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

Got lost looking for love...

Morning before arrival was full of panic about things still undone and mixed with trying to do those things as fast as possible - fixing the tents, waiting for some more tents to arrive, cleaning the house, buying loads of food (with the minor incident with milk that got under all other food and was leaking and left traces all over the shop I was walking) and constant texting with Italians about the way they should go.

Australian girl had arrived on Monday and felt quite home already, so next we were expecting the Italians to arrive, they started to cycle from Valga at 9.40am...should have arrived at 4pm the latest...but wind, Estonian "big mountains" and their romantic nature were not on their side. They went looking for a place called Lõve that they found is equal to the word Love and they got lost in their way looking for love. Of course they just explained it as adapting to Estonian slow nature, that they were so slow to arrive but finally they did tired and hungry at 7pm but still lucky enough to get a wonderful oven cooked lamb for dinner. 
At 8.05pm we picked up the big group from bus station in Viljandi and already on the road back to farm I knew that we are gonna have lots of fun together, cause all of them seemed very active and talkative and different at the same time. By midnight almost everybody had taken the shower and I managed to go to sleep also, the volunteers accommodation area in tents looks like that (4 smaller tents and one big army tent):

10 volunteers? Are you crazy??!!

"How many people we will have at the same time? Ten??? Are you crazy...I will go away!!!" said my father when he finally realized how many volunteers we will have at the same time in our farm for 2,5 weeks. But that was one week before their arrival, not much he could do to prevent this happening anymore...

Today is Saturday, it's exactly 3 days since our farm turned into an international work camp with 10 people from many different countries. The work camp is organized by EstYes organization that sent us a nice selection of nationalities  - 2 Spanish, 1 Slovenian, 2 Chinese, 1 Korean plus Estonian group leader. And as we say in Estonia  - where there is some, there will be more - through workaway.com we received an Australian girl and from couchsurfing camp in Riga I invited to join us 2 italians who were on their way through Estonia on bycicles. This invitation took a lot of courage from my side, not knowing about the reaction of my sister and my father. Well...it all went good anyway, I started to laugh hysterically together with my mom while trying to tell the news to my sister and she thought that we are under some drug or alcohol, so realizing that it was just 2 more people, she took it quite easily and my dad just said that he will go with duty assignment to a foreign country for that time but of course he didn't do that. In stead he took a vacation from work to help us.
BEFORE 
Before the arrival of this big group we had "some" preparations to do...borrowing tents from friends and from army, buying mattresses and thinking through the rules, working and eating schedules, arranging work that volunteers can do and of course the most important - building a toilet outside. Choosing the place and getting the approval of all the family members took about the same time than building the toilet itself. The hole was dug by our wonderful Australian volunteers Rosie and Heds in half a day. They also made a smiley face of stones in there, not that anyone could see it after the toilet had put into use but we always know it's there:)
The most difficult part  - building the toilet itself on top of the hole  - was completed by Anu, my sister, who studies native construction. And the result is amazing  - the most beautiful toilet with the most beautiful view I have ever seen, and I know that I am not the only one who thinks that. You can get an idea how it looks like from here: