Ship Shape Sheep

There is one question that is firmly fixed in my mind right now: What am I doing on a sheep farm 30km north of the nearest town with a guy named matt who hasn't shaved in several months and is into "hard fantasy novels"?  Of course, there are other questions on my mind.  Where are all the sheep?  Why were there two hares fighting in the field outside?  Why do none of the neighboring houses have lights on?  Why does everyone speak Swedish?  Why does Matt NOT speak Swedish?

I don't know if I will find the answer to these questions.  For now I must content myself with petting his two dogs Spirit and Jack who are currently splayed out on the floor by my feet and also with reading the new English novel I just bought at a department store in Pori, one of the most dead Finnish towns I have ever been to.  Answers should come when we start working tomorrow, giving the sheep water and putting fences into the ground to keep them from wondering.  I'm beginning to realize that a lot of farm work involves building fences.

Last night I stayed in Jyväskylä with a lesbian girl named Sani and an Argentinian couple who has been living in Kuopio.  We drank red wine and I think the Argentinian girl got a little tipsy because she was rolling around at length on the yoga ball and also talking about some kind of apparatus that would be like the "tingler" that's used for your head but instead for your entire body.  Basically she just wanted to have goosebumps all the time.  It was a little hard to understand.  I think at one point I suggested hanging nails from string and said the word "clavos" in Spanish.  The sun set very late.

Now I am in the computer roomm in Matt's house and he's downstairs watching some kind of fantasy series.  I really have no idea what the next five days have in store for me, but I figure at the very least A) a fair amount of loneliness and B) lots of Kiwi slang I don't understand.  I have caught myself just nodding yes to feign comprehension at least a few times so far when Matt has used expressions I don't understand.  Someone needs to tell people from New Zealand that the word "yes" is not pronounced "yis".

I can't believe my time at the bee farm is over already.  I can't believe that right now all the people I came to know and love are probably sitting down for a nice dinner, talking about the shenanigans from the day and who got stung and how the chicks are getting so big, and I can't believe that the American couple has moved into the cottage by the lake and taken over where I lived.  But I did need to get out of there at some point. I was ready.

And now I am ready for sheep.

Älä raavi!

I am currently sitting in the apartment of a Chilean guy who lives in the upstairs of a duplex 5km outside of the Finnish town of Jyväsklä.  Today was my last day at at the bee farm with Ari and Marja.  Marja and I made delicious meatballs made of reindeer and diced ham that I helped her to prepare.  We got fresh parsley and chives from the garden which we cut with scissors, then fried the meatballs and served them over buckwheat with tomatoes in vinegar and oil on the side.

But anyway, that's all over now.  I'm in Jyväskylä in the apartment of this Chilean guy who I barely know but who's really nice (he's one of the dudes in the 4H club who came to the farm the other day to experience Finnish farm life.  He accidentally left his jacket and today we met up so I could give it back).  We're drinking black tea and he's lamenting the lack of instructions in Spanish for the new wireless headphones he just got in the mail. He's had an interesting life.  His father abandoned him and his mother when he was little, he barely ever talks to his mother now who still lives in Santiago, he has no aunts and uncles, he's an only child, and his Finnish wife just divorced him.  Tough.  And he's unemployed.  But he doesn't seem down at all.  He seems fairly happy and carefree and in good physical shape doespite the fact that all he seems to do is play video games. He also speaks great Finnish, an area in which his lack of English has actully helped him since people are forced to speak Finnish with him instead of just switch over to English.  I just witnessed a conversation between him and his ex-mother and law dowstairs (she rents the place he lives) and was completely blown away by his fluency and comprehension.  But I guess he has lived here a few years.

In other news, three nights ago Ari and I transported almost a million bees.  We had 48 hives, each with about 20,000 bees.  And nothing between us and the bees.  No guard or protection.  No window.  No anything. Just us in the front and th bees in the back.  Luckily the bees are surprising tranquil when being transported.  First you hit them with the smoker so they think there's a forest fire and they go inside the hive.  Then once you have them in the car the engine sort of lulls them into tranquility.  They are a lot like infants in that way.  The noise of the engine is comforting (I like to think it reminds them of a really big mother bee) and the movement lulls them into a kind of daze.  When you get to your destination they crawl out groggy eyed out of the hive to look around, but they arent't looking to sting you.  they just want to check things out.

However, like an infant, as soon as you pick them up and physically move them they can get a little fussy.  And when your arm is wrapped around the entrance of the hive youre carrying things can get a little messy. At the third site we visited I was carrying one hive when all the sudden I felt the horrible flap of insect wings against my bare skin.  Immediately I knew that a bee had worked its way inside my glove and was now trying to get out and panicking.  When bees panic they sting, which is exactly what this one did, forcing its stinger into the straining muscle of my forearm. And instead of being able to just swat the bee off and run off into the woods screaming and lighting my hair on fire I was forced to gently put the box down, walk away from the hives, and then take off my glove before removing the stinger.  But by then it was too late.  The venom was in me.  And for the last two days my arm has looked like a balloon.

So I'm not as immune to bee stings as I thought.  One day Ari said "Mark was born to be a beekeeper.  I've never seen someone more naturally resistant." and  I basked in this praise until I realized there are a lot of factors with stings and I got a little bit lucky with the sting in the neck.  If the stinger goes into a muscle or a vein or deeper or stays in for longer, the results can be a lot worse.  And though I was a little sad to leave the farm, I have no problems with leaving the bees.  I will be fine if I never see the inside of a hive again.  I don't intend to be a beekeeper.  I'll stick with the animals that don't sting you like cats and dogs and chickens.

The Chilean is now playing some kind of online game with his cousin who lives in Norway.  The amount of tenchnology in his room is amazing. He's got a big screen TV and two laptops and his new state of the art headphones.  The sun is shining outside and tonight I'll meet the two Finnish girls I'm staying with who are also hosting an Argentinian couple for the night.  And then tomorrow I go to the coast to work on a sheep farm.  I'm ready to go home.  I wish I could just get on a plane to Seattle right now, but my plane doesn't leave Stockholm until the 18th. But for now I can enjoy this beautiful Finnish afternoon and the fact that the sun will shine until late.  And I have a temporary friend with whom to drink tea with and speak Spanish.

More to come soon from the coast.  Until then, älä ravi, it only makes it worse.  

A Hemingway Quote and Two Beekeeping Photos From Yesterday

"Two hours later Dr. Valentini came into the room. He was in a great hurry and the points of his mustache stood straight up. He was a major, his face was tanned and he laughed all the time.

'How did you do it, this rotten thing?' he asked. 'Let me see the plates. Yes. Yes. That’s it. You look healthy as a goat.'" -- A Farewell to Arms

 Ari inspects the bees while I look on.  "I think we'll be back at 4pm, so pack a lunch," he said yesterday.  We got back at 8:30pm. 

The last site of the day.  Molly, from New York, looks on as Ari operates.  I got shocked by the sheep fence in the left side of the photo.  Beautiful birch also on the left.  We ate fresh honey from these hives.  It was nauseatingly good and also just nauseating.

Now Im going to walk into town!  A beautiful reprieve!  6km or so!  And tonight an overnight trip with Ari that i am a little bit apprehensive about but im sure will be great!

Mark

Routine is Hyvää (Usually)

 I have sort of developed a routine which is pretty comforting.  Every day I wake up around 930 and walk to the house where I have granola topped with some kind of sour berry picked directly from the forest and fresh organic honey.  Then I feed the chickens.  This part I love.  I talk to them, and have been amazed by how much the chicks have grown since ive been here, about doubling in size.  If the black hen has layed eggs I snatch them from her and if not I give her a mean look that tries to convey that Im disappointed with production levels.  I have never been very impressed by the rooster.  Whenever I try to pet him he always cowers behind the hens.  What kind of man is that?

After this I usually embark on the morning task, which could be anything from going out with Ari in the Sprinter to do work at the bee hives or helping Marja to clean up the kitchen.  Today was a little bit strange because after helping Ari with the bees in the morning (see: standing, watching him) I spent the rest of the morning building a an electrified bear fence around Madders front door so that it would be the first thing he saw when he woke up from his hangover and stepped out the front door.  I didnt actually make it live but I did make it look like it was hooked up to a battery and even put the "high voltage" sign on it for good measure.  Either way I got some good pictures.  Then, this afternoon, Madders and I drove around looking for queens.  We had to search for the colonies to find the queens and then when we found them we'd put them in a new, unpopulated colony so that the former colony would start making more queens.  What I mostly did though was sit around and let the bees try to sting me, though a lot of my fear has left me.  I got stung today once through the suit but since the bee couldnt fully get its stinger in me it didnt really hurt.  It felt more like getting bit by an ant.

My time here is rapidly drawing to a close.  I have about a week left and then Ill probably make my way to Stockholm to get a flight home.  I have a very good feeling about the pacific northwest this summer.  I put my time in this winter so I plan to take advantage of the summer: cruising around Capitol Hill (the Hill!) on a penny board, slacklining at Cal Anderson, doing more yardwork, and generally trying to be the biggest hipster possible.

But things are also looking up here.  Im going to take a sauna tonight and supremely hope the american couple joins me.  And then maybe Ill go fishing again.  Or just lie in bed and read "A Farewell to Arms".  The blue, blue Finnish sky is the limit. 

Quote of the Day

"Sometimes all you need is 20 seconds of insane courage...just 20 seconds of embarrassing bravery...and I guarantee you--something great will happen." -- We Bought a Zoo

The Humans I Work With

After being on a farm for a week and driving down endless country dirt roads, the town of Jyväskylä, about 30 miles north of where I'm staying, seems like a veritable metropolis.  By Finnish standards it basically IS a veritable metropolis, since any town over 50,000 people in Finland is more or less gigantic.  Jyväskylä has about 130,000.

The first things that have struck me here is that there are people whose skin is not blindingly white and that you have to pay to go to the bathroom.  One euro.  You actually have to pay.  For the past week I have been peeing in fields 98% of the time so this is a little bit annoying.

It is nice that there are immigrants here.  In Finland there aren't nearly as many as in other Scandinavian countries (in Norway you can go to any town, no matter how big and no matter how in the middle of nowhere it is, and there will always be at least a few people from the Gambia or Liberia or some other faraway place).

But enough about Jyväskylä and the commerce I'm currently enjoying.  Today I'd like to describe the people I work with on a daily basis, since people are the only thing that ever really matter anyway.

Ari

The boss.  The patriarch.  Answers his phone "Ari Seppälä" barely in a whisper and then talks progressively louder as the conversation goes on.  I regard him with a mixture of respect and unbridled terror.  He is one of the hardest working people I have ever met, but a TINY TINY part of me suspects that this is only because he doesn't want to be dealing with his family all day and just wants his "me" time.  The other night at dinner Marja (his wife) said she thought Helsinki had the best engineering school in the country and Ari said, "You have no idea what you're talking about".  He can be a little rough around the edges but also joke around and be kind, too.

Marja

The real boss, and I say that because apparently she has the final word in everything and because Ari sometimes refers to her as "the boss".  She is wonderfully kind and somewhat reserved but for a Finn she is basically as outgoing as they come.  Last night after dinner we had about a twenty minute conversation in which she explained to me how she doesn't get along well with all of her sisters, especially after she urged one of them to divorce her husband.  Come to think of it Finns are generally pretty reserved but can casually say things that most Americans might consider kind of private.  The first day I got here Ari casually brought into the conversation the relationship he had growing up with his dad (apparently it was more like two friends living together than father son) after we had only known each other about an hour.  But anyway, Marja is wonderful and cooks a mean perch stew.

The Kids

Ako, Virti and Peppi.  I have exhanged maybe 15 words with all three of them combined.  They're so used to having strange people in the house they don't really care who you are.  And I get the feeling they resent a little bit having to compete with strangers for their parents' attention.  But I could be reading into this.

Irina

At first I liked her, now I more or less despise her.  She's blunt and has the sense of humor of a bag of tacks.  Irina is the other WWOOFer and she's from Russia.  You only need to know three things about her: 1) She doesn't use toilet paper because she "spent some time in India".  2) She won't kill the wasps that fly into her room and harass her every morning because she "doesn't like to kill things".  And 3) She uses a wood-burning stove even though there's a perfectly good electric range right next to it that takes about 1/15th of the time to use.  And she says the word "porridge" about 100 times every morning.  At first we got along swimmingly (sort of) but now we barely speak.

Madders

I still have no idea how to spell this guy's name.  He's from Latvia and he's been working on the farm off and on for five years making 7 euros an hour.  Ari said at one point that Finns won't do this work and now I understand why -- it pays horribly.  Madders is a great guy and I love him to death but he's also horribly racist and I'm having a hard time dealing with it.  He's said some fairly offensive things and I fear that we might have a confrontation in the near future, but also get the impression he knows I'm not ok with some of the things he says and maybe avoids the subject.  All that aside, yesterday we packed honey together for about three hours and listened to the radio and (I) sang and it was a great time.

I better go now though.  I'm at the tourist office and there's a girl who I think's waiting for the computer.

Hei hei!

Mark

Bee Keeping

Hello everyone --

I have decided that since I am once again in Finland, and it is once again (almost) summer, that I should make an attempt at reviving this blog.  Plus, since I'm currently an indentured serv --  worker -- on an organice honey farm in Finland, there should be plenty to write about.  For whatever reason, as Im going about my daily work, sanding 2 x 4s and putting up bear fences, beautifully crafted sentences always flow freely in and out of mind, and then of course the minute I sit down to write I have trouble putting anything more than four words together.  But Ill do my best.  And also please pardon the lack of apostrophes.  I dont really know where they are on this computer, as they have been replaced by the "ä" so important to Finnish words like "nähdään", which means "see you".

I live with a Finnish family.  Or actually I live in a little cottage by the lake with a sauna next to it.  I cant lock the door, and on the first night I was afraid a lumbering brown bear might try to poke his head in to investigate or that one of the neighbors might steal my socks when I was sleeping, but the only problem Ive had so far was a wasp that would come in every day around 6am looking for a place to put its new nest.  I dont like killing anything but in this case it was unavoidable.  As Ari said, the father of the family and guy I basically work for, "Life is cruel".

But life isnt really all that cruel out here on this beautiful farm.  Its just tons of hard work.  Ive never seen anyone work harder than Ari and Marja do.  Ari more or less works continuously from 10am to 9pm every night.  But they dont really consider it work.  The just consider it "things that need to get done".  And when you have about 800 bee colonies there are always things that need to get done, like the bear fences weve been putting up since i got here.

Apparently there are brown bears in central finland.  I always thought bears in Finland were only in the east next to Russia and and the north, but four brown bears have been terrorizing Aris beehives for the past few weeks, the first bear problems in this area since the mid 90s.  It doesnt sound like a huge deal losing a bee colony (which basically looks like a small filing cabinet except filled with a thousand little insects that desperately want to sting you in the throat), but Ari calculates that the loss of each colony costs him about 600 euros.  And the government, bless its Finnish heart, compensates bee farmers 300 euros, but it can still be a very substantial loss.  Hence, the fences. 

The reason I used "throat" as the part of the body that bees desperately want to sting you in is because on my first day here I got stung in the throat.  But it was actually (sort of) my fault, as I was standing directly in front of the flight path for the bees to get back to their colony and I wasnt wearing any kind of protective gear.  But I havent been stung since, and Ive come to learn a lot about bees, which has been one of the best parts.  Here are a few things Ive learned:

1) Bees will never sting you just to sting you.  The only sting you when you make them mad or when they panic.  One thing you can do to make them REALLY mad is try to take their honey, since you are essentially stealing their food.  One time during honey harvesting Motters, a racist Latvian kid whos been working here on and off for the last five years, got stung in the face twenty times when a nail in the box he was carrying ripped a hole in his suit.  Twenty times.  Apparently your body gets somewhat used to it after you get stung enough, but I dont think it could ever get used to that kind of attack.

2) All worker bees are female.  Plus the queen, of course, is female.  So where are the males and what do they do?  Well, the males are called "drones" and they do nothing.  They sit around and eat until theyre grown up, and then they go off in search of a queen to impregnate.  If they find one and mate, they die.  If they dont find one and dont mate, the eventually die.

3) The queen is an interesting character.  The only difference between a queen and a regular bee is her diet.  A few days after theyre born most bees stop receiving proteins and become workers.  But the queen keeps receiving proteins and become bigger and more prominent.  I always thought the queens just kind of sat there in one of the cells of the honey comb, but this is not the case.  Shes always walking around looking busy, because if she doesnt the workers start to think shes sick or that somethings wrong.  She must keep up apprearances.  Also, whereas the workers die off every year, she can live for up to five years.  Imagine if all your acquaintances died every year and were replaced by a new crop, for lack of a better word, the following year.  The queen must be emotionally tough.

But enough about bees for now.  I also feed the chickens every morning, for example, and I catch the mother hen eyeing me with undisguised loathing every time I come into the coop and take the one egg she layes (though yesterday she laid two).

It has been an interesting few days here on the farm and Im excited to see what comes next.  The sun is setting sometime after 10pm i think and it never gets fully dark.  At 11pm you could easily sit outside and read the newspaper.

I hope all of your are well (and by "all of you" i mean the two or three or zero) who have read this far, and enjoying your springs.  More to come soon.

Mark