Month: September 2020

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Local food

I made a decision a while ago to buy locally produced food when it was conveniently available at a competitive price. I don’t buy everything that might be available as it must be things that we use.

Two of the products that are produced on local farms in our neighbourhood are eggs and milk.

I started buying eggs quite a while ago now. It is a short walk up to the neighbouring farm. We get 30 eggs at a time and we can also buy double-yoked eggs or cracked eggs at differing prices. I buy just the regular eggs.

In addition to eggs, I can also get cucumbers at the egg farm, though the cucumbers are produced at another farm in Inderøy. Though I don’t purchase it, I can also buy honey here, produced by the farmer’s wife. I find their price a bit high, so have only purchased it once.

I also buy my whole milk in a bottle at a farm that is just a little bit farther away, but still within walking distance. I usually get two liters of milk at a time. One pays a deposit on the bottle on the first purchase and after that one returns the empty bottle and only pays for the milk itself.

In both cases I use a small backpack to carry home the food. Eggs are put into 12-egg cartons which nicely fit in the backpack. Two or three liters of milk also fit nicely into the backpack, though not both eggs and milk at the same time.

To pay for what I purchase, I can use my telephone to send the money while I am at the farm. No invoices or delayed payment. I pay when I take the food. I often meet the farmers and it is nice to chat to them for a few minutes.

This is one way that I can contribute to farmers trying out new marketing ideas.

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Milk in a bottle

When I was small, we got milk delivered in one-quart milk bottles on the back steps. It would have been pasteurized but not homogenized. I remember the cream rising to the top of the bottle.

There are no guarantees that my memories are actually correct. I think we got milk delivered every other day. My mom would put the empty milk bottles on the back porch and they would be replaced with full ones during the morning. I remember there being a calendar in the kitchen which showed which days we would get delivery.

How was the milk paid for? I’m not sure about that as it was during elementary school years that milk delivery stopped. I think my mom bought tokens of some sort, that were put in the empty milk bottles to show that the milk was prepaid. The milkman would come to the door, probably once a month or so, to sell more tokens. A lot of that is guesswork.

I also have vague memories of an icebox on the back porch, before we got a refrigerator. We probably got our first refrigerator in the early 1950s, before I started school. Home delivery of milk slowly disappeared as people got refrigerators and could store the milk longer at home. The rise of supermarkets where one bought all kinds of food items, including milk, would also have contributed to the disappearance of home milk delivery.

The interesting thing that prompts this memory is that I am now buying milk in a glass bottle. I have a 20 minute walk up to a local dairy farm. I paid a deposit for the bottles on my first purchase and now I just pay for the milk I buy each time. In Norway there is a digital payment system called Vipps that I can use to pay for the milk each time I pick it up.

Åsvang Farm, pasteurized milk from Inderøy, one liter

Again the milk is pasteurized but not homogenized and the cream rises to the top. I don’t use the cream, but just shake the milk so it gets distributed in the milk. I notice that the farm is now selling both skimmed milk and cream, so they have expanded their number of products in the last five months. I started becoming a regular user of this milk in April 2020.

There is no home delivery, but I can either drive by the farm when I am out anyway, or it is close enough to get a walk. At the moment they have fresh milk on Mondays and Thursdays. I have three bottles and I buy milk once or twice a week, depending on how much we have used.

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Inderøy Walk – Brekkefallet in Mosvik

It’s over two months since I last wrote a blog, but the summertime is not a time for me to write. Now that we have come to September, I am hoping to get back to writing regularly. I have taken many walks over the summer, so you will get to know some of the other places in Inderøy.

I have a friend that I walk with regularly and today’s walk was a new one for both of us. The starting point is a designated parking area beside the main road between Skarnsund Bridge and Mosvik. The given information indicates that the walk is about 2 km and that one can go around in a circle. We used about 45 minutes on our walk, so we walked more than 2 km. We followed the trail around in a circle and also took one side trail that we decided wasn’t going to take us back to where the car was parked. There were a lot of trails, though I imagine many of the trails are made by the deer and the moose and only some of them have been improved by humans.

Green man means an easy walk.

The first bit of the trail is quite steep, but it is all under the trees and once one is up about 25-30 meters above sea level, then the rest of the trail is gently up and down. The post itself is about 50 meters above sea level, according to the map I was using.

It was a nice sunny day, but we were not too warm as almost all of the walk was in the shady forest. The trail is easy to see and there are markers (red and white) to show which trail to take when there is a choice.
The trail was dry and there were no muddy or swampy sections.
As usual there was a sign to say when one had reached the check-in point. I like best the walks that lead to a viewpoint even though the walk itself is in the forest. It was very steep down at this point and we approached the viewpoint from the trail that was back from the edge of the cliff. In the background of the picture is the island of Ytterøy.
We found more than one viewpoint. Here we are looking across Trondheim Fjord to Ytterøy.
Looking south-west out Trondheim Fjord with Ytterøy on the left, Frosta straight ahead and Mosvik on the right. The narrow bit straight ahead is called Norviksundet and it separates Ytterøy from Mosvik.

This is a recommended walk. The steep bit gives one good exercise for the heart and lungs when going up, and the knees when going down. It would not be recommended when it has been raining heavily as the steep bit could be slippery. However, most of the trail is not steep and very enjoyable walking through an older forest.