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: