Roots In Sweden

WWOOF! WWOOF!



Corvin Busche - our current "WWOOFER" from Berlin, Germany

My husband, Hans Göran Karlsson, is an outdoors-y,

nature-loving man.  He has no desire to 'conquer' the elements or physical fortresses that abound in this part of Sweden (or anywhere else for that matter), he just loves to be one with all of them...to drink them in.

But for at least a solid week out of every month, morning till evening, and sometimes longer, he is a prisoner inside the small office just off the front hall of our storstuga (main house),

" doing the papers". 

These dreaded papers consist of the seemingly endless government forms that must be submitted or updated, the bills that must be paid, the orders that must be put in, the information leaflets or brochures comparing farm equipment that must be read and evaluated...

you name it - he hates it.

So when he called to me on one such morning to come into the office to
    "look at this",
I hurriedly punched down the bread dough, covered it with a cloth and went right in.



W.W.O.O.F volunteers on an organic farm.

He had seen a small advertisement in one of the farm magazines about an organization called

W.W.O.O.F.

World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms  

W.W.O.O.F links up young people who have a desire to spend  time working on an organic farm with farmers who would be willing to provide that opportunity for them.  There is no pay involved, it is strictly volunteer, and it is happening all over the world.

We went to their website immediately.  It looked great. We signed up and began to post pictures and information on our profile.

We wondered if we would get any bites with our

alcohol-free/tobacco-free/drug-free/devotional-at-every-meal standard.

The handsome young man you see in the picture at the top of the post is
Corvin Busche, a student from Berlin, Germany who is working on his degree in chemistry/biology.

 He saw our profile and contacted us instantly for a six week time slot

 beginning in mid-March.  We agreed just as instantly, the arrangements were made, and before we knew it we were picking him up from the bus at the ICA parking lot in Junsele.

The long bus ride had taken it's toll, so we encouraged him to rest up a bit that evening and be ready to start work the next day.

Trust me on this one....he was READY!

Bright and early the next morning he was up and into the barn with Gustav and I, doing all the barn chores with gusto...even mucking out with the wheelbarrow and scaling the heights of the dung heap.

Once breakfast was finished and Gustav was off to school, he and I were back into the barn again where he was powerwashing stalls in the young animal barn so that we could set up the maternity wards for calving time.

After a short tutorial, he headed to the dairy and began washing the cheeses.

 Remember washing the cheeses - the job everyone hates to do? 

 Corvin is smiling, and he did it perfectly.

Later, when Gustav got home from school, they went to the carpentry and constructed this excellent feeder for the outside animals, carried it over to the pen and set it up.

It was a big hit with the heifers who were so anxious to use it they even criss-crossed each other to dig into the grain it held.

Any thought of breaking him in gradually to the joys of farm life with it's abundant opportunities for work were dismissed as he and Gustav hiked over to the little stuga to bring a dresser up for him.  They moved so fast I couldn't even focus the camera, and just a little while later when the timer went off and I was hurrying back from the pack room I came into the kitchen to find Corvin taking the sourdough bread out of the oven - WITH the wood peel.

It was official...we had a winner!

(Stay tuned for the further adventures of  "Corvin Comes to the Farm")