The Finland Files - Week 5
So, this week we spent our entire Tuesday picking blackcurrants. Unfortunately for us, the blackcurrant bushes happened to be riddled with stinging nettles. So before we could even get to the blackcurrents, we had to do some massive weeding. Thankfully, Madie wanted to be macho so whilst he weeded, I was responsible for picking 5 kg's of blackcurrants to make some sweet sweet juice for the café.
That night we headed up to our neighbours, which happen to be our host's sister, brother-in-law and nephew. They put on an incredible spread and the drinks flowed freely. We played my favourite dinner-party game ever, where each person plays a song that is significant to them in some way or another. We were also blessed with Martin's (our host's teenage nephew) beautiful acoustic renditions on guitar. Later on, we walked home incredibly drunk and satisfied.
The following day, we had a bit of a dampener on our spirits, not far from where we are staying there was an accident involving a car and a male deer. What makes it even sadder is that the poor deer happened to be a beautiful black grey buck (the only one we have seen other than white tails). Our host's farm, which is a seventh generation family run farm, has traditionally also housed the hunting abattoir where local hunters bring their kill.
Not to judge, the Finnish hunting regulations are very strict and super protective of the moose and deer that are hunted...but this was a very real life situation that we experienced whilst being here. The buck was honestly beautiful, I've never seen a grey buck before, it look like Harry Potter's protonus and I had to walk away from where they were unloading the deer into the abattoir.
On a lighter note, whilst I was working in the café, Madie and Yaki did some target practice with an air-rifle which Mads was super excited about. We also spent about four hours outside after dinner, playing catch with two tennis balls which means we can now compete in a two ball catching competition- if it exists (if not we are winning at life anyway).
The following day was much of the same and the only thing to note was that we watched the blood moon which was really amazing. Due to where we are in Finland, we had to wait till around 11:30 to watch it, which we admit is better than waking up at 5 am in Australia.
The following day Madison left early to go for a bike ride and ended up getting stuck in some large estate and had to throw his bike over a gate and climb over to get out. Which is hilarious, but stuff like this happens to Mads all the time, which equally concerns and delights me. Madie spent a lot of the day fixing the windows for the greenhouse (yes, he's still working on them).
I had the afternoon off and due to the Åland Island Vlog taking so long, it was causing me so many issue (with the final product still not turning out perfect). Just to clarify for anyone that has watched it, I can write properly without random capitalisations, but the font was changed whilst exporting and the original font had half of the letters in caps. I had to change some of the letters so it was all in caps agh...it was just this whole thing...so sorry if it annoys you...it annoys me too). Regardless, due to those things, I had lot of time waiting for iMovie to process whatever I was asking it to do, so I started writing a book. So that's fun...and all I'm going to say.
The next day Madie was out in the fields with Justus and Valentina picking wild oats, whilst I worked in the café. That night after dinner we decided to head up to Sunset Rock, a 15 minute walk from our tiny home. We brought a tent and a couch up to the rock using the farm's John Deer gator and watched the sunset with some local beers and ciders. Our night was cut a bit short however, at around 3:30 am in the morning, we woke up to freezing cold rain coming through the tent at all angles (we only brought the inner tent because it has been so dry lately and so naturally it decided to rain on us). We quickly made the decision to take our stuff and head back to the tiny home for the sake of our health.
The following morning, Madie was a very kind boyfriend and snuck out to collect the tent that we abandoned the night before. The rest of the day, due to lack of sleep, we were both a little cranky and so didn't really see each other till the that night where we cooked dinner (our sweet potato curry recipe with baked camembert and salad as a starter). We also spent a bit of time prepping for our travels to India, and found a really great channel called The Budgeteers, which we binged the first three episodes of their recent India trip late into the night.
Today was a semi productive day, with the Åland Vlog FINALLY uploading, both of us spending time researching travel insurance for India and we also prepped our tech stuff to go on the road (clearing SD cards, recording serial numbers in the event something is stolen, etc). Though in some sad news, Madison has lost his beloved black hat, which meant another trip up to Sunset Rock this morning in search of it, but no luck. We also sat down with Dorine, another workawayer from France, and discussed her experiences in India, Myanmar, Vietnam and Thailand, which was super helpful for our Asia planning.
There is still one more week of the Finland Files to go, but I hope you have enjoyed this series and we will look to do some more in our future travels. Thanks for supporting us.
With love, R xoxo