Next to the ice cream parlor is the little octagonal Bee Pavilion, which was built in the late 19th century. The pavilion has beehives around it. I wonder if the bees like ice cream?

Long ago, there were three farms in Valla, which were merged into one in the 18th century. Old and new live side-by-side here. You can see Linköping University in the distance, and among the trees in the park is the manor house, which is now a part of the folk high school.

Three generations of the Westman family lived and worked on the farm, for over 100 years. The most famous member of the Westman family is the last owner, Captain Henric Westman.

Henric’s parents, Leonard and Ida, worked hard to make Valla Farm the finest farm in the region. Henric wanted everything on the farm to be as it always had been, managed in the same way as in his parents’ day. At Valla, oxen still pulled the plows, even though other farmers were using horses and tractors.

Contract farm worker Kristian Werner Pihlström, who had worked at Valla Farm his whole life, commented on this in 1933:

            Somme plöjer med traktor, di

            Kall’ert, somme plöjer med hästa, men på

            Valla plöjer vi med oxer, och de´ har vi

           gjort i flere hundre år

Captain Henric Westman gave a lot of money to Linköping.

In 1913, he wrote a deed of gift to the city, which came to be called the Westman-Werner Foundation. Money from the foundation is still granted for cultural purposes, once every five years.

When Henric Westman died in 1937, the City of Linköping inherited all of Valla Farm and much of his fortune. That inheritance is a large part of the reason that the open-air museum of Gamla Linköping exists.

The buildings remaining from Captain Westman’s time are the manor house; the Westman Stables and the Valla Stables, where you can still visit the horses; the Valla Farm smithy; the big red barn and the granary where Tekniska Verken’s Museum is located.