estwärts

After getting a lot done in the last few weeks and starting some work, it’s now time to finish off the last open building sites. For one day, Jolie and Uli are supporting us on their transit from Tallinn to Tartu. They are just as enthusiastic about the place as the rest of our late shift crew and help our small group with some final work. For example, Mille, Vera, Jakob and Jolie really get stuck into peeling trees so that the felled trees can be turned into pest-free larger and smaller building material.

At least as important seems to be the exciting race with ourselves for the longest strip of peeled bark, which eventually reaches a remarkable length of over 2 meters!

Finally, Uli, Lionel and Mille make the second barn door towards the road accessible and, above all, provisionally lockable so that the wind can’t pull it out of the beams along with the hinges. With some fiddling, new hinges, small modifications to a gate wing and “gate stoppers”, like the gate on the other side alredz received, are completed in one morning to prevent the gate from swinging open.

The large roof construction site on the barn, which has kept Tobias, Jakob and Jorge particularly busy over the last week, is now finally finished with Jakob and Jorge taking down the scaffolding. After we had actually estimated a third person for this work in the morning, the two of them surprise us at the next break with the realization that everything has been taken down and only the transport is still to be done.

The result of the barn construction site is impressive - after we sorted, cleared away or drove away all the building materials scattered around the yard on Tuesday, it becomes clear what has been achieved. The buildings are still the same as four weeks ago, they stand together in the small clearing under the Estonian sky, which is still sunny. But the greenery under which everything has sunk over the last two decades has been cut back, revealing the first visible repairs.

While tidying up the leftovers from the last few weeks, we keep noticing how much has been done here. Alone the weight of scrap metal that was collected from recycling the old construction wood is astonishing and even if tidying up in itself is one of the more tiresome tasks, it can be really nice with stories like this behind it.

It’s nice to see that we’ve been able to finish work on the buildings as well as in the garden. The two magnificent larches have more light because there are less thujas and spruces blocking them and the buildings have more air because the greenery has been trimmed back by a few meters. On the main house, the ventilation grilles that Tobias has refitted now help to keep larger animals out and the air coming in at the same time. As if the yard was breathing a sigh of relief, the flowers of an autumn crocus have been stretching out towards us in front of the main house since the weekend.

From Tuesday to Wednesday afternoon, we really work hard and build back the camp infrastructure, sort tools, plan the material logistics and pack everything from A to Z in boxes and cartons. Once we’ve finally closed up the sauna and Tobias has hammered the last nail into the boards of the main house, we can breathe a sigh of relief.

Finally, we stop by Marju and Jaan’s place, unfortunately a little, and celebrate the successful first building activities on Rihula with delicious snacks and non-alcoholic sparkling wine. To many more and the revival of this wonderful place just before Sirtsi Moor!