Blueberries, Rocks, and Sweden

Our workaway is finally over. Three weeks have come and gone. The last two weeks were packed with lots of berry picking, fishing, more rocks, an unexpected trip to Sweden, and eating lots of good food. Looking back now we did a lot of cool things in Mosvik that we couldn’t have done anywhere else. Here is an outline of the adventures we had in our last half of the workaway.

Berry picking: Blueberries are one of our favorite berries. We usually had them in our daily breakfast smoothies for about $4 per bag. In Norway, they are everywhere and they are free! You can find blueberries anywhere beneath your feet. We headed to a secluded forest with blueberry bushes covering the whole hillside. To pick the blueberries we used a comb like apparatus that separated the blueberries from the leaves and stems for easy picking. In total we filled a 25 liter bucket. Of course we ate blueberry ice cream for dessert!

Fishing: A neighbor friend, Jannik, took us fishing in a tiny boat that went slower than we could swim. The fjord was beautiful and kind of sunny after a large rain storm. We (Ryan) only caught one fish but it was a big one. We mostly enjoyed being out on the water and talking with Jannik. The highlight was when we saw mink whales swimming near the boat. They looked like dark Dolphins.

 

Sweden: Who knew we were so close to Sweden?! Mosvik was only about a 2 hour drive from Åre, Sweden. Many Norwegians take the drive because prices are much cheaper for alcohol and certain foods. We mostly helped get lots of wine for our host family. Sweden looked immediately different from Norway. The land was red and orange and higher in the mountains. Not nearly as much water. We did however stop at the largest waterfall in Sweden which was breathtaking. You can walk out over the water and feel the mist from the fall. It was epic.

Thanksgiving: It’s a tradition that each helper make a meal from their home country. We kept thinking about what the most American food would be. Hotdogs, hamburgers, maybe Mac & Cheese? Finally we remembered that one holiday centered around eating: Thanksgiving! So we decided to whip up a big Thanksgiving meal for everyone. To our surprise we found a turkey at the store! Astrid had most of the other ingredients we needed to make our feast. The menu included: turkey (duh), mashed potatoes, stuffing, sweet potato casserole, rolls, and gravy. Nothing turned out like how it does when my mom makes it. The rolls were flat, the stuffing was too dry, the turkey wasn’t as flavorful. Too bad we are missing the real thing with our families this year. I think everyone enjoyed it though. The sweet potatoes casserole is always a big hit mostly because it tastes like pie filling. It was cool to share a little bit of home with everyone and we were happy to eat some homemade Thanksgiving food since we won’t have the real thing.

Bee keeping: The bees produced honey!! Yay! Sandra and Adria helped Astrid with the bees and honey. It looked like a crazy job because you had to remove all the bees from their honey combs. There were so many bees buzzing around; thank god for bee suits! All in all the bees produced 10 liters of honey. Perfect for all the baking needing to be done over the holiday season.

Northern lights: The northern lights just kept getting stronger as the nights became darker. I was fast asleep when Ryan woke me up to come downstairs and look at the lights. The green curtain lights danced across the sky. One minute they are there and the next they float away. They were quite green and bright and filled up the whole sky. Even though I was half asleep it was well worth it.

Rocks: I think we started dreaming about rocks towards the end. We separated more rocks up at the top of their garden and created a rock cover for the camper to sit on. The hard work payed off with some new arm muscles!