MODERN WOMEN DON’T LIKE TO MILK
Ardennes Stallion
Fredrik Lundgren was a man with a firm handshake. Villagers remember him as purposeful and trustworthy, fired by new ideas in farming and economics. “Lundgren was not like the rest of us,” says Bertil, who became Fredrik’s hired man in the early 1930s. “He had a tremendous brain. Had he gone to university, he would have been up there with the best of them. Wasn’t anyone who could’ve stopped him.”
Fredrik was born in the province of Halland in 1875. His father was Carl Magnus Lundgren, who had been born out of wedlock in 1838. His mother was Ebba Bagge, who married Carl Magnus in 1873. She came from a line of clergymen, merchants, and sea captains, all prominent members of the upper middle class.
When Fredrik was nine years old, the family moved to Kungsäter, where Carl Magnus leased Hultaberg, the large farm owned by the Crown and previously leased by Baron Falkenberg. Ebba died in 1887, after giving birth to eight children. Carl Magnus came upon hard times but retained the lease of Hultaberg until his death in 1893. Financial difficulties may well have been the reason why Fredrik did not continue his education beyond the obligatory nine years of grade school and possibly some time spent at an agricultural school. His passion for farming had shown itself early on. As a boy he cried when rains ruined the harvest.
After his father’s death, Fredrik first worked as a farm hand in a neighboring village. Around the turn of the century he attended large textile fairs all over Sweden as one of Gottfried Bergenheim’s traveling salesmen. His interest in farming prevailed, and in 1904 he became Ninus Brodin’s new tenant farmer. This put him in charge of Prästgården, a farm covering 63 acres of cultivated land and 223 acres of forest and pasture. In articles he wrote for a Varberg newspaper, he praised life in the country as far superior to that in the city. While not denying the importance of industry, he felt it must always be secondary to agriculture. Industry, if unchecked, led to destruction. He argued that it lured the workers away from the farms, used and discarded them with no concern for human dignity. Agriculture, he believed, was the very foundation of Swedish society.
It was as a newspaper man that Fredrik visited Torp in the late summer of 1908. He was working on a series of articles about the farms in the parish. Torp, in those days, was certainly one of the most prosperous, its land as extensive as that of Prästgården, with 68 acres of cultivated fields, and 200 acres of forest and pasture. The barn and the stables were sprawling red structures pressing against forest and steep granite rock. Facing them, set apart by a cobblestoned courtyard, was the two-storied main house, painted white. Large elm trees bordered the pathway leading up to the main entrance. Surrounding the house was the garden, with raked gravel paths and peonies as far as the eye could see. A white flagpole with a golden knob flew the blue and yellow Swedish flag — on days when the flag was not raised, the wind cracked the ropes against the pole in protest. Towards the outskirts of the garden, pear and apple trees dominated, mixed in with white and purple lilacs, weeping willows and grottoes of billowing linden trees. A shoot from Baroness Falkenberg’s Danish cherry tree had long since taken root and in the spring its blossoms were the talk of the village. Still farther out, red and black currants took over, with patches of rhubarb, gooseberries, and black and red currants. Around it all ran a hedge of hawthorn, kept at bay by Anders.
Fredrik was invited in. “I was glad to see that the Börjessons had preserved the kind of old country home which is almost extinct today, even in our parts,” he wrote in the ensuing article. In the living room, Fina’s woven curtains let the sunlight through, while her geraniums and ferns filled the windowsills. The floorboards had never known linoleum, and the wallpaper was a soft rich blue. The light gray sofa and the chairs with their turned legs, lyre backs, and pale-yellow upholstery were made by a local cabinet-maker. To a less sophisticated visitor, they might have seemed too elegant for a farmhouse, but the style, a restrained Louis XVI, had become common in well-to-do Swedish homes after Swedish King Gustav III introduced it in the late 1700s.
The room also held one or two large wooden chests, with leaves and flowers painted on a brownish red background imitating marble. Anna’s sister Ida had seen similar chests when staying with a family in Stockholm. One of her letters home mentions a visit to Skansen, a large open-air museum which had opened in 1891. “In the old cottages were several chests just like ours,” she wrote. “Madame thought they were so nice, and when I told her we have several, some of them in the attic, she thought I was joking. We also saw some copper kettles, not nearly as beautiful as our large ones. Had I told her we keep one of them in the barn I guess she would have swooned.”
“Mrs. Börjesson is a highly competent woman, liked by all,” Fredrik wrote, “and the Börjesson children, some of whom are young adults, are well brought up and behave themselves accordingly.” One of the daughters, “a well built, handsome woman in her early twenties,” served coffee and cake. Presumably it was Selma, who was 24 years old at the time. Anna would have been nineteen.
Carl Börjesson, in Fredrik’s words, was “a man in his fifties, known for his many services within and without the parish.” That year Carl Börjesson was running for a seat in the Second Chamber of the Parliament, a body largely made up of freeholder farmers. For a number of years, Carl Börjesson had also served as a member of the Älvsborg Province Council, which represented an area covering some 8,000 square miles with a population of 317,000. The responsibility of the provincial council was twofold. It determined budgets for medical care, education, transportation, and law enforcement. It also elected members of the First Chamber of the Parliament, which was a forum for nobility, higher civil servants, military men, and industrialists.
Over cognac, Fredrik and Carl Börjesson likely discussed politics. As members of the Conservative Party, both would have frowned on changes in suffrage about to be pushed through by a coalition of Liberals and Social Democrats. In the past, suffrage had been based on income and property, the general assumption being that those who did well by themselves also would do well by the country. Beginning in 1909, the polls would be open to a much larger segment of the population, and one unlikely to vote Conservative. Though still closed to women, elections for the Second Chamber would be open to all men, provided they did not owe taxes for the past three years. At local elections, open to both men and women, no voter would be entitled to more than 40 votes. Though hardly democratic, it was still a drastic change from the old system of the fyrk, which allowed an estimated seven percent to control the outcome.
In the course of the visit Carl Börjesson also took Fredrik on a tour of the farm. The 19th century had been a time of great change for Swedish agriculture. In the past, farms had produced only enough to support the people who farmed them. However, as the population grew, with larger concentration to the cities, farmers were pressured to produce more and sell their surplus in the open market. In 1807 and 1827 royal edicts caused the land to be redistributed in such a way that it could be farmed more efficiently. Scattered holdings were consolidated; farmhouses were moved out of the villages to be close to the land. While it did help increase productivity, it also changed the Swedish countryside. One could barely see from one farm to the next. No longer could workers from one farm call out to those from another, even if only to goad each other to work faster. It was not just a matter of an increased physical distance, but also a distance of souls, unfortunate among a people who already tended to be introverted.
In 1887, as imports from the United States and Russia drove European grain prices down, Swedish farmers demanded that the current policy of free trade be abandoned and tariffs introduced. The issue divided the Parliament into two camps: free-traders and protectionists. The free-traders tended to be Liberals, the protectionists Conservatives. After two tumultuous elections, and a temporary dissolution of the Parliament, the protectionists won.
By the early 1900s, under a stable tariff system, Swedish agriculture flourished. As proof of Carl Börjesson’s successes, Fredrik cited the year-old barn, “well built, of solid material.” It housed the new farm machinery: plows, graders, harrows, and seeders. The reaper, mostly used for grass, was of Swedish manufacture, perhaps a Viking or a Herkules. Pulling it were Carl Börjesson’s large Ardennes, powerful horses of Belgian origin. Once used to transport Napoleon’s troops, the breed had been introduced to Sweden in the 1870s. The stallions weighed about 2,000 pounds and stood nearly 17 hands. Their collars fit snugly on their well-defined withers, their endurance and intelligence were uncontested, and they bore wonderful names, like Jupiter, Ballancort, and Democrate de Bogaerden.
As Carl Börjesson and Fredrik inspected the fields, the talk likely turned to artificial fertilizers, a controversial subject at the time. Fredrik’s writings reflected his belief that man must complete what God began. A successful farmer, aside from being a good businessman, must also keep abreast of the latest in agricultural research. His most important capital was the soil: if exhausted it would no longer yield a profit. Fertilizing with manure alone was wasteful. While it did supply nitrogen and potassium, it contained relatively small amounts of phosphoric acid. Therefore, Fredrik argued, it made sense to add the latter artificially.
Carl Börjesson, I suspect, argued the other side. He always welcomed a debate: he enjoyed the jostling. Like many of the other farmers, he did not feel that artificial fertilizers justified the cost. Rotating the crops was in itself a protection against tired soils. “Look at the forest,” he would say. “If we cut down the evergreens, the deciduous will follow. It’s nature’s way, and she needs no help from us.” Barnyard manure would take care of the rest. It completed a cycle that linked the animals to the field, returned to the land what once grew on it, and added humus and bacteria without which any soil would be barren. Besides, there was plenty of manure to go around; Carl Börjesson certainly did not foresee a shortage.
The farm, on the whole, bespoke Carl Börjesson’s point. Fredrik admired the crops, except for a field of “less than pretty” third-year grass and clover. In Kungsäter, the 1908 harvest would be one of the best ever recorded. Turnips, beets, and potatoes came out of the ground so large that the children took them to school to show them to their teacher. The rye was said to have grown taller than a man. It was so coarse that the scythes had to be sharpened every five minutes; the women who bound it covered their arms with thick wool stockings. Indeed, all over Sweden the harvests that year were abundant. The total value was estimated at 800 million crowns, about 200 million more than average. Fredrik claimed that everyone stood to benefit: “If the farmer is rich, everyone benefits. Progress, prosperity, even liberty, ultimately rests on the land. It keeps its workers strong and focused, makes them part of a greater whole, give them a sense of meaning and belonging.”
Before Fredrik left, it was time for the milking. Anders kept the cow barn spotless: whitewashed walls, roomy stalls with plenty of straw, and sanded floors so the milk maids would not slip. The cows — reddish brown with patches of white — entered the barn in a single line, the order fixed. Anxious to be milked, they mooed and tossed their heads. When they spotted Carl Börjesson and Fredrik, they bridled and held back. For a while the outcome seemed uncertain — cows are suspicious of strangers — but urged on by Anders and other cows behind them they plunged into their stanchions with milk spraying from their swinging udders. Fredrik counted about thirty “good-looking” animals, most of them with show ring honors. Like all good producers, they were lean rather than fat, with deep chests, sleek coats, and sturdy hooves. The veins stood out boldly on their sides and abdomens; their udders were heavy and thin-skinned, free of calluses, with long pointed teats extending forward and up.
As the mooing subsided, the milkmaids sat down on their low, three-legged stools. Each woman knew her own cows, and the cows knew her. If a heifer was high-strung, the woman took her time, running her fingers over the udder, holding the teats without squeezing, pushing upward once or twice, in imitation of a thirsty calf. As the heifer relaxed and “let down,” the woman leaned her forehead against the animal’s flank and began to milk as usual, rhythmically and forcefully, repeating the same movement over and over, separating the milk from the udder with her thumb and her forefinger, then pressing it down the teat with her remaining fingers and the palm of her hand. Jets of milk struck the buckets, at first hard and hollow, later more muffled, as the contents of the buckets whipped into creamy foam. The cows chewed their cuds, swished their tails, and plopped manure into the concrete gutters. Occasionally a woman’s voice praised or scolded. Soon the entire barn smelled of contentment and warm, large bodies.
One of the milk maids was Selma. “Many modern women consider milking beneath them,” Fredrik wrote. “I was therefore deeply gratified to see that the Börjesson daughter — the same young woman who served the coffee — was not one of them. When I left, both she and her sister, in clean frocks, were in the barn milking. Honor to them both, and to all young women who stay home and work at the family farm! What would Sweden’s future be without them?”
The sister, most likely, was Anna.
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