Today we were welcomed again by a happy sun and cool breeze – perfect weather for the day's first mission – to pick more weeds for the evening’s dinner as well as to preserve (via freezer) for later in the season. Unsure of what the name in English is (and at the moment I can’t even recall the Swedish name) these herbs were housed with many tasty others. Imagine a place where moss grows on rotting stumps, wild peas flowers taste of the most purest flavor, and strawberry plants await their fruiting cue. This is urnatur, and this is where we were finding tonight’s salad. Both alex and I felt as though we had stepped into some fantastical land where we were free to be the scavenging animals that we once were.
Then it was time or a lunch break!
pictured: lunch - weed and spinach salad with walnuts, artichokes, and brie
The second mission for the day is one that will continue into tomorrow and actually started yesterday – to build a new, traditional style Swedish fence from two types of trees: juniper (the vertical posts), spruce trunks (the horizontal “fence”), and spruce branches (what holds it all together. In order to prepare the wood for fencing, lots and lots of axing was needed. And having never used an axe before, alex and I naturally weren’t the best woodsmen. But after sharpening a few juniper posts into what looked like really big pencils, we started to get better and better. And later on we had to remove all branches sticking out from the spruce branches with a gentle glide of the axe. What’s really neat is that tomorrow we will heat the now nearly naked spruce branches in order to make them flexible – thus able to be used like rope and hold the fence together. Crazy old ways!
pictured: alex taking a swim in the lake
pictured: mini island adventure - bird's eggs // alex with boat // mossy green things
pictured: alex's first row boat excursion
Then it was time for an after work break, including a row in a canoe (alex’s first) and a dip in the lake (an alex only adventure).
Then it was time for dinner!
pictured: dinner - alex's vegetarian dinner // lamb from the farm (one of the tastiest meats i've ever had // rhubarb pie for dessert
We are so lucky.
pictured: alex showing off his "working muscle" (apparently what all farmers have)
are you eating meat over there??
ReplyDeleteha. i guess so. so far i've had fish three times and lamb once. the lamb was grown on the land here and was the best thing ever. but i still felt a little bad. and my tummy felt a little worse.
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