02 · Destination
A light in the forest.
There is something about a shop that glows when the rest of the landscape has almost gone dark.
A digital travel magazine
Margaretelund
A place in the forest where cheese, fire and colour refuse to behave as expected.
Report · after the evening
When darkness fell over Margaretelund
Karolina Kallentoft came to the farm, read from the new book and spoke about Ormaryd, writing and the beings moving through the forests around us.
Karolina Kallentoft read from Skogen de döda vilar i at Margaretelund.
Contents
In this issue
Read it like a magazine: cover to cover, or browse until something catches your eye.
Within a few hundred metres, a small world gathers: cheeses with names like characters from a novel, a farm shop glowing in the forest, sheep and goats behind the fence, coffee in the yard and the scent of milk, timber, fire and summer.
What’s on · 11 June
Darkness Falls Over Margaretelund
Author evening with Karolina Kallentoft, book signing, forest folklore and a pre-release in Ormaryd.
01 · Cheese
Sweden’s best Eldost
A feature-style encounter with the cheese that made people find their way to Margaretelund.
02 · Farm shop
The farm shop glowing in the forest
An unmanned farm shop, a hundred lights and around forty local producers.
Extra · Tonic
A small bitter obsession
More than seventy varieties of tonic in a farm shop in the forest. A side track that became a small destination of its own.
Extra · The build
We bought a farm so we could build a dairy
The story of how cheese in the home kitchen became a farm, a shop, a dairy and a destination in the forest.
03 · Process
Milk, metal and mould
The documentary feature from inside the dairy.
04 · Terroir
North Småland terroir
Game from the forests, apple must from Vättern’s slopes and milk from the highlands.
05 · Travel guide
Visit Margaretelund
How to get here, unlock the shop, shop on your own and meet the animals behind the fence.
07 · Farm life
The animals by the fence
Goats, Gute sheep and Jerry the bottle-fed ram – residents who make the place truly alive.
08 · Serving ideas
How to eat Margaretelund
Eldost in bread, Greta with greens, blue cheese with honey, tonic tasting and ice cream in the sun.
06 · Summer
The ice-cream kiosk by the road
A summer feature about Ryssby ice cream, handmade gluten-free cones and the courtyard behind the shop. Now closed for the season – with hopes of returning next summer.
01 · Cover story
The cheese that drew people into the forest.
Many people come to Margaretelund for the first time for one simple reason: they have heard about the cheese.
Not about everything around it. Not the goats, the colours, the ice-cream kiosk, the fire or the unmanned farm shop glowing in the winter dark. They come for the seared crust. For the idea that a cheese can be the main character of an excursion.
And then the curious thing happens: the cheese is not the endpoint. It becomes the doorway in.
“First comes the hunger. Then you begin to see the place.”
Eldost as destination food: not a product shot, but a reason to linger.
A cast of cheeses
At Margaretelund, the cheeses are given names, faces and temperaments. Greta is bright and salty, Svarta Malin dark and adventurous, Farbror Blå slow and alive. Here cheese is not just something to cut and serve – it is something to get to know.
02 · The place
You do not merely drive here. You arrive.
Margaretelund has not been built as a stage set. It has grown out of work, timber, cold, colour and persistence.
The approach, the pale wooden façade, the bicycle against the wall, the posters against the snow — all say the same thing: someone has made choices here. Not a template. Not a ready-made farm-shop aesthetic. A world of its own.
That is why the place belongs more naturally in a magazine than on a traditional website. You should be able to browse. Pause. Look again.
The shop after snow: timber, posters, a red bicycle and a warm light in the forest.
03 · Behind the scenes
The fire souls in the dairy.
Behind the cheeses stand Emelie and Alexander, early milk runs and a warm, humid room where fingertip judgement guides every decision.
A cheesemaking day often begins before the farm has fully woken. The milk tank is hitched to the trailer, the vat is filled, and the hours in the dairy begin: acidification, cutting, forming, salting, washing, piercing and waiting.
Here, following a recipe is not enough. Half a degree, a few minutes or the feel of the curd can change the result weeks, months or years later. That is why every cheese from Margaretelund carries the trace of the hands that made it.
Milk, steel, heat and hands. Most of the flavour begins long before the cheese reaches the shop.
04 · Farm shop
Colour that does not apologise.
This is not beige rural nostalgia. It is red, yellow, orange, turquoise, deep green and gold.
There is a warmth here that is not typical Swedish farm-shop style. More hand-painted poster, more Frida Kahlo at the edge of the spruce forest, more cigar box and summer heat than linen apron and discreet sign.
The colours change the mood. You come in for cheese and stay among red shelves, turquoise crates, yellow details and small things you did not know you were looking for.
The shelves are part of the experience: colour, abundance and carefully chosen small producers.
07 · The animals
The animals by the fence.
Behind the shop the pasture begins: goats, Gute sheep and a bottle-fed ram who seems to believe visitors are his real flock.
The animals at Margaretelund are not decoration. They keep the land open, give the place its living edge and remind you that a farm is always more than façade, range and opening hours.
The goats are called Britt-Marie, Isabella, Thunder and Getrud. The Gute sheep are black and horned. And Jerry, the bottle-fed ram, still has a very personal idea of what a flock is.
The animals make Margaretelund less polished and more true.
Extra · Tonic
A small bitter obsession.
In the tonic corner, more than seventy varieties make the farm shop even more unlikely.
It began as a collaboration with True Selection in Nässjö. Then, as so often at Margaretelund, it got a little out of hand.
Yellow shelves, many bottles and a small bitter obsession in the middle of the forest.
06 · Living flavours
The heat of fermentation.
Mould, bubbles, chilli and time. Margaretelund should feel like a place where flavours are allowed to develop.
On the shelves you also find the things that bubble, sting and wake a meal up: kombucha, chilli, fermented vegetables, honey, marmalades, tonic and bottles that make a simple dinner less predictable.
The colour ties the food to the visual identity of the place.
07 · Evenings
When the farm does not quite fall asleep.
Fire, lights, people lingering and a place that becomes most itself as darkness falls.
Photo essay
A chair in the forest.
A red chair in the forest. Some spruce. Two jars. It looks as if someone has just left — or will soon return with coffee.
04 · Flavour landscape
North Småland terroir.
In North Småland, terroir is quieter than in Tuscany, but no less distinct.
Within forty kilometres, growing zones one to five meet: apples by Vättern, milk from the highlands, game from the forests and stony fields shaped by generations of hands.
In the farm shop, the landscape becomes shelf metres. Around forty producers, carefully chosen, let visitors take a piece of Småland home.
The shelves show a flavour geography: milk, must, meat, preserves, tonic and everything in between.
08 · Serving ideas
A dinner that starts on the shelves.
This is not a recipe archive, but a few ways of taking Margaretelund home.
A good farm shop does not make food more complicated. It makes it more considered. Eldost, Greta, blue cheese, honey, tonic and ice cream become small servings where the place still remains on the table.
Inspiration rather than exact recipes: a few good things carry the whole meal.
06 · Summer memory
Thank you for this summer.
The ice-cream kiosk is now closed for the season. The hatch in the dairy wall had its first summer with Ryssby ice cream, coffee and slow moments in the courtyard.
Now we are looking forward to next summer and hope the kiosk becomes a recurring part of Margaretelund.
A summer feature about Ryssby ice cream, handmade gluten-free cones and the courtyard behind the shop.
Travel facts
Visit Margaretelund.
Margaretelund is at Margaretelund 1, between Eksjö and Nässjö, close to road 40 and about two kilometres north of Ormaryd station.
Open24 hours a day, every day
How to shopUnlock with BankID, scan yourself and pay by card or Swish
On siteParking, animals behind the shop, coffee and a ice-cream kiosk we hope will return next summer