This is a picture of the houses (foreground) that Nils Anton Broman did build from ca 1850 and onwards in Sörbyn. The building behind the flag-pole is the main building. The main building was built in 1887 and has since then been improved over time to a modern house with central heating and all the modern facilities you needed until the nineteen-seventies. This summer we are going to do some more improvements.

The building on the left, in the shadow of the old birch tree, is an old store-house for grains , bread and meat used before the time of the freezers. The smaller building on the right is the first building on the farm. From the beginning that building was a “soldattorp”, which was N A:s when he was a soldier* (then his surname was Stahre = starling in English). The farmhouse was in use as a dairy farm until 1972. Until then the farm had provided the livelihood for N A , his son Egon and his grandson Bengt. The dairy farm business wasn´t doing well from the middle nineteen-fifties due to structural rationalization of farming in Sweden, imposed by the government, but luckily the farm had timberland enough to keep the family economy at status quo. In 1972 Bengt started to work at a saw-mill in the village until 1980 when he retired. Bengts son Fred no owns the farm and it is still producing good timber.

*In Sweden we had a system for enlisted soldiers during the 19^th century that forced upon landowners in villages to provide soldiers with houses and farmland. Usually there were approximately 2-3 soldiers in a village of 20 farms of regular size. The soldier families lived a very poor life in small cottages like the one above with almost no cash money. The soldiers met twice every year in nearby military camps to exercise for about a month.

2004-02-08/Fred Broman