Zapfensteiger
The profession of Zapfensteigers is a former apprenticeship. In 2011 there were still around a hundred cone climbers in Germany who, for example , are being trained in a paid, one-week course at the Nagold State Cycles in Baden-Württemberg . A health clearance certificate must be renewed every two years.
The task of the cone climber is to use a certain technique to climb the conifers to the crowns when they are ripe and to collect the fruits for seed production.
The cone climbers use crampons , safety harnesses and use special rope climbing techniques to get to the valuable seeds. At work they are secured with a tether. They pick cones from the branches with telescopic tongs and collect them in a sack. The not fully mature cones are up to the full maturity of seeds in particular Darren dried. With the help of this technique, a high quality harvest is achieved, which is not achieved by picking up the cones from the ground because of losses from animal feeding or scattering by the wind. The seeds are used to raise trees. In the Freiburg city forest, the mostly freelance cone pickers, who usually spend the night in the forest, regularly harvest the still green Douglas fir cones .
This profession was practiced in the GDR until 1985.
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Markus Schleufe: Cone picker: Only genuine with a cone picker ID. ZEIT ONLINE, August 22, 2011, accessed on August 27, 2020 .
- ↑ BZ editorial team: Two million cones are a record. Badische Zeitung, August 27, 2020, accessed on August 27, 2020 .
Web links
- Zapfensteiger ( Memento from October 6, 2018 in the Internet Archive )