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:
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:
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