Thursday, July 27

 

 

Having stayed up into the night we woke up late to find that the sun has decided to work overtime today. We ate brunch outdoors and at 12:30 I noticed the chicken in the distance in the next field. I called to it and it started trotting this way but it kept getting sidetracked by anything and everything that captured its attention.

I go onto the next field with a potato for the chicken. It happily eats it but decides not to follow me back to the garden. I show Irma this photo that I took about this time yesterday, when I found the chicken wandering around the kitchen poking its head behind the curtains and generally inspecting the place. I had no idea it had got there and eventually, when it had satisfied itself, it came out and trotted over to me.

Camilla comes over and asks if I can help with the hay-work at 15:00 and I agree.

I will spend the rest of the day wrestling with bales of hay, which I like doing. I will go to the field in the trailer behind Mika’s tractor. I will stack bales and then, when we have filled the trailer, I will drive back with Camilla and Marina and work with Minna unloading stacking the bales in the barn.

We will stack almost two trailer loads and then pause to eat at the farmhouse. I will sit down to macaronilaatikko with Mika and Camilla, Bernhard and Gita, Marina and Maurits, Aili, and Mina.

Afterwards Mina and I will finish the second trailer load and then Camilla, Mina and I will drive back to the fields to help with the third load.

Camilla will explain to me that the chickens can get out of the hen-house quite easily although most of them choose not to. Amy, one of the sheepdogs, has invented the task of rounding them up and herding them back into the hen-house whenever she sees a chicken around the farm. Two chickens have learned to resist this, and Amy now ignores them. The rest allow themselves to get rounded up and forced back in. This explains why the chicken that visited us never made it. It stayed in no-man’s land too long and got rounded up.

I will get home about 21:30, feeling wonderfully tired. I will sleep like a log.