Monday, May 11, 2009

Alla's Farm














































At the music festival during Easter I was speaking to Nina, who printed the posters for BAK. She was selling hot chocolate and some wool shawls with her husband Smari. I was asking her about the wool and she told me about her friend Alla who has a farm in Pyngeyri. I told her I really wanted to go to a sheep shearing and she said that to go for lambing is a great thing. A few weeks later I got Alla's email address and we began some email communication. She is also studying English at the University Centre.

I happened to have mentioned this to Gunna Sigga, who works at the University Centre and happened to have picked my mom and me up from the airport in September, and she was planning on visitng her as well. So we made a plan to go Saturday afternoon.

Because Gunna Sigga is just amazing she came with ponnukokur and her homemade blueberry jam (I eat this every day with my yogurt at school). yummmmm. Zelia had a blast riding next to Karl Aaron, Gunna Sigga's son as he tried to think of all the English words he knew. It was actually quite impressive especially when he said blow torch - I definitely don't know that in ANY other language!

We arrived and Alla went and got us a backpack to carry Zelia in and a pair of mittens - which she refused to wear - of course. As you will see in the pictures, she eventually refused her hat as well. Anyway, we walked around the farm and looked at the cows, smaller than the ones in the US and very cute. Check out the colors on that one! I was truly hoping to see a birth, but it wasn't meant to be I guess. We saw several lambs and Alla says she doesn't even know how many have been born. Earlier in the week she had a day with 12 new lambs!!!! Amazing.

She also does a lot of craft work, makes buttons from the sheep horns, washes and spins wool, sews, etc. We got to se her workshops which were very neat and she invited us back to learn to do some of these things - I can't wait.

Zelia had a lot of fun looking at all the animals, Labbi the dog included, and on the walk back to the house she began making chicken noises, baa, baa, baa - it was pretty funny. She was also going through her entire repetory of words and sounds so we were doing a lot of laughing.

Jacob and I bought a dozen of her eggs and we were all invited inside for some tea and coffee and she too would have made ponnukokur, but we needed to think about heading out. She had a beautiful old piano that Dan, Tanja's friend visiting from Argentina (from the US though), played really nicely. We had tea made from mint, lemon balm and some other herb growing outside. Then she began boiling some eggs, some of which were wild duck eggs. Their shells were practicall green - very interesting. Jacob was anxious to try it and offered Zelia a bite, she proceeded to eat the entire thing!

We came home, fed Zelia and then headed to Tanja's where Dan was making us all a 4 course meal! Bruschetta, cheese, salami, mushroom risotto, spelt pasta with salmon, raosted lamb and tiramisu, delicious!

0 comments: