Tag Archives: farms

Historic Sweden: Royal Palace, Skansen, Vasa Museum

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Gamla Stan
Sweden’s most well-known exports today are IKEA furniture and H&M clothing, which means my impression of the country is one of sleek modernism. Naturally, Sweden does have a history and is rightfully proud of its past accomplishments, I’ve simply never bothered to learn anything about them. So when I began researching this trip, I was a bit surprised at all the recommendations to see the Royal Palace. To be honest, before this trip, I didn’t even know Sweden still had a royal family. It seems a rather archaic institution to support (the state still funds them partially), though I guess the tourism benefits now outweigh any concerns about the monarchy trying to regain control. (More below.)

Royal Palace Guard

Many of Stockholm’s tourist attractions are concentrated on the island of Gamla Stan, or Old Town. Within these winding, medieval lanes, you’ll find the Royal Palace, the Riddarholmskyrkan Cathedral, the Nobel Museum and more. The Royal Palace entrance fee is a bit steep (150 SEK/$23 for adults or 75 SEK for students), however you do get entrance to three attractions: the Royal Apartments, the Treasury and the Tre Konor (Three Crowns) museum. Photos are not allowed in any of the Royal Palace exhibits, so I had to content myself with taking photos outside.

The changing of the Royal Guard takes place at noon each day, and while it was not as showy as say, the India-Pakistan border guard changing, it’s still fun to watch if you happen to be in the area. One thing I noticed was there were at least two female members, the first time I’ve ever seen women as part of a royal guard. I did a little bit of Googling and couldn’t figure out if Sweden was the first to do this, but at any rate they win points for being progressive!

Female Royal Guard

I jumped into an English-language tour of the Treasury and learned the following tidbits on Sweden’s medieval history:

  • The Royal Regalia includes 5 items (listed in order of importance): sword, crown, scepter, key and orb
  • Tre Konor (Three Crowns) is the name of the original royal castle that was destroyed in a fire in 1697. The Swedish Coat of Arms also includes three crowns on it. Why three? One leading theory is that the three crowns represent the three parts of Sweden (Sweden, Norway and Denmark). That’s right, far from being amiable pacifists, the Swedes were out to conquer everything they could get, especially their neighbors. Another theory is that the crowns represent the three Wise Men, thus symbolizing the divine right of the king to rule.
  • In Sweden, the absolute monarchy was outlawed in 1720. But like a zombie attack, the old kings and queens constantly plotted to regain power again, and did so successfully in 1772. King Gustav III introduced the Union and Security Act to fully restore the royal autocracy in 1789 (when the French Revolution began).
  • Sweden’s queens seem to be more colorful and strong-willed than the kings. My favorite is Queen Louisa Ulrika, who was a pen pal of Voltaire, and highly annoyed by her mild-mannered husband, who was uninterested in getting more power. So in 1756, Queen Louisa Ulrika removed 44 diamonds from her crown and shipped them to Berlin to get funding to stage a coup d’etat. Unfortunately, she was found out, and many heads were beheaded except for hers, since the Queen was more or less beyond the law.
  • The Coronation Robe is ruby red (the color of royalty) with ermine fur trimming because it was thought that ermines would rather kill themselves than get their fur dirty.
  • In 1980, the constitution was reformed such that the oldest child would become the next King or Queen, not the oldest son. That meant Princess Victoria became next in line for the throne, not her younger brother Prince Carl Philip, who was about 6 months old at the time.
  • None of these regalia items are actually used or worn nowadays, other than for ceremonial purposes like christenings and funerals. In those cases, the crown is placed on a pillow.

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Sausage Party, or the Stuff FDA Nightmares Are Made Of

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Still foggy with sleep, we tumbled off the bus to see two wood-fired cauldrons, belching out clouds of smoke and steam in a medieval fashion. The air was filled with the finest perfume any gastronome could wear: the scent of pig lard.

I found myself on yet another of northern Italy’s ubiquitous small-scale farms, surrounded by idle farm machinery, deadened remnants of the fall harvest, and the sharp smell of pig shit. This trip had been touted on the syllabus as a visit to an “artisanal butcher,” but we were about to see that this butcher was one of the more minimalistic variety.

Tools of the sausage-making trade: kidneys, salt and cigarettes

On this plot of farmland in the sleepy village of Guastalla, about 3,000 pigs are housed and nourished. Yesterday though, the pigs counted one fewer among them. “Normally, we wouldn’t work on Sunday,” said Alberto, “but today is the saint’s day for Sant’Antonio, and you would not want to slaughter a pig on that day. So, we went ahead and did the job ahead of time.”

Inside the shed, several grizzled men milled about, dressed in heavy-duty galoshes, beards, and puffy vests to defend against the crisp January cold. A long table was placed in the center of the room, piles of pig bits arranged neatly on top. Meat, skin, and bones; the disassembly had been swift and democratic. Ribs lay stacked inside a plastic crate, buried beneath a thick layer of salt and pepper. Feet lay splayed at the table’s edge, still intact and furry. Pools of fresh crimson blood dotted the room, soaking into the dirt floor. Behind the operating table, anonymous organs dangled from hooks. “What is that?” I asked. Rae came to my rescue. “These are the lungs, and here’s the spleen and the three lobes of the liver.” He pointed them out to me. One, two, three. Apparently, there are some benefits to growing up in a family of butchers.
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A Flight of Fancy: France’s Poulet de Bresse

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A month has passed since I was last in France (my how time flies!), but I’m still milking those experiences for class projects. Our trip to a Bresse chicken farm was particularly memorable, so I converted that into a magazine-style piece that I will submit for evaluation.

A Flight of Fancy: France’s Poulet de Bresse (727 kb)

Ferme des Levées: the Happiest Pigs in France

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Anyone who has even briefly investigated livestock production at industrial farms knows that the process is wholly unnatural, with animals reduced to meat-generating machines, forced to live in dirty, cramped conditions.

At Ferme des Levées, owners Anne and Jacques Volatier firmly believe in treating their pigs with respect and raising them with traditional, organic farming methods. Jacques began raising pigs in 2000, and prior to purchasing this farm, he had no farming experience and worked as a civil engineer in town planning. “I don’t know how exactly to describe it, but I had an intuitive sense that I wanted to find a way to help grow the planet and start a project that would benefit the local economy. The intuition has now become certainty and a way of life in the countryside.” He attended an agricultural training program for a year, acquired the necessary capital and decided to launch a pig breeding operation because it was a product that could be raised and transformed entirely on the farm.
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Soaring Through Centuries: Falcons and Farms in Tuscany

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A falcon catches a lure mid-air.

After a 7 hour battle for seating on a hot, overbooked train, I stepped off the platform in San Miniato and took a good look around. This was Italy’s famed Tuscany, the stuff that Hollywood movies and expat marriage dreams are made of. All was quiet, and I paused uncertainly as I looked at the empty train station waiting room. If I were a WWOOF host, where would I be, I thought to myself. My worries were allayed however, when I spotted a woman waiting around the corner. She approached me with a smile and said, “Hi, are you Crystal? I’m Amy, nice to meet you, I’m glad that you made it!”

Amy quickly introduced herself and told me about the Barbialla Nuova farm, where I am volunteering through WWOOF for the next couple weeks. In no time, we were trading life stories and discussing how the shape of bread across cultures is influenced by the way it is used (flatbreads for curry in India vs round disks used as bowls for stew in England). Amy moved from Australia to Italy with her husband and two young children about 9 months ago, after deciding that they wanted to spend some time living abroad. Ken, her husband, is a very talented bread baker and they both have extensive experience as WWOOFers around the world. After sending out inquiries to the WWOOF network, they stumbled upon Barbialla Nuova and haven’t left since. “It’s really neat to be on the other side now as a host!” commented Amy.

Barbialla Nuova is a 500-hectare farm in central Tuscany, and the project aspires to govern the land as a holistic living organism, with knowledge from the biodynamic, sustainable and Fukuoka schools of natural agriculture. The farm holds a herd of 60+ Chianina cattle, pigs, a lake for fishing, and some of the most valuable natural white truffle beds of the Val d’Elsa. More than half of the property is wooded, and much of the remaining land is set aside for grazing animals. Wild boars, deer, hares and porcupines are some of the animals that are commonly seen on the grounds. At one point, there were about 50 farmhouses on the property, and the 1861 census records state that 382 people lived on the estate at that time, with each family given a house and some land in exchange for half of the profits. Even further back in history, Barbialla was underwater during the Pliocene era, and in some of the layers of rock, you can find marine fossils of gastropods and bivalves.
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Hiking and Ruminating the Italian Alps

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Clockwise: Mural of a mountain goat and cow outside Fratelli Lussiana creamery, fresh wheels of cevrin in warm room, foothills of Piedmont, aging wheels of cevrin in cold room

A couple weeks ago while on the Piedmont stage, our class visited Fratelli Lussiana creamery, a cheese producer in Giaveno, about 35 km west of Turin. The primary cheese they produce is cevrin di Coazze, made with half goat and half cow’s milk and aged for 3 months. At the time, I was tired, hot and not in the mood to see yet another farm, but we all fell headlong in love with this cheese producer. After showing us an overview of the cheesemaking process and aging rooms, the lovely Lussiana siblings piled us into a hay-filled tractor and trundled us up a narrow, rocky mountain path, while we tried to keep our balance, yodeled and ducked under overhanging tree branches. Once we reached the mountaintop farm, we were greeted by a herd of seriously dexterous goats, placidly ruminating cows, and the friendliest donkey in the world (who kept sneaking into photos and nuzzling for attention). The farm caretakers welcomed us with fresh wheels of cevrin, salame, bread and red wine, and we ate cheese next to the animals who produced the milk for it, as the sun went down over the Italian Alps. It was one of the best days of my life.

Determined to recapture some of that high, some of my classmates decided to contact Fratelli Lussiana and ask if they would allow us to return for a second visit. Only, this time we wanted to see the cevrin making process, which happens every morning at 6 am. With the 90 minute drive from Bra, this meant that we would be setting out on a 4:30 am road trip. Totally worth it!

After duly waking up at a rather uncivilized hour, the first challenge was figuring out how to get back to the creamery. We were armed with an address of questionable accuracy (the GPS was telling us to go to a different town) and also a phone number. To complicate matters, no one present was terribly fluent in Italian. So, over the next hour, we called three times, and using an amalgamation of broken Italian and French, managed to get within a few streets of the creamery. As we drove through Giaveno, desperately looking for familiar landmarks, we spotted an elderly gentlemen walking briskly down the street. I rolled down a window and asked him for directions to Fratelli Lussiana, and he broke into a toothy grin and began to wave wildly. Seeing our blank reactions, the man said, “You know what, I’d better just point out the way myself, do you mind if I hop in the car?” And before I knew it, I was scooting to make room for a swarthy Italian man in the backseat. We explained that we were students at the University of Gastronomic Sciences, interested in cheesemaking, and he said “Ah yes, of course! Who do you know of the Lussiana brothers? Oh Luigi, yes I know Luigi!” Within a few minutes, he had steered us to the creamery. We thanked him for his help and asked if he needed a ride back. “No no, I walk a lot, 20 km a day! I’ll be just fine.” He stuck his head into the barn to say hello to Luigi, and sauntered off back into town.
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