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.