söndag 20 december 2015

November

It was already the beginning of November. It was unusual warm for the time o the year. The first day of my return we worked in the gardens to turn the soil with the hoe. It was so warm that I had to take off my sweater.

The next day we went to check a moose skin that were laying in the river. The Belgian girl wanted to scrape it and the weather was perfect for that. The skin had been in the river for two weeks but unfortunately it was not enough. I had never had a skin in the river for more than two weeks but I had also not had a skin in the river this late in the season. Since the water was cold it probably needed to be there for another week.

The unusual warm day was over, the cold return but still not so much snow. We did the last logs of the chicken house and put on the roof. Now it was almost finished, only the window and door was missing but that was for later. It is also good for the logs to dry a bit before doing more.


My plan was to build a sauna next year and I wanted to use big spruces on the farm that were too close to meadows and fields. Some of the spruces were very big over 40 cm in diameter. The spruces had also been growing fast that decrease the quality but I did not know what else to do with them. We started to take down the trees and debark them it was a time consuming work. I guessed I would need around 20 trees for the sauna and was not sure we would have time to do that this month.


A week had passed and we checked the moose skin again now it was ready since I could easily remove the hair with my hand. I left the Belgian girl at the hide tanning area to scrape the skin and returned to the farm. It should take about a day to scrape the skin. In the end of the day she had not returned and it started to get dark, it had also started to snow. I returned to the hide tanning area to help her get back since it was 3 km out in the forest. She was not there, I started to shout her name and searching for her. I did not find her so I decided to return to the farm to see if she where there. It was dark when I returned to the farm and she where not there. I told the Woman from Swabia and the two of us prepared to go back and search for her together, but then a car arrived and one neighbor brought the Belgian girl. She had walked in wrong direction but luckily found a road that lead back to the neighbors house. She was a bit chocked but happy to be back, she had prepared her self mentally for a night in the forest.


More snow fell and this time it would probably not melt away. Before that I had found quite many mushrooms called herald of the winter (Hygrophorus hypothejus). That mushroom is usually found very late in the season after the first night frost. We made tasty omelets from that mushroom.

We continued with the trees and every night we had aching arms from the work. We also brought up grass bumps from the wet meadows with a sledge. We crushed the grass bumps and used them in the outhouse.

We tried some ice fishing but got nothing, it was to early. In January I was going to try again.

We cleared the area around an old house foundation from small birches and goat willows. Someday I wanted to build a guest house there.

Some of the spruces I wanted to take down were not in such a condition that they could be used for building, but they were big and shading the meadows so I took them down either way and chopped them up into firewood.

It was now the beginning of December and I had to return to the south to work some more. The Belgian girl also wanted to leave the farm to explore more of Sweden so we went together to the south. The woman from Swabia stayed on the farm to take care of the animals. I did not want to leave the farm but I had promised to work three weeks in the south.

torsdag 17 december 2015

Harvest party

We had started to harvest from the farms for our daily meals, we also harvested some swedes and turnips and sliced them and put them in the sun to dry. I like drying as a method for conservation but up here in Lapland you have to start dry early. Later in the harvest season its usually to moist and to little sun to dry. If I have a sauna next year I can dry in there.

A boy from Austria arrived with a cab, he had tried to hitchhike but failed to get a ride. All three of us were now living in the log hut. The boy from Austria had a hard time eating fish, after we had treated him with fish-head soup he had enough. He said he needed meat and he thought we were eating meat everyday at this place. I suggested to him that he could eat ants if he did not like fish so we collected some ants but in the end he went to town with bicycle to buy some tin can meat.

I had invited to a harvest party and we were preparing for that. Eventually I finished the shelter, we had not used it except for a goat-house. We made the floor in the shelter, a big fireplace in front of it and benches around the fireplace. We also dig up roots and branches that were in front of the shelter. It looked good and I wondered why I had not done this before.  


I went to the neighbor village and bought a lamb for the party. The day before the party some people had already arrived and for dinner we ate the intestines and the testicles, witch were very tasty. We saved the brain for tanning. The next day we ate the sheep head for lunch, the meat loving Austrian man carved out the meat from the head and he said it was the most discussing work he had ever done.

So the shelter was ready and the fire was going and the party could begin. A friend from Dorotea chopped the lamb into pieces and we put it on the fire. We were about ten people now, and more people were o their way. The women from Swabia that had been here last winter returned. Except the lamb we ate a lot of good food from the gardens. The party lasted for several days. On the days we were working with the gardens, chopping down trees, tanning, picking berries and dug up root systems and in the evenings we ate meat and drank beer. Most people returned home when the meat and beer was gone. Some people stayed and for a month we were a group of about 5 people.   


We thought the meat party was over but then the hunters visited and gave us 6 moose heads and two moose skins. We put the skins into the river (it had to be there for at least two weeks) and started to skin the heads. We got a lot of meat from the heads and we boiled broth from the legs that we also got. Almost everyone tried to skin a head. 


We continued with the work, we constructed a new bigger woodshed and picked more bilberries and boiled jam from them. Now we had a lot of jam jars. I also got help to finish the storage house.


It was now late September and the weather were getting colder. We moved inside and started to cook there. An Irish man and a Belgian woman were still sleeping in their tentipi that they had brought.

More people left the farm and now it was only me , the woman from Swabia and a man from Götaland at the farm. We started to build a new chicken house from the spruces I had prepared and dragged from the road down at the wet meadow. The new chicken house was a little bit bigger than the old one and was situated farther away from the gardens.

We still got some eggs but less and less for every day. It was time for final harvest we harvested almost everything and put four fifths into the storage clamps, we stored the rest inside. We might have harvested about 200 kg of crops but it was just estimation since we did not have any scales.
The man from Götaland returned home and now we were only two people at the farm. I had to go to the south to work for a week. I went to Stockholm with the bicycle and returned two weeks later. With me I brought a girl from Belgium. It was sunny and warm when I returned but the woman from Swabia that had stayed at the farm said that it had been some snow and temperatures down to minus nine.

onsdag 16 december 2015

Building

The girl from England had arrived and she helped we with a lot of different tasks. We got more fish than we could use since we only were two people at the farm so we put the cages on land, and fished with rod instead. We were out fishing many evenings and one evening I got a big trout in the Perch lake, that was the first trout I had seen in that lake. We barbecued the trout over fire but, it did not taste as good as the trouts up in the mountain lakes, it tasted a bit muddy. We tried to make sashimi with the raw pike and perch, it tasted very good with soy and ginger.

We went to the neighbor village to begin demolishing an old barn it was the same barn that I last year had taken the roof metal from, but now I was interested in the wooden planks for the storage house. We used the planks for the storage house´s roof. After that we had ailed the planks we put some tarpaper on top, now the roof was water resistance. The storage house still needed walls but that had to wait for later, instead we started to dig the foundation for a log hut (timmerkåta).

My friend who owned the goats came to collect his animals that I had taken care of. The goats had been on the farm for three weeks now. It was a little bit sad, we were going to miss the goat milk. Sometime in the future I would to have goats myself, it seemed to be the perfect animal for this farm.

A young boy from Germany arrived. He was very fascinated about the farm and how we did things. Since I had two helpers I decided it was time to collect reed for the storage clamps. This year I wanted to build at least three therefore we needed a lot. We went to the Pike lake and went with canoe to the other side since the reed were taller there. I cut the reed with my scythe and the other collected it and put it in bundles. We put the bundles in the canoe and I transported the bundles back to the shore. The canoe was filled with reed so I had to stand up in the back and paddling. We carried the reed back to the farm, after several turns we had a big pile that we stored in the saw house.

There were some old trash piles at the farm that we started to remove, it was layer after layer with shattered glass, old shoes, rusty metal cans, plastic and a lot of other things. We filled a big trailer two times and went to the recycling station.

After three weeks the girl from England returned home. Now it was me and the German boy left at the farm. He was very interested to learn about many things and I tried to teach him about wild edible plants and some bushcraft. A women from Israel visited and baked us some good bread over the fire.

The foundation of the log hut was ready so we started to build it. I had already prepares the logs and it did not take long to get the logs up since it was only four layers of logs. The roof was more difficult but eventually we managed to get it right. I covered also this roof with tarpaper. When the floor was ready we moved into the hut that had a nice fireplace in the middle. It was a bit smoky and we tried several solutions and it got less smoky.

tisdag 15 december 2015

Goatmilking and Haymaking

My brother and a friend of him visited me, the extra hands would be useful during haymaking. But before that I needed to go to Kittilä (Northern Finland) to get a canoe. I needed two since we were fishing in two lakes now, it was a bit difficult to swim out with the fish cage in Perch lake. My brother stayed at the farm and took care of the animals and helped me with covering the rest of the gardens. I had to be away for three days. I got a request from a friend when I was in Finland, he wanted me to take care of his goats during two weeks I accepted. When I returned to the farm the goats were already there, my friend had set up an electric fence that covering a large area around the shelter. We could milk one of the goats and got about 7 deciliter of milk each day. It was a bit difficult to milk the goat since she could not stand still and also because she attracted a swarm of mosquitos.


Now it was time for haymaking, the upper meadows had already been cut and the grass had been used as coverage for the gardens so now I wanted to to cut the grass at the lower meadows. We used the drying racks from last year and even built some new ones. There was a nice feeling to cut the grass at the lower meadows since they were so plain after all the work with taking away grass bumps an bushes. I cut grass with the scythe and my brother and his friend raked it and hanged it up on the drying racks. It was a rainy summer so this year we could not dry any hay at the ground.



Most crops in the gardens were still small, but we could now start to harvest winter kale and salads. The crops did not grow much in this rainy weather.

The old road were still covered with spruce branches from all the trees I had taken down in February. We cleared the road and burned the branches. The wet meadows looked so much better without all the shading spruces. Still it was more spruces that needed to be taken down and a lot of birches but not for this year.

Usually cloudberries and bilberries is ripe this time a year, but they were still not ready to pick, and it did not seem that it would be a good year for berries.

My brother and his friend returned home, but the next day a girl from England arrived.

söndag 13 december 2015

Around Midsummer

I made another fish cage so now I had two. One was situated in the Pike lake and the other one I put into the closest lake from the farm where we had fished last year. Since that lake had so many perches we called it the Perch lake. I only had one canoe and it was at the Pike lake so I had to swim out with the cage. I could not get so far out so I did not get as many perches as last year but still more than enough.

Some days before midsummer a women from Meänmaa arrived to the farm. She wanted to learn about self-sufficiency and especially fishing. We fished, collected a lot of wild food and worked a lot in the gardens. I cut grass with the scythe and she collected it and covered the gardens. We needed a lot of grass for the gardens my plan was to cover around the crops with 10 cm of grass twice a year. The insects had awaken and made the work painful. 


Midsummer we ate a tasty dinner with, smoked some trouts that we had caught up in the mountains, perch skin chips with curry, roots of willowherb, pesto of nettles, eggs and a fresh wild leaves salad to that we drank fermented crawberry juice. Later in the evening we went down to the lake to see if there would be a party like last year and yes there was the party.


A couple of days after midsummer two danish girls arrived. The work with the gardens was far from done so I was happy to get some extra hands. The sun was up almost all night so we could work until late in the evenings. 


So much time had been used to work in the gardens so I had not had time to continue building. The storage house were still standing without roof, walls and floor. But soon after the haymaking I was going to continue.


The woman from Meänmaa stayed three weeks before she continued her travels to the south. The danish girls stayed for two weeks. Now I was again alone at the farm but I knew more people were coming to help me with the haymaking.

lördag 12 december 2015

Spring and early summer

The wood barn filled with eight cubicmeters of wood.


The farm has a hillside that slopes towards the south where the snow disappears first. I had already made some strawberries fields there, but I wanted to use the slope more. In the future I wanted to plant some fruit trees and berry bushes there, but for now I started with a small terrace garden with three terraces. I build it with stones and branches, the soil had heated up enough for digging, only some parts were still frozen. At the top terrace I planted artichoke, the lower terraces I was going to plant herbs and salad, but later when the soil got warmer.


It was now May and more and more snow melted away for every day. It rained a lot this month almost every day. Before the snow had melted away I transported the canoe to another lake three kilometers away. I wanted to try to fish there since I heard that there where pikes (Esox luciuc) in that lake. I called it the Pike lake, but I had to wait before going out with the canoe there were still ice on the lake.

The logs for the storage house I was planning to build was ready for use. I had already made the foundation last year. It was a bit tricky to get up the three top beams since they were five meters long, but I succeeded by building a hoist with three thick poles. The beams of the storage house were at place and I was going to continue with the rest later on, for now I covered the construction with a tarp.

The rain continued and I was down at the wet meadow taking away big grass bumps, small trees and bushes. Last year we had taken some hay from here, this year I wanted to take more and it would be a lot easier to use the scythe without all the bumps. I used a hoe to get rid of the bumps, it was a boring heavy work and the constant rain did not make it better.

There were no ice on the lakes anymore so I went out with the canoe and put down the cage, next day I had gotten two pikes and I got pikes almost every day. I ate some off them but most pikes I dried for my dog, she really liked them.

It was time to prepare the gardens. I turned the soil with the hoe and sowed swedes, turnips, carrots, parsnips, red beats, salad, parsley and I also put the potatoes in the soil. The potatoes had been inside for three weeks to start germinating. In the house I had already sown leeks, pumpkins, zucchinis, winter squash, winter kale, cabbage and some herbs, but it was to early to plant them outside.

The rain did not seem to stop and now it was already June. The potatoes had already started to grow and the swedes and turnips had also started to come up. I did not believe it were going to be any more freezing nights so I planted out the leeks, pumpkins, zucchinis, winter squash, winter kale, cabbage and the herbs. A week later the temperature unfortunately dropped below zero for some nights, the potatoes took heavy damage a lot of black leaves but they survived. All the pumpkins and winter squash died, only two zucchinis survived. The swedes and turnips survived as well as the carrots and parsnip that had started to grow.

Melting snow

Still it were a thick layer of snow but the days were getting warmer. The strong sun melted the snow during the days and in night it froze again and created a nice crust on top of the snow. This winter had not given us many days of strong walk able crust but still good for skiing. 



I dragged up all of the debarked logs from the old road besides the wet meadows up to the house. I did not really have a plan for them, but I guessed that most would come to use since I had planned many building projects for this year.

I started to run out of hay so I had to give the rabbits branches from spruces and aspen. They seemed to enjoy the branches and I realized that I probably had given them to much hay, next year I was going to mix the hay with many branches from the beginning of the winter.


The women from the Black forest wanted to go to the south, she was tired of winter and wanted to pick fresh greens. Now I was alone at the farm.

I was down the lake ice fishing a lot for me and for my chickens. I had not seen anyone else down the lake the whole winter except for Easter then it was quit many people down the lake out fishing with snow scooters. I was apparently the only one using skis.

I started to build a wood barn of some of the logs that I had dragged up. The construction of the woodshed was very simple. I put the logs overlapping each other with some cutting in the corners so that they would sink down a bit, but still leave a lot of space in between so that wind could blow through and dry the wood. I found old stone plates at he farm that I used as roof for the barn. I imagined that this wood barn could store about eight cubic meters of wood Its not enough for at winter so I would need to build another one later on.

I cut and chopped all of the wood that I had prepared in December. I could just get all the wood in the new woodshed.

I went with bicycle into town to buy some provisions and met there a man from Helsinki (Finland), who was on his way by bicycle to Trondheim (Norway).I invited him to the farm and he accepted gladly since the weather was bad for bicycling it was raining a mixture of snow and rain. He stayed for a couple of days and helped me with bringing up wood that I had chopped down at the wet meadow, we stored it in one of the old woodsheds since the new one was full.

It were still a lot of snow around but you could see spots of the ground here and there. I even found some small nettles that tasted really good. In town it was more green plants especially close to the warm walls of the big houses. Every time I went into town I picked a bag with greens for the rabbits.

torsdag 10 december 2015

Winter

It was already December but still no snow on the ground. I started to take down birches that I put in a big pile. Later on in early spring I was going to cut and chop them into firewood. It was quite many birches and the work took some days, during the work it started to snow, and this time the snow would last the whole winter.


The Lake was now frozen and the ice were enough thick to walk on.


I tried some ice fishing but did not get anything, it was to early. Luckily we had preserved a lot of perch fillets with salt. We had alternated fish and coarse salt in buckets. When we wanted to use the fish we had to desalinate by putting it in freshwater a couple of hours two or preferably three times. Salinity must be ten percent or higher, otherwise the fish come in fermentation. In Sweden its a traditional preserving technique to let the fish come in fermentation with diligence. Some day I want to try that.


I started to prepare some logs that was going to be used for a log hut and a storage house. I used my broad axe to prepare the logs it was a time consuming work.

More and more snow fell. Now it was time to bring out the skis, we had nice wooden skis at the farm. We were often out on ski tours. 

The water in the spring did ot freeze but we had to shovel a path to the spring, since it was difficult to walk through the thick layer of snow when carrying buckets of water. One day when I was going to fetch water, the snow around the spring were all dirty, someone had taken a bath in the spring and thrown arund a lot of mud on the white snow. I find a footprint and could say that it was the wolverine (Gulo gulo) that had made such a big mess. I could not get water now but the next day the mud had sunk to the bottom of the spring and the water were once again clean and fresh.


In the middle of January I tried to ice fish again and now the perches had awaken and I got plenty. I also went by skis up to the trout lake an tried to ice fish for trout, but got nothing, may be it was too early for the trouts.


In February I started to take down spruces that were growing along the old road. The spruces shaded and acidified the wet meadows where the road passed. I think I took down over 50 spruces of different sizes. I debarked most of them, but some were only good enough for firewood.

onsdag 9 december 2015

Winter is coming

In northern Sweden there are tales from the past of a creature known as Vittra. Usually she could be found roaming around at the bogs at night and in daytime she could hide in a cave or under a big tree. Sometimes she could help those in need. There are stories about her blue cattle grazing at night in distant marshlands, sometimes if a poor family did not get enough milk from their cows it could happen that she let her cattle go along with the poor family's for a while so that they could milk from her cows that always gave plenty of milk. But in most cases it was best to keep away from her as she was not so keen on humans. There are rumors that she has been on the farm and may be still is here. Anyway the rumor about this creature inspired the woman that now live at the farm to make a sculpture picturing Vittra.


I found that some hunters had thrown away some moose skins and moose heads. I took one skin to tan and one head to eat. I dragged the skin since it was so heavy to the closest river and laid it in the stream. It was going to be there for some days until the hair started to fall off. Then I dragged it back to the farm and scraped it on a scraping beam with scraping knife. It was heavy work for the arms. The days were still sunny and quite warm so I could dry it in the sun. Later on when I had time I was going to tan it.


The tanner that visited us earlier in summer returned. He wanted to help me build a shelter out of logs. I wanted this to become the new outside kitchen sine the other one was really only provisional. We had some logs that had been taken down in early spring but we needed more logs so we took down more trees and debarked them. Building with logs is slow work, and we managed to build a layer in a day. 


One evening two young girls arrived, they had hitchhiked here. They were from Iceland and Denmark they had come here to get some experience and work for food and shelter. Thanks to them, me and the tanner could focus on building sine they took care of cooking, cleaning, feeding animals and debarking logs. They also helped out to slaughter roosters and some hens. We needed to reduce the number of animals because we had too many in relation to how much feed we had. They were lucky the second evening we saw a beautiful northern light it was first time for them.

The tanner had to return after two weeks and I finished the shelter by my self. I used some of the metal plates as roof. It was to cold now to cook outside so we had to wait with the opening of the shelter until next year


An old man who owned a lot of forest next to my lad said that we could take wind fallen trees for wood and construction so we went out in the forest and pulled many logs back home, it was heavy work to pull the logs. We also find a big aspen tree that we shopped up to firewood and brough back to the farm. We got help from a neighbor with a quad to transport some of the bigger trees.

Some snow fell and the girls made a snowman, but the snow melted. It was now November, it was warmer than usually. Usually snow comes already in late October. But it was getting darker, we did not have many hours of daylight.

In the end of November the girls had been one month at the farm and decided to return back home. Now we were two people at the farm me and the woman from Schweben. We burned the sprucebranches from the trees that we had taken down to build the shelter.



tisdag 8 december 2015

Late harvest

At this point I had prepared the perches in many different ways, now I was experimenting with fish-bread. First I gutted and skinned the perches, then I filleted and put a big chunk of fillets in a bucket. I mushed the fillets with a wooden musher and mixed them with flower, salt and oil. I flattened the doe and fried them in a frying pan over an open fire (during summer we had cooked food mostly outside).

The woman from the Black forest arrived, I showed her around and she liked the place and wanted to stay. We had food in abundant, every day we picked bilberries (Vaccinium myrtillus) that had been ripe for some weeks now. More mushroom started to pop up and we collected many different species Boletales (Bolete), milk vaps (Lactarius), gypsy mushrooms (Cortinarius caperatus), slimy spike-caps (Gomphidius glutinosus)as well as some more.


Finally we built the outside kitchen, it was just only a provisional but enough for now. .We used some of the metal plates we had gotten from the Scottish man to build the simple roof.


 We went up in the mountains to try out another one of the trout lakes. The lake was closer to the farm than the other one and was located between two mountains. I tried to fish with a lure and got almost instantly a trout. At the slope of one of the mountains we found a lot of bilberries and we picked about 20 kg. We also had brought a net but we did not have a boat up here so I had to swim out with the net. The next day I returned to the lake and emptied the net, I got ten trouts and a big burbot (lota lota). 


We found a road killed fox that I skinned. I tanned the skin with alum and was planning to make a hat out of since the color of the fur suited my beard. We boiled the meat as food for the chickens, they really liked it. The boiled head looked a bit scary.



I wanted to try the net in the lake where we had been last spring so we went there with bike and walked the last five kilometer like last time. I swam out with the net when we arrived in the afternoon. We spent the night in the chalet. I emptied the net in the morning but there was nothing except a lot of seaweed. It took a long time to clean the net.


The lingonberries (Vaccinium vits-idaea )and the rowan berries (Sorbus aucuparia) where now ripe, we spent a couple of days picking them and boiled them for jam. We had now many jars of jam from cloudberries, bilberries, rowan berries and lingonberrieas. We had some blackcurrants (Ribes nigrum) bushes at the farm but the chickens had eaten most of them. We also collected some crowberries (Empetrum nigrum) that we turned into juice. 


It had been some frost nights and we decided it was time for final harvest. We harvested about 100 kg of potatoes and a lot of carrots, beets, parsnips, swedes and turnips. Some of the swedes and turnips we dries and put in jars. The root cellar had to be repaired before it could be used so the only way to store the harvest was to build storage clamps. I had never done this before and had never heard anyone doing it in Lapland. I was worried that the crops would not make it but we had no choice than to try. First we dug a pit, about 30 centimeter deep with a ditch so that water could flow out. We covered it with spruce branches and dried reed that we had collected down the lake earlier in summer. On it we put a pile of 50 kg of potatoes and covered it with more reed and spruce branches. Finally we covered everything with a thick layer of soil.

Early harvest

Now I could begin harvesting for the daily meals, especially the turnips were big now. From the wild I was now mainly collecting leaves from nettles (Urtica dioica) and cow parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris) since there were so much cultivated food in the gardens.

The man who had gone away for a while, returned with a bunch of people from. Urkult (a music festival) they had been at. To feed all of this people we had to empty the fish cages. We were five people in the boat (borrowed from a neighbor) when we emptied the cage that was filled with perches. The hull was now full of fish. I took out the knife to begin to clean the fish. One man did not want to be a part of the fish slaughtering so he jumped into the water and swam back to the beach. After a couple of days the festival people returned to whatever it was they came from.

Now we were two people at the farm. I climbed up the roof to check out the chimney. It was almost falling apart so we repaired it with several layers of concrete.

A man from another farm 70 km away from us arrived by bicycle he was curious about us and wanted to stay for two weeks. He was a tanner and an experienced butcher, since we had never slaughtered a rabbit before we asked if he could show us how to do it. He slaughtered and skinned it in a very professional way. I started tanning the skin with alum.

Some mushrooms had started to pop up in the forest, mostly russulas (Russula). We dried some of them and stored in jars.

We visited a Scottish man that was living in the neighbor town. He had also moved here in April, he offered us sheet metal from a barn that he wanted to tear down if we took down the roof plates. I agreed and was going to come back later to do the job. The sheet metal could be useful for roofing for example an outdoor kitchen. We met a women from the Black forest (Swabia) there that had been at the Scottish mans place a week or so. She was working there for food and shelter. She treated us with some salad from wild plants.

The tanner returned home and my comrade decided to leave the farm. Now it was only me and my dog left.

I returned to the Scottish man to perform the work to take down the roof plates. It was quite a difficult thing to do since the barn was big with a steep roof. The metal was slippery so I had to tie a rope around myself and attached the other end of the rope to a tree at the other side. Eventually the work was done I was going to get half of the plates that was about 20 plates. The woman from the Black forest (Swabia) was still around and we went for a plant walk since both of us were interested about wild plants. I invited here to the farm and she was interested to see the place and said that she would visit me soon.

Haymaking

The warm weather prevailed. In some places where the cloudberries had become pollinated they were maturing quickly. I wanted to be done with the haymaking before picking berries . We were going to cut hay with a scythe first at the higher-lying meadows and then the lower-laying wet meadows.

One of us had gone to the south for a while so we were only two people for this task. I was the one who knew how to handle and sharpen a scythe. I did not use a traditional Nordic scythe instead I used an Austrian scythe. I had learned to use the Austrian scythe when I was living at a chalet in Värmland. The Austrian scythe is made of a softer steel and therefore you can cold-hammer the edge into a small edge that you then sharpen with a sharpening stone. I think its easier to get a really sharp edge with this method. The other man was in charge of raking the cut grass. The days were hot and we had to go to the lake for a bath several times a day. We had built some drying racks but most of the grass we left drying on the ground since the weather was so sunny and warm. We turned the piles of grass three times and after that it was dry and could be carried into the old saw house. The other man was bored of raking he said that he would rather buy hay than raking any more. I continued the work. A couple of days later the other man decided to leave the farm.

It was incredible hot now, apparently it was the warmest and driest summer in a long time. One morning, when I came out of the house I had a feeling that something was strange. Later on the day when I was down the lake refreshing my self I met one man from the midsummer party, he was out rowing. He told me about a major forest fire in Västmanland and that the smoke had reached all the way here. Västmanland is quite far away from Lapland so the smoke was very weak and difficult to notice, but it was the smoke that gave me the strange feeling.

The well there we were fetching dishwater had dried out, I tried to dig deeper into the well but it was difficult since it were so many stones in the mud, I even found moose bones. The drinking spring showed no sign of drying out. The stream close to the house had dried out a long time ago.

The cloudberries were now matured, and I was finished with the hay. I set out on the on the marshes to pick berries. I picked for many days and got finally around 40 kg. I mashed the berries and stored them in a pit which was a meter deep. I put down a thermometer and saw that there were seven degrees. That should be just enough storage temperature I thought. 

måndag 7 december 2015

Midsummer

The warm weather changed and now it was quite cold, in the night the temperature fell dangerous low. The crops that had got such a good start did almost not grow at all for nearly two weeks. I was worried for the potatoes, they were enough big now to take serious harm if temperature would drop below zero.

The mosquitos disappeared since they could not stand the cold but the biting midges were still around and made life difficult especially the weeding work. The two new people (two brothers) at the farm found the situation almost unbearable and hided inside the house instead of helping out with the tasks that needed to be done.

It was time to do something about the house, we decided that the best thing to do was to fill the basement with gravel so that the walls of the basement that were still standing would not fall inwards and raise the house. We needed at least 70 cubic-meters of gravel and it was no way we could get that amount by ourselves so we had to order it. A big truck arrived five times and unloaded five big piles of gravel close to the house. The heavy truck had some difficulties to drive up our steep little dirt road. We started to shovel and rake down the gravel into the basement, it was heavy work and it took a long time. In the beginning we took turns but in the end I was the only one working. This work went on for the whole summer and was completed in late autumn.

The village there the farm is situated is nearly abandoned but in summer time some people come here since they have family estates here. We heard that some of them had a gathering down at the lake midsummer eve so we joined the party. They were surprised to see that someone actually wanted to live here and they did not think we would make it through the winter, but I knew we would (at least I knew I would). They said that its tradition for them to drive snow scooters over the lake, I did not know that was doable. Later in the evening they actually did that, of course sometimes the scooter sank to the bottom but it was attached with a line with a floating marker so they could find the scooter when they went out with a raft and pulled it up. The trick was apparently to keep an even speed, if you went to slow or to fast the scooter would sink. Two days after the party the youngest of the brothers decided to leave the farm.

That evening the temperature dropped down to two degrees. The potatoes would survive but it was not good for the cloudberries (Rubus chamaemorus) they were in bloom now and needed the insects pollinators but most of the pollinators needed more warmth to be active. A week after midsummer the warmth returned, the crops had survived and started to grow again.

Two of the rabbit females gave birth, the first one gave birth to five rabbit kids, but she did not give them milk and bite of their legs and arms. That rabbit had never given birth before and this was apparently not a uncommon thing to happen. The second mother gave birth to two small healthy rabbits one was brown and the other one was white.

End of spring

My comrades returned to the farm with seven rabbits, ten hens, ten roosters and seven chickens. It was more than we had agreed on so I had to rapidly build more cages for the rabbits and another chicken house. Soon we got our first egg, only two of hens were laying eggs the others were still too young.


The days were warm and we were raking old grass from the meadows, the old grass dried up quickly and we stored some of it to use later on as bedding for the animals, we used the rest of the dry grass to cover the soil around the small sprouts in the gardens.

An old man (90 years old) and his daughter visited the farm. They had lived here 60 years ago, the old man had built the house together with his father. They were very curious about us and were glad that someone wanted to live here. The old man showed us where the cold spring was. The spring was located about 400 meter from the house. The water tastes really good, until this point we had gotten our water from melting snow, a small stream outside the house and from an old well close to the foundation of a barn.

We started to collect wild plants for eating and drying. In every meal we included greens and roots, mainly from cow parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris), dandelion (Taraxacum vulgare coll.), willow herb (Epilobium angustifolium), alpin bistort (Bistorta viviparia), thistles (Cirsium spec) and clovers (Trifolium spec). For tea we collected leaves from raspberries (Rubus idaeus), birch (Betula pubescens) and meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria).

We put a net in the lake and checked it for several days but we only got one fish, a very big perch. We found this odd since we got so many fishes when we were ice fishing, we figured that most perch were to small to get caught in the net. That can be the case when few people are fishing in a lake and therefor the lake gets overcrowded with thousands of small fishes. We bought a fish cage from a man that were manufacturing them in the neighbor town. The first day that we checked the cage we got over 200 small perches, and after that we got usually around 50 a day. We ate a lot of perches and boiled the rest for chicken food. 


We had heard rumors of lakes up in the mountains crowded with trouts (Salmo trutta), so one day we decided to check it out. We went to a lake about 15 km away from the farm, there was also supposed to be an old chalet that once had belonged to the village. We went the first distance with bicycle and the last 5 km we had to hike. We reached the lake and found the chalet at the northern shore. The water was very clear with beautiful sandy beaches. The house was small and cozy with a fireplace and two small beds. We tried to fish and got instantly some trouts, but it was difficult to reach out with the line since the lake was shallow. After fishing we climbed up the close-by mountain that was the highest in the area it was 668 meters above sea level. The view was not so good though since it was a lot of small birches blocking the view. We also found a hut at the top, that was an old fire-watch cottage.

Now all snow was gone and the spring had treated us with very good weather that unfortunately lead to an explosion of insects. The mosquitos (Culicidae ) and black flys (Simuliidae) made this paradise a bit uncomfortable. But the real pain was the biting midges (Ceratopogonidae) they were so small that it was very hard to protect yourself from them.

Once again one of us choose to leave the farm, this time a young girl. The same day we dropped her off at the bus-station we picked up two new eager re-settlers. Now we were again four people at the farm.

söndag 6 december 2015

Alone for a month

We had now made the decision to bring some animals to the farm. My comrades went to the south to get some animals and I stayed at the farm together with my dog.

I was alone for nearly one month (May). There was a lot of work to do, I chopped more firewood, built a compost, and prepared the gardens, fished, finished the chicken house and built rabbit cages.

Now and then I needed to get some supplies from the store in the nearby town (35 km away). I went by bicycle with my dog. Once on the way back from town I cycled up a step part of the dirt road and was quit tired, I looked up and saw something standing in the middle of the road about 100 meters away. I first thought it was a moose (Alces alces) and looked down again and continued to push the bicycle up the step road, but then I looked up again and saw that this was no moose, it was a robust creature it was a bear (Ursus artctos). I stopped and my dog also stopped , and then all three of us were just standing there looking at each other. My dog realized that this was no animal to chase but she started to walk towards the bear so I said to her STOP, and again all three of us were just standing there. Eventually I realized that I could not move forward so I turned around and cycled some kilometers in wrong direction but then I thought it was silly I did not want to go back to town and the bear was probably gone now so I went back and when I returned to the spot where the bear had been it was gone so I continued. When I passed that spot I heard something in the bushes close to the road and the bear had been hiding there and now it run quickly into the forest. From the back the bear looked like a big fury ball bouncing away into the forest.

It was now late May the gardens were prepared with hoe. I had sown carrots (Daucus carota sativus) , parsnips (Pastinaca sativa ), red beets (Beta vulgaris), broadbeans (Vicia faba) , peas (Pisum sativum), swedes (Brassica napus), turnips (Brassica rapa ssp. rapa), jerusalem artichokes (Helianthus tuberosus) and reddish (Raphanus sativus var. sativus ). The potatoes (Solanum tuberosum) would be put into the soil later since my experience of Lapland says that frost nights is very like before midsummer and the potatoes are very sensitive when they have started to sprout. The size of the garden was about 500 square meters.

Almost all snow had melted away and there was no ice down at the lake anymore.

Spruces turned into firewood and building materials

The land around the farm had not been used for a long time, and therefor a lot of trees and bushes were growing where old meadows and fields once were. Only a small part of the land where still open land. Some spruces (Picea abies) where quite big since the land had not been used for at least 60 years.

We decided to take down some of the spruces in a first attempt to open up the lands, we started with some spruces around the house and the old root cellar. (The root cellar had no roof and the stones had to be fixed before it could be used, but that was a project for later.) We also took down some spruces around some big goat willows (Salix caprea) to give them more spaces. The Goat willows would be important later on if we would acquire some beehives since that tree bloom very early and are a very important source of nectar for the bees in spring.

Most of the fallen trees where chopped into firewood. The winter in Lapland is long so we knew that it would require a lot of firewood. Some of the spruces were debarked and the thought was to use them as building material for some kind of outside kitchen.

Now there was several piles of chopped firewood laying around the farm, left outside to dry in the sun. Still there was snow everywhere but the sun was strong during the days and snow where melting rapidly.

We wanted to get some chickens for the farm, so therefor we needed a chicken house. The old garage seemed like a good place to have some animals in, but the roof were leaking so we needed to fix that first. We removed the rotten roof and made a new roof of debarked spruce poles from the forest and some metal plates that we found laying around.

The arrival


Welcome to Västikulla, a farm situated in Southern Lapland. This farm had been abandoned for many years, until two years ago when a small group of re-settlers found their way to this beautiful place.

In the beginning we where four people and one dog, we arrived in April 2014. There was a lot of snow that made it difficult to reach the house. We had brought a canoe that we used as a sledge to transport our belongings to the house.

The buildings that were still standing where in a bad state. There was an old saw house, a leaking garage, a simple wood shelter, an outhouse and the main house. All the buildings where more or less leaning and many of them with leaking roofs. The main house was in a shabby state but at least the roof was not leaking and the chimney seemed intact except for the top part that almost had fallen apart. In the basement one wall had fallen inwards and the still standing walls where leaning and had a lot of cracks, we realized that this house where not going to stand for long if left alone.



The first thing we did was to try to start the fire in the stove in the kitchen, after some smoky failures we finally mange to get a fire going. Since we only could get the fire going in the kitchen we decided to sleep there on the floor. We had brought some reindeer skins that we spread out to sleep on.

We had made it we had reach the farm. We asked our self if this would be our new home? and where we really ready for this challenge?

The first week we where occupied with cleaning the house and explore the land with skis and snowshoes. We saw a lot of reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) and tracks of a lot of other animals. There was a lake quit close to the farm may be around 500 meter there we tried to fish. We went out on the ice and drilled a couple of holes and quit soon after we had put the first hook in the water we got a fish, a perch (Perca fluviatilis) soon we had over 20 perches.

Only a week had passed when one of us, a man from Lithuania decided to leave the farm, he had not expected that it would still be so much snow and cold nights. Now we where three people left at the farm