The work in the fields : there was 3 steps. First of all, becaude the soil is quite full of clay we have to add horse shit which has about 2 or 3 year old to have a better soil quality. For this I did almost 30 loads of wheel barrow of horse manure :).
Then we put it all other the ground, added seaweed to give the soil some nutriments that the seeds will need. The last step is to add some sand on some part of the field (for example for soon to be carrots or potatoes). De just have go mix all those different layers and plant the seeds.
Beer degustation
Geir and two of hid friends are making their own beer because in Norway as soon as the alcohol is over 4,8% it has high taxes. They came at the farm with some of the beer they made to taste it around some neutral taste snacks and then a nice meal. Some of them were about 3 yo and they were all really nice. We ended the degustation with a smalk glass of whisky. It was a really nice evening.
The Brewing
After the degustation of the beer, there is of course the brewing of it. The first step is to select the cereal. Then you crush it with a home made device.
The next step is to put the result of the previous step in water heated to a 75 ·C for this recipe. Then you add the hop and eventually some orange peels and so on. You cook this for 1 hour, it's the time for the hop to librate it's sourness.
A tradition in their family is to have so whale at the barbecue for "Maiste's" birthday. Of course we eat the whale and she get's the leftovers you cut before putting the meat on the barbecue (==> raw whale) It was so delicious, really tender and a lot of taste. An other tradition that is more proper to all Norwegians is the "Pulza" or "Lumpa". Basically, it's a saussige in a "pain pita" without honey mustard and/or ketchup. It's a nice meal and quite cheap so it has become the main dish in parties.
I had the opportunity to do a sauna and to swim in small fjords amongst horses and sheep while i was at Geir and Sossa's place. It was really great and a very interessting exprience since it were naturalist places.
The hay
The hay ws a really nice experience, and i am gratefull to my host to allow to participate in this because it was thr old way of doing it and the amosphere was really good. The main idea of the hay is to cut some grass about 1 meter, 1 meter and a half, then sort it to take off all the thing that could rotten and then put the grass on iron strings to make it dry. After a few days you take off the hay and store it in a room. It as quite funny because we had to jump and roll all over the hay to make it shrink in order to fill up the room completly. But what was the best was at the end of a rather hard work !!! Indeed we had beer and the traditional dish that comes with this activity : The SourCream Porridge. You eat it with butter, cinemon and sugar and it is absolutly wonderful.
Durng the third week of July, another workayer joined us. And we did quite a lot of wood work like chopind cuting storing etc... Geir and Sossa have a mountain cabin near Fagernes and close to the Jotunheimen national park. !in this area in the winter it can down to -20°C and the snow can ba more than 1 meter deep so you need a lot of wood to keep warm since the only electricity come from a solar panel and the water from a well. So we wen with Geir and David (the german workayer) to bring some wood. We spend the night in the cabin before going back and during the evenning we visited rather quickly the Jotunheimen park. We had a lovely meal, and some good drinks. it's was fun.
I could assit to 2 art expositions thanks to my hosts and it was nice since i am not acquinted with this environnement. The first one was in Frederikstad : it was a summer exposition and we went to the openning. The second one was inMoss and it was a "Mommentum" (name of the event) called Tunnel vision (title of the event). It was full of "art work", lot of colour, of smells, of forms, etc... And there was an activity where you eyes was blinded, and you had some earplugs. You were guided by a voice in the earplugs and by a dancer who was holding you're hand. It was reallly relaxing and a unique experience!
