Friday 8th May
Today our little foal goes outside for the first time. He’s a bit reluctant and keeps locking out his front legs but finally he’s in a field with his mum, which they will share with Skippy.
Then we all muck in to finish the wood splitting and finally it’s done and the yard is clear once again.
Saturday 9th May
We’re off to Gotenburg today. We walk to Floby which takes just over an hour and catch the 10am train and meet Flo (a volunteer who came to the farm) at the station. She’s with her friend Martina. We’re going out to the archipelago and get the ferry to Vrango, the furthest island.
Many of these islands rely on motorbikes and quads for transport and there are no cars on the islands. One relies on wheelbarrows. Once on the island we do a coastal walk and stop at Lotsutkiken church – a viewpoint for lunch. Martina is a botanist as well as an environmental scientist so it’s interesting talking to her about the local flora. The weather worsens and we return to the harbour and wait for our ferry back with a celebratory glass of wine! Back in Gothenburg we leave the girls and walk into the city but now there’s torrential rain so it’s not much fun. We look for a bike shop but the ones we find are shut. At 6pm we meet our ‘warmshowers’ host Marko. We decide to head back to his place stopping to shop for dinner. Marko insists on doing all the preparation and cooking and won’t let us help. But it’s lovely to be looked after like this.
Marko has certainly had an interesting life including commercial diving; recreational diving for a year in Ayia Napa and a 20 month cycling trip around the world. Again listening to someone’s cycling experiences makes us hanker to be out on the road instead of the rather static existence we have now.
Sunday 10th May
Marko cooks us a fabulous breakfast and then we get the bus into town. We then get on to the river ferry. We walk round town and take in the sights.
We get the train home and pop in to see Anders and Hu.
It’s great to see them and within seconds we’re sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of red wine whilst Hu cooks us some Chinese food – yum! We sit and chat and then they give us a lift so they can meet the new foal.
Monday/ Tuesday/ Wednesday
We spend the next 3 days building the chicken coop. The roof is done thanks to Ion so we just need to build the walls. So we measure and cut the recycled planks and make the outer walls. Then we repeat the exercise so we can create an inner wall and fill the gap with rockwool – the insulating material.
It’s a hideous material to work with and we’re breathing in the dust and getting covered in the small fibres. When we insulate the ceiling it becomes even worse as we try to fill the gaps with rockwall and then hold it in position with fibre board. We’re now being showered in dust and fibres whilst struggling to hold the boards in place whilst tacking them in place. We also take the light from the current chicken house and rewire and fix in the new coop and we have light. Finally I scrape down the inside walls ready for painting. We still have work to do but it’s a great new chicken coop and Christina is pleased with the results.
Thursday and Friday
Work on the chicken house continues and it gets a coat of rödfärg Swedish paint – the red paint seen all over Sweden. This paint has the consistency of glue so it’s much harder to apply than I expected. Christina also wants us to paint the ceiling white.
Daz makes new nesting boxes for the hens to lay and hangs the door. It’s almost done but we’re off to Stockholm for the weekend. Lotta left on Friday and we’ve got a new volunteer arriving today.
