Monday, August 26, 2013

What I Learned in Scandinavia: Two Items

This will  be old stuff to you,  dear jaded and all-knowing reader, but here are two items new to me:
Wiki
Falu red:  here's how you paint your Swedish farmhouse.  You get some tailings from Swedish copper mine.    You mix with a bit of linseed oil, rye flour and water.  You  paint the farmhouse.  Ten years latter you brush it down and put on another coat.  Repeat every ten years for three centuries.  You've got a nice-looking red farmhouse; I would say "wooden," but at this point I assume the copper oxide is standing up by itself.

http://www.nordicneedle.com
Tractor eggs: you cut they hay, you sprinkle on some chemical.  You bundle it up in, I don't know, I suppose polyeurethane.  You make a lump about the size of a suburban compost turner.  Tractor eggs.  You leave them in repose in the field  to be admired until needed.  I suppose they can be deployed any place you have hay, but the term does seem to have peculiar frequency in Scandinavia.  Cue up jokes about tractor chickens.
Falue red has a Wiki  page.  Tractor eggs, it seems, do not. 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

some folks wrap their hay rolls here but i've never seen one totally enclosed like they do in scandinavia. we lose a lot of hay to raon falling and siaking the rolls, and from the west ground under them. my rolls are big -- 5 by 5 feet -- most are 4 by 5. we dont cover mine. by the time winter comes and i move them by tractor one or two at a time to feed sheep, goats and donkeys through the winter, outside 6 inches is not edible because of rain soaking.