Meanwhile, spring has sprung!
9 March 2026
In February, there was still plenty of snow and ice. We put winter tires with studs on the car because otherwise we were afraid we wouldn't be able to get out of here. It was -15 degrees Celsius at night, -3 degrees Celsius during the day. No weather for gardening. We did start on our guest house, which we call "the cottage." We actually came up with "Vila," because it also means "peace" in Swedish, but that name hasn't caught on yet, and our Swedish neighbors aren't exactly thrilled with the pun either. Well, the cottage, anyway. We're going to redesign it quite a bit, so it's a really comfortable place to stay. First, a lot of demolition work, and then proper reconstruction.
There was still so much snow; it would take a few weeks for it to melt. Only one morning, our land was green, not white! Quite a surprise. We immediately got to work in the garden, because we need to sow seeds in the vegetable garden. Order a greenhouse. Figure out how we want it. Off to the store. Way too expensive. Think of another solution. Meanwhile, think about the chicken coop. It needs pruning, let's do that first. Hey, those branches, we can use them to weave our vegetable beds!
So that's what we're doing now. Neighbors are coming over and they think it's all beautiful! Only those paths, aren't they too narrow? Hmm, yeah, well maybe, okay, adjust. Do it differently. Meanwhile, looking for soil; we think we can fit 20m³. Way too expensive. Those molehills look good too. Dig up the molehills, add soil to the beds—really good, good soil! And a neighbor knew someone where we could get horse manure, great! Another couple of cubic meters filled.
We have a lot of projects going on, and sometimes the temptation is there to work on other projects. So we're sticking pretty strictly to our priorities:
- Vegetable garden
- Chicken coop
- Various odd jobs
- The little house
But yes, yesterday the neighbor came to ask if we'd like to buy three sheep from a friend of hers. They're pregnant. She's asking 1500 kroner for them. So 50 euros per sheep. That's very little, of course, and if they each have two lambs in May, we'll have nine sheep for 150 euros... Another project. We're going to pick them up at the end of March.
There's too much going on here to describe it all. We're also tired every night, but wake up in the morning full of energy; we want to keep building and working. We live really differently here than in the Netherlands. That's the plan, of course, and we're consciously organizing it that way.
So, we go grocery shopping about once every three days. When we go to the store, we also buy other things at the same time; we don't just go for one carton of milk. We buy everything in bulk, so do we need a can of coconut milk? Buy a box full of cans right away. The standard supermarket bread is inedible, so we're baking our own. The cookies are delicious, but we're making them ourselves now.
The projects have definitely become priorities, with the vegetable garden at the top. At the same time, we're efficiently working on other things that need to be done: preparing the chicken coop, pruning branches, repairing the chainsaw, and so on and so forth.
And because we don't have any work here yet, we're being very frugal with spending. We're not making any major investments yet. Fortunately, the previous owner left behind a lot of stuff that we can use. So we're being creative with that. We throw little away, we repair things, we reuse things. We already had that in the Netherlands, but because we feel the need for it more here, because 1) we have no income and 2) it's inefficient to go to the store for every little thing, it's not becoming a nice-to-have here, but a way of life. Well, long story short, it's beautiful here, and we're just getting started, and we're excited!