Early September in southern Norway means it’s time to harvest this year’s marshmallows; and a bumper crop it is, thanks to the rain we’ve been having.
Marshmallows thrive in this climate. Their only known foe is the Norwegian Marshmallow Monster. There was one in the adjoining field:
it comes at night and gorges on marshmallows.
When it awakes the following afternoon it has no memory of what happened.
A Bad Guide 
… It’s been a long time since I last saw a harvester.
And to think that a decade ago I would have forsworn ever being able to live a city.
Now I lose track of the passing of the seasons. Yesterday I was looking for blackberries (no luck – the brambles I have access to are crap), and saw that it’s time to collect elderberries. They at least look good this year (actually it’s been a very good year for fruit). Need to make cordial/juice this weekend, I think. Even if I don’t know how to filter it yet.
The sloe looks promising again, but I still have plenty filling my freezer from ’07. Can’t afford the vodka to soak them.
That goes right into the cedar box, but not for long, I trust. Your pieces call up in me the ghosts of childhood, when I was reading Charlotte’s Web, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, the Junior Classics, Alice in Wonderland … Glass mountains, a salt-mill at the bottom of the ocean, a green frog and a golden ball …
How big is the fire and how big are the sticks for roasting those things?
Stuartnz’s obviously never seen a jætte.
I don’t think they have jætter downunder; they would fall off.
Indeed not – far from being jætter, the most likely derivation for the term Pākeha (a non-Māori NZer) is from a word roughly equivalent to leprechaun or pixie. So I’m at the opposite end of the size scale.
Are we talking about jaette-puffed marshmallows ?
It looks like the makings of quite a s’moregasbord in any case.
hillarious… but what’s a jaette?
My mother used to tell me about the bountiful marshmallow crops of her ancestral land, and I’m glad to see them at last.
Jætte is the Danish for giant, apparently. Here it’s en kjempe. I first thought it might be a pike, which is gjedde in Norwegian.
Next to oil, marshmallows are Norway’s biggest export; it’s the reason the harvest is mentioned in the national anthem.
I have seen many of these spring rolls in France, and I liked them very much in the landscape while going through the countryside in a train, but I don’t remember ever seeing them wrapped like that in plastic sheeting. Why is it done this way in Norway? (“I did it my way”?) Is it sustainable?
I suppose you need to buy some marshmallows for the goats every now and then, especially when autumn arrives, don’t you?
I have seen them “unwrapped” in France, and I have seen the marshmallows somewhere but I don’t remember if that was in France or in Canada (since I don’t have a car, I don’t travel much on the land, except in France where my sister drives me).
When I was young, there were no such “rolls”, only haystacks – they looked like round houses without windows, with a straw roof. The art of building haystacks that would not collapse or get ruined by rain is pretty much lost now that everything is done by machines.
It ferments the hay when it’s wrapped like this, and I’m not sure why that’s a good thing. It’s called silage, and in some places/countries they make it in silos and in others by wrapping in plastic. I know it smells really great when it’s unwrapped, and horses and cattle eat it, but not our goats. They liked it for a few days for a change, and then Never Again. However, the Norwegian Wikipedia Silage article says goats eat it so maybe it’s just ours that won’t.
We used to make silage (or ensilage as it’s called in Danish, too) in silos or stacks. Making it in wraps is far more efficient since one can then handle portions immediately without having to worry about too much air getting into the stack.
The reason it wasn’t done like this in the past is the simple fact of the balers having grown sufficiently strong now to press the hay firmly enough for the anoxic fermentation to take place.
Without knowing anything about microbiology, my guess is the process starts the breaking down of celloulose to simpler, more easily digestible sugars, thus improving the nutritional value of the grass. Sorta like when we cook grain to make it easier to eat. Efficient use of ressources.
Straw can be wrapped in the same manner – or just baled and then stacked before enclosing it thoroughly in plastic – then ammonia is blown into the stack. This too presumably helps to break down the straw.
Of course these days much straw is used is for heating instead.
The other amazing thing about haystacks, Marie-Lucie, is spontaneous combustion; they can just go up in flames, of their own accord. They always felt very warm.
Of course these days much straw is used for heating instead.
If you mean insulation, that’s always been done very efficiently in Denmark as far as I can see from the bits and pieces I’ve read: thatched roofs, straw mixed with mud for walls (called ‘cob’ in England), and nowadays mud sprayed on bales of straw to make Lego-like building blocks. They also use straw to build with in some parts of England.
The other amazing thing about haystacks, Marie-Lucie, is spontaneous combustion; they can just go up in flames, of their own accord.
The same thing happens with bagasse. In some big sugar factories the bagasse pile can be huge and these internal fires are apparently very difficult to put out. Again, they are ignited by fermentation. Luckily cement and concrete don’t behave like that.
My vague memory is that when hay was first being replaced by silage in Britain, molasses figured in the story. Would goats like that?
By the by, the blog of Dienekes alerts me to goatish news.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19725964?dopt=Abstract
Siganus: I have seen many of these spring rolls in France, and I liked them very much in the landscape while going through the countryside in a train, but I don’t remember ever seeing them wrapped like that in plastic sheeting. Why is it done this way in Norway? (“I did it my way”?) Is it sustainable?
The reason for doing silage in Northern Europe is to have green fodder for the animals when they’re kept indoors for the long winter.
I’m not from a farm like Sili seems to be, but I grew up doing siloslått, “silage harvesting”, on my grandfather’s farm (well, it was my uncle’s by then, really, but not to me) in Northern Norway in my summer holidays. My uncle drove the tractor, filling the grass trailer with the aid of a monster like the one above, while my grandfather, various holiday guests and neighbours were inside the silo spreading and packing each wagonload of grass. (We kids were supposed to be helping, but we much preferred jumping from the hayloft into the fresh grass. Once I couldn’t wait and jumped early, I hit a soft spot and went right through to the concrete floor. Somehow I got the impression that they thought I deserved it.) The rundballer have made all this obsolete. Of course, silage itself was a recent and huge leap from the earlier use of hay, so it’s stupid to be too nostalgic about it.
We still did some hesjing to make hay, though. I think it was because the cows need some of their food harder to digest than silofôr. I hadn’t seen hesjer for years, only grass rolls with plastic for silage or without it for hay, but this summer I saw them again several times. Something seems to be going on.
The building above is quite typical of Norwegian barns. The ground floor is usually a fjøs for livestock, above it is the hayloft, låven, accessed by an outside bridge, (låvebrua. On my grandfather’s farm the silo was shallow and rectangular, built as a wing extension “midship”, with big doors from outside, open up to the hayloft for emptying with a trolley hoist (or whatever that is supposed to be called in English), and a hatch in the wall near the floor for access from the livestock room.
Sorry. The link was supposed to work like this. I hope.
And sorry for the giant post. Here’s another one.
Jætte is the Danish for giant, apparently. Here it’s en kjempe.
If I’m not too mistaken I think a Danish jætte is roughly the same character as a Norwegian troll. You really shouldn’t be taking small goats to places like that.
We kids were supposed to be helping, but we much preferred jumping from the hayloft into the fresh grass.
I can imagine that very well…
One thing I’d like to know: what does the fermented grass look like when it’s taken out of the silo or out of the plastic bag? Is it partly rotten? Humid or dry? Blond or dark? AJP said it smelled “great”, but what is great in this case? Even his Christmas-tree-eating goats don’t like it.
AJP said it smelled “great”, but what is great in this case?
Lack of synonyms for ‘it smells great’ is one reason I can’t write a food blog. It’s literally like fermented grass, a beery smell. It’s definitely not rotten, it’s dark and damp.
Dearie, I’ll do a molasses test on the goats, see if they like it. I bet they won’t. I love to see goats & dogs decline new kinds of food you offer them; the way they turn their head away, politely disappointed, is always the same.
The scientific tracking of goat migration/abduction sounds useful. It’s too bad they didn’t include mohairs, but I still may be able to make use of it somewhere.
Trond, once again very interesting.
I hit a soft spot and went right through to the concrete floor.
Funnily enough my neighbour had a similar (crippling, in his case) experience falling into a silo. It is my other neighbour, the one you know, who owns the låve, monster and silage in the photograph. The låve needs major repairs, I hope they do it soon.
Someone ought to do a book of photographs of haystacks of the world before it’s too late.
Thanks, posters and hosters, for fascinating and oddly cheering reading!
Yes it is, isn’t it?
One thing I’d like to know: what does the fermented grass look like when it’s taken out of the silo or out of the plastic bag?
The closest I get is det lukter silo “It smells like silage”. It’s a smell we all know and relate to. When Rosenborg of Trondheim first entered the European Champion’s League, they were surprised by how the great clubs cut the turf razor short and watered it just before a match for the ball to run faster. At the same time, large stadiums don’t allow much air down at ground level. The smell of Milan’s href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Siro” rel=”nofollow”>San Siro stadium made the Norwegian players rename it Sann Silo (True Silo).
But to a Martian? You have a monsoon season, haven’t you? It’s the sweetish smell of a bit too long grass being cut before completely drying up after a period of rain. But more.
Again: San Siro.
Would you mind adding a preview option for the dys-HTML-ic?
You are not the first to ask for a preview. Unfortunately wordpress or whatever this blog organisation is called don’t supply one.
It’s literally like fermented grass, a beery smell.
Yes, that would explain my very strong aversion to the stench of silage in the several years I lived on farms as a child. I’d never thought about it before but since the smell of alcohol is enough to induce nausea in me, it makes sense that giant piles of fermented grass would do the same.
Oh that’s interesting, Stuart. Poor old you, though.
I have sometimes used LanguageHat’s preview function to preview posts for A Bad Guide, by cutting and pasting back and forth.
You have a monsoon season, haven’t you?
Not really. It rains more heavily in summer than in winter, but not so frequently, that’s all.
It’s a smell we all know and relate to.
I suppose we have the same thing with the smell of sugar cane fields. Proust might have something to say about this.
I have sometimes used LanguageHat’s preview function to preview posts for A Bad Guide, by cutting and pasting back and forth.
Empty, I don’t understand this, but it sounds interesting.. Can you elaborate?
Doesn’t the monsoon have something to do with India being close to the Himalayas? I suppose I ought to look it up…
… well yes it does, according to Wikipedia. But the interesting thing is that monsoon really refers to the wind rather than the rain that accompanies it.
I have sometimes used LanguageHat’s preview function to preview posts
Yes, if you compose your text in the LH comment box then click the LH “preview” button instead of the “post” button, you can see if you have missed anything on your markup. Even better, if you have a [free] wordpress blog (not to sound like a broken record or anything), even if you don’t use it for blogging, you can use the HTML editor it has for composing posts so you don’t have to type all the little carrots and so forth. Just type the comment in “visual”, put in your italics and links, then using the tabs on the upper right switch to “HTML”. You can then copy and past the coded text. I don’t know if LH supports all the same HTML code as WordPress, but the italics and links will work just fine.
copy and paste
Yes, what Nijma said. The relevant part is:
if you compose your text in the LH comment box then click the LH “preview” button instead of the “post” button, you can see if you have missed anything on your markup
Then instead of posting to LH you cut and paste to move it from LH’s little “Leave a Comment” box to Crown’s. I only do it if it seems easier than carefully proofreading, usually if a link is involved.
Ah, got it. Except what did Nij mean about little carrots?
Carets. Those things that grow under the key below F1, on a German keyboard.
I mean more like those arrow bracket thingies, like a napping caret, that you use to make stuff like italics and blockquotes:
<i><blockquote>italics and blockquotes</i></blockquote>
If empty had a free blog, maybe populated with null set theory anecdotes, he could use the html editor in it for composing links, and also use the home page URL as a calling card when posting comments.
I seem to remember corn being used for silage on my grandfather’s midwestern farm. I think most of the silos were used for grain though. Dangerous, I think, the silos–we had to stay away from them.
The hay was baled and stacked under a roof next to the barn. When we picked eggs we had to look for them on top of the hay bales too because sometimes the chickens would lay an egg or two up there. I remember my aunts tossing eggs down to someone on the ground who would catch them and put them in the egg basket.
arrow bracket thingies
See here for more names. This came up on LH a while ago.
If empty had a free blog, maybe populated with null set theory anecdotes
Sounds like it would attract an empty set of readers. Also, would be a dangerous sink for my time even if I managed to make the content any more interesting than that.
supposed to be helping, but we much preferred jumping from the hayloft
My mother, as a child visiting her grandparents’ Vermont dairy farm, fell from a hayloft into a manure pit, luckily escaping without any injury except to her dignity.
Sounds like it would attract an empty set of readers. Also, would be a dangerous sink for my time even if I managed to make the content any more interesting than that.
You don’t have to write every day. You don’t have to do anything. Look at Stuart’s blog–he only has one page. If you want, you can disable the comments. You don’t even have to tell anyone about it–I have one like that just for pasting links or book titles I want to save quickly when I run across something interesting in a thread. But of course having a blog is not for everyone and good intentions notwithstanding it can go in unexpected directions.
She doesn’t get paid for this encouragement, you know.
I broke my pelvis & some more ribs falling out of our hayloft a few years ago. I just stepped backwards into … nothing.
AJP: I burying this comment as the way to get to you as I don’t have your email. Could you be kind enough to look at http://canehan.wordpress.com/ and give me a frank assessment as to whether I should continue this new blog …
BTW, loved the marshmallows – they grow in our fields in northern France too …
Continue? Hell, yes! Great blog, Paul — I mean Canehan — I love blogs with good pictures and of course as a journalist you can run rings around most of us as a writer. I just hope you post a lot more than I have recently.
I’ve added you to my blogroll.
EVERYBODY GO AND READ PAUL’S BLOG! I mean Canehan’s new blog.
Yes, I agree, Paul should continue and thrive. Very nice pictures and good writing.
Yeah, Canehan! the pictures remind me of my youth in Normandy, though a different part from yours.