Endless Cycles

Geese Flying South

This was not a good year for pears but a  fairly good year for apples they say.  Tomorrow is "The Day of the Apple".  One can go to apple tasting or to the apple juice/cider presses.  Kulla Musteriet is very close to us, we always have some of their cider to enjoy here at home.  The climate here is ideal for apples, no wonder they taste so good!

We have had some apples on our tree out back. I fed them to Pandora and Lillan, our neighbours horses. Our pear tree was loaded with pears last year, just packed........ the birds fed on those pears all trough the long and exceptionally cold winter!  This season I can hardly see any.  The Native Americans around North Fork, Mariposa and Coarsegold taught us that if fruit was scant, or if there was only a few acorns on the oaks, it would be a mild winter.  Time will tell if their predictions hold true, even here in Scandinavia.

Cutting, thrashing, drying, turning, baling in different ways.  Giant bales, smaller, to me more familiar bales, then the here so common plastic wrapped silage bales...........   Never have I seen such impressive pieces of farming equipment.  There is a specific one for every task, nothing is done by hand it seems other than maybe strawberry picking.  A job a lot of school kids do, during the summer vacations.  No "farm workers" need apply!

The fields around us are being worked frantically!  A couple of weeks ago they were harvested, thrashed baled etc.  Then plowed, disced and harrowed.  Each time, each season, each year big boulders and rocks of varying sized get dredged to the surface.  How can there be such an endless supply of rocks?

This morning there have been three tractors working various tasks.  One specifically dedicated to rock removal.  One flying around "fluffing up" ( a brand new farming term! ) the ground, the third sowing.  In just a few days the fields will be green again and we will wonder what it is we have growing all around us until such a time as when we can tell what it is.  Each year is different.  The field next to our road was filled with red clover this summer.  Beautiful and sweet smelling for a time.

Bee keepers put out bee hives to pollinate the flowers and for clover honey production.  Hard workers those honey bees.  The year prior there were oats growing in that field, rape seed or what in the States is called canola, the year before that.  Those brilliant beautiful yellow fields so closely associated with Scania/Skåne in particular.  Always changing.  Never dull.

Fall is in the air, the birch trees are showing hints of yellow.  Soon the trees and bushes and all the hedgerows will explode with color!  I LOVE fall!