As Roald climbed into the two-wheeled buggy beside his mother and sister Annie, he was too excited to speak. If only his father would let him drive the pretty dun-colored horse hitched to the buggy!

Roald knew little about horses. He lived in Oslo, a city in Norway. He had never owned a pony of his own, and really had never visited in the country where boys ride and drive horses.

Early that spring his father had said, “This summer we will take a vacation and go through the farm lands of Norway.” For weeks Roald waited for the day when that journey could begin.

Then one day in July the journey did begin. The family left Oslo by train. But to Roald the journey didn’t really begin until they left the train at a small town miles from the city and climbed into that two-wheeled buggy which Norwegians called a cariole.

The dun-colored horse took them only a short way. For most of their journey was to be on small steamboats on the waterways of Norway, called fjords, and by automobiles on mountain roads. But Roald gladly climbed on the boat.

Their first boat glided along narrow waterways for miles and miles between mountain walls that in some places rise almost straight up from the water. Roald began to wonder whether this could be a part of Norway’s farm land. But now and then, even in this mountainous region, his father pointed out a lone farmhouse perched up on the mountainside.

Soon the boat passed shores that were less steep and Roald saw stretches of low and rolling land between mountain peaks. He caught glimpses of farms lying close together. This farm land was like the farm land he had seen near Oslo.

Roald wondered what farmers grew in this land of mountains and water. But he did not need to leave his boat to see some of the farmers’ products. As the boat stopped at a small town along the fjords to deliver the mail and boxes of foodstuffs, boys came on deck to sell baskets of fruit—cherries, raspberries, blueberries, currants, and apples.

After a day on the fjords, the family traveled in an automobile. Roald soon asked, “What are those strange fences we see everywhere in the fields?” But he needed no answer to his question, for in a few minutes he saw one of those fences loaded with grass. All along the way he saw men, women, and children in the fields making hay. The men cut the grass and the women and girls and boys helped rake it into small stacks and hung it on the fencelike frames to dry in the sun.

They saw farmers cutting grass on slopes that are covered with rocks. The farmers used scythes and hand sickles to cut around the many rocks. Farmers in many countries would call such rocky hillsides waste land, but in Norway no blade of grass can be wasted if the cattle are to be well fed during the winter.

Roald looked up at one place and saw a big bundle of grass dangling in the air. “Oh, Father, look!” he cried. And his father smiled as he said, “You must not be surprised to see bundles moving along over your head. Farmers who live on the mountains send hay, baskets of berries, buckets of milk or butter down to the valleys on strong wires which have been stretched down the mountain slopes.” And in a few minutes Roald saw a woman hang a bundle of hay on a wire and start it sliding down to the barn below.

At one place the automobile stopped for an hour. Roald and his father took a walk. Back from the road were a farmhouse and the barns of a large farm. They walked along a narrow road up to the house. They saw people at work in the fields. In one field a man was raking grass. He was riding on a rake behind two horses. Other men were loading the grass on a low-wheeled wagon to haul it to the barn where it would be hung on the fences to dry. In another field girls were gathering potatoes which the men had dug.

Far back across the field was a wire pen which caught Roald’s eye. At first he thought that he was looking at a chicken house. But as he walked closer he saw that foxes and not chickens lived in the pen. What cunning foxes they were! Baby foxes lay sleeping in the sun. Other foxes ran about the pen, jumping up on the box houses and off as they pleased. The foxes had long black fur. Down the back of each fox was a stripe of fur tipped with white. Such animals are called silver foxes because of the white tips on the black fur.

At first Roald felt sorry for the baby foxes. He imagined that they were unhappy and longing to be free to run away into the woods. But his father said, “These foxes have never lived anywhere except in this pen. They are well fed, and, no doubt, are very contented in the pen.”

Farmers in this northland often raise foxes for sale. The silver foxes are very valuable. People pay large prices for fox furs and they like the pretty silver tips on them. Ships that sail from Norway to other countries carry many fox pelts to those other lands.

But Roald soon forgot the foxes as he watched some boys busily working in another field. Rows of poles were sticking in the ground in that field and bunches of grain hung on each pole. The boys were pulling up the poles, turning them around, and sticking them back into the ground.

Roald watched them for some time. From one of the boys he learned that grain in that part of Norway is usually dried on poles. By the time the oats, barley, and rye are ripe enough to cut summer is nearly over. The wet fall weather begins. The grain must be dried as quickly as possible. Stacking it in shocks on the ground would not do, for the rainy weather would rot it. The farmers in Norway fasten their grain on short poles to hold it up off the wet ground.

The grain on one side of the poles which Roald saw had received more sunshine than the grain on the other side of the poles. That is why the boys were in the field turning the poles. They wanted all the grain on the poles to dry quickly.

Roald was surprised to see other boys cutting small shrubs and branches of trees and hanging them on fence posts to dry. What would they ever do with those dry leaves? But his father told him that if he stayed on the farm during the winter he would see the goats eating the dried leaves and liking them too. And most farmers in Norway keep goats as well as cows, horses, and pigs.

Roald and his father and his mother and sister then rode on a bus to the next town. They did not travel very fast, for the bus driver is also the mailman. He stopped at each farmhouse along the road for which he had mail. Sometimes he dropped the mail in a mail box by the side of the road, but often girls or boys were waiting at the farm gate to take the mail. Often the driver gave a sack full of mail to a farmer or a man who runs a small store in a village. That man delivers mail to the families who live farther back off the main road.

At one place the man who was to take a sack of mail was not outside his house to meet the bus. The driver and all the passengers on the bus were impatient. The driver honked the horn of his car, but still the farmer did not come. Then the bus driver went over to a post by the gate and pushed a button. He told Roald that by pushing that button he rang an electric bell at the farmhouse. So Roald was not surprised to see the postman come running after the bell had been rung.

Roald was ready to take the train back to Oslo after a week in the country, but he talked about the farms all the rest of the summer.