Angela's Blog | November 2023

Greetings from a deeply frozen Mossy/Frosty Bottom. It's currently -10 degrees outside here and I am sitting at the breakfast table enjoying a cup of coffee, watching two mice frantically running around in the kitchen. I've accepted that they are also inhabitants of this house and they seem to become bolder and bolder by the day! I am somewhat perplexed and amazed by their seeming immunity to my presence, but I suppose it's nice in a way to have a bit of company from small furry creatures. Out the window, there is a white-tailed deer grazing away in the snow, which is always a joy to see and a sight I still can't quite get used to. Ah, the joys of forest living!

For those of you who don't know me yet, I'm Angela, Daniel's partner. I've been featured in some of Daniel's videos but preferred to stay behind the scenes, because even though I am an extrovert and a very chatty person in real life, I am extremely camera-shy. However, to mark new beginnings in a new country, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to connect with you, as I've been meaning to do this for quite a while.

So, you might be wondering how I ended up becoming a permanent resident of Mossy Bottom. To provide a bit of context to this, I’ll explain my background…I was born in South Korea, but moved to Romania when I was three. The house I grew up in backed on to the Carpathian mountain range and the nature and environment were perfectly suited to outdoor activities. In the winter, there was so much snow that going sledding after school became part of my daily routine. In the warmer months, we were frequently visited by brown bears, who would come up with the most creative solutions to raid our rubbish bins. And in the autumn, I have fond memories of regularly burying myself in the beautifully coloured leaves. It was also in Romania that I’d met my friend, Caleb, whose family had emigrated to Romania from the US at the time and who now lives in a traditional Mongolian yurt in Oregon. Looking back, Caleb and his family, who are to this day crazy, adventure-loving people, were a source of profound inspiration to me, even though I hadn’t realized it at the time. Despite having very little and living in an old log cabin with no separate bedroom, no shower, and an outside long drop toilet, they were the happiest people I’d ever known. My neighbours growing up all had their own little orchards and were broadly self-sufficient - something that my mother in particular appreciated, since the majority of what we ate was bought from neighbours. All in all, it was a happy childhood in the sticks of Romania.

As many young people do, I moved to a big city, Berlin, after graduating high school in search of better career opportunities. I worked for an airline for a few years and then studied medicine, something I’d wanted to do because I have a younger sister with disability and was always curious to know how the human body works. I’d met amazing friends there and culturally, it was a great fit, but living in a large city, I’d really missed being out in the wild and felt disconnected from nature. My boyfriend at the time was a Scotsman and we would watch YouTube videos about self-sufficiency and tiny house living and daydream about buying a croft in the Highlands of Scotland one day and working on the land. But alas, life had other plans for me.

After becoming single, I was more determined than ever to make the Highland croft dream come true on my own. To get a better idea of what is involved in growing food and maintaining a homestead in a similar climate, I was looking for volunteering opportunities in that region and one fateful day, a friend sent me a link to Daniel’s very first video, saying that it might be a good opportunity for me to volunteer and learn from, especially since it was a relatively young person trying to make it on his own in a remote location. So I’d sent Daniel a message about wanting to volunteer at Mossy Bottom, and that spring, I got the opportunity to experience Mossy Bottom in full bloom. There were so many seeds growing, so many birds chirping, and the luscious green was unlike anything I’d ever seen. Being surrounded by nature and working on the land, I knew that this was definitely the life I wanted to pursue and felt really inspired by Daniel, who put so many hours every day into maintaining the homestead and growing food in a sustainable way.

Before meeting Daniel in person, we had chatted back and forth and had already established that we had a lot in common and had similar pursuits in life, with the exception of medicine of course, which Daniel, like most people, tries to stay away from as much as possible. We had sort of oddly connected even before meeting in person, but volunteering had sealed that connection, and when Covid happened, I spent as much time as I could at Mossy Bottom because all the lectures became digital. At Mossy Bottom, I became immersed in the lifestyle I’d dreamed of and had my own responsibilities and a daily homestead routine, such as feeding the animals, weeding, watering the plants if needed, and maintaining the honesty box, something I especially enjoyed doing. In a world in which we import so much of what we eat from places halfway across the globe, I felt a sense of purpose in packing as much of our organic, home-grown, local produce in the boxes as I could and it was heart-warming to get feedback in many different forms from the local residents. I remember reading a lovely hand-written note from a young girl, Mia, who had enjoyed our strawberries so much that she wanted to order a box full the next day for her 10th birthday. Memories like these will definitely stay with me wherever we are.

This is not to say, however, that life at Mossy Bottom was not without its challenges. Some of you might remember the video that Daniel made two years ago about turning a trash pile into a beautiful bee garden. For months, we were both digging endlessly by hand in the rain, from early morning until late at night with our head-torches, extracting bits of trash from the soil…But during the process, we’d also found some hidden treasures buried in the ground that would never have otherwise re-surfaced, such as a plastic bag with photos from the previous occupant’s, or May’s, era, or beautiful, hand-crafted ornaments. And the end result, a beautiful garden full of flowers that bees could collect nectar from to their heart’s content, made the monumental effort all worth it.

The experiences at Mossy Bottom in Ireland were a great learning foundation and I’m hoping that a lot of this knowledge and know-how will be transferable to our new life here in Finland. I am so excited about being able to grow vegetables again, but this time, in a climate with less rain and more reliable sun in the warmer months of the year. The one thing I was most looking forward to when leaving Ireland was leaving the midges behind, because I was the ultimate food source for them and their bites caused me to look like someone who’s just had the bubonic plague but, alas, I have been warned by neighbours now several times that I must brace myself for the midges AND mosquitoes. So if I don’t feature in any of Daniel’s videos in the summer here in Finland, you’ll know why!

I must admit, I didn’t want to leave Ireland because I had just made some really lovely friends there and was just beginning to get used to the Irish culture post-Covid restrictions. As an extrovert, the Irish “craic” suited me quite well and I didn’t know how I’d integrate in Finland, supposedly a nation of introverts. I didn’t want to stand out like a sore thumb. But having been here for about two months now, I can honestly say it’s been a wonderful experience. There are community activities happening every second week in the village hall, so I’ve been attending them with our little one, Juno. The people in our nearest village have been most welcoming and always make an effort to try to teach me a few words here and there in Finnish, even though most of our conversations are carried out in English or German with a bit of Swedish…For the moment, at least. We also have really lovely neighbours, near and far, who always try to help us out and have been most generous to us. At the moment we are enjoying warm pumpkin soups almost every dinner using the ginormous home-grown pumpkin that our nearest neighbour, Ollie, has brought us. Our other neighbour, Hans, has kindly offered to teach me Finnish over the winter, which I think I’ll take him up on once my Finnish reaches a level at which I can have more fluid conversations…I’m not going to lie though, I am struggling with learning it immensely, since it doesn’t bear resemblance to any of the languages I know. But knowing that our local dentist is a German man who has moved here later on in life and speaks fluent Finnish gives me hope that it is possible and achievable. Fingers crossed!

I’m sorry it has taken me this long to post this, my first blog - I’m not a natural storyteller like Daniel, so it’s been a bit of a bumpy ride for me, even though I enjoyed writing it! I hope you all enjoy the month of December…It’s the cosiest time of the year, I find, and I’m hoping to get a bit better at knitting this winter, as there’s definitely a need for knitted things here. We’re certainly very excited about Christmas and can’t wait to celebrate our first joint white Christmas here in Finland (I hope I don’t jinx it now and all the snow melts on Christmas Eve!). I'll be posting another podcast around Christmas, so for those of you who are interested, watch this space. Have a lovely weekend everyone - I hope you’re all snuggled up warm, wherever you are. If you have any questions or topics you’d like me to talk about in future podcasts, please feel free to comment below and I’ll try my best to respond.