Travelling in Iceland, we passed by this small farm in the northeast where I first learned how to work. My parents sent me there for two summers when I was ten and eleven. Several other children also spent the summer at this farm. While we had various adventures playing around the farm and in the surrounding countryside, our day was structured around numerous chores.
I was usually paired with another boy a year older than me, by the name of Hreiðar. First thing each morning we went to the cow barn. There were seven cows, and they each had a name. Hreiðar prepared the milking devices while I took a shovel and cleaned out the fresh cow dung. Each cow was milked in turn and the milk put in large aluminum jugs.
Then we untied the cows from their stalls, let them out of the barn, and herded them out the main gate of the farm so they could graze in the wild grasses outside the fenced fields. Neither cows nor sheep were usually allowed to graze on the farm’s fields during the summer because the farmer needed to maximize hay production on these fields to feed the animals over the winter. With the cows roaming free, we now loaded the milk jugs onto the tractor and drove down to the main gate where we unloaded the jugs for pickup by the regional milk truck. The driver picked them up each morning and offloaded clean empty jugs.
In the late spring, the lambs were born in the sheep barn. When all the ewes had given birth, the farmer let the sheep out into the fields, just for a couple of days, to let them graze easily. Then they were rounded up and sent out the main gate to fend for themselves until they’d be rounded up in the fall. There was no sheepdog to help in this – the only useful skill of the farmer’s dog was to bark at cars coming down the driveway. Instead, we children ran this way and that, trying to direct the sheep by waving our hands and yelling. But Icelandic sheep are unruly and independent, frequently breaking through our ranks to burst back into the forbidden fields. Herding them gave us plenty of exercise.
As the summer went on, most of the sheep went grazing in distant hills and valleys, but there were always some who preferred the green grass of home. The sharp-eyed farmer would spot a ewe with a lamb or two in some distant corner of his land, and then dispatch us children to drive them again through the gate. Afterwards, Hreiðar and I grabbed our work gloves and toolkit and walked the fence looking for the weak spot where the invasion occurred. Often, there were telltale signs of tufts of wool caught on the barbed wire. Repairs might include tightening a slack barbed wire, nailing a loose wire to the fencepost, or in extreme cases, replacing a broken post with a new one and attaching the strands of barbed wire to the new post.
As the summer progressed, more time was spent on the hay. Making hay while the sun shines is an apt expression, because hay takes a long time to dry in the Icelandic summers, what with spells of rain and cold. When rain was imminent, the farmer attached a hayrake to his tractor to gather the hay into rows, so it would gather less rain. Meanwhile we used hand hay rakes to gather together hay in the corners of the field where the tractor couldn’t reach. When the rain had passed, or if there had been a false alarm, we all returned to the fields to spread out the hay, the farmer this time attaching a tedder to his tractor.
Finally, later in the summer, the hay was ready for gathering. It would either be made into hay bales or gathered loose on a wagon. We helped stack the hay bales in the barn, with occasional breaks to enjoy climbing up the high stacks. The loose hay was blown into the barn by a hay blower, but it all landed in the same place, and the children would be inside, spreading out the hay with pitchforks. I once missed a couple of days of work because I was using a short pitchfork, and while tossing the hay behind me I gouged my knee with one of the tips. But, back from the hospital, I joined the other kids in jumping into the huge piles of loose hay.
In the evening of every day, the cows had to be brought back to the cowbarn for another round of milking. Sometimes they were visible just beyond the fence, and sometimes they were even waiting impatiently at the gate to return home. But other times they were nowhere to be seen, and the children were split into search parties to look for them beyond the hill to the north or up the stream to the south. Cows are easier to herd than sheep, and after being prodded, would lumber straight home for the night.
Nowadays, fewer Icelandic children spend the summer on a farm. And many of the jobs previously done by children as well as adults have been replaced by mechanization. Dairy production has been consolidated on fewer farms, and efficiencies in hay production has simplified the labor, and even allows more grazing on the fields by sheep.
In adulthood, I’ve had numerous jobs where much was debatable, subject to evaluation and reasoning. Should we make this argument? What kind of update should we give our client? Is this a material or insubstantial risk? With my colleagues I’d argue back and forth on what to do, if anything.
But there’s a lot to be learned and valued about those jobs that just have to be done, and no opinions or assessments are needed. Rain or shine, you have to fix those fences and find the lost cows.
Gunnar Birgisson is a lawyer and writer currently based in Texas. While practicing law in Washington, DC, Gunnar was for several years the president of the Icelandic American Association of Washington, DC.