Beautiful Pine Grove

We live in a village of Männisalu, which translates into Pine Grove. Our forests are full of different kind of trees, pine is defenitely one of them. We also have oaks, spruces, maples, birches, willows, aldens, mountain ashes and few others. There is lots of forest in the area where we live. Some has been cut, but luckily they also plant a lot of trees every year.

As I was driving kids home one day I noticed how beautiful the short 5 mile trip really is. Especially right now when Estonia's trees and meadows are in a very nice shade of green - a bright fresh green of new leaves and grass blades. Then I decided to take some photos of the sights I pass by as I am heading home from Viluste School.

The first farm house in our village is habitated only during summer month, as the owner is a high school chemistry teacher in Northern Estonia and during the school year she only comes for weekends. Her brother, also our villager, helps her to keep it in order. She is a passionate bee keeper. The rest of the farms in our village are full year around.

There is nice little birch grove around the next curve, which is currently being thinned. There are always so many anemones in spring time, the bottom of the forest floor looks like it is covered with a white carpet.

Next three farms are very close to each other. The reason for that is that originally their lands belonged to the same family and were divided up between the heirs quite recently. So they are also all relatives in those three farms.

One of them is rising cows. The milk truck comes every day and few villagers, who don't have a cow but still like farm fresh milk, collect their daily milk from them as well.

The other is rising sheep. They are also local veterinarians and very helpful neighbours. They inherited 8 sheeps from his father. By now, they have 120 sheeps. It is their life style. They still make hey and rake it together by hand, they let it dry on the meadow and when they are done bringing it in to their barn, the barn smells like heaven. And they enjoy it!
Everything in their property is in a perfect order. Some of the firewood for kitchen range is axed so thin, that you don't even need a paper to ignite a fire. And it will be a fierce and hot one, perfect for cooking.

Next household is our mail box holder. All the village mail boxes are in one place to make mailman's job little easier. The distances are so big between farms and as the weather during most of the year is rather tough, it just makes sence.

Our closest neighbours are a retired couple. Their grown up children are living away from childhood home. One of the daughters is a forestry teacher in a vocational school and she helped her parents to plan and plant a new future forest between us on an unused field.

And this is how we approach our residence, the beautiful Leppoja farm in the end of the driveway.

Pictures by KJ