Stories from the past

That Kåra-Lars and Björs-Jonas were close is probably not the right word, I would like to say grown in with each other. My father and brother Jonas used to - after 1948 when the telephone was connected - talk to each other for at least half an hour every morning at around 05.30 am. A need for contact that, with dad's move up to Kåra, has to be managed a bit remotely. It would be very interesting to know what they were talking about.

In the 60s, we had a postman, Post-Arvid, who delivered letters and newspapers to us on the Lill side in Järvsö, a fairly large district from the southern end of Nor, Nordsjö, Klacken, Backen, Kåsjo and Stene. His round probably measured about 50 kilometres - cycling every day, summer and winter in scorching sun, rain, biting frost and deep snow. As Arvid was also a talkative man, his day's work took many hours to complete.

Around 1965, there was a proposal to the farmers in Kåsjö and Stene to hold a common milking center for all the cows during the summer with an employed milking man or two to free up the farmers and the people on the farms for mowing and harvesting. The whole thing was called the "Collaboration Pasture Association".

Since the forest up on Grindstenberget towards Klacken was mostly owned by farmers and farms in Stene, it was found natural that, when felling took place approximately 4 kilometers from built-up areas, an overnight cabin was set up for the forest workers. A simple, one-room log cabin with a wood stove. Unpainted, of course, and with a chipboard roof.

Every farmer has his land and with good housekeeping he meets the needs of his kratur from these by cutting hay and sowing and harvesting oats and barley. Then there is a very good old principle that nature must be kept in good condition - an overgrown paddy field is an abomination, likewise overgrown paths and bushy ditches and roadsides.

It has been told to us children that way back in time, Kåragården was located around 500 meters to the northeast up by Gammelgårdsbacke. The location must have been very pleasant with the forest to the north and open to the south. But, a wanderer, who on a hike from up north on his way to Stockholm to buy new medicines, always slept over in Kåra, told the Kåra farmer that "your farm is on the wrong side of the water and the road, that is, north of the stream that flows down from Steneberget and the road up towards Nordsjö.

"Boys, when there's a price for stones, we'll be rich" Dad used to say. What I remember most are all the stones that were around in the fields, in the forest and around Kåragården. A little way up Grindstensberget just before Lappatäkten on the high side when coming from the bottom, there was the biggest rock I have ever seen. It must have measured at least 8 meters in diameter and the same height.

There wasn't much variety of food in the good old days, but what we had must have been useful and strengthening. We became strong and had health, mostly perhaps due to the fact that we were moving all the time and had to help on the farm with what we could manage and in that way got a good appetite.

I visited Bollnäs horse-racecourse for the first time shortly after I turned 18. In my father's newly purchased Volvo duet, me with a new driver's license. A number of Gentlemen (Björs-Jonas, Kåra-Lars and Freska-Pelle) wanted to go there and see a trotting day.

One of my richest childhood memories is when we brothers went on the toboggan at the top of Kusbaken's big bridge and then bounced down between the plow embankments. (at that time they were plowed with wooden plows and maybe not so hard) and then there was a cross stop against a harder plow embankment down by the country road.

Since we are now having a serious winter with a lot of snow that reminds me of the winters of my childhood, I want to tell you about a skiing excursion in the moonlight on hard crusty snow.

So there are 30 jam jars here. They will serve as vitamin injections next winter for our breakfasts with the cheese milk and a mixed jam of red currants, strawberries, rhubarb and blueberries.

When I look back to my childhood as I remember it – 1945 to 1960 – it must be understood that perhaps everything did not go as it did at home, but other villages and parishes customers do things differently. As I mentioned, we didn't buy a tractor until the late 60s...

I drove home from Gothenburg on a beautiful summer morning at 5 o'clock am, the sun was shining, the birds were chirping and a month's holiday was ahead of me. Dad sat outside on the bridge branch, sucked on the pipe, scratched the cat behind the ear and drank coffee. "How lucky you are to come so soon, would you like a cuppa?"

Olle, didn't you and I try our hand at business when we were in our younger teens - bought a few cases of drink from Abrahamsson's Johan and sat all night up by the barn up in Kusmyra or behind Kulthammar more precisely on midsummer evening. The old men bought for their grog, but I think we tasted quite a lot ourselves too.

Fishing is certainly not my best side. Snare pike fry during childhood it was exciting and then club lake on the first clear ice in the river it was also exciting but sitting with a fishing rod and not getting a pacifier was not exciting except once...

When I was very young, probably the second half of the sixties, I got to hang out with grandfather Björs-Jonas and father Jonas (the younger one) on a logging drive in the forest - somewhere between Järvsö and Nor. It was then done by horse and sleigh, in the winter.

In the mid-sixties, when I was very young, I had to accompany my father Jonas (the younger) and grandfather Björs-Jonas to the farmers' common village sauna. It was up towards Kåsjö, if I remember correctly. There the farmers in the village sat once a week and talked...

Something I understood early on that my father appreciated was Grandma Karin's "Potatoe porridge with pork" which was cooked most often when we visited Björs. I remember how it smelled like fried pork in the kitchen in Björs, pretty much always when we were there.

Cousin Anders and I once found a chest in a loft in the barn to the right of Björsgården. In it were shields and swords and everything a 12-year-old could dream of. All in wood, of course, but skillfully and nicely made. It must have been the Brotherhood gear (toys)…

In 1804, on September 29, the undersigned jurors appointed a fire inspection following the honorable Mr. Lawman Dahlman's order of September 28, 1804, whereby it is reported that the farmer Mårten Olofsson in Stene has lost the Man- and Ladugården at the homestead no. laid out by the severe stormy weather...

However, it wasn't about the big farm we were going to talk about, but about grandfather there. He is the parish's oldest male resident and turns 90 on February 3 (1928).
He was not born in the farm, but became a groom there in 1862. He was born in Stene and the son of churchwarden Jonas Månsson and Karin Mårtensdotter in Björs (see Björs history).