Summer Farm (fäbod - säter)

This cabin is one of two surviving buildings originally built to be used with our local village's summer pasture. The cabin in a beautiful position (the extra is taken looking out from the front doorstep) and seems well looked after.
In most of Sweden, before the advent of "modern" agriculture, the tradition was to move the animals away from the farm and into the forest in the summer.  The cows and goats would live off the grass and leaves in the wilder areas, while the farmland meadows produced the hay needed to sustain the animals through the long winter. Similar systems were found in Britain, the Alps, and many other parts of the world. I learned a new term today in Wikipedia, describing this system of husbandry - Transhumance.
In Sweden, the task of taking the animals up into the forest, looking after them, milking them, and producing butter and cheese was considered a task for the unmarried women and girls. (The boys would be working on the farm or in the forest.)
Every village had its own area of summer pasture and recently I found our village's area marked on a map, just a couple of kilometers off one of my regular walks. Hence today's blip...
As well as cheese and butter this way of life produced place names and music. A special form of singing was used to call the animals home when it was time for milking etc. Here you can both hear the music and see it in action, as the cows gather.