Pálína Axelsdóttir Njarðvík
Lambing Season | Farmlife
Eystra - Geldingaholt
"Lambing season is a fun, difficult and sleepless time. You have to stay awake during the night, can only go inside to eat and rest for short periods and you spend more time at the sheep barn than at home. The work never stops."
Lambing Season
Lambing season is the period when sheep give birth to lambs. It takes place during the spring months and into June. Lambing season is a very busy time for sheep farmers, and it’s good to get all the help you can get during it. When it’s busiest, people have to take turns eating and sleeping; there’s always someone in the sheep barn, day and night.
Pálína grew up near her maternal inheritance, Eystra Geldingarholt, where her aunt and uncles operate a mixed farm, with both cows and sheep. Pálína has been a regular visitor to the sheep barn since she could walk. As a child, she tried to help out and make herself useful in the sheep barn, and today, she is an essential worker during the lambing season in Eystra - Geldingaholt.
What’s most fun about periods like the lambing season is that the whole family takes part
When ewes give birth to lambs, it is called lambing. While most ewes can lamb without assistance, some of them need help getting their lambs into the world. That’s why it's important that there’s always someone on duty in the sheep barn to help those who need help.
Lambing season is a fun, difficult and sleepless time. You have to stay awake during the night, can only go inside to eat and rest for short periods and you spend more time at the sheep barn than at home. The work never stops. Sometimes it can be really hard, but when everything goes well and you save a lamb, then it doesn't matter how many hours of sleep you got that night.
It’s incredibly nice when the lambing season can bring people together and maintain friendships; we actually have non-stop visitors all during lambing season, and many of them come to help lighten the load. Lambing season in the spring and the roundup in the fall are both events that attract people to us and maintain family relationships.
It’s so much fun to get to be people’s window to the countryside
Pálína runs the Instagram account @farmlifeiceland and has around 90 thousand followers.
“I started the account a few years ago. It all started because I felt like I was drowning my own friends in sheep photos, so I wanted to create a new account just for that. I wasn’t expecting much, but the reaction was great; it’s grown a lot more than I thought it would.
I love giving people a glimpse into Icelandic country life, because for most people, this lifestyle is very exotic, even if it’s just everyday life for me. This is a reality that most people aren’t familiar with. I show them my everyday life, as raw and true as I can, and people enjoy that.
I’m always surprised when I get questions from people all over the world about my sheep, asking where’s Botna, how’s Sunna doing, and so on. I think it’s amazing that people remember my sheep’s names and that they care and want to know what’s going on. It’s so much fun to get to be people’s window to the countryside."
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