Post: On the road from the southeast to the west

“We don’t need to set an alarm for tomorrow morning,” Mark said. I was grateful. Yesterday’s post kept me up until past midnight (focus!) So Mark was already asleep and after I hit Publish, so was I.

I woke up rested and feeling like it was around 7:30am. Oops! It was 9:45! We dressed in haste to make it for coffee, tea and breakfast just in time.

After repacking we left Hella for a day’s drive (tourist pace) to Stykkisholmur in the West.

The longest stop along the way was to Fridheimar tomato greenhouses.

The greenhouse supplies nearly 40% of Iceland’s tomatoes, so it’s likely we’d sampled some along the way without knowing it. The houses operate year round and are heated by naturally warmed geothermal water. Hydro and geothermal power also greenly supply the electricity, so these tomatoes are not the energy hogs that a hothouse tomato would be in the US. In addition, the operation trucks in 400 tons of CO2 from natural steam to give the fruits an abundant carbon atmosphere. The soil is pumice, very abundant in Iceland. Everything in the abiotic environment, then, has been suitably and cleverly adapted using Iceland’s natural resources.

There’s only one biotic factor missing: a pollinator.

Bumblebees are brought from Holland to fly amongst the tomatoes.

If these plants could talk, I believe they would highly endorse their standard of living. They are simply beautiful plants. When we grow tomatoes in the northeast USA, they are cultivated as annuals, of course. The plants are staked, or caged, or sprawled on plastic. By this point in the summer, the vines start to senesce, looking straggly and yellow.

The Fridheimer greenhouse tomatoes just keep growing. Plants grow from the top up, and you can see how the vines are thick and have a series of scars from where past clusters were attached. New clusters continuously form at the tops of the vines. Everything is exceedingly tidy and clean.

Visitors can eat at the restaurant inside the greenhouse and it’s a popular spot for tour buses and families. We didn’t have a booking but were able to sit at the bar and sample “Healthy green” (green tomato juice and seltzer and “Healthy red” (tomato juice with a cucumber garnish), a cup of tomato soup and a roll.

We had a nice chat with the bartender who spied Mark’s Colorado College hat and was curious since he’d spent a summer working in Breckenridge. He amused us with a story of camping in a parking lot near Garden of the Gods, bedding down outside without a tent, and waking up to discover he’d slept beneath a sign warning of rattlesnakes. After that communal chuckle we were told not to be bashful about plucking basil off the bar plant to accompany our snack.

And the flavor was of the most excellent tomato. If there is a terroir, I didn’t detect it. Our soup and beverages were fresh, sweet, and bright, and not very acidic. “Pure tomato,” was Mark’s pronouncement.

For the rest of the afternoon, we drove north and west to Stykkisholmur. The landscape is a little different. Some areas have less grassy vegetation. The mountains can have a talus slope of fine basalt. When there is what looks like a farm at the base of a huge mountain, I kept thinking about the angle of repose. If you’ve ever made a pile of sand or soil, you’ll recall that the slopes of the pile are determined by the material— not by the digger. This volcanic material looks just like one of those piles, and it’s hard to believe that a good rain doesn’t just wash the mountain into the farm.

When we walked to dinner, we saw a few streets of Stykkisholmur. It’s a pretty town.

And the birdhouses of Beauty Hill, an installation by this couple.

We ate at Narfeyrarstofa, a restaurant specializing in local food. They could also boast about specializing in stunning presentation.

We left dinner around 9:30pm to walk back to the hotel at sunset. The light was gorgeous for a few more photos:

Finally, the umbels of the day: A sturdy Angelica in a gusty wind outside of a bakery in Borgarness, and a thicket of Sweet Cecily on a path by the tomato greenhouses. Sweet Cecily, in addition to having a fantastic common name, smells like licorice.