Opening of the storage clamps

The days are slowly getting lighter but still it feels like a long time until spring. 

We are running out of fermented raspberry leaves next year we need more. We still have plenty of other herbs that we collected, mostly nettles and cow parsley.

The closest dishwater well is almost out of water, so instead of getting water from there we are constantly melting snow on the stove. The freshwater spring is still filled with water as it always have been.

I have been worried about the storage clamps since it has been very cold with unusual thin snow layer, usually the snow layer is at least one meter in January but it has only been about one decimeter. Some of the potatoes and other crops have been stored inside but now they have been eaten so therefore we had to open one of our three clamps. As usually its a bit tricky to open the clamps since its several different layers of soil, spruces branches and reed. It felt good to look at the dark soil, in contrast to all white snow. Eventually we manage to open a small hole, I put my hand into the hole and started to pick out potatoes. They seemed quite good but not as good as last year, some potatoes had got frozen and was soft but most has survived. It was also a bit moist in the clamp, probably because of the frostbitten potatoes. Last year the clamps were dry, it was like open a pharaohs grave. Probably there are some frostbitten potatoes also in the other clamps, I hope they do not endanger the healthy potatoes. In one of the clamps I also have stored carrots, parsnips, swedes and turnips to get seeds. I really hope they will be okay in spring when I open that clamp.

The end of a year and the start of another

December had been unusual warm with not so much snow. I had to be away from the farm during this month and the women from Schwabia stayed at the farm, taking care of the animals. Around midwinter I returned to the farm with three others. It was nice to be back home. We arrived in the evening and brought our stuff up the hill with sledges.

Every day we were out on the close by frozen lake fishing. The ice was a decimeter thick and we used an ice drill to get through. The perches had awaken and we got plenty of fish every day.

The last day of the year we prepared an ice-hole with axes. The plan was to take a dip in there. We returned to the farm to start a big fire there we could warm our self after the dip. It was not so cold around -7 °C and a little bit windy. Later back down at the lake we prepared our self for the ice dip. I jumped into the water first and the others followed. It was freezing to run back to the farm but the fire gave a good warmth. After this we prepared the new years eve meal, it was a nice evening with storytelling in front of the candles. We saw only a few fireworks around 12 o´clock, that had been detonated in the village. Three o´clock in the night the neighbors arrived on snowmobiles. The house was crowded with people and the party lasted for awhile.

The following days we continued the work with preparing logs for the sauna. One of the man that came with me had a chainsaw license and showed me the correct way to take down trees. The days were short so we could not work outside for long, during the long evenings we made a lot of handcraft. A danish girl taught me to spin yarn and make gloves with an old technique called nålbindning in swedish. It is an old technique to make stuff from yarn that people used before knitting and crouching.

The temperature dropped to -20°C to -30°C for several days. The lowest temperature was -32°C . It was difficult to heat up the old house with the small stove , some mornings it was below zero inside. The cold made it more difficult to work and to get water from the spring we had to crack the ice. The spring only freeze when its below -20°C .

One day the chainsaw stopped working, after a while I found out that t was the spark plug that was malfunctioning. I did not have a spare one so I had to order one. Since we did not have the chainsaw to help us we had to use a big handsaw for cutting big logs (timmersvans). I had bought it in a flee market a year ago. The saw was very smoth to use I was surprised how easy it was to saw big trees.

I had to return to the city to work, but two people stayed at the farm to take care of the animals. I wished I could stay but we were far from self-sufficient and we needed money to keep developing this beutiful place. The first day after i was gone one man cutted himself seriously and had to sew the wound.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.