A House Called Nut - Life in the backwoods of Finland

Critters

Thanks so much for the encouraging emails in response to my fear of entering water. You guys are the best. I think writing about it actually made a world of difference. Now whenever I feel some fretting coming on, I just get in (screaming helps). Janne and I have been swimming every single day and I’m starting to wish that summer would last for ever.

Speaking of swimming, look at the tiny things that floated by the other day.



We guess these babes must be about a week old. They’re so cute. So yellow!

Then there was a rustle in the tree behind us.



Even tree creatures enjoy the lake view.

Bath time in the sauna

Since this is Finland after all, Janne and I go to the sauna once or twice per week, where we get unbearably hot, and then cool off by plunging into the lake (we do this in the winter too, but that’s another post for another day). It’s an old, wonky, wooden sauna with doors and windows that don’t quite match their frames, and sap leaking from the wooden interior (sticky, but fragrant). If only I could glimpse all the many sweet memories I’m sure have been created here over the decades.


Sauna instructions. We’ve also been informed that singing is part of the tradition in this particular sauna.

Ours is an old-fashioned sauna, heated by a wood stove alongside which is a small cistern where the bath water heats up as the fire burns. Following tradition, we lug water directly from the lake and into the cistern, setting aside one bucket of cold lake water for throwing on the hot stones, and another for mixing with the hot bath water.

When sauna time is over, we partially fill two-gallon washing tubs with the hot water from the cistern and then top them up with cold water until they’re just right. Scooping water from the buckets with a ladle, we wash ourselves right there in the warmed sauna.


Enough water for a shower

Two gallons is all the water it takes to bathe oneself with a bucket and ladle, which is less than most showerheads use per minute. And with the dwindling summer groundwater reserves, we very much appreciate having a shower alternative—and such an economical one too. Not to mention that the water is heated with energy we would have used anyway to warm the sauna. Oh so practical! What I especially like is that going to the sauna is an activity in itself, with the added benefit that you come out squeaky clean. It might seem tedious and a bit quirky to bathe in lake water scooped from a bucket, but with a view like this, I’m not complaining.


View from the sauna

Salad and fear

 
Delicious, hot, sunny weather has arrived and we are savoring it. When you live next to a lake, that means trying to accomplish all life’s activities by the shore—working, eating, sleeping, not to mention spying on fish and birds, waiting for lily pads to bloom, and, of course, daily swims. For me, it’s also meant facing a lifelong fear: getting into water, any water. Maybe I can blame this on the teenager who pushed me in the deep end of the pool as a not-yet-swimming four-year-old, I don’t know. But every time I’m faced with a body of water and the prospect of entering it, a little voice in my head is aroused and fear takes over. The curious thing is, I love water and I love being in it. It’s just that initial act of getting in that makes necessary all those internal pep talks and counts to three. Thank goodness for peer pressure and unbearably hot days, or shower water is the only H20 I’d know.

Yes, this is a totally irrational fear, but it’s also one that I’ve nurtured for many years—who could have anticipated that I’d spend my every day next to a great, big puddle in Finland? The happy news is that I’ve gone swimming for the past six days in a row, but I’d like to keep this up without all the silly fretting. How do I do it? How have you overcome your fears? I’m starting to think I’m not very good at challenging mine. Even though progress has been made, my romantic daydream of a morning dip to start each day is such a long way off.
 
On a completely different note, the chive flowers finally bloomed (hooray!), and the new potato-chive flower salad was made and devoured.



Isn't it pretty? If you’d like to make this yourself, mix about ½ cup of crème fraiche with the juice from half a lemon, add a  drop of olive oil and a touch of salt and freshly ground black pepper, and that’s your dressing. Mix this into the boiled, cooled, and cubed potatoes (I used several handfuls) and top with chopped fresh chive and chive flowers. Break up and sprinkle the flower heads over the salad before you dig in.

Have a happy weekend! I plan to spend mine in the water.

Bird life

A pair of Canada geese feed off the water plants by our shore.

For better or for worse, we live with birds. We expected this little corner of the woods to come alive with human life over the Midsummer weekend, but instead there were just those same, familiar bird songs…and honks, and screeches.

Some birds are better neighbors than others. Blue tits nest in the astounding number of handmade birdhouses that someone lovingly placed in our trees many years ago.

Their cheep-cheep-cheep is the sweetest chorus when Janne and I work in the garden. Then there are woodpeckers, arctic jays, white wagtails, magpies, and that arctic loon couple that always remember to yodel “good night.” An owl nests somewhere on the opposite shore, every now and then a pheasant will mosey through, and I’m pretty sure there’s a resident hawk too.

Can you guess who the problem neighbors are? That’s right, the seagulls. Hordes of them arrived in April, endless varieties with all manner of screams, they shouted at each other or at us or at something all night and day, vandalized the pier, and made me wonder if living on a lake was such a great idea after all. Not that moving would do any good. During my last visit to Helsinki, a whale of a seagull dropped a good luck wish on my head just as I was being introduced to a large group of people. I think I might have made an impression. Thankfully, most of the gulls have now moved on and I no longer have to scrub the pier every morning, raving like a madwoman, and apparently scaring no one (but humans?) away.

Recently, we’ve even noticed some common terns mixed into the bunch. So that’s why all those little fish are hiding under the pier.

This is the kind of entertainment that is earned through a quiet evening of sunbathing on the pier. Who needs a tv?

Midsummer

Midnight on the summer solstice

In this country of weather extremes, where we’re engulfed in darkness for so much of the year, it’s no wonder there’s a celebration of light. Midsummer is historically linked to the summer solstice, which marks the beginning of summer—long days, sunshine, warmth. But even though the time around the summer solstice is the lightest of the year, it’s not the warmest—something which we were all reminded of this past weekend. It was cold. It rained. If it weren’t for all the leaves on the trees, we might as well have called it November. Inside, we wore woolly socks and huddled around the woodstove.



This is where a sauna tradition can really come in handy, because there are few weather conditions that a hot sauna and a cold lake can’t amend. Rubber boots delivered us out of the house and down the muddy slope to the sauna. A touch of steam, and the wind, the rain, the northern lake water were all a relief.

Now, of course, it’s sunny and hot and…could summer finally have arrived? Let’s say it has. This week we’ll get down to business and make a vasta. And with some luck, those chive flowers will bloom and finally meet their potato salad destiny.

How are you celebrating summer?

Midsummer preparations

Baking pies


Beating rugs






Flowers for every room


A fresh bar of my sister’s sumptuous, handmade soap

Tomorrow is Midsummer’s Eve and we’re getting ready for houseguests.



If only the rest of these chive flowers would cooperate and bloom. Hasn’t anyone told them they’re destined for tomorrow’s potato salad? The nerve.

Now I must return to cleaning-cooking panic. I’ll be back on Monday. Happy Midsummer to you! Hauskaa juhannusta!

Lazy day

I didn't know summer was so shy. Just one mention of the beautiful weather and it fled. I spent Saturday reading, eating, and working in the warm sun, but by evening we were huddled inside watching a brilliant display of lightning illuminate a rare dark June night. Sunday had long been designated for outdoor labor-- mammoth weeds are threatening to strangle our garden and home, and projects in progress dot every corner of the yard. Then there's all that mowing to tackle, except a lawnmower is another luxury we do without, and all the grass (weeds?) are trimmed with a scythe-hand clipper combination. But on Sunday we woke up to gray skies, a howling wind, pitter-pattering rain, and the greatest inclination to camp out on the sofa (and here I speak for all of us, because Väinö is not a dog who appreciates anything but drinking water).





It turns out rain is good for something other than filling wells. It's good for slowing down, afternoon naps, cups of tea, writing, reading, thinking, crafting, inhaling the scent of lilacs that I'm so glad we clipped from the tree.

It's also good for taking time to learn life lessons from a dog.



Come evening, summer made an appearance just long enough for us to be certain that a dip in the lake was in order.



It wasn't what we had planned, but it was a happy day.

Cycling with a dog

All this gorgeous, sunshiney weather has finally given us the chance to explore the larger area around the cottage. Living in the countryside without a car or public transport means our travel options are limited to bikes and feet. But a person can only walk so far, and Janne and I always feel a bit guilty enjoying long cycle rides while our furry friend sits home alone. Good thing we have a bicycle-riding pooch.

Väinö the dog long ago got his very own Basil Pasja basket, specially designed for carrying animals on bikes. The idea first came to us on the way back from one of our first foraging trips in Helsinki, when the two-hour round-trip walk to the nicest forest was feeling a bit much. Swoosh, a girl whizzed past us with a dachshund in her bicycle basket. One of us wondered aloud if Väinö could do that too and the rest is history.

From our last human-canine bicycle outing:

Who says Pomeranians look like foxes?

Good dogs don't chase cranes, especially mamas with babies.

Walking through a meadow lalala

Small dog discovers old boat in Finnish forest

Backwoods east

Janne’s Karelian roots are in the little village of Öllölä, which lies a mere ten kilometers from the Russian border. At the height of its glory, the village boasted over a thousand inhabitants, many of them young (in the words of Uncle Paavo, “most households had at least ten children”), but like many rural areas of Finland its population has declined in recent decades as young people have felt the lure of the city. Now there are only a handful of houses and an aging community.

But even with only one shop, a flea market, and a summertime dance hall, the village has some attractions beyond its stunning countryside scenery. We rarely make a visit without popping into the local flea market cum cat shelter, a place so quirky, I’m certain words can’t do it justice. As always, I made note of the “Greece” tourist bag that’s been hanging in the same spot for at least the past nine years. The market is stand-on-one-foot, difficult-to-breathe, I-can-hear-you-but-I-can’t-see-you crowded, but the gems it occasionally reveals to dedicated seekers make the momentary physical discomfort worthwhile.  Here are a few shots of their current homegrown art exhibition:


"Presidential couple Tarja and Pena swimming"


"An endless supply of backwoods junk ha ha said Kaapo"

Down the road is the lava, or dance hall, where there’s weekly live music and ballroom dancing in the summer, attracting visitors from surrounding villages. We stopped by to check out the summer schedule and discovered something even more interesting in the bathroom.


Hey, they have a composting toilet too!

Nothing like peeing with your neighbors and friends. In London, I remember a club opening with two-toilet stalls for women who didn’t want their bathroom bonding conversations interrupted. Which makes sense, I think. Who knows? Maybe the idea was imported from Öllölä.

Three things

Last weekend, the Finnish graduation party season took us back east to Janne’s home regions of Savonia and Karelia where cheek pinching and oversized dessert portions abound. At one grandma’s house we were actually served pie and ice cream before the main course, which was then followed by a second dessert. Why did no one bring me here as a child? In between pettings and feedings, we found time to accept one gift at each of the three homes we visited. It was tough, but we managed.

Janne’s parents got the ball rolling by giving us these swell binoculars. I haven’t quite managed to glue them to my face yet, but one of these days…



Our little home in the woods is surrounded by wildlife, some of which we can only glimpse in the distance or whose silhouettes we can just faintly discern. The melodic yodel of our arctic loon neighbors has sent us to sleep for weeks, but even with some serious zoom action on the camera, we weren’t able to really see them until now. They’re beautiful.

Savonian Mummo (grandma) and Ukki’s (grandpa) cheery green, red, and white house is one of my favorite places to be. It’s the hub of family activity, where everyone works hard to defy the stereotype of the stern, silent Finn. Somehow, someone found out that even though we’ve planted this big garden, we don’t have rhubarb. No rhubarb! Unbelievable. I think you can tell where this is heading.

After traveling home with one of Mummo’s many rhubarb plants and surveying the yard to find the spot, we dug a hole, planted it, stood back to admire the plant and dream of pies, and then, a little to the right, we saw this spot of red:



So we had rhubarb already! And apparently we did pick the rhubarb site. How about that. Only days before, you might have caught me envying Monkey Lobster’s amazing rhubarb discovery. Was it a charm, perhaps?

But this next gift from Karelia was my favorite. Here’s a peek at Janne’s uncle Paavo making it himself:



It’s a naalbinding (kinnasneulatekniikka) needle, forged by Paavo out of scrap copper. Janne’s paternal grandma, Martta Mummo, is undoubtedly the most skilled craftsperson I have ever had the privilege to meet, and she has promised me a private naalbinding lesson on our next visit. Here’s the finished needle with a few enthusiastic, amateur stitches by me:



More on naalbinding once I get past the basic stitch. In the meantime, if anyone knows of any good naalbinding resources, I’d be grateful to hear of them.