SEEDS - DAY 4 - Vallanes farm in Fljótsdalshérað
ICELAND | Tuesday, 15 September 2009 | Views [569]
I woke up at 7:50AM but did not get much sleep. We had breakfast made up of home grown barley mixed with some kind of syrup, coffee and something else. Oh, btw I forgot to mention that we will be vegetarians for two weeks, this will be my first time eating nothing but vegetarian food for longer than 1 day. So far I've enjoyed the meals, I feel very gassy and I still haven't taken a dump which I'm hoping to do soon. We started off by heading to the Korabbi patch and harvesting the Korabbi - easy work.
Rolph and I headed back to prepare our lunch for everyone. The woman who prepares some of the meals and does the housekeeping is very nice, I think she is intuitive like me and I could tell that she and I are going to get along just fine. Her name is Lilya and she does yoga too. I really like her humor and we have some commonality. Together with Rolph we prepared barley soup, homemade hummus, barley grain bread, fresh beet-celery-orange-ginger juice - deelish!! I talked about my upbringing, the differences between our lives growing up in America for me and Germany for Rolph. This Icelandic woman was burning Nag Champa - score ! I showed her my Nag Champa oil, she loved it. The other team members finished their day work in the field and came back to enjoy the meal we just cooked for everybody.
After lunch I was teamed up with Amelie, Luca and Greg for our next task. Our task was to rip off the roofing to a silo which was an incredible amount of work and also very dangerous; I almost fell through a couple times, good thing I have traveler's insurance ! I had Thor's hammer and banged the boards loose and heaved them off, it was more work than you can imagine. So after all that, Luca and I threw the frisbee around, fun. A short while after that I took a stroll into the weeds towards the mountain ahead with my house keys in my hand and tossed them out far ahead of me and said goodbye, that was the end all, cathartic. I love Iceland and the people in my work camp are pretty cool, we now have less than two weeks together.
I had moved out of my apartment in Jamaica Plain already but throwing my house keys which I still had on me towards the mighty Icelandic mountains sealed the deal, forever. After dinner we made a bon fire - sorry I forgot one detail before the fire, I made a few new buddies play UNO with me. Ok, now bonfire. Eymundir bought some beer for us to celebrate his birthday and also the weekend to follow. The group sat around having beers, enjoying the fire, sharing stories, but mostly silence and stillness save for the crackling of flames and the clicking of camera shots.
Two guys who are filming a movie were there, Henry and Gunni. Henry is from the UK and is making a film about all the positive things coming out of Iceland during the economic crisis here. There were filming as we harvested the Korabbi yesterday, and they also rented a private plane and zoomed around over our heads capturing the farm on film. I can't wait to see it ! Gunni struck me the most. When the time came for introductions he said exactly everything I would have said. He is a free spirit, he does what he wants, whenever he wants. He doesn't like to speak about himself but would rather you get to know him in time. I liked him. He also composes music and works as a sound engineer.
We've all had a few beers in us and the conversation quickly turned dirty as our hostess Lilya and the two film guys wanted us to engage in Kiss or Tell. That was fun. I never got a shot by the bottle turn but one girl managed to get kissed by Gunni. Lilya's sick dirty humor came out the more she drank and I loved that. At first I thought she was a shy proper lady but no, I was wrong. She is absolutely AWESOME. I <3 her personality and she is so funny. Good people. She told us about the monster in the lake, there is a legend in Iceland about that.
It was probably about 3AM when everyone turned in and I had taken my sleeping bag outside and pitched a fort by the fire. SO COLD ! Bad idea. I freezed my ass off but managed to doze off for a few hours until dawn. When I awoke I made haste to the house and slept on a mattress in the hallway. I had awful, vivid nightmares about my mom and family, the bar business back home, not sure why but I am psychic and sometimes my premonitions are on point. I pray for all things good and kosher for my family. I certainly miss everyone.
PS. I found a very special black stone that I can't stop holding !!
