Last post before coming home! - Kumlinge, Finland

Howdy. Here are some pictures and a video from the month I've spent in Kumlinge, Finland. I come home in three days! If you followed this blog at all, I hope you enjoyed it at least a little.

What you are watching here is indeed a Swedish version of "Go the Distance" from Hercules. I went to the local middle school's musical, which they had written themselves about life on Kumlinge, and it freaking rocked. They speak Swedish on Åland because it's historically been a part of Sweden, if you were wondering. I couldn't understand anything they were saying, but a big chunk of the songs were reworked American songs, so I could catch up with the plot when they started singing. They also did Leavin' on a Jet Plane and a Bruno Mars song called Grenade. Absolutely amazing. And there were only 10 kids in the whole production, so actors had to double as musicians! Every time a song would start, half the kids would run to the side of the stage and pick up their instruments to start the song.

On the ferry from Sweden to Åland.

Count it! I only read Through the Looking Glass.

These are some of the wonderful, and, yes, fairly old people from Kumlige. My farmer works with the Red Cross's chapter here and this was a fundrasier lunch.

And part of that fundraiser lunch was a raffle of a bunch of stuff, and I won this rhubarb jam!

Kora launching a boat for the first time that she built. She is named Paerlan, which means The Pearl.

Afloat!

If you want, you could say that I'm awesome, and most people probably wouldn't disagree.

See above.

A "hugelbed!" This is a permaculture project where you dig out a little area, then fill the hole with sticks up to the previous ground level, and then pile your soil on top of those sticks. The sticks break down and eventually make great fertilizer, and you can plant in them. I built three of these while I was here.

A shot of the garden. The field you see belongs to the neighbor, who is the principal of the local school.

Buckets of pee. Really. Good compost should never be wasted.

The bike trip lives on. Kora on the left and Thorsten on the right

A wonderful little spot.

The three of us took this little bike ride to that little wonderful spot to hide this geocache. Geocaching is a kind of international treasure hunting thing. You post the gps coordinates of where you hide your stuff online, and then anyone can come find it. Someone already came and found this!

Hiding.

Thorsten and me.

A fun read.

Gave "A People's History" a run for it's money as the best book I read on this trip. I got this book from our farmers in Croatia, and when I opened it I found that it's part of a little traveler book exchange. A previous WWOOFer had left it in Croatia and signed her name, so I did the same and passed it on to a guy who came here from Switzerland.

The local school. They asked me to come and talk to the 7th, 8th, and 9th grades (a total of 9 kids) about California and my trip and stuff, and I ran an improv workshop for them. They were a little shy about all of it, but it was still rad.

Dandelions are blooming here like crazy. Big fields like this will be green one day and then literally overnight turn into this yellow explosion.

The local shop. This is also a good shot of the roads in Kumlinge. They're all this dark red dirt, and none of the streets are named. There are a few signs that point to farms and the school and stuff, but no street names on the whole island.

One of the neighbor's horses. I've been collecting horse manure for the past couple days for fertilizer for our potatoes.

The bike they've lent me.

THE WALL. The summers here are really warm, but also can be windy. The wind that blows through is really cold, too, which is no good for the plants. So I built this wall of sticks and brush and sugar and spice and lions and tigers and bears as a wind breaker. Teacher, leave those kids alone.

More of the wall.

Finished hugelbed.

Another hugel.

Their lovely hen.

This is the chicken tractor. The farmers keep the chickens in there for periods of time as a kind of organic grass trimming effort. The chickens pick and nib at everything, and eventually the grass is gone and they can plant.

A bed of almost 80 strawberries that I organized. It looks a little haphhazard at the moment, but that's because they were all just uprooted from their previous spot. Hopefully they'll be back tov looking nice soon.