When most people are still fast asleep, she’s already out in the fields. Michaela Hafner, an early bird through and through, usually gets up at 5 in the morning. Not because she has to, but because she likes waking up with the new day. Especially in summer, when everything is so peaceful in the mornings and the air is so fresh.

Michaela has always enjoyed being outdoors: as a child, when she would run barefoot through the apple orchards, later as a competitive race walker and now as an apple farmer. It was always clear that one day she would take over her parents’ farm in Terlano/Terlan. Today, Michaela and her husband Ulli, parents to three sons, run the farm and Ulli’s vineyard in Santa Giustina/St. Justina near Bolzano/Bozen together. “A lot of people can’t understand how we can work together for 8 or 9 hours a day,” grins Michaela. “But we like it.”

Some jobs see them outside the whole day long, even eating together in the open air or the little shed, until the heat and the day slowly fade away and, for the day, the circle ends.