GEAR PlusReunionin Bern

March 2014

Margareta Cronholm

After roughly two years as retired I have still a few professional

engagements

• I am still involved in the work with the Public Service Account but hope to have made the last one now when reporting 2013!

• After 25 years my engagement in the project to write Swedish Broadcast history came to an end. We recently finished the archives of the project and the last volume – in English – an anthology on Swedish Broadcasting History was published at the end of 2013.

• The volume will soon be available in a digital format. Available now are 39 of the almost 50 titles published in Swedish digitalised and republished via ur.se.

Today I work with two different non-profit associations

FolkKulturCentrum (The Society of Folks Culture) &

Kulturlandskaparna (The Society of Landscaping)

FolkKulturCentrum (FKC)

• I like to write satire based on everyday life. 2014 is a big election year in Sweden not only having the elections for the EU parliament within a few weeks but also elections for Swedish Parliament and communities.

• I have written an ironic text over the agricultural subsidy that EU offers and that I nowadays have some experience of (more on that later)

• Another text is satiric to the routines at Swedish emergency clinics at the big hospitals

• You might have heard about Complaints Choirs? We have written a text in that tradition to be sang

• And finally the big work giving each Parliamentary party leader a real smack from a group dressed like school children singing famous children songs dressed in the crepe paper collars we used to have when we were at school. Let me give you some examples.

Vänsterpartiet (GUE/NGL)European United Left–Nordic Green Left

Socialdemokraterna (S&D)Socialists & Democrats

The rose by Javier Mariscal was not approved by the group!

Miljöpartiet (G/EFA)The Greens | European Free Alliance

Centerpartiet (Alde)Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe

Sverigedemokraterna

Over to Kulturlandskaparna!

Kulturlandskaparna

• I was born in Solna – a suburb town outside Stockholm. I never thought I would be involved there anymore after leaving it 1968.

• Surprisingly I have found an agricultural environment in this urban area that I did not know of before.

• It is an old milk farm that delivered milk daily into Stockholm City. The farm employed some 100 persons 100 years ago - labourers were paid in kind.

• Today Kulturlandskaparna keep a stock of sheep helping to keep 10 ha (about 25 acres) land open either by pasturage or hay-making.

• Children are welcome to learn more about the animals and the yearly cycle with them. We also give courses to learn about wool craft, fencing, sheep breeding and hay making by scythe.

• I would like to present some pictures from our work on the farm

View over the old milk farm at about 1900. About 100 people lived here helping with the milking and haymaking as their primary obligation.

Labourers payed in kind. The system with one year contracts and payment in kind was not formally abolished in Sweden until 1945!

Today sheep, hen fowls and horses are kept here in order to

show an agricultural environment to the very urban people living in

the surroundings. I am involved in the work with the sheep.

The old greenhouse

The Horse Shoe stables from 1929

The yearly cycle begins and ends in October when the rams and

ewes meet for breeding and the decisions are taken about what 6

months old lambs would be saved.

Most of the lambs are slaughtered and the meat is sold fresh. The

skins are prepared to fells.

The small Craft shop with wool products and lambskins

Winter afternoon.

Some of the ewes are slaughtered and smoked to be lambs shoulders

or joints for Christmas.

Some ram lambs are saved a couple of years and end up as

locally produced sausage.

December offers a Christmas market with lambs soup and

sausage being sold

A fire for our locally produced lamb sausage

Hot home made lamb soupis sold at the Christmas market

The wool cutting starts in JanuaryThe wool is prepared with carding combs. I

personally love to teach this to small children telling them about old times when

children really did this as a part of the household. It is amazing to see how quiet

and calm they are. This is really meditative!

The wool is being felted and crafted objects are sold in our shop. The courses are very

popular

Teaching children to use carding combs for the wool

The wool is being felted

We teach adults how to build up small scale sheep based farm

Other courses teach how to make your own fence from pine tree

From a course about Hay making with scythe in order to preserve old types of

flowers

The manure is distributed to the close allotments

Result from the last fencing course. Pine tree is used in traditional way

Hay making with scythe

The lams are born now in March

Children learns to handle the small animalsIn May it is time for the animals to go out on

pasturage.One human family leads one ewe and her

lambs out to the meadows

Midsummer is celebrated on the farm

Our Chairman feeding a lamb

Two even more newly born lambs

Children´s family and mowe´s family meet

A lap dog? No a lap lamb!

On the way to the summer meadows …

Straight through the students campus

At last!Summer pasturage under the wild apple trees!

Midsummer dance with maypole on the farm

Thank you for your attention!