A day in the life

By Shelling

Strawberry focus

It's the middle of May but the weather is a bit chilly still, particularly at night. Last night we even had frost, not so common here this time of year. Nothing must happen to the sacred strawberry plants! 

Polish, mostly, workers travel to Öland to help with all stages of the strawberry cycle from planting to weeding through to picking them. This gives many workers and families from Poland, Rumania, Lithuania and other countries some extra money that gives them a little bit of a better life in their home countries. It's hard, manual labour usually and not many swedes are prepared to do it so it's been a niche for many during the planting and harvesting season. They are spreading last years straw in the rows to keep the plants warm at night so they can carry fruit at midsummer, the 21st of June. I saw seven people working with this, the fields are big and they are many...

The extra is an unusual guest in my lawn. Red Cowslip, Gullviva in Swedish. They are usually goldish yellow and grow everywhere now but one red one found its way to my lawn. On Thursday I'm going to cut the lawn but by now I can see where the nice flowers are and make little flower-islands all over it. 

Comments
Sign in or get an account to comment.