a week with Marco the goat farmer

Up in the hills of the Emilia-Romagna region in Italy there lies a farm. On this farm there are several beautifully-dilapidated stone houses, about 200 chocolate-colored-brown goats, and the farmer Marco, a crazy young Italian man who transforms his goats' milk into the most delicious cheese. For the past 10 days Erik and I have been wwoofing on his farm. WWOOF is an organization which brings organic farmers who need some extra help in touch with folks who are seeking an adventure in agriculture and who want to have free room and board. (for more about wwoof check out: http://www.wwoof.it/gb/about.html)

I regret not writing about my last week in Sweden, which was spent on a beautiful tiny island called Fårö, pictured below:

I spent a lovely 10 days there with Erik's family, seeing a place so near to his heart, where he has spent nearly a month of every summer since he was born.

But now, Itlay. We flew directly from the island to Milano, then took a train to Bologna. From there we took a bus to the tiny town of San Prospero, though we nearly didn't make it since our bus driver seemed to have never heard of the town. We were helplessly lacking in the Itlalian language when we arrived and are faring only a bit better now. I do feel a bit ashamed at not preparing for this HUGE part of being in another country, called communication, yet i suppose i say my excuse was a busy spring and the fact that i'm still plugging away at my 2nd language, Swedish. So we arrived in the evening at the bus stop, got picked up by another wwoofer, and saw the farm for the first time....it is extremly picturesque as to be expected. By the end of our first evening here, we knew we were in for a good time. Before Marco got home from market, we munched on fresh bread with several kinds of goat cheese to choose from, local wine, and sweet, seasonal fruit. (finally i'm eating peaches again!!) Marco came home bringing with him another wwoofer, Emily from New Zeeland, who arrived the same evening. He gave us a friendly hello, told us to eat and drink whatever we wanted, then turned up The Police in the kitchen and made us a late-dinner of amazing pasta, bitter salad greens, tomatoes....yum. And chocolate and grappa to finish off the meal. Erik and I only had to give each other a knowing glance during the night to say, "cool.....this is going to be great."

Well, of course we have worked. We have taken turns milking about 120 goats 2x a day. We have helped make cheese, mowed the grass, cleared in the forest, weeded the vegetable garden. We have become dirty and goaty at the end of the days, but in between all this work we have laughed, ate the most delicious meals in the world (have i forgotten to say that the 2 other wwoofers are basically professional chefs?!), and taken long siestas.....so long we almost wonder if we're being lazy, then we look for the others and realize everyone is sleeping. :) The Italians are wonderful people. Full of expression, emotion, chaos....everything that the Swedes aren't. It is a refreshing change, though a little tough to get used to hearing them explode at one another, but when they make up and laugh after 3 mintues we realize maybe it's just one of those billions of cultural differences that exist between people on this earth.

A lot has happened during 10 days, but we're told it's been a typical week. Here is some of the drama that has unfolded: I cut my eye (it's better now), Carlo the worker got a nail through his foot, the dog Tommy (the sweetest, biggest, gentle giant in the world.....we love you tommy!!!) had his tail run over while taking his siesta under the market van, we threw a party for 100 of Marco's farmer friends, making homemade, brick oven pizza, listening to italian folk music, and trying out some traditional dancing. and drinking lots of wine. To continue....the inspectors came to check the cheese room so we spent a frantic day cleaning to pass inspection, the pipe broke yesterday which takes the milk to the cheese making room (do we have a word for this in english?) and all 300 liters of milk was lost, Marco's extended family stayed for 2 days and we served food for 14, and....well, that's all I can think of for now.

We are leaving today for a second farm 2 hours from here, going west heading towards the coast. We hope it can live up to our high expectations we have now, and we hope we are offered as much wine and grappa, and homemade gellato. We will miss the goats, and Marco and his crew and remember them fondly.....ciao!!

Spring soup: a recipe

I realize all of you gardeners out there reading this are far ahead of me in the harvest....i am aware i'm only just now enjoying what your tongues tasted weeks ago. I heard a report yesterday that the Wrights in SC are enjoying zuccinni. yes, those days in the 90s certainly help. Nevertheless, i was in the garden yesterday evening, thoroughly loving the cool evening air and the quiet (Sweden was playing a fotball match against Greece in the European finals and every person in the country was glued to their tv but me), and I was inspired to cook a soup from my small though exciting growing garden. There is no need to wait for the big showy veggies of summer like tomatoes and squash to enjoy your garden. As I filled an empty pot with the greens and herbs I picked, the smell was intoxicating....the essence of spring. Here is the recipe, and maybe you who are in warmer climates can store this in your memory for next year

Spring Soup

1. Go out to the garden and harvest what you can of any green or herb. Even if the plants are small, you can take a couple leaves without harming its growth. My bowl was filled with a few leaves of the following: kale, collards, spinach, lettuce, basil, cilantro, and 1 radish.
2. Wash and chop finely all that was harvested. Boil this together with water (maybe 4 cups for every 2 cups of greens), some bouillon (not much, you want the flavor of the greens to take center stage), 1 clove garlic, and enough salt to taste.
3. Boil for just a couple minutes, then let simmer for a few more. Not much time is needed. Then sit down and enjoy this deeply green, nutrient dense, fresh soup

I also made 4, 0.5 liter bottles of rhubarb saft recently. Saft was a new thing for me when I moved to Sweden, but it is the common drink of kids and adults alike here. It is basically a condensed juice which you buy or make in small bottles, then dilute yourself every time you want a glass. Hmm......it's hard to explain. Here is a picture:


You can make saft out of any berry or fruit. Rhubarb is coming out of our ears here so that is what i chose. Here is the recipe I followed:
Rhubarb saft
2.2 pounds rhubarb
1 cup water
1.5 cups sugar

Chop the rhubarb and boil it with the water for 10 minutes, or until it is soft and broken down.
Drain this thick, fruity mixture through a cheese cloth or regular dish towel for approx. 20 min or until all the liquid has drained out.
Boil this liquid with the sugar until the sugar has disolved, then fill a clean .5 liter jar with this thick, almost syrupy looking saft!
This keeps forever in the fridge, and when ready to drink, mix about 2 T. in a glass with cold water. Just test the amount yourself and decide how sweet you want the drink to be. I think it's nice when it's not too sweet.

Other news...Erik and I leave in just 1 week for Gotland!! I'll write more on that later....and after this short trip we'll head to Italy for a month of working on 3 different organic farms there, including (we hope) drinking wine under the evening Tuscan sun. :) We are really looking forward to the education we will receive from this ancient and far under-valued method of simple apprenticeship, involving direct teaching from an experienced person to an eager learner.

Cold Frames and Warm Springs

These are my home-made coldframes, built with salvaged 1930s windows and old boards. They have been delighting me with how nicely they warm up and how quickly my little seedlings germinate in there. I wish I had 10 more.....I sort of couldn't stop buying seeds this spring and planting a few in pots to see what would come up....now I have a sprawling greenhouse in my front yard (which of course isn't MY front yard but the family's I work for--hope they don't mind!) and I am excited to transplant these babies into the garden once the temperature is finally warm enough!! The days have been beautiful....and long. The sun is up sometime in the 3 am hour, and it doesn't really get dark-dark until nearly 11! Still, the nightly temps can be too close to freezing to plant the garen yet. The Swedish lifestyle is one of extremes. In the winter everyone suffers from the lack of sunlight, but now we are all recharging and getting overdoses. My hands are a nice brown already, and I’m even beating Erik in the "who's darker?" game.

So the garden has been delightfully consuming much of my free time lately. What would I do without plants to watch grow?! It is one of the best things in life, truly. Erik and I have rented a small community garden plot (about a 15x15 meter space) and so far there's not too much going on. We've added some compost and horse manure to the soil (I helped myself to the free fertilizer lying in one of a million horse pastures around here), and we have tiny spinach plants coming up, chives, oregano, rhubarb, rosemary, and mint. Unfortunately you can't make too much of a meal out of those ingredients, but we're enjoying the herbs in our omelettes, and RHUBARB is my new favorite food. This little-known plant in the Southern US is a thriver in cold climates like Sweden, and I have made several rhubarb pies, muffins, and this delightful thing called "rhubarb crème" which is basically cooked down rhubarb with sugar and a bit of water, and it is a delicious jam-like sauce you can eat in yogurt or as a dessert with hot milk! yum! anyway....a quick list of plants that will go into the ground in a couple weeks: kale, collards, squash, winter squash, tomatoes (under a plastic tunnel), beets, spicy greens, basil, cilantro, parsley, dill, cucumbers, cabbage, swiss chard, pumpkins, corn, eggplant...tehe....I’m not sure we have space for all this, but it's just a few plants of each. I have decided I need to be a small farmer of some sort one day. Well, I’ve had that thought 1,000 times already, but this time I’m sure. It suits me; the dirty pants and rubber boots, observing and anticipating growth, seeing change, eating real food, being in charge and using my own creativity and ideas....and I think if I ever have a job one day where I have to work inside on pretty days I would go ballistic. That’s that.

Well, there is too much news to report!! I should've written a post every week and reported the progression of spring here because it has been phenomenal. First, here is a picture from April:

We had snow until mid-April, and I thought spring would never get here. But then it melted and every day there came a few more leaves on the trees, more birds twittering their songs....then came the tiny flowers which cover the forest floor. First blue and purple, and then white. SOO beautiful. If anyone wants to visit me in Sweden, book a ticket for the first week in May. Daffodils came, then tulips galore, and loads of small wildflowers in people's yards which nobody mows down. Now the apple trees are blooming whitish-pink blossoms and when I bike anywhere the smells of blooming trees and flowers is a sweet delight.

Other than loving the weather, I have been learning to play the fiddle from a very nice fiddle maker in town, and this is an instrument I’ve been yearning to learn for years, and though it's difficult and all the amazing players today started when they were 3.5 years old, I am plugging away. Speaking of fiddles.......last weekend I had the great blessing of attending the Silkeborg Dance Weekend in Denmark!! It was 3 days of contras, squares, Scottish country dancing, and having a great time laughing with the fun-loving Danes. Those people know how to give a hearty laugh! I was the only one of 150 dancers under 50, and that fact plus my ashevillian contra style made me a bit of a small celebrity all weekend. It was fun, I have to say. They either thought I was that crazy American dancer or really fun. Mostly fun, I think. I met some amazing people, who within 5 minutes of chatting offered for me to stay with them in their home if I should ever some back to Denmark, and I got 75 invitations to the next dance weekend in November. :) :) I got to chat with Lissa Schneckenburger, one of my all time favorite fiddle players from Vermont, who helped us groove all weekend with her amazing talent. I talked and danced a lot with Frank, a dancer from Brasstown, NC (SMALL WORLD) who I have danced with 100 times at Warren Wilson and who moved to Denmark 3 days ago. (Coincidentally after the LEAF festival...funny:) It was refreshing to dance with a familiar face, and as he put it, "you now have an uncle in Scandinavia." I met Victor, an older man with suspenders and a beard and easily mistakable for a Danish farmer, who turns out to be one of those American transplants to Scandinavia. He's been living in Denmark with his Danish wife (who makes all her own clothes....beautiful) for 38 years but he was born in Manhattan and he talked my ears off in a thick new york accent and offered everyone american chocolate chip cookies all weekend that he had baked. He said after we danced together....in a cute, shy, but new yorker way, " I ....I like the way you move." :) :) CUTE! It felt funny to be away from Erik for 3 days (his mormor turned 90 and he was home for the party) and it was a delightful reunion at midnight when my bus finally pulled into the station in Uppsala (after a long car trip and flight). I saw him standing there looking cold by his bike, trying to see me through the bus windows. First his face was a black stare and then opened up into a big gaping smile/erik face when he saw me. what a wonderful feeling to be back with the one you love.

I ran a half marathon the weekend before in Stockholm, beating my predicted time and enjoying the racing life again in a nice and noncompetitive atmosphere. These fun weekends have been nice, especially because during the week I get to thinking and worrying about my future, and it's good to just live and enjoy life. I have decided to leave my au pair family and make it on my own here. I hope to find a job teaching english (or serving coffee or worse...I cannot be picky), and I think I have found a place to live...in a house with 5 other Americans (from the South at that!) who are coming to work for a university ministry in Sweden called Campus Crusade for Christ, or "Agape" here. (the word "crusade" doesn't help the message much unsurprisingly) The best part about this house we're renting from an Egyptian woman who hasn't redecorated since the late 80s, is the garden which has in it something I’ve been wanting so badly here.....a simple glass greenhouse!! for growing hot-loving veggies in the summer and cold loving greens in the winter. yay. and they have 3 old variety apples trees, a plum, cherry, and pear tree, and currents, raspberries, and rhubarb of course! ;)

well, i'll sign off here. I hope everyone reading this at home or abroad is doing well and enjoying the spring!

my new thing...

...is to snap small branches off of anonymous trees from the forest in early spring. I bring them inside, put them in water, and wait for the suprise of their green leaves to appear. If I was better at my tree identification, I would also know what their names were. I want to get better at that.

But I've decided tree branches are the cut flowers of early spring. The natural twists and curves of the branches and the fresh green leaves make just as strong of a statement as the brightest colors of flowers.

"isn't that just 10 dollars?!"

I begin this post with a quote mom must have said at least 15 times while she was visiting me in Sweden, and this is just one example of the many things we giggled over during the big VISIT. I realize i'm writing this note too long after the event, and now it feels like old news. I always do that. As I walk along the street I come up with a great little piece of writing in my head, a nice combination of words, a philosophical thought that passes through my mind, thinking i'll go straight to the computer when I get home and jot it down for the blog world to read, but then i forget to, and the thought leaves me, and whatever brilliant thing that was there is now gone and I feel i have nothing to report.

well anyway, here i am now. it's better than nothing. So....3 (or was it 4?) weeks ago my beloved mother and sister visited me, came all the way to Sweden to see me and my Swedish life. I felt really loved and special the whole 8 days they were here, just thinking of the effort it took them to make it to my little house. I found mom at the airport, head down on the cafe table, worn out like a child from the flight. We then strolled around for a few hours, awkwardly pushing mom's 2 huge suitcases through the touristy airport stores as we waited for Becca, whose flight from NY landed 4 hours later than mom's from charlotte.

How can i quickly summarize the visit?
Awful weather.
But good spirits.
Long walks in the green, mossy, evergreen forest.
Laughing at mom and Alexander playing together as she spoke English to him and he responded in Swedish, and they got along beautifully. Even when mom said "ja!" in affirmation as he said "Jag har en ont här." (I have a boo-boo here)
Becca's papper and stubby pencil kept in her pocket to write down "all the Swedish words i know"
Oohs and ahhs over cute red houses.
Mmms and yumms over hot strong coffee and tasty cafe treats.
Window shopping at the expensive stores.
Buying fun foreign cheap things at the 2nd hand stores.
Splurging on the purchase of beautiful yarn.
Getting knitting help and inspiration from Becca.
Laughing like loud americans on the city streets.
Giggling at night in my tiny room.
Meeting a small organic farmer in the middle of nowhere.
He had a wooden bowl filled with fresh brown eggs in his farm store.
Delicious dinners hosted by wonderful friends and "family" here.
Semlor!
A visit to the Carl Larsson home where we feasted our eyes on an artist's work who adored his family and home and made it beautiful.
Biking everywhere.
Through the forest.
Lingering in the grocery store and wishing america had a better cheese and yogurt selection.
Calculating the currency conversion constantly and in the end deciding we should compare every purchase to our 60 kr. kebab because, if a kebab is only 60 kr then shouldn't we buy this (shirt, yarn, candle holder, etc) since it's only (100, 200, etc) kronor?
Me remembering that I have the most gracious and wonderful mom and sister ever.

and so much more!!


Now i'm busy growing little plants for the community garden plot Erik and I have just aquired, learning to play the fiddle, planning our summer trip to farms in Italy, trying to plan next year, making new friends, and training for a half marathon in May! yikes.

anticipation

I can hardly wait for tomorrow morning. I will wake up, feel excitement in my belly, eat a quick breakfast, put on something cute, and drive to the airport. There i will find my mamma, sitting at an airport cafe (having arrived very early) and we will be reunited, mother and daughter, friends together again. I will bring her breakfast and we will sit with her big black bags until we are reunited with our dearest, darling, we-miss-her-so-much sister and daughter BECCA who is arriving around noon. I feel already that this trip will be so encouraging for all 3 of us. And that it will be for lack of a better way to put it...a woman's trip...a time for being with women, giggling as women, talking as women, appreciating everything as women. Often I think all three of us wish we were like some families who settle near each other, who visit often , who can drive over for a weekend or come by for a sunday lunch after church. But we're not...somehow Becca ended up in Minnesota and now NY, I met someone from Sweden and have followed him here...and we find ourselves in different corners of the world instead of different parts of a state or city. But this is us. This is the life God has led us to. And it means we communicate a lot on the phone and through emails, and we have these visits which are not so frequent but when they happen are a whirlwind of fun and excitement.

Today there is much to do....final planning, fixing bikes for use next week, mopping kitchen floors and finishing building my cold frames so my garden doesn't look like a construction site! The first flower opened up outside my door yesterday, just in time, and it's as if it knew someone special was arriving. :) It's small and yellow and perfect. I love spring. The picture above is flowers from Becca's farm at mid-summer, when flowers have their time of glory. I can only stare at that now and think...does that really happen? do these little plants really burst with color and out of a tiny seed become something so amazing with such detailed beauty? in the winter things seem hopelessly dead, beyond revival, but i know that soon there will be renewal. ressurection.

looking out the window

That's not me in the photo, or my window, and i didn't take the picture, just to put that out there. But i am looking through MY window, and the view is much cuter anyway, with some apple trees (albeit sleeping right now), raspberry plants, and pines and birches across the street. (I don't have a digital camera so it's tough to put picutres of myself or Sweden up on my blog. I ought to get with the times i suppose and buy one, but the cost stops me)

So, to back up, the Swedish family I live with moved a few weeks ago to a new house about 15 minutes by bike from our old one. This new house (called by more than more person "a carl larsson home") is a better fit for the family, and for me it is an immeasurably better situation. My old room was dark, in the basement, and not a place I wanted to spend time in. Now i have my own apartment, so to speak; a separate wing of the house with my own entrance and small hallway, my own kitchen, my own bike parking spot outside and tulips coming up by the door. If you haven't caught own, the feeling of having my "own" space has been good and helped me feel more independent here. Erik and I appreciate having dinners on our own, here and at the adorably small studio apartment he just moved into. This Spring has felt full of nice, fresh changes and as the light grows longer and the weather warmer, I begin to feel more at home here in Uppsala, with my life here in this new country. My Swedish is improving and I can hang onto conversations better and laugh with others (legitimately, not half-heartedly while thinking did i really get that joke?:) Our backdoor opens onto the city forest which is a gorgeous area full of trails, one titled "troll trail" which goes through an area completely untouched for the last 40 years and is thus full of beautiful decaying trees which display the amazing life cycle the forest. I love winding my way through the trails on my bike, then popping out on the other side in downtown Uppsala. I signed up for a half-marathon recently which is in May in Stockholm, and it feels good to have something motivating me to get out the door to run, something i always enjoy once i'm out there but which is somehow tough to start doing. Also, Erik and I are getting to know folks better here and are feeling spiritually fed by a wonderful international Bible study that is concerned with not only what we know about God but that we love others because of God's love for us.

To give some recap for the month of February: I celebrated my 23rd birthday on the 11th, and it was a pleasant day filled with Swedish celebrations here as well as calls and packages from home. The move happened= BIG accomplishment. I began growing lettuce in egg cartons in my sunniest windows, and I'm building a cold frame from old windows to set the transplants in once they are big enough. I am biking on a new (old) bike that I fixed up and so now no longer need to borrow Hanna's "mom" bike here unless I need the baby seat to carry Alexander on. (I just laughed at the though that if HE knew i just referred to his bike seat as something for a BABY he would most definitley get extremely defensive and declare what a "stor kille" (big guy) he was to me, complete with a visual display of him climbing on the tallest kitchen chair to show how tall he is. :) I love my new bike, and though it only has one gear, it is the fastest bike ever, and i'm constantly effortlessly passing Erik when we bike to town together. tehe. i call it blixten because it is as fast as a lightning flash, and because i like the sound of the word. :)

I have been reflective lately, thinking about what life means and what is important. Isn't it so easy to just breeze through the days consumed with the details and forgetting to ask what our real purpose is? I am convinced more every day that God created us for real relationships of love and joy....with Him and with each other, and that involves being involved with people....all kinds in all places. Our neighbors are next door and they are hungry children across the globe and women who are sold into prostitution in India. To love them means to pray, to act, to be aware of their situations and to do what we can about it. Life is short, often confusing, broken and yet being redeemed, a joy to live some days and a trial on others. I think these words from Isaiah 55 are beautiful..."Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat!"

Mom and Becca arrive in one week! I'll try to write a post soon after their visit to record what i'm sure will be the best 10 days of the year. :) I hope all of you reading this remain well!