Iceland Day 4

Friday, Dec. 8, 2017

We started today by visiting a local greenhouse that raises tomatoes, peppers, and mushrooms year round. It was really interesting to see how they kept tomato plants growing and how they rotate them out so as not to have a lull in the production.

  

The color is due to the artificial lighting. The greenhouses are heated with geothermal hot water which is heated by the underground volcanic activity. This also how the majority of homes and businesses are heated.  

It was interesting to learn how they take the suckers off a plant and graft them onto the main stem to start new growth. When the suckers are ready to produce fruit, the old section of the plants are cut away.

They use these bee boxes through out the houses to pollinate the plants. Each box has a queen bee and all female worker bees. Something was mentioned about the male bees being lazy and usless so they are removed. Hmmm!

Next we visited the mushroom growing operation. They produce about 10 tons of mushrooms per week. 

The mushrooms are hand sorted, graded and packed.

One of the many growing rooms.

We visited on a Friday and they had just harvested these beds heavily so they wouldn't have to come in over the weekend to harvest again. Said they would lower the temperature to slow growth.

The owner's daughter is the one who gave us our tour.

This greenhouse produces their own compost for growing the mushrooms. They use canary grass they grow, leftover straw from nearby farms, chicken manure and pure Icelandic water. The smell reminded me of when we cleaned out the calf pens after a long winter. Phew!

You can see the steam being generated by the composting.

After a delicious lunch of mushroom soup and fresh baked breads we headed to the Golden Circle and a visit to the Gullfoss waterfall. The water cascades down two tiers into a deep crevasse. The snow and ice gave it a very special look.

The crevasse

The Hvita River that feeds the waterfalls.

Next stop was the Geysir Hot Springs area with boiling mud pits and geysers.

Strokkur geyser erupts about every 7 minutes and can shoot water 100 feet into the air.

The old Geysir which is now dormant. It was the first geyser documented in printed material (1294) and is where the word geyser comes from.

Loved the sunset behind the steam plumes.

Before dinner, we made a trip to the Secret Lagoon which i a natural hot spring. The water was nice and hot. It was a very relaxing time.

Time to go to our home hosted meal. As many of you know, the company I travel with, Overseas Adventure Travel, has local families host a dinner for us giving us the chance to learn more about local customs and to share about our culture. We visited a beautiful lady for her first time hosting one of the dinners. She teaches crafts and knitting to first through fifth graders.

The sweaters on the right of the picture were all knitted by Helena. She said with her teaching she can only do about 1 1/2 sweaters a week. It was a fantastic evening.