Posted in Blog on Oct 05, 2026.
Author: Luca Reichmann
What happens when we bring together agriculture, tradition, art and culture with food in a way that makes them accessible to as many people as possible? What happens when we pass rural life, cultural heritage, nature conservation and our relationship with consumption on to the next generation in a way that allows us to preserve and strengthen old knowledge while also responding to new challenges? And how can we approach nature conservation in a way that makes people genuinely want to take part?
How can we keep a regional culture alive, make its value visible, and at the same time become better prepared for the changes and challenges ahead?
Our opening event on rural culture and cultural heritage called StadtLandFluss (CityCountryRiver, based on the game categories) explored exactly these questions through traditional orchards, harvesting together, cider pressing, regional food, art and music.
Learning by Doing
Personally, I was never a big fan of purely classroom-based learning at school. I found it difficult to keep my attention focused on a blackboard for hours. For many people, learning by doing is a much better way to learn. This is why I designed this opening event on rural culture, as well as our other workshops, to be as interactive and accessible as possible, regardless of language, previous knowledge or age.
At the same time, I wanted food to play an important role. Sharing a meal is one of the oldest and most important ways of bringing a community together.
At our first StadtLandFluss event, held on 20 September 2026 at Gaswerkareal Schaffhausen and in the surrounding meadows, we were able to experience exactly that. What grew out of several years of personal experience in this field became a shared day dedicated to our unique rural culture. Dozens of people took part, helped with preparations behind the scenes, contributed their own knowledge, talents and skills, and learned something new at the same time.
The fact that our work in Schaffhausen has become part of an international exchange at UNESCO level is an important recognition for us. At the same time, the heart of these kinds of projects remains deliberately local: knowledge should not only be discussed, but experienced, practised and passed on together with the people who live here.
The Harvest
We started at 9:00 a.m. on the grounds of Gaswerkareal in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. From there, we travelled to the first traditional orchards, located only around 15 minutes away on the German side of the border.
We deliberately designed the event to take place across the German-Swiss border. Nature does not recognise national borders. Especially in our region, with its unusual and winding border, it is important to understand that we are part of one shared ecosystem. What happens on one side of the border also affects the other.
In the small German village of Gailingen, we met young gardener Yannic Kühnert, who has a particular passion for fruit trees beyond his professional work. He accompanied the harvest with his expertise and explained, among other things, that traditional orchards are human-made cultural landscapes and therefore, much like sheep or cattle, depend on people for their continued existence. Apple trees in particular can become heavily overgrown without regular care and eventually suffer serious damage or die.
Many owners of fruit trees and traditional orchards are now elderly and can no longer maintain their land on their own. At the same time, too few younger people are interested in continuing this work. Orchards are abandoned or sold for other uses. A generational transition is therefore urgently needed.
Through events such as StadtLandFluss, we want to encourage people to take care of these landscapes together and to pass on the knowledge needed to maintain them. Traditional orchards are among the most species-rich cultural landscapes and provide habitat for thousands of species of animals, plants and fungi. They also perform important ecological functions.
We have begun mapping the locations of the trees, some on public land and others on private property for which we have permission to harvest, on Mundraub.org. We also mark trees that are open for public harvesting with a yellow ribbon carrying the message “Harvest me.” This allows people to see where fruit can officially be picked, preventing valuable food from going to waste while providing free access to regional produce.
After harvesting several hundred kilograms of apples and pears, including some very old and rare varieties, and moving between several orchards, we returned to Schaffhausen to use a mechanical cider press, where we processed part of the harvest.
The remaining apples we later processed using hand presses, as was common before mechanical pressing became widespread. The freshly pressed Moscht, our local apple juice or cider, was then either pasteurised or bottled fresh.
