Paid partnership: Urlaub am Bauernhof hosted our stay at Biobauernhof Aubauer and paid me to create content about our experience, including this blog post. Everything you read here is based on what we actually did, saw and experienced during our stay – and is all my honest opinion.
Some of my happiest childhood summers were spent staying on a farm in Austria (I was lucky enough to spend four of my primary school years living in Vienna).
My brother and I would disappear off to sit in pigsties surrounded by piglets, collect the eggs, jump off beams in the barn onto the hay, ride fairly feral horses and, on one memorable occasion, help pull a calf out of a cow who was struggling with giving birth. I absolutely loved it.
So Austrian farm holidays are something I’ve always wanted my own kids to experience too. On our latest trip, the three of us spent three nights on a farm stay near Salzburg at Biobauernhof Aubauer, a working organic farm tucked into the mountains of the Großarl Valley.
Our stay was organised through Urlaub am Bauernhof, which has hundreds of farm stays across Austria. At Aubauer, we stayed in a self-catering apartment, ate an alarming quantity of homemade cheese, helped with the animals on their summer farm, make stick bread over the campfire, swam in a perfect outdoor swimming pool and explored the surrounding mountains, all without a car.
In this guide, I’ll show you what staying at Aubauer was actually like, what we did on and away from the farm, and how you can plan an Austrian farm holiday of your own.
What is Urlaub am Bauernhof?
“Urlaub am Bauernhof” is German for “holiday on the farm”, and there are hundreds of farms across Austria to choose from.
And there’s a lot of variety between the farms. You can stay on organic farms, livestock farms, vineyards and mountain farms; there are places offering horse riding, farms particularly geared towards younger children and more luxurious options if “rustic” isn’t your scene.
Accommodation varies too, from self-catering apartments and studios to en-suite hotel-style rooms with breakfast.
The important thing to know is that they aren’t all offering the exact same holiday. Each farm is independently run, with the owners deciding what accommodation, activities and experiences they offer.
Urlaub am Bauernhof is the umbrella organisation, helping the farms with things like marketing and making sure they meet its quality standards. The English-language version of the site is at farmholidays.com, and it’s a useful starting point if you fancy an Austrian farm holiday but have no idea which farm or region to pick.
Biobauernhof Aubauer is the farm we stayed at, so everything I describe below is our experience there. Another Urlaub am Bauernhof property may have completely different animals, activities and facilities, and be somewhere entirely different in Austria.
It’s worth looking through the individual listings and choosing according to what your family actually wants to do.
Also (because I got this question in my Instagram DMs!) – staying on a working farm does not mean signing up as an unpaid agricultural labourer! You’re still on holiday. You can take or leave any activities that involve joining in with farm life, and you’re always free to organise plenty of days off the farm too – if that’s what you want.
Biobauernhof Aubauer is an organic farm in the Großarl Valley, not far from Salzburg. Before this trip, I’d also stayed at another Austrian farm with the kids when they were younger, so have a read of our previous Austrian farm holiday if you want a broader idea of what this kind of trip can look like.
Our farm stay near Salzburg at Biobauernhof Aubauer
Where is Biobauernhof Aubauer?
Biobauernhof Aubauer is just outside the village of Großarl, in Austria’s SalzburgerLand region. It’s around an hour’s drive – or an hour and a half on public transport – south of Salzburg, surrounded by the mountains of the Großarl Valley.
We travelled all the way from the UK without flying. We took the Eurostar from London to Brussels, followed by an overnight train to Salzburg, so this is definitely a trip you can do flight-free if you have the time and fancy making the journey part of the adventure. I’ll cover the full journey in a separate post.
Flying is obviously quicker. Salzburg has direct flights from several UK airports, with airlines including British Airways, Ryanair, easyJet and Jet2, although some routes are seasonal, so check what’s running for your dates.
We didn’t have a car once we arrived and managed perfectly well using trains, buses and our feet. From Salzburg, you can travel to Großarl by public transport, (50 minute train to St. Johann im Pongau, and then a 20 minute bus to Großarl) which takes around 1.5 hours in total.
We stopped at the Salzwelten Salzberg show salt mine in Hallein on our way from Salzburg to Großarl, which we all absolutely loved, before continuing to the farm by public transport. I’ll be writing a separate guide to that, so more on that one soon.
The farm itself is in a gorgeous spot. It feels properly rural, with fields, animals and mountains outside the windows, but you’re not stranded halfway up an inaccessible hillside (especially handy since we were car-free).
It’s set back from the main road into Großarl, about a 5-10 minute walk from the nearest bus stop (the bus travels regularly between St. Johann im Pongau and Großarl), and about 25-30 minutes walk from the main part of the village using a foot and cycle path away from the main road.
This meant we could easily get to restaurants, the swimming pool, buses and the summer lifts without needing a car.
Our apartment at Aubauer
We stayed in the Lavendel apartment, one of the guest apartments in the main farmhouse. The family live downstairs, with the holiday apartments on the floors above, so you’re staying right in the middle of the working farm rather than in a separate accommodation block.
Our apartment was modern and new-feeling, with two bedrooms, a lovely balcony and fantastic views across the valley and surrounding mountains.
There was a double bedroom with a big, comfortable bed and a separate kids’ room with bunk beds. Both bedrooms had wardrobes and plenty of storage.
The bathroom was equally good, with a double basin and a really good shower.
The main room was a large open-plan kitchen, dining and living area. The kitchen was really well equipped, with a proper hob, large fridge and freezer and all the kitchen equipment we needed to cook for ourselves (if you’ve ever stayed in a self-catering apartment, you know this isn’t a given)!
There was also a good-sized dining table, which gave us somewhere to eat, sit and draw or write, and generally spread ourselves out, plus a comfortable sofa for collapsing onto afterwards (which also turns into a bed if you’re a larger family).
French doors opened onto the fantastic balcony with it’s own seating for all of us. Being able to sit outside looking straight across the lush green valley towards the mountains was a brilliant way to start and finish the day.
📱 Two useful extras that come with your stay
Staying at Aubauer also gave us access to two genuinely useful guest benefits: the SalzburgerLand Guest Mobility Ticket and the Großarltal Guest Card. Once I’d completed the online check-in using the link sent by our hosts before we travelled, we were sent another link to sign into the Großarltal digital guest system and access the Großarltal Guide app.
In the app I could access the QR codes for both cards for all of us, ready to use while we were there. I’d get everything set up before you travel, particularly if you’re arriving by public transport.
There are two different cards, and they do different things:
🚌 Guest Mobility Ticket: This is the really useful one if you’re travelling without a car. It gives overnight guests free public transport throughout the whole of Salzburg province for the duration of their stay. You can receive it electronically during pre-check-in, so you can use public transport from the point you arrive, rather than having to reach your accommodation first.
⛰️ Großarltal Guest Card: This is the local visitor card for people staying in the Großarl valley. It gives you a range of discounts and included extras around the valley and surrounding area, including reduced summer mountain-lift fares, selected hiking transport and discounts at various attractions. We used ours to get the reduced guest-card fare on the Panoramabahn.
Breakfast at the farm
Breakfast at Aubauer was excellent. We were staying in a self-catering apartment, but breakfast was included with our stay and served downstairs in the farmhouse each morning.
The table was loaded with cheeses, overnight oats with yoghurt, cold meats, savoury spreads, bread, fruit, vegetables and homemade jams, most of it produced either on the farm itself or locally.
The cheese, yoghurt and butter are made directly on the farm or up at the family’s mountain hut (the “Alm” or summer farm), using milk from their own cows. We actually got to see some of that process for ourselves later in our stay when we helped with the milking and made butter up at the Alm.
I’m particularly enthusiastic about this because breakfast is my favorite meal of the day, but it was truly the breakfast of kings – generous, fresh and the perfect fuel for heading into the mountains for the day.
When you’re choosing a farm through Urlaub am Bauernhof, you should check what food is actually included. Breakfast was part of our stay at Aubauer, but that doesn’t mean every farm offers the same arrangement. Some are half board, others are self catering, some offer breakfast like we had, some offer breakfast baskets and some offer room only. The set-up varies from property to property.
What can you actually do on the farm?
One of the nice things about staying at Biobauernhof Aubauer was that there were opportunities to get involved with farm life, but nothing was compulsory!
We still plenty of time “off” to plan our own hikes, or to explore Großarl village and do our own thing. If something was happening on the farm and we fancied joining in, we could.
Animals and everyday farm life
Because we visited in summer, many of Aubauer’s larger animals were actually up at the family’s summer farm in the mountains rather than down at the main farm.
This is traditional in Austria: cows and other livestock spend the warmer months grazing the high mountain pastures, while the farmers are also busy making hay on the fields further down in the valley to feed them through winter.
But there were still opportunities for the kids to feed the rabbits and play with the tiny kitten just outside our apartment, as well as just spend time around the farmhouse, where there was plenty to do.
The garden had a big trampoline, swings and lots of outdoor play equipment, plus table tennis and badminton equipment to borrow, as well as board games indoors. Younger children were particularly well catered for, with Duplo, wooden building blocks, a multitude of ride-on toys and plenty of space to play.
Making hay animals in the barn
On our first afternoon, we were invited into the hay barn to make little animals out of hay, using thread, glue and pipe cleaners. Our farmer Barbara and her eight year old daughter Johanna were there to show us the ropes and help out.
It was a really simple, fun introduction to the farm, and a relaxed way to get to know our hosts (Barbara’s English was excellent by the way).
The activity was really aimed at younger children, although even mine, at 12 and 14, were perfectly happy getting stuck in too. It was really nice just chatting together in the hay barn, surrounded by that distinctive sweet, dusty hay smell, making things with our hands while taking in the sounds, smells and feel of the place.
Our afternoon at Aubauer’s Alm
Our favourite farm experience happened away from the main farmhouse, up at Aubauer’s Alm, or summer mountain farm.
🐄 What exactly is an “Alm”?
An Alm is a high mountain pasture where livestock graze during the warmer months. If you’ve ever read or watched Heidi, that’s a good way of understanding it: the main farmhouse is in the village in the valley, but during summer the animals are taken high into the mountains where there’s fresh grass and meadow to graze.
Whilst the main farm is in the valley, farmers or members of the family may spend lots of time up at the Alm looking after the animals, milking the cows and making things like cheese, yoghurt and butter.
Back down at the main farm, there’s work to do too, including mowing and drying the hay from their lower fields, that will feed the animals once they return from the mountains and live in the barn over the winter months.
Those scenes of cows grazing beside a little wooden hut high in the Alps are real: Moving livestock up to the high pastures for summer is a long-established part of Alpine farming.
That’s exactly how it worked at Aubauer. Our apartment and the main farmhouse were down in the Großarl Valley, but during our stay many of the animals were still up at the family’s Alm. To meet the cows, help with milking and see how their milk was turned into butter, we had to head up into the mountains too.
We took Barbara’s advice, and rather than getting a lift to the summer farm in her car (which she had offered too, knowing we were car-free), we took one of Großarl’s summer cable cars and hiked around 8 km through the mountains to meet Barbara at the Alm. We needed to be there at 4pm for the evening milking, so we had all day to get there.
The cable car, hike and our food along the way were things I organised ourselves, rather than part of the farm activity, but this day is a great example of how you can fit in your own activities alongside the farm organised ones.
Hiking to Aubauer’s Summer Farm (the Aualm)
We took the Panoramabahn gondola from Großarl up to the top station, then followed the ridge all the way across to Aualm. Our full route is on Komoot: it was 7.25 km and took us just over four hours, which included a really good lunch stop at Wolke 7, at the top of the Kieserlbahn gondola.
For a shorter hike without finishing at the Aualm, you can finish at Wolke 7 and take the Kieserlbahn back down to Großarl instead. This is known as the Himmelsroute (Sky Route). You still get the ridge walk from the top of the Panoramabahn, (which does include a pretty steep climb at the start), but without the longer final section to Aualm.
Or you can do the whole walk backwards from the Kieserlbahn to the Panoramabahn. There are fun things en route like marble runs and swings, and an “adventure lake” (the Himmelreichsee), and it makes a really good point-to-point mountain hike in its own right for families who fancy something slightly less strenuous. There’s also a separate sensory trail nearby too; great for kids.
The full hike to the Aualm had around 480 m of ascent and 520 m of descent. There are some pretty steep climbs along the way, but the views are fantastic and there are places to stop and play en route, so it worked really well with my reasonably experienced 12- and 14-year-old hikers.
A one-way trip on both sections of the Panoramabahn cost us €29 for an adult, reduced to €26 with the Großarltal guest card, and €13 for children aged 6–15. Do check the current lift opening days and times before planning this hike: the lifts don’t run every day throughout the summer, there are seasonal closures and services can also be cancelled because of weather.
Helping out at the Aualm
Once we arrived at the Aualm, we had a few minutes to refresh ourselves with a large drink, and then we got properly involved.
First we were able to give the pigs a good scratch. Then we headed out with Barbara to help round up the dairy cows from the mountain pastures and bring them back for milking. They weren’t too far away, luckily!
We then helped them into the barn and three at a time came through to the milking parlour.
The kids helped the farmer fill the trough with some food, and then we watched as the cows were attached to the milking machines, while Barbara explained everything we were seeing.
Then, we were shown how the fresh milk is separated into skimmed milk and cream, before we used the cream to make butter in a manual butter churn. This took a certain amount of elbow grease!
We then washed the butter in water, and pressed it into little patties using a traditional butter mould.
We took ours back to the apartment afterwards and put it in the fridge, to use for our scrambled eggs which we ate on our last evening!
It also put all the wonderful breakfast ingredients into context. The cows we’d just helped milk were producing the milk used to make all of the cheese, yoghurt and butter we’d been eating back at the farmhouse.
If you’re car free like we were, it’s worth arranging your return from the Alm with Barbara in advance. It’s a long way to walk back down to the valley, and she will happily give guests a lift back when she’s heading down herself, provided there’s space in the car and the timing works. We’d arranged this with her, so after our afternoon with the cows she drove us back down to the valley.
Stick bread around the fire
On another evening, we joined the other guests at Aubauer to make stick bread around the campfire out in the garden. We wrapped strips of dough around long sticks and held them over the flames until the outside was golden (or black in my children’s case) and the bread was cooked through.
The dough that Barbara made was delicious – miles away from the heavy lump of bread I’ve had before over a campfire! It was incredibly light and fluffy, with delicious fennel seeds mixed through it for flavour.
And once the bread was cooked, we pulled it off the stick, leaving a hole down the middle just the right size for one of Aubauer’s own sausages, produced from their own livestock.
It was a simple and sociable activity, especially since we’d been out doing our own thing all day, and I think that sums up the way activities are set up on the farm: there were things to join in with most days if we wanted, but our holiday wasn’t organised for us from breakfast until bedtime.
Is an Austrian farm stay good with teenagers?
I’d stayed on Austrian farms myself as a child, and we’d previously taken our own kids on a farm holiday in Austria when they were much younger. This time, though, they were 12 and 14. Would they still be interested in feeding rabbits and pottering around a farm, or had we missed the boat?
For mine, the answer was definitely yes, but the things they enjoyed had changed.
What worked for my 12 and 14 year olds
At this age, it wasn’t really the toys or organised children’s activities that made the farm work for them (although these would be a huge added bonus for younger kids).
It was being able to get involved in proper farm life, as well as having access to the mountains for our own days out.
Heading up to the summer farm, rounding up the cows, helping out with milking and then making butter from the cream was interesting for all of us (including me!) rather than being activities designed specifically to entertain children.
There was also enough around the farm for them to entertain themselves. The trampoline was still used, and table tennis and badminton worked well for those gaps when we were hanging around at the farm. Plus everyone loves a campfire evening!
Having our own apartment helped too – it gave us plenty of space to spread out, rather than all being wedged into one hotel room for three nights.
But I think the other reason our farm stay worked so well at this age was everything we could do beyond the farm.
We went hiking in the mountains, rode the gondolas, stopped at mountain huts, swam at Großarl’s outdoor pool and visited Hallein Salt Mine. And we missed out on plenty of other activities available (like tandem paragliding, rafting, canyoning, mountain biking and mountain karting!) because we just didn’t have the time to do it all!
The farm was our base and part of the holiday, rather than the only entertainment on offer.
What is better for younger children?
There was loads at Aubauer that I think younger children would get even more mileage from. There were ride-on toys, Duplo and building blocks, board games, outdoor play equipment, trampolines and rabbits, kittens and chickens to visit around the farm.
The hay animal making activity would be particularly lovely with younger kids too.
And I know from experience that Austrian farm holidays can work brilliantly at all ages. We first took our children on one when they were much younger, along with their little cousin (spanning the ages of 3 to 10), and they all loved it.
Look closely at the individual farm when you’re booking. Urlaub am Bauernhof isn’t one standard product; it’s an umbrella organisation for many different farms which happen to welcome guests.
Each property offers different animals, facilities and activities. If horse riding is the thing your child desperately wants to do, for example, choose a farm that specifically offers it.
For us, Biobauernhof Aubauer hit a really nice middle ground. We were able get close to the animals and get a real feel for the way farmers in these regions live and make a living; there was plenty for younger families to do, but also enough farm involvement to keep my 12 and 14 year olds interested. Being within walking distance of the village and cable cars – and all the off-farm activities that offered – was key too.
Things to do around Großarl with kids
One of the reasons Biobauernhof Aubauer worked so well for us was that we had a nice mix of farm activities and independent outdoor fun which we just organised ourselves.
Großarl is a brilliant summer base for an outdoorsy family, with mountain lifts, hiking trails, huts, swimming and plenty to do within easy reach of the farm, and not over touristy either. (We didn’t hear another English voice the whole time we were away)!
We packed quite a lot into three nights, unsurprisingly. I’m planning to write a separate Großarl with kids guide with much more detail, but these are some of the things that worked particularly well alongside our farm stay.
Hiking in the Großarl Valley
There is a huge amount of hiking around Großarl, from relatively gentle family walks to proper multi-day mountain routes.
On this trip, as well as our ridge hike to Aubauer’s Alm, which we accessed using the Panoramabahn gondola, we also did a 10 km circular mountain hut hike that was great for me and my bigger kids, but would also work brilliantly for smaller kids split over two days, staying in one of the mountain huts overnight.
For families who fancy trying their first overnight hut hike, this would would be a fantastic first experience – and all the huts are incredibly child friendly, with playgrounds, mini petting zoos and mud kitchens.
I’m going to write this particular route up separately, so I won’t reproduce all the details here, but the we accessed the trailhead on bus 541 to Grundlehen, which runs once an hour, and there are quite a few hikes you could do from there.
I’ve also previously done a longer 3 day hut to hut hike from the Großarl Valley with adult friends, not with kids, although strong hiking kids and teens could definitely manage it. If sleeping in mountain huts appeals, that post gives you a much better idea of what a multi-day route here can look like.
Hiking from the summer lifts
The summer gondolas make the mountains considerably more accessible with children because you can dispense with the long slog out of the valley and start walking higher up.
There are two gondolas in Großarl, and their valley stations are almost next door to one another, however they diverge as they head up the mountain, so their top stations are about a 4km walk away from each other.
This means you can use both gondolas together – up one and down another – to hike between the two. There are play stops and activities around the mountain, including marble runs, swings and sensory trails. You can read more about this here.
Just remember to check lift operating days and seasonal opening dates before planning your walk, as they don’t always run every day.
Großarl outdoor swimming pool
After all that hiking, we also spent most of a day at Großarl’s outdoor swimming pool, which was around a 20-minute walk from Aubauer.
Austrian outdoor pools are just the best. The pool is stainless-steel, so it feels incredibly clean and well looked after. There is a waterslide, bubbles and separate areas for smaller children, as well as a diving pool with a couple of sprung diving boards (one of which is pretty high)! There’s also a proper restaurant there, so you can have a good lunch too.
The entrance cost €13 total for one adult and two children when we visited. Our guest card didn’t give us a discount but it still felt like a complete bargain!
Großarl village and playgrounds
Großarl itself is small enough to explore easily on foot. From our farm, we could walk into the village in around 25–30 minutes along the foot and cycle path, which was really pleasant (no hugging the verge on the main road)!
Rucki Zucki’s Gaudialm is a large – and very impressive – adventure playground in the village, with plenty of things to climb on and play with, including go-karts, goats and a mini lake with rafts!
It’s another reason I think the area works particularly well if you have children of different ages: you can combine proper mountain days with much easier afternoons close to your accommodation.
There are also shops and restaurants in Großarl, so you don’t need to arrive with loads of provisions – there are supermarkets, restaurants and cafes to keep you going!
Hallein Salt Mine
We actually visited Hallein Salt Mine on our way from Salzburg to Großarl rather than as a day trip from the farm, and it worked really well as a stop en route, but you could definitely make it a day trip too.
You kit yourselves up in a white boiler suite, then travel deep into the mountain on a little mine train, cross underground into Germany, hurtle down miners’ slides and take a boat across an underground salt lake. It was so much fun!
I’m writing a separate guide to this, which I’ll link when I have it!
Getting to this farm stay near Salzburg without a car
We did this entire part of our Austrian trip without a car, and Großarl was super easy to reach and get around.
I’ve marked the main stops on the map below, from Salzburg and Hallein through to Großarl and Grundlehen, where we started one of our mountain hikes. Click on each marker to see what we did there and how it fitted into the trip.
Travelling to Austria by overnight train
We travelled from the UK by train, taking the Eurostar from London to Brussels and then the overnight sleeper from Brussels to Salzburg.
It meant we could get all the way from London to the Austrian Alps without flying, and the sleeper train also saved us a hotel night along the way. I’m writing a separate post about the whole journey, including what the sleeper cabins are actually like, breakfast on board and the practicalities of doing it with kids, so I’ll link that here once it’s live.
Salzburg to Großarl by public transport
The main railway station for the Großarl Valley is St. Johann im Pongau, about 50 minutes from Salzburg on the train. From there, bus 540 runs into the valley, connecting St. Johann with Großarl in about 20 minutes. The bus is a tiny bit winding, but my kids are a bit prone to car sickness, and they were totally fine.
The particularly useful bit is the Guest Mobility Ticket I mentioned earlier in this post. Overnight guests in SalzburgerLand can currently use public transport across the region free of charge for the duration of their stay, including regional buses and trains. Ask your accommodation to issue the ticket during pre-check-in, so that it is valid from the point you arrive in SalzburgerLand.
Once you’re in Großarl, public transport is useful for hiking too. Bus 540 continues through the valley towards Hüttschlag, while bus 541 heads up the Ellmautal towards Grundlehen. We used the latter to reach the starting point for one of our hikes. There are also hiking taxis for trailheads that aren’t served by the buses.
Do you need a car?
We certainly didn’t. Between the buses, trains, summer lifts and our own feet, we managed everything we wanted to do during our three-night stay.
From Aubauer, we could walk into Großarl in around 25–30 minutes on the foot and cycle path. That gave us access to the village, swimming pool, restaurants and mountain lifts without needing to arrange transport every time we left the farm. If you had very small kids, that wouldn’t be the quickest of walks though – so depending on how good your kids are at walking, a car might be useful.
Having a car would also obviously give you more flexibility, particularly if you wanted to explore lots of different places outside the valley and further afield. If you’re happy using public transport and doing a fair amount of walking though, a car-free stay here is perfectly doable.
For us, though, being able to arrive by overnight train and then spend several days hiking, swimming, exploring the valley and staying on a working farm without needing a car was a pretty good advert for the ease of exploring Austria by public transport.
Practical things to know before booking Aubauer
A few things worth knowing before you book:
- Check what’s happening during your dates. Farm life changes with the seasons, and in summer many of the animals may be up at the Alm rather than at the main farmhouse. If there’s something you particularly want to do, don’t assume it will automatically be running.
- Check the mountain lifts too. If hiking is part of your plan, look at operating days and seasonal opening dates before booking, particularly in the shoulder seasons.
- You can manage without a car. We did, but you’ll need to be happy walking and using buses. If you want to visit the summer farm without your own transport, arrange this with Barbara beforehand.
- The apartment is properly self-catering. The kitchen was extremely well equipped, so cooking for ourselves was easy when we didn’t want to eat out. Supermarkets in the village were large with a lot of variety.
- Three nights worked well for us, although I would have preferred a week for more time for hiking and exploring the valley.
For current prices, availability and exactly what’s included during your dates, I’d check Biobauernhof Aubauer’s listing on Urlaub am Bauernhof before booking.
Would we stay on an Austrian farm again?
Absolutely. I loved Austrian farm holidays as a child, and I enjoy them just as much now as an adult!
What I like is that the experience has changed as my children have grown up. When they were younger, simply being able to wander outside, find the animals and play around the farm was enough.
This time, they could properly get involved: rounding up cows, milking, making butter, hiking across the mountains to the Alm and generally being more active and independent.
And it’s definitely not just fun for the kids. I love the mountains and the animals, but I also love simply being around the farm. As a relative townie these days, even the smell of the barns and hay makes me happy, and I genuinely enjoy getting stuck into the farm jobs when I get the chance.
A farm stay near Salzburg can work really well as part of a bigger Austrian adventure. We had the farm experience, but we also had proper mountain hikes, swimming, gondolas and a salt mine, (and of course you could visit Salzburg itself as well!) and we managed the whole thing without a car.
If that sounds like your family’s sort of holiday, have a look through the farm stays available through Urlaub am Bauernhof and see what suits you. There are hundreds to choose from across Austria, so you can pick the farm, region and activities that fit your family.
🐝 Read more: More family adventures in Austria
Planning more time in Austria? These are good places to go next:
An Unforgettable Family Farm Holiday to Austria
See what an Austrian farm holiday looked like when my kids were younger, and how it compared with returning with tweens and teens.
Wagrain with Kids: What to Do, Where to Stay and More
Another brilliant SalzburgerLand base for a family summer holiday (only 35 mins drive from Großarl), with mountains, lifts and plenty to do outdoors.
Cycle Touring with Kids in Austria & Italy
If you fancy seeing Austria on two wheels instead, this is my guide to getting started with family cycle touring – try the gently downhill river routes in Austria – they are fantastic!
Family Friendly Hut to Hut Hiking Near Salzburg
A three-day Alpine adventure if staying in a mountain hut sounds even more appealing than staying on a farm – or add it on to your adventure!
