Time has come to let the Swedish cows out of the stable, to enjoy their fair share of spring sun and grass under the hoofs. According to Swedish law, cows have the right to graze outside during summer.
Nowadays, seeing the cows being let out has become a popular family event, and lots of people go to nearby farms to watch the newly released cows take their first happy leaps after a long and dark winter inside.
Spring sign #1: Yellow crocuses in a sea of brown and grey. Photo: Sara Jeswani.
I’m on my way to work when I see a man and his little son suddenly crouching down in front of a heap of brown, dead leaves. Their heads move together, studying something very closely. My curiosity is awaken. What can be so interesting among a bunch of old leaves?
As I get closer, it’s obvious. Bright yellow crocuses glow beneath the brown and grey.
Spring sign #2: Willow buds. Photo: Sara Jeswani.
Now, this isn’t just any little yellow flower. This is a Sign of Spring, which in Sweden is something almost sacred.
My blog colleague Kate is in good company when she starts looking for spring signs , since it’s actually something of a folk sport.
This time of the year everyone does it: Children, adults, farmers and city dwellers, newspapers (article in Swedish) and television programs.
The Easter weekend is on its last day and finally the green buds, swelling on every tree and bush, have started to burst into leaves. For those of us who dream about a garden full of vegetables and other edible stuff, this is the time to get busy.
One of our rhubarb plants has woken up from its winter sleep.
There can’t really be more locally produced food that the things growing outside your own window, and growing your own veggies has become a bit of a trend – recently even Sweden’s Minister for Finance Anders Borg talked about how satisfied he is to be almost self-supporting on vegetables from his own garden during the summer season.
I live in a flat, but not having my own garden hasn’t stopped me. The last few years, with a rising awareness about sustainability and food production, more and more people have started to grow food between block of flats in Sweden’s cities. Where I live, we are a few neighbours growing things like rhubarb, squash, carrots, lettuce and garlic between the houses. Cultivating the earth together doesn’t only make it easier to get through the summer months, when many go away for holidays just when the plants are in desperate need of water and care – it’s also much more fun than doing it alone.
Others who share this belief and who have taken the idea of collective food production to a higher level, is Folkodlingen (“the people’s cultivation”) in Skarpnäck. Skarpnäck is one of Stockholm’s suburbs,
The garlic we planted last September.
and here a group of people have started producing vegetables and fruit both at an allotment and in a “garden park”, a place that will both be a nice place to hang out in and at the same time produce edible plants. Within this group there are some trained gardeners, but it’s open for everyone who wants to join and learn.
Recently I went to the Multicultural centre in Botkyrka here in Stockholm. It’s a cultural centre arranging a lot of interesting exhibitions and seminars. This time the name of the exhibition is Tillsammans (Together), looking at the problems humanity is facing, as climate change, food production, and human rights violations, and investigating how we could solve these problems together instead of confronting them alone.
One section spotlights the Skarpnäck community garden, and in one of the texts a woman called Lena explains why she joined the group.
– I thought it was a brilliant idea, since I think we need to grow food in every backyard and green space in the city. Oil and transport prices get higher and higher. We have to shift into more local production, importing tomatoes from Italy is just insane. And growing food together with others is just so much better than doing it alone.
The garden park fruits and berries will be available for anyone who wants to eat them and now the group is negotiating with the local public administration to get access to more unused public land.
The exhibition Together, here about the community garden project in Skarpnäck, Stockholm.
Photo: Britt-Marie Sohlström/Flickr.
Saturday was the international day of biodiversity. Although I didn’t participate in any of the activities to make people aware of this, the enormous diversity in nature is difficult to ignore for anyone who walks through Stockholm right now.
Flowers are painting the whole city in different colours, birds are flying around and if you stand under a maple-tree you’ll hear the humming song from thousands of insects.
Yet we have lost many species, both animals and plants. Scientists have estimated that there were once about 10 000 different types of edible plants in the world. Today only 150 of them feeds most of the globe’s population, and 12 plant species (such as rice, wheat and corn) provide 80 percent of the nutrition we get from the vegetable kingdom.
In Sweden about 3 500 different mammal species are considered to be threatened or disadvantaged.
There has been several studies trying to show the huge economic value that biodiversity brings. And of course many of our economic activities simply wouldn’t be possible if it wasn’t for bees pollinating our fruit trees and vegetable plants or small organisms cleaning the water, for example. But I’m not sure that putting a price on plants and species is the best way to protect nature. If we couldn’t make money on these services, wouldn’t they be worth saving? And what about those parts of the ecosystems that we actually cannot make an economic worth of?
Another explanation to why biodiversity is important, coming from environmental organisations and scientists, would be this: If biodiversity is weakened – if species die out or we suddenly only have one kind of say apple trees – the whole ecosystem becomes so much more vulnerable. This big web of interdependent smaller systems is almost unforseeable. If one species disappears, nothing might happen, but on the other hand we can also face a long chain of other species following in its footsteps. We simply don’t know beforehand.
Or, yet another reason to care about biodiversity: Do we humans, as a species, have the right to eradicate other species?
Here you can see a photo presentation which speaks more about the importance of biodiversity.
Just waiting to open…
The first tentative steps of spring is a very special time in Sweden. At the arrival of the first sunny days, when birds start singing in the trees and melted snow flows along the streets, most people let everything else wait and get out of their houses to turn their faces towards the sun.
I don’t know if this is a proof of our very special relationship with nature, as many Swedens like to think, or if it is simply because novelty always has a strong attraction. If you have lived through a winter here, I can assure you that the day when the sun’s beams finally starts creating a sensation of warmth when they reach your skin, it feels like something entirely new.
What is true, anyway, is that for a lot of Swedes taking a walk in the forest once in a while is an important thing. Some time ago I read an interview with the environment inspector Yusra Moshtat. When she moved from Bagdad in Irak to Gothenburg, Sweden, she couldn’t understand why people talked about how wonderful it is to go out in the forest or that it’s “good for the soul” to spend time in nature. In Irak somebody who goes out in the woods to think his or her problems over would be seen as a madman, she said.
But when Yusra Moshtat’s son tragically passed away, it was the long forest walks, the trees and the singing birds that actually helped her get through the grieving process.
A couple of years ago Yusra Moshtat wrote a report for the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency about how immigrants in Sweden can be easier integrated into society through nature, and how nature can also be made more accessible to people who haven’t got the habit of spending time outside built-up areas.
This Easter the weather has been wonderful, and after spending Saturday afternoon lying on the sunny rocks by lake Mälaren listening to the gulls with a friend, I almost went to my cellar store room to pick up my summer clothes.
But as with all passionate love stories, there is also a risk of big disappointments. Yesterday when I woke up and removed the blinds, I was met by – snowfall.
So I guess those summer clothes have to wait for a bit longer…
… is one of the founders of Sweden’s first climate magazine, Effekt. Seeing the connections between society and nature results in a lot of thoughts about how we live our lives. How are Sweden and its inhabitants setting about the challenges of making our society a more sustainable one? Why is Sweden often rated as one of the world’s most sustainable countries? Do we earn that title? And what have we got left to do?
