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Due to the extreme altitude of its galleries, between 2,000 and 2,500 metres above sea level, Schneeberg depended more than other villages on food supplies from the outside world, at lower altitudes. At Schneeberg itself, the only cultivated plant which grew in sheltered spots was chives (Allium schoenoprasum). Cows, goats and sheep only found adequate grazing from July until early September, on the meadows which still today belong to the mine. As well as chamois, which the miners were allowed to hunt without restriction, thanks to the ancient privilege granted by the local prince, they could fish a limited quantity of char from the Schwarzsee (‘black lake’) of Schneeberg, at an altitude of 2,600 m.
If we calculate that there were 1000 people working at Schneeberg at the peak of its fame, around 1500, we can only try to imagine the high costs of supplying food to the village. The main foodstuffs were meat, rich in protein, and cereals like rye, wheat, buckwheat, oats, barley and millet. Already in 1486 (on the Saturday after St. Matthew’s Day), one Wastian Mezger was authorized to open a butcher’s shop at Schneeberg, shown in the view of 1556 (the foundations still exist, above the present-day miners’ village). Meat arrived, of course, still ‘on the hoof’, in the form of living beasts, mainly driven to Schneeberg from Hungary and Styria through the Pustertal, and were not taxed on the way. In 1553, there were more than 300 animals; in 1559, about 250 Hungarian oxen; and about 150 animals annually from 1591. They were brought to Schneeberg in spring and allowed to graze, before being gradually butchered and eaten, since in full summer the need for meat was at its peak. The rest of the herd was killed in autumn, before fodder had to be purchased, and preserved. Methods of preserving meat were simple: it was kept under salt, in cold galleries, frozen in winter, and smoked. After 1620 the consumption of meat gradually fell as the mine became poorer. Meat became too expensive, and the people mainly ate cereals. Dairy products and fresh milk, the third main source of food, were brought daily to Schneeberg in winter months from Saltnuss, the nearest permanent settlement in Passeier. In summer, the meadows near the mine supplied these products. Other fats (like butter and lard) and cheese mainly came from the nearby Oetztal through the Timmelsjoch.
After 1874, when the railway was opened, the supply of food and other products was of course greatly simplified. Goods reached Schneeberg in return for ore, which was sent down to Maiern to be enriched. In 1924, this task was taken over by the cableway. In this way, it was possible to receive fresh food at the mine nearly every day – and hungry shepherds’ children used to await the passage of the cable-cars on the Schneebergscharte from seven in the morning onwards, in order to snatch a piece of bread from the wagon as it passed, grateful for a little extra food.
The mine owners had already clearly understood that trading in foodstuffs and other useful goods represented a further source of earnings deriving from mining. A substantial part of the workers’ salaries was thus paid in the form of foodstuffs, material for lighting (tallow, oil, wax), equipment and clothing. This system of payment was called Pfennwert. The rest of the salaries was paid in cash. In time, the miners came to depend increasingly on their employers’ arbitrary policy of supplying essentials, since throughout the Tyrol, at the height of mining, food was scarce and even meat and fats had to be imported in large quantities from nearby villages. The mine owners thus indirectly ‘squeezed’ salaries by raising the prices of these natural goods, and also profited as much as they could from the caravans of draught animals, which returned unladen from the Inn valley, to transport food to Schneeberg. The largest property owners from the Inn valley, the Tänzl and Stöckl families and the Flam from Sterzing, made huge profits in this way, as did the Fuggers and the prince’s mining company. Speculation on foodstuffs and the sale of poor-quality products at high prices were the order of the day. Naturally, complaints and protests by the miners up in the mountains rapidly followed. The extreme reactions of the miners, aware of their importance as specialized and highly sought-after workers, were ‘suspension of work’ (strikes) or even the definitive abandon of one mine and transfer to another one. In all the mining regulations, from 1427 until the Austrian state law on mines, considerable attempts were obviously made by the local princes to regulate the trading of goods and to control fair prices. But prohibitions, injunctions and the application of standard prices were short-lived, since political and economic changes, wars, inflation and poor harvests, even if they occurred in nearby towns, changed the entire complex of environmental conditions, often for long periods of time.
Until the restoration of the state mining industry in 1871, when all salaries were paid in cash, payment for work in the form of ‘goods in kind’ remained a permanent source of bitter controversy.

The ore carrier Josef Schafer
Recollections by his grandson, Reinhold Schafer (1904-1992):
‘From 1880 until 1928, my grandfather Josef and later my uncle Heinrich hauled ore along the mine road from St. Martin am Schneeberg to the railway station at Sterzing, using horses. In the last two years, after the cableway came into use, they only carried ore from Mareit to Sterzing.
On the return journey, they brought food for the working people, and kept large supplies at Maiern and Schneeberg. At St. Martin, thanks to a licence from the town authorities at Rabenstein in Passeier, they managed a grocer’s shop and, sometimes, also the hotel. As the miners were only paid very irregularly by the Austrian state, my grandfather was allowed to mint his own money in silver and copper, so that the miners could pay him for their purchases of food.
Unfortunately, in the 1950s, I destroyed the heavy carts, reinforced with pieces of iron, and the sledges, which were still kept near the ancestral Schafer farm, and recovered from them about eleven tons of metal, which I sold as scrap’.