Part 3

Roald wondered what farmers grew in this land of mountains and water. But he did not need to leave his boat to see some of the farmers’ products. As the boat stopped at a small town along the fjords to deliver the mail and boxes of foodstuffs, boys came on deck to sell baskets of fruit—cherries, raspberries, blueberries, currants, and apples.

After a day on the fjords, the family traveled in an automobile. Roald soon asked, “What are those strange fences we see everywhere in the fields?” But he needed no answer to his question, for in a few minutes he saw one of those fences loaded with grass. All along the way he saw men, women, and children in the fields making hay. The men cut the grass and the women and girls and boys helped rake it into small stacks and hung it on the fencelike frames to dry in the sun.

They saw farmers cutting grass on slopes that are covered with rocks. The farmers used scythes and hand sickles to cut around the many rocks. Farmers in many countries would call such rocky hillsides waste land, but in Norway no blade of grass can be wasted if the cattle are to be well fed during the winter.

Roald looked up at one place and saw a big bundle of grass dangling in the air. “Oh, Father, look!” he cried. And his father smiled as he said, “You must not be surprised to see bundles moving along over your head. Farmers who live on the mountains send hay, baskets of berries, buckets of milk or butter down to the valleys on strong wires which have been stretched down the mountain slopes.” And in a few minutes Roald saw a woman hang a bundle of hay on a wire and start it sliding down to the barn below.

At one place the automobile stopped for an hour. Roald and his father took a walk. Back from the road were a farmhouse and the barns of a large farm. They walked along a narrow road up to the house. They saw people at work in the fields. In one field a man was raking grass. He was riding on a rake behind two horses. Other men were loading the grass on a low-wheeled wagon to haul it to the barn where it would be hung on the fences to dry. In another field girls were gathering potatoes which the men had dug.

Far back across the field was a wire pen which caught Roald’s eye. At first he thought that he was looking at a chicken house. But as he walked closer he saw that foxes and not chickens lived in the pen. What cunning foxes they were! Baby foxes lay sleeping in the sun. Other foxes ran about the pen, jumping up on the box houses and off as they pleased. The foxes had long black fur. Down the back of each fox was a stripe of fur tipped with white. Such animals are called silver foxes because of the white tips on the black fur.

At first Roald felt sorry for the baby foxes. He imagined that they were unhappy and longing to be free to run away into the woods. But his father said, “These foxes have never lived anywhere except in this pen. They are well fed, and, no doubt, are very contented in the pen.”

Farmers in this northland often raise foxes for sale. The silver foxes are very valuable. People pay large prices for fox furs and they like the pretty silver tips on them. Ships that sail from Norway to other countries carry many fox pelts to those other lands.

But Roald soon forgot the foxes as he watched some boys busily working in another field. Rows of poles were sticking in the ground in that field and bunches of grain hung on each pole. The boys were pulling up the poles, turning them around, and sticking them back into the ground.

Roald watched them for some time. From one of the boys he learned that grain in that part of Norway is usually dried on poles. By the time the oats, barley, and rye are ripe enough to cut summer is nearly over. The wet fall weather begins. The grain must be dried as quickly as possible. Stacking it in shocks on the ground would not do, for the rainy weather would rot it. The farmers in Norway fasten their grain on short poles to hold it up off the wet ground.

The grain on one side of the poles which Roald saw had received more sunshine than the grain on the other side of the poles. That is why the boys were in the field turning the poles. They wanted all the grain on the poles to dry quickly.

Roald was surprised to see other boys cutting small shrubs and branches of trees and hanging them on fence posts to dry. What would they ever do with those dry leaves? But his father told him that if he stayed on the farm during the winter he would see the goats eating the dried leaves and liking them too. And most farmers in Norway keep goats as well as cows, horses, and pigs.

Roald and his father and his mother and sister then rode on a bus to the next town. They did not travel very fast, for the bus driver is also the mailman. He stopped at each farmhouse along the road for which he had mail. Sometimes he dropped the mail in a mail box by the side of the road, but often girls or boys were waiting at the farm gate to take the mail. Often the driver gave a sack full of mail to a farmer or a man who runs a small store in a village. That man delivers mail to the families who live farther back off the main road.

At one place the man who was to take a sack of mail was not outside his house to meet the bus. The driver and all the passengers on the bus were impatient. The driver honked the horn of his car, but still the farmer did not come. Then the bus driver went over to a post by the gate and pushed a button. He told Roald that by pushing that button he rang an electric bell at the farmhouse. So Roald was not surprised to see the postman come running after the bell had been rung.

Roald was ready to take the train back to Oslo after a week in the country, but he talked about the farms all the rest of the summer.

In the High Pastures

“Come, children dear, For night draws near, Come, children.”

During the summer months you might hear a Norwegian girl, high up on a mountain, calling her cows with such a rhyme. She would, no doubt, call each cow by name, just as the girl does in the old rhyme.

“Come, children all, That hear my call, Brynhilda fair, With nut-brown hair! Come, little Rose, Ere day shall close;

And Birchen Bough, My own dear cow; And Morning Pride, And Sunny Side;— Come, children dear, For night draws near, Come, children.”

Dotted here and there far up in the mountains stand lonely little huts. For months during the year, the roofs of those huts are covered with snow and no smoke comes from the chimneys. But as soon as the winter snows are gone and the tender green grass covers the mountain slopes, the girls take the cattle to the mountains to feed on the fresh grass. Those girls will live in the lonely huts until the snows of the next winter begin to fall on the mountains. In Norway the people call a farmer’s mountain pasture his saeter (say ter).

Sometime in June many girls start on the journey to a saeter. The girls look forward to that day for weeks even though they will be very lonely up in the mountains. Anne and Hulda are sisters who go to a saeter each summer. Anne is only fourteen years of age and Hulda is seventeen. Sigrid, who is about the same age as Hulda, and Martha, who is much older, live on a farm not far from the farm where Anne and Hulda live. Anne, Hulda, Sigrid, and Martha take their cows to the same saeter. So the four girls live together for three months each summer.

One summer, Anne, Hulda, Sigrid, and Martha started for the saeter on June 25. They live in a part of Norway that is far from a fjord or a railroad, so they had to travel on foot. They did not go alone, for there was too much to take to the saeter. Their older brothers went with them. The girls dressed in heavy brown khaki suits and high-topped shoes, walked ahead with the cows, the sheep, and the goats. The boys came behind them with horses loaded with food, churns, milk cans, bedding, and cooking vessels. At first they traveled along a main road and walking was easy. Only a few miles from their homes, they stopped for a week at a house near the road. The cows ate the grass off the mountain slopes near the house, and the boys planted potatoes on a patch on the mountainside which was level enough that crops would not be washed away.

At the end of the week they again loaded the horses and started on the rest of their journey. To reach the high pastures, they must walk up a narrow zigzag road. The small dun-colored horses climb the paths carrying the bundles. What a lot of turns the road has! One mountain path has twenty-seven turns. Of course, the many turns make a longer road than a straight one would be, but the girls are glad for the zigzags. They make the road less steep and they follow the smoother paths.

By the end of the day, the cattle reached their green pastures. And the girls opened the hut which was to be their home for almost three months. The hut was made of rough timber. It had a sod roof on which grew grass and small shrubs.

The boys helped the girls clean the hut which had been closed for so many months. They unloaded the goods which the horses had carried up the mountain and put everything in place. In one corner of the one big room, they put the churn, the milk cans, and the tools. In another corner was a fireplace. On it they hung iron kettles on which the girls would cook their food and boil the milk to make cheese. On a table at one side of the room they put the crocks for the milk and on a shelf above the table, they placed the dishes. At one end of the room on wooden beds, they put the mattresses of straw and warm covers which look like small feather beds.

The next morning the boys set out down the mountain again. They must return to help gather the grain and cut the grass on the farm. The girls are left alone with the cattle.

All four of the girls got up early each morning. They milked the cows and the goats. After breakfast of cheese and bread and butter and milk, Anne and Sigrid each morning took the cattle to the pasture. While the cattle wandered about on the mountain eating the fresh grass, the girls lay in the sun or searched for wild berries—blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries.

Each evening Anne and Sigrid called the cattle. They knew each one by name, and perhaps some of their cows were named Rose, Birchen Bough, and Morning Pride like the cows in the old rhyme. They drove the herds back to the barns near the hut and went home for supper.

Hulda and Martha had supper ready. They had smoked herring, goat’s cheese (goat’s cheese is dark brown in color and tastes sweet), potatoes, bread, butter, milk, and fresh berries. Hulda and Martha were busy all day. They took care of the milk, cleaned the house, and walked two miles to the main road to meet the postman who passes in the afternoon each day. One day each week they got the milk ready for the man who came to take it to factories where butter and cheese are made.

The girls were glad when Saturday nights came. Then some of their relatives and friends came out to see them. Girls from other saeters came too if they were not too far away. On these nights sometimes the girls and boys sang songs and danced on the grass.

Ole, Kristian, and Sofie are other Norwegian girls who take cows to the high pastures. They live on a farm near a fjord. They take their cattle part way up to the saeter on a boat. The girls, dressed in dark dresses and heavy shoes, carrying big knapsacks on their backs, travel on the same boat with the cows. When they leave the boat, they drive the cows a few miles up the mountain. They live much as Anne, Hulda, Sigrid, and Martha live on their saeter. These girls can go to the village by boat to buy groceries.

Automobile roads have been built in some parts of the high mountains. Tourists climb the high mountains in automobiles. Round and round they climb, sometimes on a road that is like a shelf sticking out from the rocky wall. And here and there they may go right through the wall itself, for holes, or tunnels, have been cut through the rocky banks.

Tourists who travel through those mountains are glad to find a hotel at a saeter on their way where they can get food or stay over night. And hotels have been built at saeters which are near the automobile roads. The hotel is a large wooden building. It stands near the huts which are the homes of the family which cares for the cattle.

Matti, Ingrid, and their brother Ole go each summer to a large saeter called Grotli. Their father has a hotel there. Grotli means “Goat’s Hill,” and Grotli looks like a goat’s hill in the summer when the goats run about on the mountain.

Early in the spring Matti, Ingrid, and Ole, and their father and their mother move to Grotli. Sometimes the snow is still on the ground when they arrive. Then the children may think that Grotli looks more like reindeer hill. A farmer, who lives near the saeter, has a herd of tame reindeer. They wander about on the mountain. They rub the snow out of the way with their noses and eat the fresh grass and moss which they find underneath.

Sometimes visitors in Norway ask, “Why must the cattle go so far away from the farm to the high pastures?” If they ask a Norwegian milkmaid, she might say, “The grass which grows on the farm must be saved for winter feed. Not enough grass grows on the farm for both summer and winter. Fresh, tender grass grows on the high mountains, so the cattle eat it in the summer. Then no grass is wasted.”

But the milkmaid may not know why the saeter is _so far_ away from the farms. And, of course, it does seem strange to American girls and boys that a farmer sends his cattle to feed in high pastures miles from his farm, while in the mountains just above his own farm graze the cattle of another farmer who lives miles away. Why cannot a farmer graze his cattle on the mountains near his home? The answer to that question is a story of long, long ago in Norway.

Long ago the farmers in Norway found that they must use the grass on the high mountains for summer feed. The king said, “Each farmer may have a part of the grass lands on the high mountains for his pasture. But each farmer must use only a certain amount of land and he must find a place which no other farmer has already claimed.”

So each farmer hunted himself a mountain pasture. When he found a space which he liked, if it had not already been claimed, he drove stakes into the ground to mark it off. He put his name on the stakes and then the land was his. Many farmers had to take pasture lands which were far from their farms. They could find no other free land.

Years and years have passed since the days when a farmer drove stakes and marked off his pasture land. The farms have passed to other owners. Perhaps now the great-great-great-grandsons of some of the farmers live on the farms, or some farms may have been sold to other families. But the new owners of the farms are also owners of the same saeters that the old farmers staked off for the farm. And that is why many a farmer today takes his cattle to a saeter far from his home.

On the Flat Farm Lands of Denmark

One day late in July, Christian was so excited he could hardly eat his dinner. School had closed for the summer vacation. The next morning Christian, who was only nine years old, was going to a farm to stay four whole weeks. In fact he would stay on the farm until time for school to open again in August.

Christian lived in the largest city in Denmark. We call that city Copenhagen, but Christian calls it Kjøbenhavn (Kuvn havn). Christian was not the only boy in that city who was excited on that July day. Many boys, and girls too, were leaving the city for a summer on a farm.

They were not going to visit aunts or uncles or grandfathers. No, their visits were going to be more exciting even than visits to aunts and uncles and grandparents would be, for many of them were going to be guests of families whom they had never seen.

Those boys and girls live in very poor homes in the city. When school closes for summer vacation, there is little for them to do. Their homes are small and there are few places near their homes where they can play. So every summer farmers invite boys and girls from the city to be their guests for four weeks of their vacation. The officials of the railroads and of steamship lines give those boys and girls free rides on the trains and boats to the farms.

Perhaps Christian was happier than many of the boys. Only a few weeks earlier a letter had come to him from the farmer whom he had visited the summer before. The letter said, “All of us here on the farm want you to come to us again this summer. I think that even the cows, the chickens, the ducks, and the geese missed you when you left last August.” No wonder Christian was excited and happy!

Morning came at last and Christian started very early on his journey to the farm. He carried only a small bag of clothes with him, so he and his mother went to the station on a street car. He passed through the gate at the station and waited on the platform for his train. Other boys and girls were waiting too. Soon they were on the train scrambling for seats by a window for they were eager to see as much of Denmark as they could.

Christian had almost a whole day’s journey to the farm. Denmark is made up of hundreds of small bodies of land with water separating them. To reach the farm Christian had to travel on two trains and two boats.

Christian was interested in all that he saw. He was not surprised to see the wide stretches of flat land, but after visiting farms of Norway you may be surprised. Christian saw a field in which black and white cows were eating the green grass. He could see far, far away across that pasture. The land was as level as a floor, with not even a tiny hill in sight.

At other places he did see hills—no very high ones though. That hilly land looks very little like land of Norway made by the giants. But the same ice-sheets did make these hills. As the glaciers that covered Denmark melted, they left behind these piles of rocks and soil which we call hills.

Some sights which Christian saw are much like the sights in the land of the Dutch children. The land of Denmark is flat like Holland, so the Danes have long made the wind work for them just as the Dutch have done. So Christian saw windmills which still pump the water off the low lands or grind the farmers’ grain.

Denmark has many small farms. Many of the farms have even less than two acres. A piece of land so small as that in America would hardly be called a farm. Of course Denmark has large farms also. But Christian saw many of the small farms as he rode across the country. The farm buildings form three sides of a square. Many times the buildings are of red brick and the roof of straw woven into a covering called a thatched roof.

The farmer was at the train to meet Christian. They rode out to the farm in a wagon behind two bay horses. After what seemed to Christian a very short ride he was opening the gate to the farm and could see the white farmhouse and barns far back across the fields.

Then began happy days for Christian. He liked the big light room at the top of the clean white house which was his own, but he liked best the big out-of-doors. He drank all the milk he wanted. He ate potatoes with heaps of butter, and eggs, and cheese, and sausages, and bread.

But Christian worked too. One of his tasks was to help gather in the eggs. The baskets were so quickly filled with eggs that the farmer took them to town twice each week. Christian went with him. They took the eggs to a large building where eggs are packed for shipping. Such a lot of eggs in that building! Christian wanted to know what the workmen did with the eggs and before the summer was over he had learned.

Some of the workers sorted the eggs, putting the big ones in one box, the middle-sized ones in another, and the small ones in another. Other workers tested them to see whether they were fresh. The fresh eggs were sent to other workmen who stamped on each egg in red the word “Danish” with a red line around it.

Christian asked, “Why do you put ‘Danish’ on the eggs?”

The workman said, “Many of these eggs are sent away from Denmark to other countries. We put the word ‘Danish’ on the eggs so that people will know that the eggs come from Denmark. Then if they like the eggs, they will know where to send for more. If they find bad eggs, they can tell us.”

Then the workman showed Christian some sheets of paper on which he kept records. From those sheets he could tell just what farmer brought in each box of eggs. He said, “You see, Christian, we keep such good records and each farmer keeps such good records that if a customer gets a bad egg, we can find the very hen that laid that egg.”

Christian knew that the workman was only joking, but the workman did know the date when the egg was laid. Christian knew too that the farmers knew which hens lay many eggs, and which hens lay large eggs.

Christian learned to milk cows too. He could milk only a little, as his hands got tired. He milked only cows that were easy to milk. But he could carry buckets of milk to the house.

In the large stable where the cows are milked, Christian saw a sheet of heavy paper tacked up over each stall. He read what was on some of those papers. They were the cows’ _grade cards_. There were good grade cards too, for they told exactly what each cow can do—how much each eats, how much milk each gives, whether that test is better or worse than other tests.

Christian felt sorry when the farmer showed him one record. That record was for a cow that was eating a great deal, but giving milk that tested low in butter fat. The farmer said that he would have to fatten that cow and use it for meat.

Christian went with the farmer to take big cans of milk and cream to the cheese factory and the creamery. The factory was in an old, old town. Christian liked to play on the narrow street near the factory.

But he always went with the farmer to take the milk and cream to the factories. Over those buildings he saw a word that he asked the farmer about. The word was the Danish word that means “Co-operative.” The farmer told Christian the “co-operative” means that the farmers are working together for the good of all. So instead of each farmer making cheese and butter on his own farm and selling it at whatever price he wishes, a group of farmers take their milk and cream to factories where cheese and butter are made for them. There the milk and cream are tested and each farmer is paid a fair price for his cans.

In the cheese factory were cheese balls marked with the word “Danish” in the oval just as the eggs were marked. The man at the cheese factory said, “We put the name ‘Danish’ upon _good_ cheese only. Anybody in any country may be sure that cheese marked ‘Danish’ has been tested before it is sold.”