Practical training in Sweden

Hi, my name is Elisabeth, I’m an Austrian student and spend my internship this year at Woodlawn Farm. Last year I did my internship together with my friend Verena. We were in Sweden on a dairy cow farm named Botans Lantbruk. The farm was located nearly 300km from Stockholm in a region called Rättvik.

Our bosses Kristina and Bengt own the big farm with around 200 milking cows and a lot of calves and heifers, too. They have two girls, Josefin (21) and Mikaela (19) and one son whose name is Fredrick (17). The farm is one of the three biggest farms in this region of Sweden.

The cows were milked three times a day in a big milking carousel. We also fed the calves and cleaned up the barn. While we were spending our time at Botans Lantbruk, a new barn was built, so we helped the workers there, too. For example we painted the wall in the new barn.

The work was sometimes a little bit hard but we learned a lot of new things and it was very funny to work together with some Swedish workers. Now we know how to manage a barn with a lot of cows and how to milk with a milking carousel.

In our free time we spent five days in Stockholm and in Göteborg. On each trip we did a little sightseeing tour, went shopping and spent one day in a fun fair.

Verena and I enjoyed the 14 weeks in Sweden very much and we got to know a lot of very friendly people. It was a great experience for us. After this amazing time we especially missed the workers, the work and the delicious food of Kristina.

Before we went back home, we spent one week in the north of Norway in Tromsö. There we went hiking and shopping and we relaxed. One night we saw the beautiful polar lights which were quite amazing.

Elisabeth's Practical Training in Sweden