Finland holidays part two

A pathway by the Jalisjärvi cemetery

Jalisjärvi museum

Jalisjärvi Museum

Abigail on the fence of Jalisjärvi cemetery

What is going on with these windmills? I will have to remember to ask Mika about them. The little "house" on top looks very precartious. I have no idea why these structures are built the way they are.

The cabin where we are staying. There are two apartments in the one cabin. We were disappointed to find out that there were some workers staying in the other apartment. But they disappeared after the first two nights, so we again have the peaceful feeling that we are far away from everything.

The field behind our cabin.

The kitchen inside our cabin.

The dining and living area.

All three together, taken from the mezzanine bedroom. The cabin has a very high roof.

Mika lives in Tampere (a city). This is his family farm where he grew up. It's a mixture of crop growing fields and forest which is harvested. Mika comes up here to manage things sometimes. Recently he has been thinning the forest on his land of every second or third tree. He is selling the birch for fire wood.

Mika and Outti took us on a Sunday afternoon outing. We went to the local "mountain". Finland is very flat. It has thousands of lakes and lots of rock, and somehow people manage some farming. In the far north in Lappland, there are mountains that reach 1000 metres tall.

When we reached our destination there was a group of people already there. But they kindly invited us to join them. Melody shared an oral story of the Prodigal Son with them. They enjoyed hearing the story.

This is Mika (we met in Novosibirsk in 2006).

This is Outti in the foreground. They have been married 1 year and have a little baby.

The ladies there invited us to eat some of the food they had prepared. Mika called it "swamp soup". I thought that perhaps this was an interesting translation. Outti corrected this and said it was simply mushroom soup. I kind of liked the first name (so long as it did not taste like a swamp), it reminded me of Puddleglum in the Silver Chair from Narnia. It turns out the mushroom soup was delicious. That's bread sitting on the side of the bowl.

The view from the top of the "mountain".

We had frost overnight. It was +1 when we got up this morning and went to the shop. This afternoon it was +8 and sunny. I was happy, so long as it is sunny and we are dressed appropriately that makes nice weather.

It turns out the Finnish also like to make damper-bannock. Abigail had a fun time cooking hers. The ladies there then piped it full of jam.

PJ was again an energetic handful. He just had to climb all of the rocks there.