Handnesgarden 3rd week

This week was really beautiful. It's much cozier when there are only 5 people here instead of 12. I collected a lot of berries and we made silage. The strawberries are just ripening here and the cherries are still not ripe (but there are very few :( ... but lots of currants and raspberries) On Tuesday evening, we went horseback riding to the beach with the Pecherons. So the original plan was to ride in the riding arena first, because not much is done with them, but they just stood there and didn't move an inch ;) Then we thought maybe we should ride somewhere else. I will only get the photos from the others at the end, so unfortunately I don't have a nice one right now. Thursday was the warmest day so far. We went swimming in the sea after work and then we made a bonfire on the beach and grilled some bread and a little meat. The bread was really delicious :) We also had Nikolay's homemade 'Moonshine' Whisky, which went really well because it was a full moon. (The whisky actually tasted good) We sat on the beach until half past midnight and listened to Nikolay's stories. All the stereotypes you know about Russians are not stereotypes but are actually true ;) I'll tell you more about it when I get back home.

Yesterday I went swimming again and it's so beautiful here. The water is crystal clear, there are no waves, and since it's saltwater, it's much easier to swim than in a lake. The problem is that no one wants to swim with me because the water is a little bit cold. (In school, I learned that the Gulf Stream flows here and it's warm, but somehow that doesn't seem right) But I think it's warmer than the lake in Sweden. Now I've been swimming alone for the past 2 days because the others ran out after 30 seconds. I actually wanted to go swimming again today (you have to make the most of it when you have the Atlantic Ocean right outside your door), but since it's raining and cold today, everyone would think I'm crazy (even though the water is always the same temperature).

Sigbjörn and Kleo (the owners of the farm) still haven't returned from vacation. They bought a little boat in Trondheim and wanted to sail here and be here by Friday. But I think they underestimated the distance a bit, so they will probably only come next week. But we have everything under control here. I think we even worked more this week than before, even though they weren't here. The only changes are that we have more silage than before and fewer quails. We slaughtered about 30 quails this week because they kept killing each other, and so we would have less work ;) But I don't know why anyone would have quails? They lay very small eggs with no meat to eat, and they're dumb. As the bird attendant, I had to carry 3 dead and 3 half-dead quails out of the barn every day because they kept pecking each other in the throat until they died. And the half-dead ones were still moving, and I had the blood sticking everywhere. But now we don't have that problem anymore :)

This morning we went for a walk with the Shetties again. It's really cool... With the ponies, someone has to take a walk for about 1 hour every day. Sometimes everyone has to work, and I can go for a walk with the ponies. I think I should introduce that at home too. And then I went shopping (there's a small store on the island). You have to ride a bike for fifteen minutes... only the bike here is a disaster. The brakes don't work properly, it only has 3 gears, the saddle doesn't go higher (my knees were touching the handlebars), the front wheel is wobbly, and it didn't have enough air in it. With my bike, I would have been twice as fast for sure. But the way to the store was really nice. If there were better bikes here, you could take a nice bike tour around the island. I only bought postcards (which were ugly and really expensive) and chocolate (which was also expensive and didn't taste good at all). Normally, I always ration my chocolate so that it lasts about 1 week, but since I'm wwoofing, I'm always a bit in withdrawal, and when I see chocolate, I just have to eat it, so a bar of chocolate only lasts half an hour. And this afternoon, I've only been writing the text, writing postcards, chilling a bit by the sea, and eating the chocolate. We were actually planning to go horseback riding, but it's been raining the whole time again... so we'll see what else we do.