Once upon a time, a romantic couple went to Norway on honeymoon, fell in love and never went back......

This may sound like a strange thing to do but, after many years of searching, Norway was the only place we felt we could live our dream of running a small farm. So here we are.

We bought our farm at Svoen just before Christmas 2009, and, after an agonizing wait to make sure nobody else who might have prior claim on the place wanted to take the farm (complicated Norwegian law), we moved in on Norway's national day, 17th May, 2010. And so the work began.

The farm had not been run for almost twenty years, but at least part of the barn was in good enough condition to allow us to buy 25 beautiful spælsau (old Norwegian breed of sheep) in the autumn of 2010. This autumn we plan to keep a number of their ewe lambs to increase our flock. They will, I am sure, feature regularly in this blog.

We feel very privileged to be able to build up this farm again and, despite the hard work, occasional disappointments and battles against the weather, we don't regret our decision for a moment and know that it will all be worth it!

Monday, August 26, 2013

Peter and the Porsche.

Vintage tractor charm.




Glossing over the fact that it is over a year since I last posted, I shall continue seamlessly with this next post.  Summer is silo time and while the sheep holiday in the mountains we make their winter feed.  I am relieved to say that as of today we have finished this daunting task.  The barn is filled with hay and tasty dried birch leaf snacks, and the added bonus is that Chloe the cat will smell of summer the whole winter after making a cosy nest in the hay.  As the above pictures suggest, Peter had fun using his newly restored vintage tractor to help with the job.

We had a very successful lambing in spring and the plan is to keep more lambs to bring the total number of ewes up to fifty.  Are we mad? Perhaps. I'll let you know next spring when we have 100 plus lambs bouncing around!  Nearly half of the girls have returned from the mountains already, having been disgusted with what has passed for a summer this year.  We still have the other half to bring back, so no doubt there will be plenty of sheep pictures in the next post.



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1 comment:

  1. RodAugust 27, 2013 at 9:08 AM

    It's been a while! Nice to see a catch up from you both. And a very nice Porsche Pete!

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