Finally a good day :) We did morning chores as usual and then trudged up for breakfast and asked when we might be able to leave the farm at some point and were basically told ‘not today but whenever you want,’ which was a bit hard to reconcile with the ‘work, work, work’ that had been going on and left us feeling a bit less than impressed. Things perked up, though, as we headed back to the neighbour’s farm for more pony rides, which are always cute and pretty easy. One kid got on my pony, Emil, and promptly started crying, but other than that, all was good.
After the morning of pony rides, we were told to untack the horses and put them in a field at the neighbour’s farm, as we would be eating lunch there and then doing another school group in the afternoon. Good news on so many levels! More pony rides, less work, new people! And then it just got better as the soup, which was delicious, included real vegetables! Of a few varieties! The people were really really sweet too—the middle aged couple that owns the farm, and another couple who live on the property but don’t farm it, and then B and T as well. It was a relaxed lunch and the people there were really friendly with us, which was nice! B and T aren’t unfriendly, exactly, they just don’t really talk about much of anything or engage in too many conversations, even if we try and start them, so it was nice to be around some enthusiastic people. They also have a really nice house, which was a welcome relief from the absolute chaos of this place.
Partway through lunch I asked the woman who owns the farm what place in the area she would recommend for us to see, and this started a spirited conversation about a few places we could go, including Mytvan, which is a lake B and T had mentioned. I think this whole conversation helped to remind B and T that we are tourists as well as farm hands, and the woman seemed to encourage them to let us go, at least a little bit. At the very least, it put it on the table. We found out around then that T wouldn’t be doing the afternoon group with us, so we weren’t entirely sure what to do with ourselves for the hour before that school showed up, but then the woman at the new farm was like ‘why don’t you borrow our car and drive down the fjord for a little bit?’ T didn’t like that idea so much as it didn’t work with the car situation at our farm, because our ponies are staying overnight at the farm tonight and we needed a way to get home, but the way things were worded, they basically had no choice but to give us that hour off. We went home and got in the farm car, giddy with the prospect of a bit of free time, and completely re-engerised zipped into town. We got a bit lost and only had about 20 minutes at the mall, which was enough time to get ice cream and re-stock our emergency granola bar supply, but it was still very exciting! It was the first time we’d been to town on our own since last Friday, and we were drunk with freedom haha.
We headed back to the other farm to do the pony rides, which went really well, and were then offered coffee and some funny little donut-like things they (and we) love around here. They continued to be super-friendly and offered us the chance to hang out with them while they worked with the sheep for a bit, which we took until we had to head back to the farm for our own cow chores. After having basically not worked the whole rest of the day, the three hours in the evening felt like nothing, and were punctuated by Bryndis giving me another epic bath, and Asia giving birth to the cutest calf ever! It was so fast, too, she popped the sucker out in like 5 minutes!
After we headed up from the barn, we played on the trampoline with the youngest for a bit, and then came in for a supper of BBQ’d hotdogs, Icelandic-style. T gave us a lesson in Icelandic pronunciation, giving us a guide to the horses’ names as a practice sheet.
I even got some work done!
The next few days are looking up too: tomorrow is more pony rides in the morning followed by house cleaning (far preferable to cleaning the cows’ house or wrangling bulls!), Saturday after chores we are going into town to have dinner and watch the Eurovision finals on TV, Sunday we get to sleep in (and will probably try and borrow the car for a couple of hours), and Monday we are going to Grimsey, which is an island 45 miles north of us bisected by the Arctic Circle. Then we’ll just have a week and a bit left to go and our stint as dairy farmers will be behind us!
Xx
D
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