So Many Countries, So Little Time!: Norway!

I'm getting around to writing another blog post much faster than I expected, but I figured I should write about Norway while I'm still here, which is only a few more days. I have been in Norway about a week and a half volunteering on an organic farm on the island of Tjome

(that O should have the line through it, but I'm not sure how to type that on my computer) through the WWOOFing program (World Wide Opportunites on Organic Farms). I am living with a couple, Anette and Erlend, and their 3 young children and helping them out with daily chores as well as larger projects on their small farm which consists of a garden, chickens, and horses, and soon to have the addition of sheep. It is a small scale farm and they only produce things for their own consumption, but they have slowly been increasing the size of the garden over the years, and they are continuing the slow process of expanding.

The daily tasks that I and the other WWOOFer (also an American, named Grant) have been helping with are feeding the chickens and horses, cleaning the chicken coop, mucking out the horse stall and paddock (all of the manure from the animals gets turned into compost for the garden), and other small things like helping cook and walking the dogs. We have also been doing other projects like helping them build a fence and a small house for the soon-to-arrive sheep, preparing the garden for winter, and making bread, cordial, kombucha, fermented vegetables, and jam. Anette has also been teaching us about the basics of permaculture and how they are working towards being as self-sufficient as possible and working with the land for the benefit of the earth as well as the people. The family is so nice and they've made us feel very welcome and like we're part of the family. I also love the food they eat! It's mostly vegetarian with lots of vegetables and some fish. It's very healthy and also delicious. Also, my favorite new European food is Norwegian brown cheese, which I didn't expect to be good but it is. It has almost a caremel-y taste, and I love it! I've probably eaten it every day since I've been here, and I really wish I could bring some home to the U.S. but it's going to be so long before I'm back that there's no way it would last that long (both because it might go bad and also because I would eat it way before that haha). My experience here has been great so far and I've really enjoyed seeing a side of Norwegian life other than just seeing tourists attractions in the cities. Now I want to explore even more places in Norway, but unfortunately I don't have enough time. I think my whole trip I'm going to wish I had more time to explore each country more, but I guess I'll just have to use it as a first taste of many European countries to figure out which ones I want to go back to! So I'll be sad to leave Norway, but I'm also excited to check out Copenhagen for a few days before meeting up with Danielle in Amsterdam! I'm not sure when I'll be able to post again but I'll see if I can at least post a small update about each city as we go to them.

In the meantime, here are some pictures of where I am in Norway:

Pond we saw on a family walk the first weekend

The house I'm staying in

The garden

The horse paddock

Chickens

View from the driveway

Beautiful scenes from a morning walk the first week. Unfortunately it's been raining pretty much every day since then, but at least I got a few nice days at the beginning.

The Marina just down the hill, which Anette's father owns

View towards the ocean from a lookout point up the road (there are islands in the way obviously, but at night you can see the light from a lighthouse)