A FENCE LOADED WITH GRASS
They saw farmers cutting grass on slopes that are covered with rocks. The farmers used scythes and hand sickles to cut around the many rocks. Farmers in many countries would call such rocky hillsides waste land, but in Norway no blade of grass can be wasted if the cattle are to be well fed during the winter.
Roald looked up at one place and saw a big bundle of grass dangling in the air. “Oh, Father, look!” he cried. And his father smiled as he said, “You must not be surprised to see bundles moving along over your head. Farmers who live on the mountains send hay, baskets of berries, buckets of milk or butter down to the valleys on strong wires which have been stretched down the mountain slopes.” And in a few minutes Roald saw a woman hang a bundle of hay on a wire and start it sliding down to the barn below.
At one place the automobile stopped for an hour. Roald and his father took a walk. Back from the road were a farmhouse and the barns of a large farm. They walked along a narrow road up to the house. They saw people at work in the fields. In one field a man was raking grass. He was riding on a rake behind two horses. Other men were loading the grass on a low-wheeled wagon to haul it to the barn where it would be hung on the fences to dry. In another field girls were gathering potatoes which the men had dug.
Far back across the field was a wire pen which caught Roald’s eye. At first he thought that he was looking at a chicken house. But as he walked closer he saw that foxes and not chickens lived in the pen. What cunning foxes they were! Baby foxes lay sleeping in the sun. Other foxes ran about the pen, jumping up on the box houses and off as they pleased. The foxes had long black fur. Down the back of each fox was a stripe of fur tipped with white. Such animals are called silver foxes because of the white tips on the black fur.
At first Roald felt sorry for the baby foxes. He imagined that they were unhappy and longing to be free to run away into the woods. But his father said, “These foxes have never lived anywhere except in this pen. They are well fed, and, no doubt, are very contented in the pen.”
Farmers in this northland often raise foxes for sale. The silver foxes are very valuable. People pay large prices for fox furs and they like the pretty silver tips on them. Ships that sail from Norway to other countries carry many fox pelts to those other lands.
But Roald soon forgot the foxes as he watched some boys busily working in another field. Rows of poles were sticking in the ground in that field and bunches of grain hung on each pole. The boys were pulling up the poles, turning them around, and sticking them back into the ground.
A NORWEGIAN FARM