Whew, our last day on the farm today and it was a crazy-busy one!

We did our last morning cow chores this morning, with nothing too exciting that I can remember, and then found out we were going to to Dun Haghi (the other farm) for breakfast. They are such sweethearts over there and we had a lovely breakfast! There was salmon and cream cheese on this funny slightly-sweet, slightly puffy bread they have here (which I avoided thanks to the salmon), but there was also this really amazing baked bread/egg/herb thing, which was a bit like a savoury bread pudding or something, I'm not entirely sure how to describe it. We had chunks of it on bread with homemade jam, and it was delicious! She also made hot chocolate on the stove with fresh cream; lovely! They are such a sweet couple and we gave them one of the postcards from home we are using as thank you cards, and asked them to come visit us :)

Then it was back to our farm to string a semi-permanent electric fence around about two acres of grass immediately surrounding the house. It was pretty easy since they have corner posts that live there year-round, and some that go through a little forest (where we discovered a tire swing!) so we just had to fill in the blanks with the plastic electric sticks. Plus we had new wire, which meant that nothing got tangled, and our hands didn't die a slow death from little bits of wire peeling off the main strand.

The weather was finally much nicer today, too, so we put the mares in so that the stud could come out for some playtime and then headed in for lunch.

After lunch we bundled up all of the kids and grabbed our cameras to head out to put the cows out to pasture for the afternoon. This was pretty much the most hilarious thing ever! We were given sticks asnd areas to guard, and tried not to die laughing as the excited, bucking, cantering, udder-swinging bovines came popping out of the milk barn and then circled and butted and frolicked around in confusion. A cantering herd of milk cows, udders a flapping, is quite the site! After quite some time we got them all in their field and secured and then Cecilia and I were allowed to pick two of our favourite horses and go for a couple of rides, which was really nice--we wanted to get some last-minute tolting in! It's so much easier to go riding here. We haul a saddle and a bridle down to the paddock, and one brush, catch the ponies in their bridles and tell them to stay (they do). A quick brushing, saddles on, and off we go. We stored the curry combs in the mail boxes to avoid them getting stolen by the puppies (who steal EVERYTHING) but we just realised we may have left them in there by accident. Oops! That will be a surprise for someone when they check the mail next haha.

I took Emil first, who I've been horse-handling at the pony rides and he was great, as usual, especially his lovely canter, which has so much power, but only when you want it. Our second ride wasn't quite as fun because Loki, who I was on, and Mynt, who Cecilia was riding, both decided to be a little bit 'up' and so it wasn't such a relaxing ride, especially when Cecilia's stirrup fell off her saddle and Mynt decided that would be a good moment to get jumpy. Compared to lots of horses at home, this was absolutely nothing, but compared to the perfect horses we have gotten spoiled with here it was a bit of a surprise to see them spook and feel them be a little bit tense. To be fair, they've been cooped up inside or on grass or going for wild gallops through hill and dale and standing around in -5 weather until today, when it warmed way up, to maybe 8? It was lovely!

As we were walking back down to turn Loki out, we noticed a long stream of cows wandering sedately down the road. Our cows. All 26 of them had decided to wander out of their fence (the hot wire one we had just built) and go walk about. Since this wasn't our fault, and there were no Loppa dogs on the case, we died laughing before we went to get sticks to try and herd them home. There is no funnier sight than a bunch of middle aged lady cows wandering down the street, especially when one of them is walking down the street humping the other, and an SUV is trying to get through. It was made even funnier when one car that had to drive through the herd was the neighbour who told us we'd broken his fence. He gave us the most 'omg you useless girls' look, it was sooo funny! We were trying to run down the road after them, but laughing so hard we could barely breathe.

B was out and about in the tractor, and he raced down the road after them and drove through the herd, turned around, and started honking to get them to head home. We got them into the cow barn OK, but then we had to play a good game of moooo-cow duck-duck-goose to get them all re homed correctly in their tie stalls. A couple of them went 'home' automatically, but a good bunch of them completely lost the plot, and I said they looked like the most disorganised school group I'd ever seen! We divided and conquered, taking one cow between one or two of us and beat/herded/pulled/pushed/willed and cajoled the stupid things into their homes before petting them and clipping them back in. It was completely hilarious and ridiculous and took far longer than it should have. We discovered that cows can't run on slick concrete too well and were treated to some entertaining Eeyore on Iceskates moments.

After we'd collected our cows and our breath, we headed up for snack and then went down, nearly two hours late, for cow chores. With everyone doing it, it didn't take too long, and I had time to take photos of most of the chores for a post I'm hoping to do on 'what exactly are the cow chores' soon.

We had dinner of hotdogs, which are very Icelandic (no, actually), and then watched Rocky Horror Picture Show with B. It was the first time I'd seen it, but I'll have to watch again, as I kept falling asleep. While we were busy with that, we washed our cow clothes twice, and while they are still drying, they seem to be back to their original colors, which is a minor miracle--they were pretty grim after 20 days of cow chores without a wash. T said my pants could stand up on their own, which probably wasn't too far off!

I'm getting a start on packing tonight, but will finish in the morning once our clothes are dry, and then we head out at 7:30 to catch an 8:30am bus--we hope. Right now some passes are closed between us and the ferry due to snow and so we might not be able to get there. The ferry is in port, but they aren't letting people off it until they clear the roads because of all the cars coming over having summer tires and whatnot. So tomorrow is generally a bit up in the air, but we are hoping for CALM wind and water and no snow so we can head over to Copenhagen as planned!

I may not have internet for the next couple of days, but we'll see how things go.

xx
D