The Duck Farmer

The mushroom picking area

Arriving at the duck farmer’s (peter) house was not without an event. The GPS led us a little astray, which was not the first time, as we were looking for a petrol station on the way it led us to an old abandoned house! Not an old petrol station – a house! Anyway, after a call from peter we found our way there (about 10pm) and enjoyed our first hot non camping meal in about 2 weeks. It was delicious. There was also a Russian girl (kinda couchsurfer) that was living and working there while we were there – but that is another story. We chatted until about 12-1am and then went to bed to finally a dark room. Now what I first must point out is that the facilities at this farm were not first class. Some of the door handles didn’t work, and consequently the door had to be propped open or else it was a window exit that would be required. There was no running water – big jugs of water would sit next to the sink, and we worked by candle light for dinner. The shower was a gravity fed system where the water would be heated on the stove in big pots, poured into a larger 25 litre jug and then a hose was connected to the jug and fed through the floor to the shower below. So the comforts of life were not so evident there. The toilet also was a drop toilet. Now for me and the guys – we didn’t care 1 bit. Not only had we been camping for around 2 weeks, we had cold baths in ice glacial rivers,  went to the toilet in the woods,  and  ate bread and cheese for our meals… We were grateful for having a roof over our heads. The Russian on the other hand was very bitter by the time that we came. She complained about not being in the 21^st century, and was very rude to peter. It was amazing. She was earning 10 euro an hour with food and accommodation included. Sweet deal I thought for a genuine Swedish experience. His farm was almost a self-sufficient farm – the water he used to get from the stream/river close by (he got it delivered as he got a bit older) he tapped elm trees and made syrup from the sap, collected duck and chicken eggs, collected mushrooms and lichen from the nearby forest and harvested snails in wooden boxes. All these were sold to various restaurants. He also painted houses when he had spare time to help makes end meet. So that morning we slept in – pretty tired, and walked around his small farm. I wrote my blog – my last post was about 5000 words – take that tus! It was disappointing that his internet was too slow to upload pictures, have some stunning shots from Norway. So after writing my blog for 2-3 hours (hope you found it a little bit interesting cause it took me ages!) mark was keen to go mushrooming with the duck farmer. So we drove a little way down the road (Andrew stayed back – maybe watching movies?) and walked down a small forest track in hunt for our mushrooms. The last time I went mushrooming was in Kyneton I think with my parents, but the mushrooms we collected were much much different to the ones we have in Australia. – see picture. They went against the rule of ‘the more colourful it is, the more poisonous it is. We had orange ones, ones with red, yellow and white ones… We started to go upwards – through a logging area. Peter was visibly annoyed about the logging going on in the forest. I don’t think that it is a good thing, but when someone has lived in the forest their whole life and it has provided for them for 30 years, you start to understand about why people are so passionate about the issue. We then moved sideways to a mountain stream, now I may have mentioned it before, but mountain streams are awesome! especially where the gradient is high. We were ‘rooming’ all the time, looking for perfect ones to sell and not so perfect ones to cut up for dinner that night. The mountain became very steep, walking through the clouds of mosquitoes, but the forest was so nice that it didn’t matter. Hard to describe, peaceful, quiet, moss everywhere, ferns, huge trees, and a stream running down with crystal clear water. Peter took us through some caves which were almost as impressive as the caves in Norway (not as big - it was a crack cave almost) which contained an underground waterfall! It was pretty nice. We headed back down and bumped into a german father and his daughter playing a type of find the GPS game. The aim of the game is to find various GPS points around the country - There is a website that you can go to for clues and the points, I guess it would be a modern day version of orienteering. If you are interested I think Australia has it too. Go talk to google about it, I’m sure you would find it. It was a long day hiking up the hill, but well worth it and we arrived back – had our gravity fed shower after some preparation, and had dinner very late (11pm) and went almost straight to bed. That night it rained a lot. We were glad that we weren’t camping, and slept in again. Waking up to geese and ducks again was a nice change. That day we went to see some moose carvings in the rocks not too far away made by the sami people 6000 years ago (4000 BC), it was mixed feelings – they weren’t that good, but you had to remind yourself that they are ridiculously old. We then went to see some moose trapping pits (they used to fence off areas and then build pits with spikes in to catch moose) All the board we saw there were in Swedish and peter was more than happy to translate them for us. The rain held off enough while we were out walking, we stopped off for coffee at peter’s friends house and then headed off for the library in ‘are’(name of town). We booked a hostel for 2 nights, and I put in a few requests for couchsurfing in stockholm. It is difficult without constant internet because you need to put in more than 1 request in order to get a place to stay (the first person might say no, then you will run out of time to ask another when you get internet, but you don’t want to say no if more than 1 person says yes… A conundrum I say. So we left after an hour – went shopping and found some reindeer and moose meat and had an excellent dinner. Here is a challenge to you people. Put an egg in water that is about 60 degrees, and then turn off the heat and leave it for 3-4 hours. Apparently after that it will be hard boiled – and taste much better.. Try it – and let me know.  I am sceptical.. We chatted till early in the morning (2am) and bed time it was.

Today we are heading towards a zoo – hoping to see some Swedish animals – elk, moose, wolverines and bears. Saying goodbye to peter and on the road again – about 3 hours to the zoo.