Monday, July 6

Irma and Naa are in Helsinki. I woke up early, vacuum-cleaned the house, cleaned away cobwebs, empty mouse shit out of a drawer, fed the cat, and went outside.

The day was bright and windy. I washed my hands. Sunshine came out and went back in again. I followed and made some breakfast.

I set up my laptop for the first time and started looking seriously at my slide show for the doctoral defence. I ended up rewriting the outline for a couple of hours.

Now I am outside again, looking at the old bike and the frog king. The weather has been changing rapidly again; it was completely overcast half an hour ago.

In a few minutes Camilla will come and ask if I can help with the hay work. The weather forecast threatens rain tonight and a torrential storm tomorrow afternoon. If the hay isn’t brought in today it may be ruined.

Normally we do one or maybe two fields a day. Today we will do four. Normally there are eight to twelve people helping. For most of the day there will be five.

Mika will drive the hay baler. Camilla, Gita, Stefan and I will, in various combinations, drive the tractor and trailer, throw the bales onto the trailer, stack them neatly, and then unload them into the barn once we have driven them there.

We will have done two fields by the time Camilla decides we should stop for a food break. Ann-Sofie will be back from work and cooking, and she and Camilla will make pyttipannu, fried eggs, makkara, bread and more.

When we start the third field we will be joined by Ann-Sofie and Johan, also back from work. Liisa and Mari will arrive on a quad bike shortly afterwards.

We will finish sometime after 21:00 and go back to the farm for beer and sandwiches. Naa and Irma will have arrived and join us.

I have read about binge drinking. Is there such a thing as binge exercising? I will go to bed with every muscle in my body aching, and fall asleep within seconds.