16. The old farm-yard
Every
bigger farm had an oven for baking bread. This was
a small building situated apart
from the farmhouse because of the risk
of fire. It was stoked
with faggots, in our dialect called ‘fakke’ or ‘sjanse’.
The storage, roofed over, was called ‘sjansesjop’. The faggots
formed a labyrinth in which small animals like weasel, polecat, ermine
and hedgehog liked to find refuge. In cold winters also birds would come
here.
Drones, bees and some species of butterflies hibernated in the bundles
of straw under the roofing tiles.
In
a corner of the farm-yard the farmer stored tree-stumps
from dead fruit-trees. They were used as logs for
the fire-place and for the stove on which the cattle-fodder
was prepared. Often the tree-stumps would lay there
for years. On the mouldered wood mosses, lichens
and fungi developed. The wood slowly turned into
humus on which spontaneous vegetation developed.
The pile of stumps was often an eldorado for small
mammals, amphibians and insects.
Near the farm the ‘house pasture’ was used for young cattle, or for
a cow that was about to calve – and for growing some fruit for the family.
Here you can see some old types of apples no longer grown in commercial orchards.
A part of the meadow was used to bleach the sheets.
In other corners of the farmyard many weeds could grow, so-called ‘culture
followers’, species that prefer places where human influence rules.
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