Since Gaija...

We left the Ecovillage just before lunch on Friday, just before lunch and bikes back to the train station in Ähtari. There we caught a train towards Vaasa... But we didn't make it! There was nowhere to buy tickets at the station, only on the train. However, the conductor's ticket machine only took chip-and-pin debit cards, not swipe cards. Damn you, America, for being the only country in the world that still uses swipe cards! Unfortunately we...

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Our Stay at Gaija

Well, if biodynamic farming seems like a break from the mainstream, Gaija Eco-Village is even further off the beaten path. Gaija, a community of thirty or so, has existed for about eight years outside the town of Ähtäri on a beautiful lake. The site, currently owned by the city and cheaply rented by the community, centers around a large building from the 1940s that served as a nursing home for fifty years. Abandoned late in the last century, it was...

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The Trip to Gaija Eco-Village

We left Toivo Farm (we found out at Gaija that Toivo means hope in Finnish) at about 9am on Sunday, after a relaxed midsummer weekend. Various friends and relatives of Toivo's permanent residents came for the night, including a man named Pablo, who works at a bike shop in Helsinki. We talked bikes and touring with him, and generally enjoyed ourselves sitting by the fire, playing frisbee and reading. From Toivo, we headed west-northwest towards the...

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The Plan

We leave Toivo farm tomorrow morning, and plan to be in Sandviken, Sweden on the 1st of July for our next Workaway. In the meantime, we plan on visiting an ecovillage north of here, in a town called Ähtäri. From our current location near Heinola, on the bottom right of the map, we will cycle for two days along a large lake - one of the most beautiful parts of the country, according to Jere - then take a train from Jyväskyla to Ähtäri, on the...

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Saunas

Saunas (sow-nas) are a big deal here in Finland. Ryan and Heidi's apartment, a small one-bedroom affair, devoted about the same amount of space to the bathroom/sauna as to the kitchen! According to them, most apartments of that size would have a sauna, depending on when they were built. Here at the farm, saunas occur on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, which is also the only time there is hot water. The hot water and radiator system is wood...

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A Bit on Toivo and Biodynamic Farming

Toivo, our home for two weeks, is a small biodynamic farm in the lakes district northeast of Helsinki. A biodynamic farm is an organic farm that follows a particular set of principles, established by the scientist and philosopher Rudolf Steiner. These principles center on the idea of connecting more deeply to the elements around us and enriching the soil, our food sources and our bodies both spiritually as well as physically. One of the major...

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There are only nine cold months in Finland...

And the other three are very cold! So says Jere, one of the farm managers here at Toivo, and so we learned this morning! After a stretch of pleasant weather with only a few mildly cold days, we woke up to a temperature of 3 degrees Celsius (less than 40 F)! Not to be deterred, we headed to the field with Jere to finish planting the kale. Toivo has an agreement with a superfood company to grow, dry and pulverize kale for a supplement powder the company...

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Weekend Ride

AAfter a long week of work (about 45hrs, including half of Saturday) we decided to have a nice relaxed weekend...not! Mid-afternoon on Saturday, we set off with a day's worth of food (more on that) and camping gear. We had planned out a route mostly on back roads for the afternoon and the following day, and since we didn't have a map, we wrote out a cue sheet with road names, distances etc. We rode about 20km, almost all on dirt roads, to a trailhead...

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Our First Workaway: Toivo ("toy-voh")

On Monday morning, after a quick stop to buy stove fuel and playing cards (shops had been closed on Sunday because it was a holiday), we caught a bus from Helsinki's central bus station, Kaampi. This took us 2hrs north of the city, to Heinola. From there we rode 30km east (a significant portion of it on bike paths, even though it was literally in the middle of nowhere!) to our first Workaway, Toivo, a biodynamic (read: physically and spiritually...

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From New Hampshire to Helsinki

Preparing to depart...for our test ride, that is. Last minute haircut...Icelandair has a sense of humor!From the plane window as we descend into Reykjavik...Arrived in Helsinki, early afternoon.After receiving printed directions to Helsinki center from the airport info desk, we reassembled our bikes just outside the main entrance of the airport.We then proceeded to get thoroughly lost, taking almost an hour to do the first 5km! The trouble is,...

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We're off!

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