While driving through the countryside one day, we noted an antique lågtryckspanna next to a house. We stopped and asked the owner whether he wanted to get rid of the machine. The owner, a bee keeper, had been using the steam kettle to clean and disinfect his bee hives but recently switched to using a modern dish washer. He was happy to give the panna to us and in an instance we had become the new owner of 100+ kg of old iron.
We cannot find much information about our lågtryckspanna on the internet. They seem to have been used by the army in their field kitchens, to steam large quantities of food. There are some examples of modern versions of our steam kettle, e.g. “lågtryckspanna 101 MT”. Ours looks much older though, we guess it is from the 1930s or 40s. A neighbour told us that they used an old army lågtryckspanna to cook food for the pigs. Anyone familiar with the recipe?
At home we tried the panna and it still worked great. It produces large amounts of hot water and steam. Since we had been looking for a smart and cheap heating system for our swimming pool this seemed a perfect solution. But we had not thought about the disadvantage of a steam kettle, particularly the enormous amount of noice (which is no fun next to a pool). See more on our pool page.
Some time ago a lady from a local nature conservation agency (naturskyddsföreningen) came by to make an inventory of the valuable trees in our village. She was especially pleased with the old lime trees (lind) in our garden along the road. In the past these trees were used for hamling, the regular removal of young branches to provide food for the livestock. Trees like these are valuable historical elements of the local landscape. Therefor the authorities are helping landowners to keep them in good health. Read more on the lime and other trees in our garden.
