I’m home.

This means it may be some time before I post another blog. But I will, I promise, once I’ve figured out  the story I want to tell.

In the meantime I can recommend the following blogs:

Abel & Cole

Transition Town Tooting

Hopp, motstånd och kardemummakärnor

Rob Hopkins’ blog

What these two things have in common, in my opinion, is not only a tiny bacteria but also that they both prove how incredibly clever our ancestors have been, and how important is is for you and me to try to preserve (pardon the pun) an important craft.

It’s harvest time at the farm. The first vegetables are ripe and I sense a couple of great months ahead. So far we’ve harvested salad, tomatoes, courgettes, kohl rabi, cucumber, chard, spinach, dill and a few strawberries. Eating freshly picked stuff like this is new to me, even if organic vegetables have been a major part of my diet for a few years now. I feel like a queen!

The spaceships have landed

Name the good things that last. These few weeks are the result of a full years’ labour, and soon it will be winter again. Nothing is possible to harvest under a thick layer of snow, so the need to preserve all this goodness is and has always been essential. We all know a few ways of doing this. Freezing parboiled vegetables is one method. Drying them another. Pickling in various ways a third. Then you can ferment them.

Many of the foods that we eat contain within them an outstanding way of preserving them: the lactic acid, also known as milk acid (mjölksyra in Swedish). This bacteria is present in obvious foodstuffs such as yoghurt and kefir; curdled milk is just another word for fermented milk. Kvass was once upon a time preferred by hard working laborers; it didn’t cause nausea such as a sip of cold water when you’re too hot can do. Another common food using this process is actually salami.

A bit of a forgotten art in food preservation is the use of lactic acid in vegetables. Borsjtj, the famous Russian beetroot soup, is made on acidified beetroot. One reason this method of preservation is less used today could be the relationship between healthy soil and a slowly grown vegetable; an impossibility in an industrialized agricultural landscape. The process of fermentation requires a certain level of minerals (salt which the plant extracts from the ground), a certain temperature and an oxygen free environment (hence the urn above).

If you get this process right there are two stages the food passes through. First the food, let’s say we’re  acidifying cabbage in order to make sauerkraut, starts degrading. If the requirements mentioned above are not met there would most probably be a development of for example acetic acid or butyric acid (which smells pretty bad). The cabbage rots. However if the circumstances are the right ones the cabbage will degrade until a certain point, until it turns and starts building up again. Just like their fresh parents the lactic acidified veggies are bursting with nutrients and are easy for the body to digest. Because you and I carry lactic acid in our intestines, on our skin and in our mouths.

The presence of lactic acid is indeed a gift which, as Annelies Schöneck writes in her book on the subject, is bestowed on all higher beings on this planet of ours. Big words for a tiny bacteria perhaps, but if you remain unconvinced, have some lovely warm sauerkraut with your next frankfurter…

Carl Linnaeus, 1707-1778, means a lot to the world of botany and ecology. His life can only be summarised in books, but the outcome I’m interested in covering is his work and research into plant sexuality, namely the discovery of the stamens and pistils.

I highly recommend reading about him on Wikipedia. There you can also read that he in 1738 married a Sara Elisabeth in Falun. (He has also called Falun “Hell’s Suburb”, something highly understandable considering the mining that have left traces in my hometown’s flora still visible today.)

Basically the stamens and pistils are what helps fruit bearing plants reproduce. They are the plants’ sexual organs, if you see things that way (like I do). Some have them both within the same flowers, others in separate ones. Regardless of which the thing about these two organs is that they need to touch, in order for pollen from the stamen to reach the pistil, or the gynoecium which effectively becomes the plants’ ovary. This is why bees are so important, by the way. It’s estimated that a third of the food we eat comes into existence through this process.

Anyhow, even though the farmer keeps some bumblebees for this very purpose in the greenhouse, nature needs a helping hand and I’m always willing to lend mine! “Pollinating the courgettes” have quickly become my favourite task of the day:

This is the stamen…

…this is the pistil…

… and this is how they meet. Not very arousing but definitely exciting.

If you have courgettes and they tend to rot and die before they ripen, you now know why. Go on, give them a helping hand! And as always, very little needs to go to waste:

The petals looks beautiful in a salad or can be used instead of vine leaves in your dolmades.

On a side note Carl Linnaeus, or Carl von Linné as we know him in Sweden, left another significant imprint in my life. My grandmother and my niece bears the name of his favourite flower, the Linnéa Borealis:

Last week I came to experience a new layer of organic growing, which is the problem with unwanted germination in the fields. In other words: the battle against the weeds have begun.

The Farmer tells me about his fathers’ constant struggles with the weeds. He, like all other farmers of the past (and indeed the present), were at war. Then suddenly a nuclear bomb came around, and sooner or later the vast majority of the farming community were using it. The chemical herbicide.

Otherwise known as weedkiller the chemical herbicide comes in many ways, shapes and forms and I have no intention to account for them here. I am however very willing to understand why these chemicals were an attractive option. It’s just a shame that there are side effects such as ground water damage, indescribable disturbance of the soils’ health and cross contamination with crops intended for ingestion!

There are many ways in which a farmer can protect  her or his crops against these thieves of light and important nutrients. Tilling the soil regularly, for example. But the sensitive area around the fragile carrot shoot cannot be tilled. This is where an army of teenagers enter the arena.

I have already met a few people from the city nearby who tells me about their early experience of this very farm: their first job was to weed the fields.

It’s sort of considered a last resort for youngsters wishing to earn a bit of dosh for ice cream. The youngest of them are 13. It’s not exactly the age where you cherish lying in the mud, if ever you do, but I can see the Farmer’s wife’s efforts in making these young citizens feel proud. Without you I couldn’t farm organically, she tells them, I would have to spray herbicides and  that would make me devastated. There are definetely worse places to have your first experience of working life, and I’m always up for new ways to engage youngsters perhaps not with the land but at least with their food… The social awareness of the Farmer and his wife sure shines through here. Oh and I didn’t get away either- of course I’ve been weeding just as much which sure is lovely on a sunny day. It’s like, you work really hard and get lots done AND you get an even tan at the same time. Double win!

According to SLU, the Swedish Agricultural University, weeds account for 40% of the global total loss of crops because of pests, disease and weeds. This equals about 380 million tonnes of wheat, which would have been half of the global annual production in 2009.  Weeds are by no means a mere eyesore, and the teenagers really are important. Once they’re done the heavy artillery is called upon to till the earth between the rows:

Tractors are after all the younger siblings of tanks, just as weaponry and dynamite were the predecessors of chemical fertilizers…

At ease, soldier.

First I removed the fruit slices…

… then I poured the wine into old, cleaned wine bottles of varying sizes…

… and then I made some nice labels. Sadly the type font didn’t follow the mac-pc transition but you live and learn, hey?

So the bottles now have to stand for at least 8 weeks although I doubt it will taste nice by then. I’m keeping bottle 1/8 to myself, and am planning to open it around the London Olympics… I’ll let you know the result!

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As you can see the distant mountain has hardly any snow left on it… summer is here at last. Along with it new duties… update to follow shortly.

Sowing is when you put seeds in the mud. Planting is when what you have sown have started growing and is transplanted elsewhere. See the difference?

Tiny cabbages about a week old.

The light enters the north around April time, before then it’s depressingly dark and wintery. By this time of year, the week of Summer Solstice, the sun spends less than two hours away from the sky, but it doesn’t ever get dark. The disadvantage of the lower temperature is made up for tenfold. “It grows so quickly you have to move off the field” as the Farmer’s father used to say.

This is how you move the plants from the greenhouse onto the fields:
the Farmer does farmy things to the field beforehand.

Two trustworthy people hop onto a little wagon made for this purpose on the back of the tractor. They load up with plants- lots of plants.

A dreaming M and a focused Jorun getting ready

The plants are then pulled out of their planters and put root-down in between two spinning wheels.

A furrow gets dug in front of the wheels, and a spatula covers it as you move forward.

If you set up the tractor and drive if off to the field you have to make it worthwhile by planting LOTS. This is broccoli and cabbage.

The plants are then ready to rumble, in neat rows and with equal distances.

Of course… sometimes you may as well do it the old fashioned way. This is me planting Calendula in the pick-your-own-bouquet field. Seems amazing there will be flowers in about a month!

Like always it varies quite a lot as to when the Farmer gets to harvest. Weather, wind and frost  all plays their part. In other words, I may well not be here for all of it. From a learning point of view I’m happier to see the planting, though.

Tomorrow morning I am off on the bus (like a peasant… or student… of WWOOF:er) to Stockholm for Midsummer celebrations, the second biggest holiday of the year! See you beyond pickled herring and vodka in tiny glasses.

It’s never a matter of weeks or months but rather a matter of years when the big seed companies are lobbying the authorities to change the legislation. A few years, however, is not enough to establish the safety of a new crop.

I am talking about the genetically modified potato, soon in a field near you. The Amflora potato was earlier this year approved by the European Commision. Behind this crop is the German chemical company BASF. They own Plant Science Sweden, who in fact started this research before BASF entered the field (pardon the pun).

So what’s the deal with Amflora?

It’s not a potato you’ll soon see in the supermarket in between King Edward and Bintje. It’s grown for starch, mainly for the paper industry (but also that of yarn and even glue for example).

Starch for paper has been used and derived from plants ever since the Chinese started making it from rice, but the point with this potato is of course that it’s faster harder better stronger. Or, to be more precise: a “normal” potato produces two types of starch, at the ratio of 80:20. Only one of these is required by the industry (the 80% one), meaning that at the moment the two are separated after growth. What the scientists have done here, though, is that by extracting a gene from the potato, modifying it and then inserting it back in the potato, the production of the unwanted starch is inhibited.

When you’re working on molecular levels it’s important that you know that what you’re doing is on the right track. If you’re not there are, after all, about as many other tracks as there are genes in the DNA string. So, a certain indicator is needed. In the case of the Amflora potato the extracted gene is also given antibiotic properties. If the gene then survives an exposure requiring antibiotics- Eureka!

I don’t think I need to start arguing why, at the end of the day, why levels of antibiotics in a crop could easily get out of hand.

So how does the company behind the Amflora defend this? Easy. How could a potato spread involuntarily, when potato multiplies through the potato itself and not through seeds? Cross contamination with other potatoes is also very unlikely. The potato plant does produce seeds, but these are rarely or never utilized. As for wild siblings, the potato is related to plants like tomato and aubergine. Again, not a great risk of genetic mayhem in the forests and fields close to us. In other words, the antibiotic resilience is kept within the Amflora potato.

There is another side of the chip though.

While the starch is the desired product of the potato there is undeniably a lot of pulp left after its’ extraction. What to do with this pulp? While the EU have strict laws around what can be fed to you and me this pulp can now end up in animal feed.

Today, in the EU, you don’t have to label your product as GM if it contains less than 0.9% of GM crops. There are practical reasons behind this legislation but it’s being abused and misused.

And, food stuffs aside, there is no need to label paper containing Amflora starch. In other words it will not be possible to, as a consumer, boycott it. I also fear that these non food GM crops are there to root (pardon the pun again) the concept of GM in our minds, making us more susceptible to future food crops.

There has, as far as I know, been no proven advantage of GM crops with the exception of picture perfect fields under ideal conditions (in other words, GM crops requires both industrial sized agriculturalists and optimal weather conditions to deliver). About 1% of today’s crops are GM, which accounts for that my skepticism is shared. Thus far.

I fear that this desire to industrialize nature is going to backfire.

What do you think?

Read what BASF writes about the Amflora here(I recommend downloading their leaflet on the subject).

Here’s some more information about GMO in English.

Here’s some more GMO material in Swedish.

And here’s what you can do.

Dandelions are, to most of us, a weed and a nuisance and a bully of more sophisticated greens. They are stronger than many cultivated plants and with little or no competition they will grow very big very fast. They are however very pretty, and more useful than you might think! When eaten fresh the dandelion is of benefit to your intestines, namely your kidneys and as follows the urinary organs. There are many concocts using various parts of the plant which will help more serious issues such as liver disease and eczema. As a sufferer of psoriasis I know the link between these organs and your skin.

The dandelion leaves are amongst the first to shoot in spring. In other words your first seasonal green salad leaves of the year. Pick the smallest shoots and avoid reddish stems, and you have a lovely salad that reminds of rocket (that’s ruccola if you’re Swedish). I take my dandelion leaves with a dash of cider vinegar, a drop of rapeseed oil, some pepper and a sprinkle of sesame seeds, for an esthetic effect.

Does this sound like I’m a dandelion connoisseur yet? I am very much not. The habit of eating dandelion coincided with my arrival at the farm.

As well as eating dandelion leaves I have decided to make dandelion wine. I like the idea of making my own wine, I just haven’t had the chance to yet. I’ve always thought that this requires a) loads of space and b) a kit that you buy from a shop. This turns out to be wrong and wrong again; this wine only requires the storage space of a bucket, and the ingredients are simple baking ones, with the addition of Time of course. A quick google search tells me that dandelion wine most probably originated in the North of England. What a coincidence!

Here’s how you do it:
Pick 3 litres of dandelion flowers. Pull the petals out, you only want the yellow stuff. Put them in a bucket.
Pour 4 litres of boiling water over the petals. Cover and leave for 48 hours.
Strain the petals off. Give them a gentle squeeze with the hand as they absorb a lot of fluid. Fluid that will turn into wine!
Add 2 kilos of brown sugar and 50 grams of fresh yeast. Stir until dissolved.
Peel two oranges and wash two lemons. Slice them all and remove the pips. Add to your bucket and cover with a cloth and a lid.
Leave this for three weeks in order for it all to start fermenting. Keep the bucket slightly cool and stir the mixture every now and again.
Pour into bottles and leave for 8 weeks at the very least.

I’m told that this wine is just like any other wine and will only improve in taste the longer you leave it. Well, let’s hope so as at the moment it looks everything but tasty!

I imagine that dandelion wine, if nicely made, is as surprisingly tasty as geranium chocolate.

The strawberry field, I should mention, is being prepared for the growing season of course.

Update 21 June:
Advised by Marina I also tried picking the most tender buds and frying them in butter. I live by “everything tastes nice with sufficient amount of sugar and/or butter”. They taste… flowery! Not the most amazing flavour I must say, but a fun and quirky extra. I’ll try it on pizza next!

This has brought me to a most wonderful farm in the northern landscape of Jämtland. It’s considered the north but it’s actually the geographical middle of Sweden. Yep that’s right, you Stockholmer you.

Anyways. This autumn I’ll be heading to London again, so in a way this is another farewell to this land of mine. Because mine as it may be, I don’t feel at home here.

Summer hasn’t quite reached the northern regions of Sweden, and most plants are still in their cradle here at the farm:

A sample of what this summer will be like have now been endured. I’m so achy I can barely lift my arms, but it was worth it all! I think I need to make a habit of showing you what I’m up to. Otherwise I fear we soon enough will be harvesting and I will have missed documenting it all.

This is what we did today:

This may look like nice and easy work, a bit like… unfolding a bedsheet. It’s not. Or, if it’s about 20×100 metres of bedsheet (one for giants), outdoors in windy conditions, it’s exactly what it’s like. About 8 times over. And on top of that, the “seems” need to be fastened. Like this:

Digging mud, as it turns out, is a bit like chopping wood. You think you’re going to be great at it until you try.

Farming in the northern regions of Sweden is of course completely different from farming in, say, England. There are several similarities though, in that the crops are more or less the same. With important differences. You couldn’t grow asparagus here. And things, as I’ve mentioned, happens a lot later this far north. The tulips are right at this moment in full bloom. That should put things into perspective for you.

So the white cloth is a necessity here, to help the seeds sprout. It provides that little bit of extra warmth as well as fertilizing the soil ever so slightly (don’t ask me how just yet, something about enabling the soil to do something very spectacular under there as opposed to protect itself were it exposed to the sun). It’s so funny. Until this morning I had no idea that this bedsheet of giants was even a part of farming, now my whole body knows…

So, what is grown at the farm then? It’s a vegetable farm, and no one can have one of those without growing potatoes I suspect. There are also carrots,parsnips, onions and swedes. There will be various kinds of beans and cabbages… salad, tomatoes, cucumbers and courgettes. There are strawberries and raspberries and probably a hundred other things I have forgotten. They also grow and sell some flowers. The customers, I’m told, are very conservative when it comes to flowers. What this means remains to be seen (if I’ll have the chance to see this before I leave in August).

Most seedlings are brought up in greenhouses (there are three big ones if you count the one with all the tomato plants in it… they can’t be grown outdoors here you see). The customers either come to the farmshop, to a stall on the town square come August, or they’ve subscribed to the farms’ very own box scheme. The supermarkets don’t deal with small producers, leaving this farm out of that game.

If I look up whilst digging or watering I can see snowy mountains in the distance. Here’s an inadequate picture:
I’m not far away from my home regions, but far enough to feel that I’ve found myself another adventure.