On Wedndesday Gunnar traded cars with one of his kids so we had a van with room for all six of us. Then we drove to the island of Fogn, the place that Gunnar's and my common ancestors come from. It's less than fifty miles from here, but you have to go through three tunnels under fjords, each several miles long, and then take a ferry ride. It's a small rocky island of small farms, with a total of about 320 people. And it's not much of an exaggeration to say that almost everyone there is related to us. We visited five different families.
The first family we visited has the actual farm with the Varland name (a high lookout point in Viking times) name. She runs a laying chicken and sheep operation, while he has a small commercial electrical business that mostly serves the nearby salmon farms.
The second farm belongs to Gunnar's sister. She raises greenhouse tomatoes and raspberries.
The third family had dairy cattle, and a granddaughter Frances's age.
At the fourth family we had wonderful vension stew, and then went out on the deck for stewed blueberries with vanilla sauce. Lulu and Frances wandered off to the next-door sheep pasture where they collected lots of loose wool, which they cleaned while they rode in the car today (Thursday). As I sit here writing this, they are downstairs with Solveig, who is teaching them how to make it into felt.
The father in the fifth family we visited on Fogn had given up farming years ago, but spent 20-some years working in an office in downtown Stavanger, which was only a 30 minute commute by boat. We've got lots of pictures, but I haven't sorted them out yet.
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