How and why? The key of learning...

One of my reasons of coming to live at the country side was definitely to learn. To learn simple things you need to know when you live in a sheep farm. Well, simple for people who have lived at country side for a long time, not simple for me always, but I think I'm not hopeless in that field also.
It is my family farm but I have never wanted to live here so far. I used to think I'm a city girl, I din't like to live at the country side, cause action and people were in the city. So, I didn't pay much attention how to do farm work and ran away from the farm very early to work in town (all summers starting from age 15). But in some point I realized that I still need to know how things are done here to keep the farm working when parents are too old and I also realized that I might even like to live at the country side. And I already knew it is possible to bring people (a lot of people as you have seen from previous posts) to country side also.

From May till August when I have been here, I have learned many things for sure - how to live together with big group of people again, especially how to live together with family; where the money comes from and where it goes in family business; how much hay we have for winter per sheep and so on...but mostly I'm happy for small things I learn every day that explain me WHY things are done by the way they are done.

One day we were sorting sheep with our volunteers Innocenzo (Italian) and Masha (German). The goal was to separate mothers from their children, the male ones from female ones (they went together with children) and the ones who had some health problems (still together with children to be separated later). We also weighed the children. These are our happy volunteers making sure that there are always sheep in the corridor that lead to weighing machine:

 In the end we had to chase sheep (mothers) to the furthest are we have for sheep at the moment through 3 gates and lots of free land. It was so far the most difficult chase I have ever seen, because they didn't want to go and were separating from each other, trying to turn back or somewhere totally different, including forest. Mostly because they didn't want to leave without their children and also looking for some water, cause it was a very hot day and all this sorting in the barn made them really thirsty. It took more than half an hour for sure and lots of nerves and running. But when we arrived back we to chase the young ones to another place, we had a "nice" surprise - about 10 of the old ones had appeared from somewhere. Probably we just didn't look carefully enough behind the hill. I knew that it should be done but usually they were still mostly together when it was time to move them. And if there is only 10, then it's usually much more difficult to keep them on the track you want them to go. But nothing else to do, we had to do whole trip again with 10 sheep who also didn't want to go but somehow it was still a bit easier then with first ones. My father told that they had the footprints of others on their way, so they went more easily...haven't figured out if that was a joke or true story though. This is our 10 sheep drinking water from our pond on the way:

But all this didn't make me frustrated, it made me happy to realize that I learned why it is so important to check everywhere for sheep. It is always easier to walk a bit more at first instead of walking a lot more later. A lot about learning and remembering is connected with why, why helps you remember the how. If you don't understand why, you don't follow what you are told to do and you don't remember next time how you should do it. Of course learning from mistakes (like this one) helps to remember them very well but always you don't have that luxury. A very good teacher is a teacher who remembers to explain why.

My sister Anu is very good in this kind of explaining and teaching. Today I learned from her how to light up the sauna oven with one paper only (plus wood and matches of course). I have been always very bad with lighting fires, so I think it was the time to learn and she agreed to teach me. She really explained point by point how to do and why. It was so thorough that I can write a separate post about it (as it's a necessary skill in life, I might even do that soon)
And another thing to learn from her is that kind of thorough teaching for sure, the why point is very necessary in teaching but also the presumption that the pupil doesn't know anything about the subject you are teaching. So you have to teach from scratch, point by point, explaining EVERYTHING, even very apparent things, because they might not be so apparent to your pupil. Will write about some things I learn here in future for sure. And this is my favorite pic of my strong and good teacher sister:

Spanish in da kitchen - cooking vol3

Spanish cooking was exactly like Spanish people - emotional, passionate, rich in variations, complicated and slow (in the meaning of taking their time)...and full of eggs! They used 50 eggs to cook lunch and dinner.

Well, Albert and Cristina wanted so much to show their food culture that they wanted to prepare many things  - tortilla and pasta salad for lunch and gazpacho and egg-cake and sangria! for dinner.
Their cooking started already an evening before because the special egg-cake (don't remember the name) had to be 24 hours in cold before. Through all the cooking they were consulting with Albert's father and with each other, loudly, nervously but still very friendly at the same time. It was fun to watch them...passionate and emotional about what they were doing. Albert said that cooking relaxes him, he likes cooking. And I'm sure he told the absolute truth, he looked very happy and concentrated while cooking.
This them turning successfully over one tortilla, the excitement is totally visible:

Didn't like doing dishes though and partly because of that there was another short drama in the evening between my sister and Albert....After doing most of the dishes after dinner, some were still next to the sink on the ground and some on the table. Cristina was in her phone as usual and Albert wanted to go to shower. My sister Anu also wanted to go to shower and it happened that she went just before Albert who saw my sister going towards sauna and started to run. Then my sister also started to run and managed to get to sauna first and closed the door and hold the door having an argument through the door with Albert while he tried to open the door from the other side. Albert: "I was the next to go to shower!" Anu: "You have still unwashed dishes in the kitchen!" Albert: " No, I don't!" Anu: "Yes, you do!" Albert: "No, I don't!" Anu: "Yes, you do!"

Then Albert gave up and the part I heard from this drama was Albert explaining the story to Cristina very loudly, speaking very fast in spanish, so the only words I understood were dush (shower) and puta (swear word in Spanish) The next thing happening was that Siiri decided to wash the leftover dishes and Anu came back from sauna. And there was another emotional discussion between Anu and Albert - "Why Siiri is doing your dishes?" "No, she isn't!" " Yes, she is!" "No, she isn't" You are like 15-year old boy! " You are like 12-year old girl!" Albert was obviously in denial about dirty dishes and Anu was obviously upset about it. Mostly because all others had done their duty...when you are in cooking team, you wash the dishes also. Maybe a bit demotivating as the Italian Daniele said to me when it was their cooking time but that is how we agreed in the beginning. But this evening was the start of tension between Anu and Albert.
But the Spanish cooked again and very delicious things, one of their cooking that took 2,5 hours instead of the 40 minutes Albert first said it will take, was the chocolate cake with berries:

What did all these volunteers do...

Besides cooking all different kinds of food every day, some other work got done also. Lots of wood got piled under the roof, so we would have warm in the house in winter. The first prize of wood piling goes definitely to Deja who did it so perfectly that my dad was worried if she knows that we are gonna burn it also. The pile of wood was just put so beautifully. So later on, she was always in wood piling team. Her back didn't like it so much though...but a lot of people managed to do that job. This is Deja doing what she was best at:

And this is Cristina and Clair cleaning our garlic:              

                                                 and one of the "favorite" jobs for all volunteers was weeding the plants, here are Albert and Zimin working in the garden:

This is the result of a group work of many volunteers :) For the ones who read Estonian, Siiri described and analyzed weeding this field in her blog: http://hetkedsiiriga.wordpress.com/2013/07/28/ka-korvitsapeenra-rohimisele-voib-manguliselt-laheneda/

I guess the most disliked jobs was cleaning the top of the barn but this was the job for rainy days and a job that needed done and was easiest with lot of people together. Here Siiri got on the picture doing that:

As it was still a sheep farm and all of volunteers wanted to do some work with sheep, there were some things they could help but during summer there is not much things we do with sheep but everybody got to see them and touch them and help a bit. 

As Albert and Cristina were the loudest to ask a job with sheep, they got to do it the most. One day it was time to measure the meat in sheep and give them some medicine and weigh them. So Albert and Cristina helped to catch the sheep for that:

And some of the jobs that were related to sheep were the jobs connected to wool and gloves&socks that we make from that wool. This is Albert teaching Gi-Pum how to put the wool on a cone:

And this is me in the evening doing my thinking face and trying to think what else volunteers could do next day that wouldn't give them long faces and pain in all different parts of their body... 

The lasagne maddness - adventures in the kitchen vol2

Before Korean cooking I have to tell about lasagne making with Claire, the awesome Aussie. I must say that most of Aussies I have met share the sense of humor with Estonians. They are relaxed and funny and can understand sarcasm and do a lot of jokes in that category as well.
This is Claire having fun with sheep marking instruments:

But back to lasagne.  My previous knowledge about lasagne making was a notion that it's not an easy food to make, so I was a bit worried when Claire announced her lunch making idea. But she was careless as usual, because she had seen her mom to make it many times. So, she was calling to her many times for grocery list and even more just before we started to cook. Everything went according to plan, the sauce tasted delicious....
until Claire started to boil lasagne sheets. She put the whole pack in the pot and then....Houston, we have a problem! The lasagne sheets were totally stuck to each other and pretty difficult to detach in hot water with a fork. So, I took them out, and tried to do it with my bare hands made from iron...managed with some of them but they were pretty hot, so had another idea. I pored cold water on them and continued detaching quite with no success. Then we decided to let those sheets be and try with new ones, we put only half a pack of sheets into water and hoped it helps...it didn't. But I thought I will put them into cold water and start to detach there...it almost worked, some broke but we managed. I was running between 3 things - making a salad, putting new sheets in the hot water to boil and detaching the ones that were already boiled at the time when Claire was putting all the important stuff into lasagne - the sauce and cheese. But we were successful and in time. In the end we had 3 different lasagnes - vegetable one with ricotta cheese for Albert and my mom who are vegetarians, a soy milk one for Cristina who can't tolerate lactose and fully meaty and milky one for others.
The only pic I managed to make from all of it  - the meaty lasagne:

Adventures in the kitchen vol1

As I can't do much else in the country side yet (not much in the kitchen also as it turned out later), I was assigned to be in the kitchen with volunteers. To show where pots and pans are, to do the grocery list with them, to make sure they make enough food and be on time with lunch and dinner.

All this experience has been very "interesting". Well, actually it has been fun, surprising, stressful, instructive, heartwarming....and so much more. As overall experience with volunteers.

First day was covered, cause I let the Italians to stay in our farm with the promise to cook :P So they had no escape from that and the representatives of  pasta-pizza-macaroni country made a delicious pasta bolognese or ragu as they call it in Italian. It wasn't so perfect as they hoped it to be (I think they were just craving for compliments saying that) but everyone who ate it liked it a lot. So I think it's fair to say that they didn't bring any shame to their country and can still proudly call themselves Italians. 

And the Asian part of volunteers were very eager to take pictures of this historical moment  - Italian food for lunch that is made by real Italians:

For dinner we had Estonian cabbage soup made by Siiri, who should be Estonian and should not like spicy food. Siiri was even very sure that she doesn't use much pepper and doesn't like spicy for some very weird reason. But after eating her soup and living in the farm together I think the soup that would be too spicy for her is the soup that is pored into a pepper pot cause the soup had more pepper than poppy seeds cake has poppy seeds in it. Still most of us liked it and I loved it, cause I also like spicy food. Only Deja was mildly said a bit disappointed and made an announcement about it. First I was a bit annoyed about it, cause still Siiri made a big effort to cook and the tastes are different and its not possible to please everybody, at least an appreciation would be appropriate. But luckily everyone else told loudly that they like her food very much:)

Next day Deja volunteered to cook. We had oven potatoes, cucumber salad with vinegar (Slovenian way) and with sour cream (Estonian way) and for meat eaters I made minced meat sauce and Deja made sure vegetarians have something to eat - a cucumber sauce that was made with vinegar and sour cream. A very unusual way for us, but as I also love vinegar, I really liked it and wanna make it myself also. The cooking went quite smoothly I would say and lunch was very delicious. For dinner we had a lot of spicy cabbage soup still left but we added more water and cabbage and made it a bit less spicy. Siiri pored half of the pepper pot into her plate and was happy also. The lunch buffet looked like this:

Next day it was the time for Gi-Pum (Korean girl) to cook...I must admit I was a bit worried, cause the list of products she needed for food was pretty long and the amount of these products was unknown. So I had to use my expert knowledge from past years in food industry and make the calculations without knowing what exactly she will cook.....To be continued...

  

Thunder strike!

At 4am I woke up because of enourmous bang and heavy rain - the thunderstorm had struck.I usually have no problem sleeping through whatever but the worry about volunteers in the tents in thunderstorm made me sleepless, the same with my sister and also my mom woke up. I was imagining how all of the tents are leaking and all people are wet and unhappy and can't sleep because of the horrifying sounds and heavy heavy rain. I was waiting that at least some of them will run into the house wet and unhappy. It was even leaking in my room, it was a long storm....but nobody came and at about 6am I could sleep again, for some hours.

In the morning we were counting the damages...Zhang Liang was the only unhappy one, he was basically sleeping in a puddle cause his bed was under a window. He had woken up at 5am and totally wet but he was too tired to do much about it and kept on sleeping. Anu made a fire in sauna oven and everybody could dry their wet stuff in sauna.
Otherwise the second day passed already more smoothly, as an extra delicacy we had homemade pate from our lamb liver and fresh blueberry-strawberry jam, not together of course - jam for porridge and pate on bread.
As Albert was complaining about his aching back after the work with an axe, we gave him the job my grandmother is doing when she comes to farm to help us out - transferring yarn into a cone.
He hurt his finger with that also and wanted to take a flight back home but after learning the right work method, he was doing pretty good already. This is him working:

Deja had volunteered to be the cook in the kitchen for that day, we also signed Zhang Liang to assist her and wash the dishes, because of his leg and to keep him in a warmer place after getting wet in the night. Outside weather was still more like autumn with rain and wind and degrees just a bit higher than 10. Welcome to Estonian summer -  yeah, of course we have a summer in Estonia but I was at work at that day.
For lunch I was the most amazed about the vegetarian dish - Deja made a warm sour sauce from cucumbers, it was very tasty and I really want to make it again some day.
Our lunch table was this time inside as it was still pouring rain and we had a bit less people:

We had to say goodbye to our lovely Italianos before lunch already as they carried on towards our capital Tallinn.Without Danieles explanation how to use the pepper pot (at the dinner before Daniele had explained in detail how to use it without putting too much of it) Albert was so lost...he pored so much pepper into his soup that it was totally black and he had to through it away. I'm sure Siiri would have loved to eat that soup anyway but as both of us are slow Estonians, we didn't think of that before the next day. For the ones who don't know her well enough - she likes her food black. That means covered with black pepper.

In the evening we had sauna with girls, Deja was telling that in her country Slovenia having a sauna is such a luxury and only rich people do it, and at our place it was her 3rd time to have sauna at all in her whole life. I felt much more privileged after that and a bit sorry for her cause I can't imagine my life without a sauna, even if its very warm outside...So, we did almost the whole experience with hot sauna and my favorite beer - on the stones and down to our throats.This is our sauna from a picture before the war:

Just before going to bed, somebody was knocking on the door quickly and loudly and then the door opened and Albert ran in and started to blabber nervously: "There are 2 cats in my tent, they are scary and watching me with their shining eyes..." I didn't understand what he wants me to do....and I just couldn't stop laughing cause he looked quite ridiculous but I understand, I can look ridiculous also when a spider comes suddenly somewhere near me...so I kept apologizing about me laughing and tried to find out what he wants me to do...and why he didn't kick them out. The thing was that he was alone in the big tent and he really was afraid of cats. So I went to his tent, looked around with a flash light many times, didn't find any cats and taught to Albert to say: kshshsshhhh to cats when they decide to return. I must admit...the cat looks pretty scary indeed:

1st working day

Waking up at 7am in the farm is not my thing to do but in the first day I couldn't sleep more - breakfast for 9 people and preparing for all the work had to be done before 9am. Although mom promised to do the breakfast, my control-freak part had to make sure everything is under control and the pride of an ex-catering manager made me to organize the buffet table in a systematic way like we did in big conferences. And well, it took all 3 of us  - me, my mom and my sister, to think of everything, cause we did it for the first time. But I think we did pretty good.

Most of the names of volunteers I managed to learn already but the Chinese...their American names Bob and Louis didn't make much sense either and I can't call a Chinese boy, Hey, Bob! I just can't. The first days lunch was covered by Italians, but for other days we needed a system also, so I hit 2 flies at the same time as we say. We wrote all the names of the volunteers on a board and made it a cooking schedule, so everyone will have the opportunity to help in the kitchen, make some food from their own country and also we can have a better chance to learn Chinese names. After all the names, the board looks like this:

Deja (Slovenian girl) and Albert (Spanish boy) were the only ones who had seen an axe before, so they got the job of piling wood and making some of it smaller pieces with an axe. We just ignored Albert's comment about the fact he can do it only for 10 minutes in a row because his back starts to hurt.
Zhang Liang (Chinese boy) and Gi-Pum (Korean girl) started to collect the leftovers of sheep shearing - they collected the sheep wool into a big bag.
Zhuang Zimin (Chinese boy) piled up our sauna wood in front of the sauna and Claire (Australian girl) did some gardening.

Anu was the one to explain to everybody what to do and how exactly, I was responsible for the kitchen as I've worked in food business my whole life and my knowledge of farm work is still quite vague. With our lovely italianos the time in the kitchen was pure fun. Daniele and Claudio or Daniella and Claudia - as they called each other with friendly sarcasm were picking on each other constantly. The cooking team:

Our first lunch together was really good. Preparing pasta bolognese (or ragu as Italians call it) for 15 people isn't an easy target but the amount was calculated perfectly and the taste would have made their mothers very proud, I'm sure. As after 4 hours of physical work everybody was very hungry but we still found time to make a first-lunch-together-picture:

But of course everything wasn't meant to go so smoothly. Just before lunch Zhang Liang stepped into a rusty nail and just in case we took him to our family doctor who was very helpful and did the tetanus shot for him for free. My father congratulated me for that - great success, already getting rid of them one by one. (remark for the people who didn't understand: this is the typical Estonian humor)
After lunch it was time to panic again -  as it was raining, Deja discovered that somehow water had found the way into her tent and got some of her stuff wet. Mildly said she was very unhappy about it. From her first reaction I thought that something like this has happened to her tent:

Of course it was bad, her stuff got wet and it is disturbing but I guess over the years of meeting emotional people and also living together with my mom who is overemotional, I still haven't got used to it. But luckily I had borrowed another tent from my friend and Deja moved into that cause we couldn't fix the tent.

After lunch we had fun chasing sheep from one place to another. We probably had almost 1 person per 10 sheep...never had so many people doing that and we really didn't need so many people but if a Chinese boy is telling you so happily that it was his first time to touch a sheep, you just want to share the fun of having sheep with all of them and I'm sure they had fun. Friendly comments like "oh, wait there are more sheep" referring to Spaniards or "Apply your mathematics, man!" to a Chinese who tried to close the gate were just a normal part of that fun.

The evening was spent with live music, I was singing and Claudio was playing flute. Although after my 3rd song everybody left with an excuse of getting warm clothes and hot tea...I carried on singing until I had almost no voice left, cause I didn't put warmer clothes on and didn't drink any tea. This is me singing and Daniele laughing about my voice