Social Summer

This summer has started out with a record time spent with friends and family. Most of the tree business is taking care of itself now, the trees grow well and they require something like one hour per day of care. Some fertilizing, some weeding, some watering, some peace.

Time with friends is important for us. Both to recover mentally from the depressing realities of the larger world, and to bounce ideas and strengthen our own thinking about the world. Strengthening and deepening networks of resistance and collaboration. We have been lucky to meet a few new friends too.

I am more and more convinced that the meaning of life is to cook good food and enjoy with friends. And once in a while make a contribution to the living world. What else is really there? At least for me. It is great to grow food and share meals.

It is good to meet new people at other people's parties too. Our friends Simon and Alexandra got married and had a cozy garden party. It was good fun to meet their siblings and their other friends.

Simon and Alexandra got married at their place, overlooking the river.

We also prepared the birthday party of M. Our boys came home for a week to hang out and prepare the party scene. They live something like 700km away, one to the north-east, one to the south-west, so we don't meet so often. They live in a very different world from when I grew up thirty years ago. Or, rather, they are aware of the destruction and decline of the industrial civilization, whereas I was blissfully ignorant of any reality at all. When I was in my twenties, during the second half of the 1990s, everything seemed so easy. Now, not so much. Reality has arrived here.

Our boys cooking pancakes on the frying pan Muurikka

M's friends came over for a wild celebration with dinner and songs. Good fun.

We were lucky with the weather.

The forest

During the last few years, we have learned a lot about the Swedish forests. Most people believe the wood/paper-industry propaganda that the forests are better than ever. Scratching the surface, the picture is more depressing. We are losing habitat for lots of species, and the destruction has accellerated since the Russia-Ukraine war started in 2022. The industry had been buying lots of wood from Russia, but that was now blocked. Now there is an over-capacity in saw mills and paper plants, so the hunger for forest is larger than ever, while the old forests are almost all gone. This conundrum leads to record high price for timber and the logging companies are now clearing out the last (previously un-economic) patches of old forests. It is an ecological disaster.

Some people organize to try to get the companies to follow Swedish law, that on paper should protect the environment and the last populations of endangered species. They meet up every two years to talk and strategize. This year, we joined. The location is an amazing forest garden in middle-south of Sweden, a place that is a lot cooler than where we live. I was amazed to see thriving chestnut trees here!

Viktor shows one of his chestnut trees.

Our friends Etta and Jona arranged a fire starter ceremony in the stream.

Fire in the forest.

On our way there, we stayed with friends in their forest house on a cliff overlooking Vatter lake. It is a big lake, some 100+km long, so the other end is on the other side of the horizon.

M and me, looking over the water.

On the way back, we visited the idyllic and touristy town of Gränna. It is most famous for a kind of candy, but there may be a change of pride. There are also a couple of very impressive chestnut trees in the park.

One of the Gränna Park chestnut trees. There are also amazing ginkgo trees.

Small town life

In our small town, we had a coffee at Cecil's the other day. It is a friendly café/bakery with 1950's theme, and it is very fitting to the city market square. This time, we learned that they had opened a small and cozy back-yard-area to sit outdoors in a quiet corner.

You can imagine our surprise when we came into the hitherto secret back yard and were welcomed by a huge minikiwi-vine, full of fruit!

Minikiwis at Cecil's courtyard.

Life here on the countryside is seldom boring. We are trying to get a reduction of the speed on the road outside our farmlet, so everytime there is a crash, we call up the newspapers and send a letter to the road authorities to reduce the allowed speed.

Another opportunity to call for speed reduction.

We visited a friend of M., who showed us how she is weaving mats of raw wool. That would work out well for us too, I think.

Weaving raw wool, directly into the warp.

Farm update

It has been a busy month, mainly with weeding. No exciting pictures of that. Most of the trees grow very good this year, with rains and good heat. Only the "mother trees" for walnut scion wood have not been happy, and we will try to relocate that function.

Also, it seems that we have run out of voles. I have seen no damage in several months, but whenever I see a hole in the ground, I place a trap.

This time, we had a novelty. The first rat was caught in the guilliotine.

Rats... First and hitherto only rat at our place.