So busy!

 Wow! How time flys. So I left the farm on Tuesday, but haven't had a chance to post, I've just been so busy enjoying my time with Clara and the Family. Today was Clara's Graduation day, studentdag in swedish, and I started to post this morning but we were so busy with preparing for the reception for the friends and family of Clara at the house that I kind of didn't have the time... So here is a bit of an overview of what's been going on with me. 

I left Lotta's on Tuesday which was bitter sweet. I was really enjoying my time there with the family and working on farm projects, but then again, it's so lovely to finally be with my Swedish Family that I originally came to sweden to be with. I just happened upon another lovely group of people on my way. I'm headed back to stay at Lotta and Gunnar's in the begining of August for another two weeks, so I will see them again before I leave the country.

Here's a picture of Lovely Lotta enjoying some sweet treat!

 The evening before I left I was at the house with the kids while Lotta and Gunnar where out in the woods doing some logging and work on the electic fencing. Love and the girls found the patch of Rhubarb, Rabarber in swedish, and immediatly Love had the idea to make a pie. After Saying it in swedish 4 times I understood what he wanted to do. So out we went with a basket, harvested the Rubarber and headed into the kitchen. He worked with the girls the cut the rhubarb while I found a simple recipe and prepared the dough. Thank goodness Love knows how to properly use a knife because I had a difficult time explaining to the young girls how to use the knives, so I gestured to him what I wanted him to do and he showed the young girls how to use the knives without getting their little fingers under the blade. And thank goodness, 2 hours laters we had a large lovely pie and everyone still had all 10 fingers.

On Tuesday I was fortunate enough to get a ride from Gunnar into stockholm, where he was headed for work anways. By car it took about an hour and a half. By public transport it would have taken the same amount of time, possibly more, but I avoided two things-having to lug my big bag around on and off the bus, train, another train, then on the subway. So the ride into the city was very much appreciated. I still had to ride the subway to Clara's neighborhood with my bag then walk to her house, but it was not nearly as long and exhausting as it could have been.Very greatful to have gotten the ride.

 Since I've been at Clara's, she has still had some school to go to during the days, and at home I've been participating in preperation for the Party that went on yesterday. (I'll write about that more at the end of the weekend.) Above is Clara and Gabriella getting some cloth for the tables at Ikea. By the way this was my first ever trip to an Ikea, and wow. I really wish my mom could have been there. We could have spent all day just looking around at the different rooms and layouts of the furnature. It's pretty impressive what they do with their merchandise in the displays. Very detailed, down to the clothes in the closet and the books on the shelf.

 

 On Wednesday Clara and I went into the Stockholm to meet up with our friend Vince and his friend Inza from Germany. They are taking a trip to see Sweden. We know Vince because he was also an exchange student in Randolph the same year as Clara. He was hoping to stay in stockholm for a couple of days but the timing wasn't great because Clara had a full house hosting family for the graduation this week and we didn't have much time to spare. I'm so glad we got a chance to meet up with them for a couple of hours between all the pre-graduation madness! We took a nice walk through the Old part of Stockholm. Since they had their large bags we didn't go to crazy with going into stores and things, but we did grab some ice cream and sat by the water for a while. It was also National Swedish day so the city was crawling with tourists. I connected Vince with Lotta so him and his friend headed there to do some WWOOFing. They had never heard of it and were really into the whole idea. I really hope it all worked out for them and the rest of their Sweden tour goes smoothly. Hopefully we'll get to meet up again, either in Sweden or Germany. Otherwise Vince will be in Vermont for a year starting in Augusts, so I'll be seeing him again soon. It's so funny where we end up meeting with old friends. 

 Clara's been going to school the last week during the days so I've stayed home with Gabriella and Nora, Clara's mother and sister, helping prepare for the party. It's been really fun to be so much a part of such a tradition.  I'll keep this post short and post again about the Day of the graduation. I meant to post this the morning of the graduation, but things where so hectic that I ran out of time.

Clara had to leave at 7 in the morning, and since her house was full of guests her and I shared her bed. We woke at 6 and I joined her downstairs for breakfast. Everyone else was asleep still, so it was nice to have some time just the two of us before the day got busy.

Here she is before she headed off to the school, all dressed for the celebration! Hope you all are enjoying the pictures and I'll try to post more often so these entries don't end up as long. Hope you're all well and the weather is beautiful!

Rain, rain, go away.

Raining here. It has been for the past couple of days. And it's been about 8 degrees Celsius. Yuck. It was lovely here just last week, a toasty 25 degrees C. Now it's back to spring weather, or something. Hopefully summer will return soon. Besides the rain, things have been good. Letting the horses out got postponed from the other day, we ran out of fence at the very end!  The horses were let out to their newly extended pastures yesterday.
 Elvira decided thursday night that she was going to stay home home and play with me on Friday, so that is what she did. Lotta took the other children to school and ran some errands in town, and I was to look after the homestead. Mostly just the child. Neighbor Elvira came over to play, since she also had not gone to school (I'm thinking they planned that together). But they had a good time, playing, I painted nails, we had snacks, and they did their regular romping around the farm in their raincoats and boots. When Lotta came home it was decided that she would go out and I would stay here with Elvira, since E couldn't really come out with us in the rain.  Lotta did  the final walk around on the fence to make sure it was all secured, then she let the horses free.

We went to the second hand store out past Björklinge. It was such a lovely place and so big! There was a main building the clothes, books, kitchen things, etc. Then outside there were multiple barns and rooms holding furniture, bikes, and everything else! So much fun.

Yesterday evening Lotta and I went into Uppsala, met up with her Daughter, Denise, who attends school in the city. Denise turned 17 on Monday so we went out for dinner and a movie in celebration. We went to a Thai Food place for dinner, average Thai food, nothing too extraordinary. After we headed over to the Theater and got our tickets to see the Hunger Games. I hadn't read the book or inquired about the story at all, but I had heard all the rave reviews in the U.S. before I left. Wow, really great story. Well written and so thought provoking. Now I need to read the books. I'm a little bummed I didn't read the book first, because now when I read it, I will already have an image in my head of the story, the places, and the people. But there are always things about the book that can't be captured in the movie. We'll see! Hope the weather is treating you all well at home!

It's been some time since I've posted... about a week. Let's see...  We've still been working on the fence. It has taken longer than we thought, just like any project. But it is very close to being completed. Lotta and I working together are a force to be reckoned with. Yesterday we worked through the woods putting up the fence and it seems like we were going at light-speed. Today we should be done, and then we can move on the more fun things. Yesterday, after our speedy fencing session, we picked blossoms for dandelion wine and set them in the boiling water. Today, after we finish the fence and let the horses out to roam in their new pastures we're headed to the second hand store to get some bottles for the wine, even though it won't be bottled for another 5 weeks... it's still something to get excited about! 

 Here's a nice picture of Lotta, the farm mother, giving the horses some love. 

 Last Wednesday I went into Uppsala again to meet up with my WWOOFer friends from the previous farm. We had a lovely day walking around the city, I had yet to go into the cathederal so we did that, and wow was it something to see. The painting on the walls were so beautiful and detailed. and it felt just as big on the inside as it did looking at it on the outside. 

 After that we headed over to the parks and botanical gardens. They are the oldest botanical gardens in Sweden.  The gardens were donated to the University in 1787 by King Gustaf III to be used as a new botanical garden. So many different flower specimens. And such beautifully kept gardens. Having worked in peoples gardens before, I have an appreciation to the hard work that is put into ornamental gardens.

 Linaeus, looking good. 

 There were flowers amoung flowers amoung flowers. 

 On Thursday Evening I went with Lotta and the children to see Love play a moose in a school play, Klas Klättermus (Climbing mouse.). It is a swedish story about a mouse, very lazy and plays the guitar. He makes friends with all the other creatures and is very good at getting fed. I don't fully have the whole understanding of the story as it was in swedish, but I very much enjoyed seeing the children dressed as diffent animals singing songs. Lotta's children attend a Waldorf school, and it's very interesting to compare the Swedish Waldorf school system to the Waldorf that I know in Vermont, Aswell as seeing the Waldorf in Sweden fits into the Bigger Swedish school system. 

 Here's Lotta, setting some posts, a strong woman indeed. We've had some New WWOOFers come and go aswell. They weren't as excited about the work to be done here, and I don't think the WWOOFing scene was for them in the first place. 

 I went to Stockholm on Sunday for a graduation dinner and party for Clara's Class. It was so nice to finally get to spend more time with Clara!!!! The party was at a club that was rented out, and they themed the party so everyone dressed as Euro-Trash. So basically every look like they came from the era of  Spice Girls. It was so fun to dress up with my favorite lady! 

 The dinner was fun, it was many speeches in Swedish, class nominations, and whatnot, but I enjoyed myself anyways, it was fun to get to know some of Clara's classmates. I met far to many to remember even half of their names. And somehow I was obviously American. Besides the fact that I speak no swedish, some people could pick out the American in me before I even spoke! 

 Clara and I planned our Euro tour a little more. Our destinations are the following-Copenhagen-Hamburg-Amsterdam-Prag-Kroatia-Albania-Budapest-Berlin-then back to Stockholm. We hope to do this in a little over three weeks, and we Must be back for Clara's mother's 50th birthday. We'll see how it all goes, and that's mostly a rough outline of the place we hope to get to. We'll be doing better planning when we are together again for the summer in a week. 

I Heard about the tornado warning for Vermont, and I sure hope it was faulty. Mostly rain, hail, crappy weather? Let me know how things are for those of you reading! I'd love to hear about what's going on in my home country! 

Happy and healthy!

Things are all going well here! I'm very much enjoying being in a family atmosphere. The last couple of days have been very nice, and it's turning into summer quickly. On Saturday Lotta went off with the tractor to go pick up some friends that are living a home on wheels. Similar to a Tiny House. If you don't know what a tiny house is here's the site-http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/ . They are parking here until school is out and then I think they are headed to a summer home somewhere near by. They have two children, Another Elvira and Noomi, who are the same age and go to school with Elvira and Ofelia. It's good because they all play so nicely together. After Lotta came back with her new neighbors some more friends of Lotta showed up to butcher some roosters. They had 5 roosters and that was far too many. The roosters were starting to get aggressive towards one another, as well as the children, so it was time to do away with them. After we caught four of them, I volunteered to help so I was handed some birds, holding them by their wings, we took them inside to butcher in the bathroom. I'll save the details, out of respect for you vegetarians out their reading. I can say though that this was my first experience participating in the actually killing of the animal. I can't say i enjoyed it, but it wasn't unbearable either. I did the plucking and saved many of the feathers for the girls. Ofelia and Noomi really enjoyed playing with all the feathers in a big bath of water outside, stirring it like a big soup. The next day we enjoyed the Roosters for Lunch! Tasted like chicken, but more wild. Not really sure how to describe the difference. But it was satisfying to eat something that I helped with providing.

The last couple of days Frank and I have been working on extending the grazing area for the Horses and Sheep and Lotta has joined us when she hasn't been with children, preparing meals, etc. We've taken up all the fencing in the area that will be extended out into a larger field as well as into the woods. By the way they own 40 hectares of land, which equals about 100 acres, half forest, half fields. We're hoping to be done by the end of the day tomorrow. All the post through the woods are set and we're almost done setting the posts in the fields, and we started putting the fence back up today. Wednesday I'm headed into Uppsala to spend the day with my friends that I met at the other farm. I'm looking forward to that. Then on Sunday I'm headed to Stockholm to go to Clara's Graduation Dinner. Her graduation isn't for another two weeks, this is like the pre-party. I'll spend the night with her and come back here on Monday, then join her again a couple days before her Graduation and be with her for another two months. We have a portioned of our summer planned. We have train tickets to Copenhagen at the end of June. I'll also be here for Gabriella's (Clara's mother) birthday and Clara's birthday. We're planning to go to a music festival for the weekend of her bithday at the end of July. And right now it looks like I'll be coming back to the Farm here in August! So far it seems like the summer is flying by, but then again, it's been a little over two weeks. I'm starting to feel the summer settling into my skin....
All the food here is so good. Lotta is a wonderful cook. I've been over eating and can feel my pants getting a bit tighter. I haven't weighed myself, I'm not really concerned with the number, what I am concerned about is my pants fitting me the whole summer, because I didn't put buying new pants into my budget......

Hope everyone is happy and healthy as well and don't forget to wear some sunscreen and drink lots of water! Don't want anyone turning into a raisin in that hot summer sun!

Feeling at home

For those of you wondering how my transition is going, I must say very well indeed. Yesterday was a holiday here, so the kids have a four day weekend. Below is a picture of the family at lunch yesterday.

From left to right, Gunnar, the father, Love (8 yrs), Elvira (5), Lotta, the mother, Ofelia (7), Denise (17) and Frank from Ireland, his shoulder in the right bottom corner. They own 40 hectares of land, half wooded and half fields. They have been developing the land they live on for 10 years and have many aspirations. Lotta is so lovely with a big heart and the same goes for Gunnar. It's so nice to be in a family invironment. There are also two other children missing from the picture, Oliver who is 15 and went off somewhere yesterday and Felicia, 18 with her daughter is in Iran visiting her childs father who is a refuge and was sent back to his country. Gunnar has 5 other children who are all grown, between the ages of 20 and 30. The first night I spent sitting at the kitchen table with Gunnar and Frank for a long time, about the farm here, the lifestyle they live and he described themselfs as not typical swedes. Being from vermont, the lifestyle they live seems totally normal to me, and I'm really loving it. We also talked about Steiner and Waldorf schools. He has had his children in the Waldorf school since 1989 and whole hearted trust in it. 

Since it was a holiday yesterday, the kids had the day off from school, aswell as today. Gunnar got some ice cream in the afternoon. Here's the children having their way with it. 

Ofelia and I made some Dandelion Crowns, in swedish it would be Maskros (translates to worm roast, but is the word for dandelion) Krans (crowns). 

Frank and I spent most of the day yesterday finishing planting hedges and mulching, meanwhile the children played with the hose. 

Frank and Love, cutting some grass.

One of the Dogs

Rasmus, a big playful pup.

Parts of they day was also spent getting the sheep back in the yard because they keep finding ways to get out. That was pretty entertaining. So we'll spend a lot of the day tomorrow fixing fence. I'm really enjoying myself here and really love the family.

Love and Gunnar went off today to the family's summer house to get the water turned on and cut the grass and things like that. We went into Uppsala, Lotta, the three girls Frank and I. Lotta hada  meeting about a teenage boy from Africa that she is hoping to foster, but unfortunatly the system makes it very difficult for Lotta to do so. She has such a big heart and really wants to give this boy a loving home, and he really would like to come live with them aswell, but unfortunatly there are many hoops Lotta must jump through. Right now she is feeling that the people in power are saying no just to prove their power and for her and the boy it's very frustrating. While she was in her meeting the rest of us walked around town and got some pizza. Then Lotta took us to Linnaeus Garden. It was very lovely, and it was fun to run around looking at the flowers with the girls. There was also a wedding going on the same time we were touring around the gardens. 

I feel so fortunate to have fallen into this family. I've been talking to Lotta about coming back in August as well. But I'm trying my best to take things one day at a time, and so far it's been working in my favor. I'm going to head out and take a walk through the woods with Rasmus. Hope you all are warm and enjoying some sunshine where ever you are!!  

Safe and sound

Writing from my new home here in Vänge. Very happy here so far. I walked almost all the way to the house when I was picked up my Lotta, my WWOOF host. She then brought me to her house, showed me around and within the first half hour, she showed me how to drop a sheep to the ground and trim the wool. How about that for a learning experience! They have 13 icelandic horses, somewhere around 11 sheep, rabbits, chickens, 9 dogs, mostly small, and one german shepard for hearding the sheep. He's a sweet heart. Lotta has 5 children, i think she said. Ranging from ages 5 to 18. I'm excited to meet them all. She left after we got the sheep to the ground and I started trimming. She had a conference to go to at her children's school. There is another WWOOFer here too, Frank, from Ireland. He left with Lotta to go do some things in town. So I've been here alone, but it's such a lovely place. I did some trimming, then came up to the house, had something to eat and cleaned up the kitchen a bit. Her husband Gunnar (I think that is the spelling, but i could be totally wrong.) just got home from work but went off again on a bike ride. Very nice man. I feel so at home here and can feel the family atmosphere. Not going to get my hopes too high, but so far things are looking up. I'm excited to get to know the whole family. I'm going to go settle my things into my room and maybe try again with another sheep. 

 One of the rabbits, looks more like a dog.

 New home for the next two weeks

 Doggy

 lovely kitchen

Some of the many dogs

All the children just came home, and in the middle of writing this I had to go outside to fetch the sheep because they were out and about in the neighbors yard. Seems like I won't have a boring moment here!!

Some Photos

Headed off this morning for my new home for the next couple of weeks. Here are some photos to enjoy until I post again.

 Debo and Anna down at the Lake

 Anders, the kind farmer.

 Karin, Lars Silver Hair and Anders at Lunch

Me, Down at the lake, practicing balance

 Planting Onions

 Anna and Debo, in the Kitchen. We spent many hours sitting, chatting at that table.

 Gustav, the Man of the House

 Mine and Debo' room

 Lovely German Girls

 Yay tomatoes!!!

Greenhouse

 One of the horses down by the stream

 Colorful lunch

View from our window