Sauna

Our sauna is unusual in that it has a loft above. When began building it, it occurred to me that by adding four extra feet of wall we could have a mini camp. So why not?


Next to the sauna one of the feeders of Cowles creek wells out of the ground. We built a wooden box and sunk it into the ground so that the water is about 5 feet deep. Since the water continually pours out a hole in the back of the box, it never warms up. It stays around 45 degrees F year round.

The sauna experience begins with fetching water from the spring and firing up the stove.


Here Marja is partially filling the wash basins. We also haul water for the hot water tank inside the sauna proper.

Of course some water is left in a bucket for throwing onto the rocks for steam.


No, we don't really wear towels in the sauna.


The rocks on the stove are from Lake Superior. The ones with holes are vesicular basalt - rocks that formed from liquid magma with gas bubbles. Here in the Copper Country some of these pockets contained copper- amygdaloidal deposits, as they were called. Believe it or not, there are sauna shops in Thunder Bay, on the very shore of Lake Superior, that sell rocks imported from Finland. Like importing ice cubes to Greenland.


After you have been in the sauna for awhile, the path to the spring beckons.


The first dip always feels the coldest. After the second or third it starts feeling bearable. If you do it too many times you run the risk however of throwing your internal thermostat out of wack and you may have a restless night feeling hot and cold at the same time.


We wear bathing suits during the spring and summer - at least until the swamp grass grows high enough to block the view from the county road. During the darkness of winter it doesn't matter.


After a dip in the dunk tank, the path to the spring leads back to the sauna quite quickly.


Evening shadows...


After several trips between the steam room and the spring, we wash up in the wash room and finally dry off and cool off on the "porch". To experience a sauna you need to take your time and do everything leisurely. If you're in a hurry, just take a shower. Of course, a shower will never get you as clean as a sauna or give you that sense of total relaxation a sauna gives, but hey, you shouldn't be relaxing anyway. Take your shower and get back to work. Someone needs to pick up the slack for loafers like me.

April

There's something about a rising full moon, especially in the spring, that excites me.


April 2. The ice had just melted from our pond and the water was frigid. The air temperature was around 70 and I had just come from a very muddy mountain bike ride and wanted to rinse off some of the mud. I didn't stay in the water very long, however.


Kalevi and Amanda. She and Sam joined us for Easter. I sensed it was a bittersweet moment for Amanda to see Kalevi again, but not Veikko.


The gang getting ready to go for a run with the pups.

Amanda had turned 22 a few days earlier, but we celebrated her birthday for a couple of days - at least until the cake ran out.

Sam trying out our new kick scooter. You can attain a fairly high speed with one dog if you are going downhill and the dog is chasing deer. I hope to begin harness training the pups in tandem with Kalevi soon.

Easter Sunday after church, everyone dressed up, time for a group photo. Jeni and Mik were unable to join us, but maybe next summer we'll get everyone together for another try.

Samanda

The second annual shovel-out-the-chicken coop. When I mentioned to a co-worker at the office that I had a real chickensh*t job at home to attend to, he laughed and said, "What else is new, it's just like your day job!" I guess there are some similarities when I think about it.

I made quite a heap of the litter, but it was so dry that I had to douse it with over 50 gallons of water. I plan to let it compost for a few more weeks before I till it into the garden.

Spring is really here...

A lazy, sunny Saturday morning.


I have to admit, you don't really work with a tractor. Dragging these trees was no work at all.


Limbing the logs with a chain saw was a little bit of work, but I quickly discovered that you can use the bucket on the tractor to plow them into a big pile.


So far we've bottle about 1-1/2 gallons of maple syrup.


This is about the best maple syrup I have ever tasted.

Jonathan practicing the score of "The Holy City". He accompanied Pastor Chuck, who sang it on Palm Sunday. It was a stirring performance, one of the best that has ever been given in our church.

The pups are almost five months old now and have a lot of energy. Fortunately they still stay quite close to us when we take them for walks.


Heini, our first girl dog. We got two beautiful daughters-in-law during the past year, so figured it was time to integrate the dog yard as well.

The snow is going early this year and our mountain biking trails will be open soon. Marja is sitting on one of hucks that our son Samuel built last summer. A huck is like a dock, except that you ride a bike off of it and there is no water below you. Now that you understand, it makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

Savu had earlier found a dead squirrel under the snow and relished every bit of it. In true husky fashion, he didn't share any of it with his sister. Of course, if Heini had found it first, she wouldn't have shared it with him either. Only humans feel guilty for taking the last piece of pie.

Marja tempting the pups with acorns. They tasted a few but weren't overly impressed.

Over the years the hundreds of tiny spruces that were growing in the field have become large trees. I decided to remove some that were shading the greenhouse, and so while I was on a roll, I took down the clump that was close to the south end of our house.

This opens the view and will also increase passive solar gain during the winter. It also just created a lot more work for me. These need to be sawed into shorter pieces and hauled off with the tractor. Some of the wood we will use for firewood, and we may square some of the logs for a future primitive savusauna (smoke sauna). The branches will be piled into large piles to be burned after the first snow next fall.

Spring Skiing

Finally, after a long thaw - some hard crust to skate on.


Before sunrise, the surface is so hard that setting an edge is difficult. The skiing is best after the sun has been up for about an hour. The surface softens just enough so that your skis edge well and you feel in total control. But after an hour or two later, it is too soft to ski on. You have to catch it when its good.



This year the Great Bear Chase was almost washed out. A two week thaw was followed by a heavy rain, creating a small lake at the bottom of the sledding hill. They might as well have run the course through it - the snow was so wet that everyone's feet were soaked.


Karl W. led out the pack in the 44k, but eventually finished 2nd.

Back from serving in Iraq, Eric H did the long race also.

Mik finishing strong in the classic. No teddy bear this time. His klister was loaded with pine needles.

Jonathan (behind the guy in the red) going up the hill in the 22k skate.

Finishing strong in a drizzle.

Jeni rang her cowbell with enthusiasm but was glad to have a warm coat. There was a raw, damp wind coming out of the east at the finish line.

Sugar Month

The Ojibwe Indians called March the Sugar Month. With simple tools and birch containers they gathered unbelievable amounts of maple sap which they boiled into sugar using stones heated over fires. The sugar naturally had a lot of "impurities" but seemed to be a remarkably healthy part of their diet.

My sap collecting equipment consists of a hand drill, plastic spouts and tubing, and recycled ice cream pails. Perhaps when I retire I will get a larger evaporator, tap more trees, and collect the sap through a network of interconnect tubing, but right now 10-12 trees provide about all the sap we can handle.

Like many an enjoyable hobby, you can turn it into mind numbing work and make a small fortune out of it - provided you begin with a large fortune, but so far I have resisted the temptation.


I like to drill the holes knee-high for the simple reason that I can support the end of the drill against my leg and lean on it. Cranking a hand brace requires real effort.


The auger bit goes in about 2 inches. If the tree is a good one, the peel of wood is wet and sap starts running as soon as you pull the drill out.


Tapping in the plastic spigot.


I guess this is literally tapping trees.


Nothing like good old plastic, is there?


My sugar bush are the maple trees behind my parents house. These trees were left for shade by a Finnish farmer who was exceptional in that he didn't mind having trees near his house. Seems like most of the Finnish settlers had little use for them - when you have to clear land by hand, trees probably start seeming like enemies. The house was built in 1895 or thereabouts, I believe. These trees were already big when I was a child. I climbed some of them. This knoll was also the first "hill" I ever skied down.


Maple sap flows best when the night temperatures fall to about 20 degrees and the day temperatures rise above 40 degrees. This means you need sunny days and clear nights - which is the most pleasant weather you can imagine for working outdoors - which is one of the big reasons collecting sap is so enjoyable.


Of course we are not the only ones who enjoy the sunny weather. Our honeybees have been taking advantage of the spring weather to make their cleansing flights. They are called so because each bee will drop a load before it returns to the hive. The snow around the hives is quite yellow on a day like this.


The Sullivans came over to tap a few more trees...



Of course, tapping trees wasn't the only activity of the day.

We poured the first day's sap - about 3 gallons - into a pot and fired up the evaporator

I have read that it takes about 40 gallons of sap to produce 3 gallons of syrup. I haven't boiled sap that often or kept accurate records, but that seems to be about right. I know for a fact that it takes a lot of firewood to boil even a gallon of syrup. I will refill this pot several times until I have about 2-3 inches of syrup on the bottom. You know it is syrup when it starts to bubble into a froth that rises to near the top of the pot. I then remove the pot and do the final boiling on an electric burner -which gives me a bit more control.

My patented Snuffy Smith evaporator consists of a steel box with 3 ten inch holes (apparently it once was junction box in a large air handling system) and old galvanized bucket, a length of stovepipe, and a license plate to reduce the air intake. The thing is so ugly that it is almost beautiful. In a way it reminds me some breeds of dogs that seem to have been developed for the sole purpose of looking ugly. At any rate, my evaporator is such a cobbled together deformity that it makes me laugh whenever I look at it. Suprisingly, it actually works moderately well.