. "And if we really processed everything that grows here into products, there wouldn't be enough time in the year," says the farmer, and I believe him, not just after taking a look in his well-stocked farm store. Cider, vinegar and schnapps are also on offer, and numerous fruit trees bear witness to the 0.0 kilometer product. As a passionate restaurateur, Didi wasn't happy without serving guests for too long, so now there is also a farm café from Friday to Sunday from 1 pm, offering delicious pastries, coffee and small snacks. Pigs are kept for the meat on offer. A radically local production.

We simply let our guests "be".

The vacation crowd is diverse - from the classic North German family staying longer than a week, to couples from the surrounding area looking for a break, who live just 20 minutes away by car and still want to vacation nearby. City dwellers and country folk. A cross-milieu mix. The Klancniks are rewarded by travelers with longer stays than is usual in Austrian tourism. Many stay for more than 7 days, and some host families have recently been staying for two or even three weeks. Summer retreat reloaded? Here at the farm, we don't bend over backwards to please our guests. No guided farm tours or timed animal feeding. However, every guest is welcome to join in and watch when bread is being baked, for example. "And if nothing is happening, then that's just the way it is," says Didi Klancnik, convincing me of his clear understanding of contemporary guest care. The elimination of timetables and regulated meal service not only brings with it a great deal of freedom, but also personal responsibility. So much so, in fact, that guests sometimes ask on arrival in which areas they are allowed to move around freely. Didi smiles. I nod and snack on another handful of homemade Hadn potato chips. They're also available in the farm store.