life in the farm 2

First there are those were one has to get up early, have breakfast at 6:30 and go to the morning milking. Then there are those when I can sleep longer but not too long. The aim is to have breakfast and disappear back to my room with a full cup of coffee until the farmer wakes up. He wakes usually around nine but there are also anomalies with earlier movement. The farmer is not a bad person but … Maybe more about this later. Long mornings can be used for doings things online and reading a book.

The kitchen has a view in three sides. Weather is visible all the time. Like a strip on sunlight on the mountainside over the valley as if it shone through a crack in the door. In some mornings we see wind tearing last leaves from trees. Around the house grow some willows.

We have spent a couple of afternoons and evenings with cleaning the barn of manure, using a scraper and high pressure washer. Being in deep shit got a new meaning. Most of the time the cows were excluded from the area during the process but I spent one evening jostling in the middle of the cows with the pressure washer, cleaning something called the kiosk and its surroundings. Cows get some kind of additional food from the kiosk, Mari calls it nuts. The machine knows by the neckband of each cow how much to give her. Some cows retreated from the splashing water, others, used to Icelandic weather, endured it stoically. When floors, walls and metal fences have been cleaned then cows don’t appreciate the hard-won cleanliness but cover everything swiftly with new manure.

One day was spent with bringing cows down from pastures. A few groups of cows that did not need to be milked have spent their summer free on pastures. The ones on the upper pasture were already waiting eagerly by the gate, sun shining through edges of their wide ears. Týra ran wildly about while Þruma chased expertly after the last cow.

A few nights northers lights have been in the sky when we came from milking, reflecting nicely in a pond of cow urine.