Adapting to climate change on alpine pastures requires finding flexibility at different levels. The articulation between the alpine pasture and the farms is where potential solutions might be activated. Yet research focusing on alpine pasture management usually considers the farm as a black box. The use of an alpine pasture – which is sometimes collective – nevertheless lends a number of specific characteristics to livestock farming systems. The distance between the alpine pasture and the farmsteads, the mixing up of herds/flocks, the necessary collective organisation, as well as the challenges stemming from the multiple use of these collective spaces, must be taken into account in an analysis of these systems. We propose the concept of the Alpine Pasture-Farms System to analyse the consequences of these specific characteristics in analyses at farm level and to gain a better understanding of interactions between the alpine pasture and farms.