May 6th

Hanna, Jorge and I live in this house--it was here when Anders' parents lived here, over 50 years ago!

The sun sets around 10, rises around 4

Aaaand here begins my tale

Hanna and I are sitting at the kitchen table now. She is flipping through Jorge’s Spanish dictionary, I am writing on my laptop. Jorge is cooking, and we were just talking to Jorge about his first dumpstering experience. Jorge is so great—he is the most humble, nicest, hardest working guy ever. My nose is going crazy with all the dirt and dust around here but I’m all whatever, ya digg? Larson is a useless lump of hair, but slightly endearing. Today he played dj with my ipod while Hanna and I cleaned the kitchen.

“Do you have Pink Martini?”

“Yes…but you have my ipod…why don’t you check?”

“I don’t want to scroll down to the p’s..”

“Yes, I have Pink Martini.”
“They are super Spanish.”

“…(in this moment I contemplated throwing the mold-covered cheese plate I was washing at Larson’s face)”

Larson begins playing Elohai N’Tzor, a song in Hebrew

“Super Spanish.”

It was hard not to laugh.

Today I sorted through vegetables, peeling off dirty/moldy bits and composting rancid cabbages/carrots/celery roots. It doesn’t sound glamorous now that I wrote it out, but it was fantastic. Sitting in the sun with a bag of produce and a dull knife. Part of the time I sorted through vegetables with Dan. He talked more about working in Greece and we discussed veganism a little. Dan said 1/3 of what is produced is thrown away. Next year I’m going to try dumpstering, at least a little. I also plan on subscribing to CSA baskets, and Hanna and I talked about finding a place in the house to store cabbage and potatoes. Even if my dumpstering/sustainable habits don’t stick, I may be able to write a story about my adventures for the Beacon in the Fall:
 “I went in the dumpster at New Seasons!” Hard-hitting journalism, folks.

I helped spread horse shit in the new greenhouse today. Hanan and Jorge loaded up wheelbarrows of horse shit and I spread the horse shit along the rows of raised earth. The horse shit didn’t smell bad at all. We will finish spreading the horse shit in the second half of the greenhouse tomorrow.

HORSE SHIT.

Hanna and I tried to make ice cream out of some of the expired milk here. It was DELICIOUS, except it never thickened into actual ice cream, so it was more like sweet chocolate milk with a pungent aftertaste. Will make more tomorrow. Such a treat!...seriously.

In the late morning I went to deliver some orders to a preschool with Anders. Anders is awesome. I will have to put up a picture so you can see what I am trying to describe. He’s old enough that any hard personality traits that he may once have had have softened and sagged along with his face skin. We dropped off the potatoes and beets at the Waldorf school and then drove to the store. Anders has diabetes and today was my fourth day on the farm.

The Swedest thing

Best crotch shot ever

Le Han

bertz

Greasy hair

bed

The Loo

First night at the farm

LOOK at that sky

...

As you can see, the farm is pretty picturesque. I'll get some shots of our fellow farmers/other stuff later. yay!

May 5th

May 5^th Sundays start at 10:00 am. Karin and Anders do a prayer/mediation/guru-inspired thing at 8 am in the main house, which Hanna and I were supposed to attend, but we slept until 8:30. I made a grilled cheese for breakfast and it was so.frickin’.good. Hanna made potatoes--a common theme in The Brain’s life.

After breakfast Hanna went off to do the watering, and I went with Dan (who had nettle-soup for bfast) to sort onions. The farm does CSA baskets in the community, as well as vegetable deliveries to two preschools, so they are always making up orders for something. Dan talked a lot about hitchhiking, farming in Spain, working on a boat in Greece, and sustainability. He is a very interesting person. Then we had Fika, and I started preparing lunch. Hanna was my helper today and we made rice and curried vegetables. SO good. Top it off with a little homemade yogurt and nettle-soup and voila! a delicious lunch for the troupe.  

Did dishes. Hanna went out to do her last round of watering. Washed some clothes in our sink. Washed potatoes with Dan and moved them. We’re going down to the lake in a moment—wish it was warm enough to swim as it is day 3 no bathing.

May 3 & 4

May 3^rd the walk to the lake was lovely, and the lake is beautiful! I went with Hanna, Jorge and Larson—quite an eclectic clan were we. Jorge is 35, from Madrid. He’s incredibly patient and humble and kind and a good worker and Hanna and I LOVE him. Larson was born within a half-year of Hanna and I, he’s from Portland and hates working…most of the time I want to roll my eyes at him, but Hanna and I love him all the same. The lake is very calm. Everything here is so quiet. Hanna and I may take a row boat out on a nice day. It stays light here until 10 pm (well, I assume as much, I crash every night by 9). Oh! And I tended to the fire, which heats water that is circulated around the houses—I was responsible for the fire until I went to bed. Fun!

May 4^th I watered the greenhouses and helped make lunch with Karin. I did the dishes and then watered one of the greenhouses again. The first round of watering took a good 2 ½ hours. In one of the greenhouses with onion sprouts we have to use water mixed with “chicken shit pellets”. This meant I had a long quest for chicken shit. Never have I desired to find chicken shit so badly. Never have I said ‘chicken shit’ so often.

“Hanna have you seen the chicken shit?”

“The chicken shit is in the greenhouse.”

“Which one? There wasn’t any chicken shit in this building.”
“One sec, I’ll help you find the chicken shit.”

CHICKEN SHIT.

Hanna made curried potatoes for dinner. Yummm. I ate it with some nettle soup and homemade yogurt. The yogurt was made from milk that had been salvaged from a dumpster by Dan (pronounced Dawn). This brings me to dumpstering…

DUMPSTERING! The event in which Dan (see below) goes in a dumpster and finds food and other items for the farm. Well, I guess that’s it.

DAN! A 25 yr old man who look like a 13 year old boy. He has one pair of socks, but don’t worry! he’s knitting a second pair. Dan is vegan, unless it comes from a dumpster. Dan sleeps in a tent by the farm instead of the available room here. Dan has the piercing blue eyes of a Siberian Tiger and wants to know why you used so much water. Dan, Hanna and I have determined, is pure. Hence the Dan-Purity-Level (see Gundi-Cankle Level), a scale by which to base the purest of the pure. Britta water filter? That’s Dan purity level. Dirty dish? Dan will lick his clean! Fantastic.

I pooped in the woods today!

General info

Sweden

General Sched:

7:30 wake-up

breakfast

8:00 Anders comes

8:30 begin work

11:00 Fika! (break)

11:15 back to work

1:00 lunch

1:45 back to work

3:30 work is done!

Whatever we want…

9 pm bed (at the latest)

Our room is pretty clean. Our bathroom is a terrifying tunnel with a toilet at the end. You can’t flush the toilet, so Hanna and I drink a lot of water so our pee won’t be gross. Throw the toilet paper away in the grocery bag, will ya? Hanna put the t.p. in the toilet twice out of habit. The level of cleanliness here is a bit low. My immune system should get a nice workout over the next 2 weeks. No chemicals to clean with of course, and a lot of water conservation means some interesting utensils/toilets/floors/etc. It’s kind of cool, though—a little grunge never hurt anyone. Except people who die from disease and stuff. Hanna and I are trying to wait until the 9^th to shower. This means 8 days without bathing. Intense, considering this conversation today:

Hanna: “Did you get your hair…never mind”

Me: “No, say it.”

Hanna: “Nothing!”

Me: “What about my hair?!”
Hanna: “I was going to ask if you got it wet, but then I realized…”

Me: “…”

Basically all the food we eat here is from the farm or a dumpster. Cabbage, beets, potatoes, and homemade milk products (cheese, yogurt, milk). They also bake their own bread here, so there are delicious loaves of bread to be had.

The wifi in the main house is incredibly fast. It’s a little funny coming from a university with relatively no online-abilities to a farm with super-fast internet.

Karin and Anders own the farm. Karin is from New York, has lived in Sweden since the 70’s, she sculpts, does astrology, homeopathic healing, folk dances, she plays the piano and can talk for hours. She also asks this little glass bead questions like, “Do we have enough noodles?” and takes it’s movement as an answer. We’ll come back to this later. Anders is a Swede. He is fabulous. Big mustache, white hair. Incredibly strong for being in his late 60’s (?), very quiet. He speaks slowly and HANNA AND I LOVE HIM.

Sweden

Sadelvagen? Skadelvagen? Sadkelvagen? Despite street names like these, Hanna and I were able to find our farm relatively easily. It is AWESOME (besides lacking a working toilet/some electricity...but that kind of makes it better).

Today Hanna and I re-planted sprouted winter squash and New England pumpkin plants into bigger pots, made lunch for our fellow farmers (including Jorge from Spain, Larson from Portland (!), and Dan, a Swede), then we helped weed a greenhouse. Now is free time (we're going to the lake nearby) and then probably an early bed. Ahhh, Sewden-pastoral-utopia-without a toilet.

Hanna and I keep thinking/talking about our Salzburg family, though. Michelle, for instance would LOVE to talk with Karin our host. I had a dream last night that Kieran was on the farm (that would be hilarious), and we decided Katie Stanley would improve the farm's organization within the week. Sigh. I am going to miss the Salzburg dynamic, but for now I am LOVING the quiet, slow-paced farm atmosphere.

More updates later. I can't even begin to describe the farm/our hosts--ok, well I guess I can:
The farm-rather small, all organic, cozy and a little unorganized. Welcoming and homey.
Our hosts-Karin is from New York...leavingow-more later!