Danish Psycling Adventures:: Sheep, Cheese & a Really Steep Mountain

Our last activity before we left Flam was a bike ride to a local farm for an afternoon of learning about local farming traditions. The excursion went something like this:

Step one: Pick up bikes! The bike shop was right around the corner (as was pretty much everything in Flam given; it's size makes Carlisle--where my school is located--look like a huge city). We hopped on and sped off!

Along the trail

Step two: ride bikes! We took a winding path across a bridge and to the other side of the water. We wound around the mountains. We were flying along the coastline of the Aurlandsfjord! Nothing could stop us now!

Those farm houses are where we needed to end up

Step three: Realize that the last part of the trail climbs up a mountain at an incredibly alarming angle!
We attempted to bike up anyway...

Trying to portray just how distressed we were

Step four: Get off bike and push it up the hill, stopping periodically to catch your breath.
We muttered about how frustrating it was to be pushing a bike up a GIANT hill when it was too steep to even be able to ride back down.

View of our path from the top

Step Five: ARRIVE AT THE TOP!
We made it! Relieved to have made it all the way up the hill, we discarded our bikes and began to explore the farm.

Getting instructions

Step Six: Await further instructions.
We met our guide, a woman who has run the farm for the past 8 years. She was really quite adorable and SO passionate about what she does. She divided us into two groups. I was in the group who was told to explore the farm for the first 20 minutes while the other group did an activity. Then we switched.

Around the back of the houses

Step Seven: Explore the farm!
Otternes Farm is a collection of 27 farm houses that have been preserved as they were in the 18th century. Caring for such a large farm took the work of five families, everyone having their designated jobs to have keep animals, crops, and trade active and productive. Our guide explained that in the "old days" there were 100 goats and 5 cows that needed to be milked every day. Milking was a job for the ladies while gathering fire wood was a job for the men (hmmm). It was (and remains) exhausting, but fulfilling work, and though much of the production done on the farm has stopped, several key things remain including making the famous Norwegian Brown Cheese (reminiscent of the Danish dark bread) and keeping sheep.

This section of this post is mostly for my mother (whose favorite animals are sheep). Her love for them has always been endearing, but something I never completely understood... until my day at this farm! I saw...

Sheep with the funniest expressions!

Baby sheep out exploring!! (5 days old). In the right photo above is a sheep just born that morning!

Sheep grazing in the mountains!

Sheep running towards me

Sheep running away from me

Sheep eating off one another's backs (they would take turns rolling in the hay and then standing patiently while the others ate they hay of its back)

Baby sheep cuddling together (giving neck hugs ;-)

I have to agree with my mom... they were pretty adorable/fascinating! But back to the rest of the day...

As we learned about the process, we took turns stirring

Step Eight: Trade places and learn to make Brown Cheese!
In a farm house (kept dark to preserve foods as they are prepared) we participated in a great Norwegian craft of making cheese. We learned that the "brown cheese" is not in fact cheese, but is extracted, caramelized sugar. It takes 10-14 hours to make 1 batch of cheese and requires 30 L of milk to make 1 kg of cheese! During the final part of the process (lasting hours), the liquid needs to be stirred over a hot fire continuously.

The liquid is then taken off the fire, stirred in a special way and then brought outside to cool/solidify

Katie helps to scrape it all together while another student holds a pot at the ready to transfer the cheese product

After a little bit of stirring magic, we had brown cheese almost ready to taste!

Step Nine: Eat a fantastic meal of local, organic fare!
Our gracious hosts prepared an amazing meal, which we ate in a beautiful farm house!

Among other things, I tried eating Reindeer!

She is demonstrating how to prepare it

Step Ten: Eat a traditional Norwegian dessert of pancakes ("lapper")!

Our host prepared pancakes for us, which are eating with homemade jam and sour cream. They were AMAZING!

SO GOOD!

Step Eleven: Help clean up, give many thanks, and go!
After clearing the dishes, we had time to take a few final photos, then said goodbye to the sheep and our hosts, and sped off on our bikes back to make it to our train on time (Note: we walked our bikes down the hill).