We bought a farm so we could build a dairy

It does not begin with building permits, drawings or long calculations. It begins in a kitchen.

When Emelie and Alexander started making cheese at home, it was not because they wanted to build a destination in the forest or create a farm shop people would travel to. It was much simpler than that. They wanted to make good cheese. Real cheese. Cheese with personality.

But quite soon the home kitchen became too small for the dream.

To take the next step, they needed a dairy. Not in theory, but for real. A place where the cheese could grow up, where the craft could take space and where the work could become sustainable. So they began looking for a farm with enough land to carry a new building. When Alexander spotted a nearby property, he contacted the owner and simply asked whether it could be bought.

It could.

And there, in what would later become Margaretelund, the next chapter began.

First came the farm. Then everything else grew.

The dairy was the reason the farm was bought. But as so often at Margaretelund, reality did not quite stay inside the plan.

As the dairy dream took shape, people also began finding their way to the cheese. Customers knocked on the door at home in Björkenäs asking for Eldost. There was already movement, curiosity, demand. The idea of a small cheese shed grew mostly as a practical solution.

But small ideas have a strange habit of growing out here.

The cheese shed became a farm shop. The farm shop became a destination. And the dairy, which had been the reason everything began, became the heart of the place that eventually formed around the cheese.

“A cheese led to a dairy. A dairy required a farm.”

They built it themselves. Almost all of it.

In 2022 the building work began. Not symbolically. Not carefully. For real.

From the first stakes marking the foundation to the final ridge tile, almost everything was done with their own hands. It was not only about choosing materials or coordinating craftsmen. It was about actually building.

Walls were raised. Roof trusses came into place. Timber was carried, cut, measured, aligned and screwed. Foundations were prepared. Drains were laid. Insulation went in. Interior walls were built. Fittings were mounted. What would later look obvious began as mud, puddles, gravel, rain and endless decisions.

When the shop was being built, there was not even electricity on the farm.

That almost sounds exaggerated, but it is true. Saws and screwdrivers ran on batteries. Much else had to be done by hand. There were moments when the project must have seemed completely unreasonable: standing far out in the forest, nailing up a large shop by hand while also running a business, making cheese, selling at markets and keeping everyday life together.

Many times the thought caught up with them: What on earth are we doing?

Cheese was sold first. Building material was bought afterwards.

The bank was not particularly interested in believing in the project.

So Emelie and Alexander did what they already knew how to do: they went to markets and fairs, sold cheese and bought building materials with the money. The project literally grew bit by bit, financed by work, persistence and an unusually high tolerance for uncertainty.

At the same time they received important support from the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development. That support was crucial in making the full investment possible. But the grants did not build the house by themselves. Emelie and Alexander did – with help from family, friends, stubbornness and more working hours than they can probably count afterwards.

Freezing weather, wind and a roof that had to go on

Some building days seem to have etched themselves deeper than others.

Like when the weather was about to turn, the wind picked up and the roof had to be finished before the rain. Or when they lay up on the building in freezing temperatures trying to make the wind barrier stay where it should. Or when the ground turned into mud and everything took twice as long as they had hoped.

The building work was never romantic at the time. It was cold, heavy, impractical and sometimes quite absurd.

And still they continued.

Perhaps because there was a direction. Perhaps because the cheese already existed and demanded its place. Perhaps because some projects, however unlikely they seem, become impossible to let go once begun.

A house that carries more than goods

In December 2024 the shop opened.

What had first been only an idea – or perhaps a stubborn movement forward – now stood as a real place. Not only a building, but a room for everything Margaretelund has become: the cheeses, the craft food, the people, the stories and the feeling that something unexpected is hidden in the forest between Nässjö and Eksjö.

When you arrive today, it is easy to see a finished shop, a dairy, a farm with animals and a place to stop. What is harder to see are all the hours inside the walls. Everything that disappears once the paint has dried and the shelves are in place.

Perhaps that is why the story of Margaretelund is also a story about work. Not as a slogan, but as reality.

A cheese led to a dairy. A dairy required a farm. A farm became a shop. A shop became a destination.

And somewhere along the way, all of it was built by hand.