Ten years later.

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This is a strange post, and I’m a little bit sorry to post it here, but to be honest I need to put it somewhere. This will be a little out of the ordinary, that’s my disclaimer.

He passed away ten years ago today, and I still don’t know how to describe him. He wasn’t my grandfather- he was much closer than that. He wasn’t my father- I have him too, but he may as well have been. He was silly and funny and happy and joyful. He was my best friend for those precious years when I needed a hero. And he was strong. God, he was strong. 

I don’t need to go into details of early life to for you to understand that it takes a village to raise a child, and my village included JD Richardson (not related in any way to me or my husband, which is weird beyond words and I know that). But he cared for me and loved me and spoiled me rotten. He always loved to tell me that my favorite thing to say when I was three was “I’m my papa J’s precious angel”. 

He was diagnosed with colon cancer when I was 12, and I remember how strange it was to see him in a hospital bed. The man who once nearly cut his leg off with a chainsaw and had cauterized it with turpentine couldn’t be bed-ridden with cancer. Nothing could do that to him. It didn’t hold him down for long. Within days he was hunting, fishing, and working on a ranch. You could see him slow down, see his hands falter now and then, but beyond anything you could see strength. 

The last days were the worst. He slept a lot, he tried to shoot himself, he cried when we took away his gun. But then he would talk, and in his voice there was strength and in his eyes there was a smile. In true JD fashion, his last words were, “the vultures are circling”. 

It’s hard to believe it’s been ten years, and somehow it gets harder each year. 17 year old me didn’t know how to grieve well, and I think it was hard to explain to anyone how it felt. But now I think of all of things he has missed, and how much he would have loved to see them. 

I often admired the person he was, and I always knew that I wanted to marry someone he would have loved. I don’t often feel sure of myself or the choices I make, but I am sure of one thing; he would be proud if he saw me right now.

  
He would adore Tyler, and maybe Siyeh just as much. He would be tickled to know that I somehow ended up with his last name. He would be green with envy that we live on a farm in Norway, if he somehow didn’t manage to come as a stowaway. 

  
And He would love to see me chopping wood.  

Those are among the few things in life of which I’m sure. 

Thank you Papa, I miss you. 

Celebration days.

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The harvest is over!!! After a quick and crazy week of harvesting everything we grow (salad, parsley, beans, currants, strawberries, potatoes, and carrots) we are done! Well, done with that part. There’s a lot more work to do now, but for today, we celebrate. Harvesting potatoes meant using half-moons to break up inches of frozen-solid soil around each plant and kneeling in the cold ground to pick up each potato. The carrots were worse. The soil was frozen this far down. 

 
We had to use pitchforks to break up every inch of soil and then try to pull the carrots up with out snapping them. It took two straight days of work, but we finally finished. This is how we feel now.

 
We all have (what is known on the farm as) root vegetable sickness. It makes you do things like pour your cereal into your coffee cup, and make up stories about Tarzan actually being trained by the KGB. The only cure is beer and days off, fortunately we had both the last two days. Yesterday, I did not set foot outside once. I read all day long. Tyler went fishing. We had today off as well so we went hiking up on the plateau behind the farm.

   
   
The beautiful Lyngen Alps.

  
  
And of course, the night view from our bedroom.  

   

Winter is Coming. 

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Winter is coming. Except at 70 degrees North, that is so much more than a family creed from Game of Thrones. And here it doesn’t take more than 5 seasons to arrive. 

In Northern Norway, winter comes quickly. We were warned of the approaching storm by Roger who was on his way to Stavanger to teach. We picked up things that were in danger of being carried off by the wind or waves, and we settled in to enjoy the (occasionally) storm force 8 winds. 

  
(Temperatures are in Celsius)

It was an incredible storm. It made work difficult, and sleep impossible. The clouds shrouded the mountains across the fjord for three solid days, even the plateau behind the farm house remained covered. 

The wind lifted the membrane off of parts of the fields, and knocked down signs. it ripped the walls of the tent to shreds. The waves crashed into the carrot field, and lifted up and moved the cast-iron bathtub on the beach. Ill have to explain why there is a bathtub on the beach at some point. 

Seemingly all at once though, the storm was over, the clouds lifted and we saw what had been going on while were hiding inside.

  
Its amazing. I cant get enough of looking at the mountains. I have to position myself wherever I am in the field so that I can see them. They make the church at the base look like a church for ants. 

 

Another benefit of the storm was that seaweed was carried up on shore. We use seaweed to fertilize the soil in the potato field, so its important to collect it before the tide carries it out again. 

  
Pierre, Tyler, and Matteo demonstrating perfect seaweed harvesting form. 

Winter is coming, which means that post-work runs will soon be post-work skiis. But for now, I can still tuck my pants into my wool socks and wear out my running shoes. 

   

Potatoes and my subconscious. 

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taka-taka-taka…taka-taka-taka…taka-taka-taka…

The storm came. To be honest, I thought it wouldnt. Or maybe it would, but it would only be a little storm.   It was 2 in the morning when the rain started and the wind started right after. 

We leave our window open at night because the sound of the waves crashing is the most soothing thing in the world. The wind was changing the air pressure in the house and causing our bedroom door to rattle. Taka–taka–taka, on and on. This wouldn’t be worth a blog post, except that I had been having the strangest dream, and the sound caused by the moving door had worked itself into my subconsious mind.

Farm work as been extremely busy the last two weeks. We have two fields that need to be finished, we finished one yesterday, thank heavens. We have lots of orders coming in and that takes a lot of time and thought to prepare. But the biggest concern right now is the potato harvest. We have several large potato fields, each field has thousands of plants, each plant has about a dozen potatoes, and the frost is coming. already our harvest has shown signs of damage from the cold. For us that means a lot of work digging up potatoes, and a lot of work after the digging is done. 

  
The potato field is high up on the hill at the base of the mountain. We push the wheelbarrow up to the top of the hill with all of our boxes and tools, and then spend hours sitting and digging in the dirt. Its going to be quite hard for me to get mad at Siyeh for digging again, its actually pretty fun. Once we harvest the potatoes we have to sort them. 

  
We have two types, golden-eye and almonds. But we have to sort them to get rid of any that have been damaged by cold or cut during picking. Then we have to sort them into sizes. we have 6 sizes for both types of potatoes; mini-mini (or “pea-tatoes” as I call them), mini, small, slightly larger, medium, and large. These are all sorted into these green boxes called ISO-6 boxes, and I spend so much time with them that I have officially started seeing them in my sleep. 

   
 
Last night while I slept, I had a dream that Tyler and I were laying exactly where we actually were but instead of sleeping, we were sorting potatoes. We were laying on our bed, surrounded by ISO-6 boxes, and sorting. At on point I looked at Tyler and said, “Maybe we shouldnt do this inside…” to which he replied, “We’re getting dirt everywhere.”

Occasionally during this dream, we would drop a couple potatoes onto the bedroom floor with a sharp 

Taka–Taka–Taka..

Summarøy and a quick and dirty week

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Well, it happened for the first time. I went a whole week without writing, and I had no idea that a week had slipped by. Its been a busy week! We said goodbye to Monica, the beautiful and hilarious woman from Spain, we developed a new system of organizing and sorting potatoes, we had Norwegian waffles…several times, we finished the largest strawberry field on the farm, and I became famous for popping peoples backs.

We worked really hard and practiced a bit more on the roller skis. We also took a trip to Oldervik, the little fishing village about 5km from the farm. Tyler took this picture of me on the rocks. 

  

The highlight of the week was last tuesday though. Jeremy asked Tyler and I to go to the raspberry farm with Carolyn and him to dig up raspberry canes for us to plant in the top field. When we got in the car though, we discovered that we were invited on this trip because we had been working really hard and he wanted to take us to this beautiful island after the raspberries. Cutting the raspberries was surprisingly hard work; the roots are shallow but fan out wide. We dug up several hundered plants though, and then Jeremy took us to the beautiful Summarøy, which means Summer Island.
This is the beach where we had a picnic lunch

   
 
We walked around the island a bit, and mostly just stared at the immensity of the open Arctic Ocean, and the huge mountains of the fjords that interrupt it. 

   
 
And a week in Norway is never complete without some delicious beer.
  

Things I never thought I would hear/say.

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Living in Norway has had it’s own delightful set of differences from life in Montana. We try our best to take everything in stride, but every so often we hear something that makes us stop and realize how different this country is. Or sometimes we say something that makes us realize that we are different too. Here are some funny examples, I’ll do my best to explain the situations so that you don’t get too confused. 

1. “We will probably not catch any cod; the killer whales have come back.” -Jeremy

This was said while we were siting in the teeny fishing boat out on the fjord, and no, it wast a joke. There really are Orcas in the fjord. I almost threw up I was so scared. 

  
2. “The communists have done well in the election last night.” -Roger

Again, not a joke. There was an election last week in Norway for local parliament and the communists took 21% of the vote. Straight up communists. 

And later that morning…

3. “Wow, that boat looks like a Russian war ship.” -Jeremy

It did. Which is very unnerving when you’re already thinking about communists. We looked it up though and the internet says it’s just a research vessel. Right, because research vessels need guns that big.

 
4. “I think the potato man stole my gloves…” -Alex 

This one was just hilarious, especially because we were sorting a mountain of potatoes and we were feeling crazy already. The mystery is this: Alex had put her work gloves down, and when she came back for them they were gone. The mystery went unsolved until a few days later when one of the self-pickers brought them down to the house, but we still didn’t know how they had gotten up there in the first place. We started to suspect the Dane who lives just down the street and who picks a kilo of potatoes every day. We affectionately refer to him as “the potato man”. It turns out he was not the glove thief, but that would have been a very funny sentence if you were listening in.

5. “Today, we will destroy Canada.” -Roger

So, here I should mention that each of the strawberry fields has a country name so that we can easily distinguish between them.  

Don’t worry dear Canadian friends, Norway isn’t out to get you… That we know of. The field called Canada is the oldest field and so this year it will be torn up and turned into a potato field. Roger was suggesting that we begin the destruction of the field Canada today. Jeremy saluted and Matteo played taps on a penny whistle before the fall of Canada. 

  

Food fest. (Lefse for days)

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Today was SMAK FEST in Tromsø, which means that we have met our lifetime quota for delicious food that we can actually afford. It started out with us making a mad dash for the antique shop because I had found a traditional norwegian cast-iron waffle maker last week and for some reason I didn’t buy it, probably because I thought it was too heavy, but then Tyler made me see that that was a stupid reason to not buy something so authentic so we had to get it before someone else did: I hope this run-on sentence helps convey the urgency of the desire for this waffle iron. We got it. Thank The Lord, because Tyler was threatening to hold it over my head forever if it was gone. 

It continued with buying ski boots that should have cost $164 but were on sale for $38, so now I’m ready for snow. 

The food festival was mostly centered on Norwegian cuisine; things like fiskesuppe (fish soup), reindeer, and of course lefse. Lefse is a sort of flatbread made from potatoes, and most Norwegians fill it with gjost (a sweet dark cheese). I sampled every single station that had lefse, and then when we got to the end I sampled them all again. And then I bought a box of it to bring home to my friends on the farm… But mostly for me because I literally couldn’t eat any more. I’m sorry I didn’t get a picture of lefse, I was too busy cramming my face.

  
  
Ty is standing next to a display of torfisk, a traditional way of preserving fish by hanging them out to dry. After we sampled some of the amazing food, we got some coffee at our favorite place, and enjoyed it in a Sami tent (they call it a lavvu)  that had been erected for the festival. 

  
We also found Harry potter in Nyorsk. Yay!

  
Things I learned today; 

1. People who work for Amnesty International will laugh at you if you tell them that the only thing you know about Amnesty International is that JK Rowling worked there.

2. When walking toward someone, Norwegians want to go to the right. Always. If you go left, they hate you.

3. I need to learn the Nyorsk word for “excuse me.”

Life on the farm.

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I thought this might be a good time to tell you a little about what it means to work on an organic farm in Northern Norway, as this is not something that most people will ever do. Here is a little bit about the day to day life on the farm. Those of us who are working here are staying in one house; a very cozy farm house with enough beds for 2 to a room. The farm house includes a kitchen, large living room, wood fireplace and our shower. We take it in turns to serve/clean up from meals, but Roger (our host) does all of the cooking. Thats actually a big rule, you have to stay out of the kitchen if Roger is cooking. 

Our day starts at 7:30 am, when we get up for breakfast. We have to be at the table at 8:15 am, although Roger often lets us sleep in until 8:36. We start work at 9, so the last part of breakfast is usually discussing what the jobs will be for the day. We send our harvest to several different eco-shops in town, and they are sold from there, and we also deliver to a couple of the higher-end restaurants in Tromsø. This means that we have a lot of work to do, even if it feels like there is nothing, we are always preparing. So the mornings usually consist of picking, today it was potatoes. I think I like picking potatoes the best, its very gratifying. We do whichever job we have until 11 am, when we take our tea. This is actually usually coffee, unless Matteo or Jeremy want espresso. Im still too scared to use the “real” espresso maker. 

  
We go back to work at 11:30, and this is usually weighing and sorting whatever we picked in the morning. One of our big projects right now is making a new Strawberry field out of a piece of land that had been a potato field at one point. So whenever we dont have more picking to do, we are digging new rows for the strawberries, or cutting up the runners to plant. 

  
Lunch is at 1:30 and then we usually take a siesta until 3. When we start work again, we are usually picking more carrots, strawberries, or potatoes, and in my case, this is usually when I have to start watching the tent for self pickers. People come from all over to pick strawberries and potatoes on this farm, so I have to stay close in case they have any questions. My Nyorsk isnt great, but they go easy on me, especially as I am new to the metric system. 

Work ends at 5, and that is when we play. We go fishing, swimming, or hiking, or play with the new aquisitions of roller skis. Some days I just make a pot of tea and read or knit. Today I hiked up into the woods to pick Chanterelles and Lingon berries, and to get a good view of the ocean. 

  (Tyler and Jeremy practicing on roller skis)

We usually dont eat dinner until around 8:45, so we have lots of time to relax before the amazing food. Roger is an incredible cook, and he makes something wonderful each night. I have to admit, reindeer was great. The fish is my favorite though. Any kind of fish. 

  
Tonight we had lefse with dark cheese, but often we have ice cream or norwegian waffles, or even better eis kakar (Ice cake. its the best ice cream cake on earth). And then we have been spending a lot of time outside looking at the northern lights (which often appear in the south here), and watching them lik our lives depend on them. So we havent been sleeping much. 

  
Thats about it for the typical day on the farm!

Ullstinden.

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We have officially conquered our first mountain in Norway! Well, conquered might actually be a bit of a strong word. What we did was more like crawl, gasping and panting up the most truely awe-inspiring mountain either of us have ever seen. It was truly a humbling day. 

Ullstinden is the mountain just a few kilometers down the road from us, and its a must-hike for any idiot who thinks he/she is good at hiking. We biked to the beach (I had to ride on the basket rack of Tyler’s bike because there aren’t enough bikes, this was its own kind of death-defying adventure), and then started our walk. It was a lovely walk around the mountain right along the sea, and after a mile or two you turn right. I say turn right because I don’t mean that the trail turns right. 

Now, I have complained in the past about how Canadians make their trails to go straight up and over mountains. I will never complain again. Norwegians just dont make trails. If you want to go to the top of the mountain, just go up. If you want to go to the sea, just go down. It sounds simple, but its not. It makes hiking extremely difficult and dangerous, and as I write this I have no skin from my knees down. 

  
Doesnt look too bad right? You’re wrong, and so was I. These rocks move, and they are covered in moss, so even if the rock you’re standing on doesnt move, your foot is going to. 

   
We all (Im sitting next to Alex, and Jeremy is off somewhere being part mountain-goat) look so carefree and happy because we had no idea what was coming. I wish I could tell photographic me to stop smiling, we will need the energy later. Here’s why.

  
I wish, oh how I wish, that this made it look more steep than it is. We were literally crawling up this on all fours. At one point I just sat down and started crying.

But then we made it to the false summit, which was almost enough for me.

  
But my sweet friends wouldn’t let me give up, and they were tempting me with sausages and bread and so I had to keep on climbing. FINALLY we reached the ALMOST summit. At this point I had decided that it might be easier to just throw myself off the edge of the cliff than climb back down that thing. But they had sausages and a fire. This is a good time to add in that we cooked our lunch on top of a mountain, and we cooked it by hanging the sausages from reindeer antlers that we found on our way up. 

  
This was our lunchtime view.

  
After one last ascent, which involved me saying a lot of things I now regret, we made it to the top. Now you can enjoy the view too. 

   
   
These two are lovely people.


  
It was pretty windy up there.

   

It was far too dangerous to take pictures on the return journey, but Ill just say that we all ended up sliding down the rocks a lot, Alex fell in the river and took Jeremy with her, Tyler hit himself across the face with a branch and I laughed so hard I might have peed a little. After 9 hours of SUPER INTENSE hiking, we made it home in time for dinner, wine, and most importantly, another light show.