The Beginning (2023)

Early 2023 was an exciting time, as we somehow stumbled across our wonderful home on marketplace. After a few messages back and forth, establishing it was indeed for sale, we decided we would love to fly out and view it. Unfortunately, given the timing, we couldn't see it right away and we knew that other people were interested.

So, we put our trust in the world & kept our fingers crossed...and as it turned out, the other potential buyers couldn't raise the funds, or wanted 'more farming land'. We got a call in March from the vendors asking if we were still interested and jumped on a plane that same week!

It turned out to be a mammoth road-trip, with us hiring a car in Helsinki and driving ~400km north to visit the property. This was an adventure in itself, as the roads were snow covered and it was my first experience of driving in artic conditions. We arrived at Perkaussalmi on Sunday and 2 hrs later, after falling in love with the place, we had made a verbal offer (which in Finland is binding).

We then drove back and on the Monday (from the airport) emailed a formal written offer, which by the time we got back to the UK - had been accepted. Then, 4 weeks later, at the beginning of April we handed over our savings and bought our home to be.

Pretty hardcore 4 weeks I reckon :-)

The photos below are the images we took when we visited and fell in love with the place.

The Summer

We spent 4 weeks over the summer in our wonderful wilderness, getting to know the land (well a small part at least) and experiencing 'camping in our house'. We didn't really have any furniture, or even a bed. The bed arrived on day 2!

We got to work on some interior stripping and 'tidying of the land'. The latter entailed removing about 2km of electric fence. We also discovered that between April & August the grass / undergrowth grows rather quickly & densely. We couldn't actually access our lake! The only equipment we had was an old and slightly rusty scythe. We gave it a go and after a few days we ached in places we never knew could ache. We also discovered 2 or 3 ground wasp nests, when we were clearing our paths - that wasn't fun.

One of the wasp nests was discovered by Helena, who was leading the way with the scythe, just out of my line of sight. When she 'hit' the nest, she quite rightly ran in the opposite direction at full pelt - scythe aloft. Unfortunately for me, all I saw was Helena running towards me at speed, with a scythe...I had a bit of a moment....

Our lad came out to join us for a while, to check out our new home. We spent a lot of time just enjoying the nature & sense of quiet - it really was magical.

Oh yeah, the other interesting thing that happened was that we met one of our amazing neighbours - well he lives 10k away. Raimo just turned up on his vespa and introduced himself...what a star. He is very energetic to say the least. He is a filmmaker and cinematographer, who as it turns out is pretty well known within the country. The unexpected outcome of this new friendship, is that he is now making a documentary of our move to the wilderness. We started filming over the summer...and I also have a radio interview lined up as well.