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.