Rewarding work in Lapland!

Cleaning the forest for the new kennel and potato picking!

Hej hej, my name is Emily and I am currently doing volunteering work here in Lapland, Långviken, at the White Horizon Husky Farm.

I have already been here for four weeks and have four more to go. I am already sad about that even I still have some time left to spend here it is way to less!


We have done so many different, cool things like baking and cooking traditionell Swedish dishes, did a bonfire on the hills while watching the sunset and of course cuddled and played with the dogs but that you can read about in the other blog entries if you have not yet.


The last weeks big project was cleaning the forest behind the house in order to move the kennel there next year. The plan was cutting down the trees with a chainsaw, then cutting them into small pieces and carry them out following by sorting them into branches to burn and wood we can use for firewood to heat up the house in the winter. By that we learned how to use the chainsaw and discovered new muscles we never used while carrying the wood sticks on our shoulders. It were quite some tough days for us but still was a good feeling after we saw what we did when we looked at the clean and fresh looking forest.


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Another new experience we did this week was picking potatoes from a neighbours potato field that where ready to reap. The first day we did all the work byhand. First it is to pull out the plants with the root and then to dig in to the soil with a special tool for that work looking a little like a small shovel. 

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After that we had to collect the potatoes and sort them by the size. The other day the digging work was done by a tractor and we only had to collect and sort them. Incredibly much faster! But it was quite interesting to see how the machine is doing the work. As a present a few bags of potatoes were gifted for us and we made Palt, a Swedish dish, from them and invited the neighbours for dinner. As you can see you get the opportunity to collect new experiences everyday!