Hi....now from sunny Estonia! Yes that's right, the spring has sprung with unbelievable energy. Trees literally exploding into leaf. Once day barren branches, the next a panoply of green. Nature is on steroids here as the time for growing, flowering and fruiting is short. Somehow these plants know this and adapt their growing patterns to suit. This ecological frenzy is contagious, infecting the whole community. Everybody is 'out and about'. Festivals, markets, concerts, gardening, and of course opening up the summer house for the season.

Spring has sprung in Eesti

I promised to tell you about the 'summer house'. In Oz we are familiar with the 'holiday house', usually, though not always , down by the beach. A place to go for weekends throughout the year and maybe an extended time in summer for swimming, fishing, sailing or just general relaxation. The Aussie holiday house owes its existence to a relatively affluent society with both time and money to spend enjoying the beauties of the Australian climate and environment. On the other hand, the Estonian summer house has an entirely different genesis, one deeply entwined in the complex political and social upheavals of Estonia's recent past
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The Summer House at Kulitse where we have stayed quite often.

After the First Word War, Estonia experienced a brief period of independence ( just 20 years) for the first time in nearly two millenniums. During this time their industry and development in the urban areas was quite prolific, leading the way amongst the countries of their region in many aspects of design and manufacture. In rural areas modernisation was slower and small farms, often 10 to 20 acres, still dominated the rural scene when Estonia came under Russian occupation again 1939-44. Russian agricultural policy was to establish large collective farms, called 'kolhoz' and 'sovhoz'. To achieve this, the government forcible acquired all these small family owned farms, aggregating them into large agriculture enterprises. Families were moved out of their rural houses into apartment blocks constructed by the Russian government and assigned to work on the kolhoz. Often these rural families were assigned to a kolhoz in an different area, a technique the Russians used to help break down traditional social order in an effort to reduce resistance to their regime. This action antagonised the Estonian rural population whose families had owned and farmed these lands for generations. Resistance was futile, and if publicly expressed usually resulted in exile to Siberia or even the firing squad. Gradually, reluctantly, life settled down and the collective farms operate throughout the 60 years of Russian occupation ending in 1991/2.  Not everything was negative. The apartment blocks, though somewhat crudely constructed, did provide an amenity not often present in the little country houses of the Estonian rural area. Heating, provided by central boiler stations, electricity and better insulation were some of the benefits of the apartments. Regular 'paid' work, nearby schools, organised and provided holidays also had some added benefit. Nevertheless there was wide spread anger and grief at the loss of those traditional family plots of land, and their location, boundaries and ownership were not forgotten through the long and dark times of occupation.

Estonia's current independence and nationhood came about in the early 90's in conjunction with the disintegration of the USSR during Gorbachev's presidency. After the initial exuberant celebrations had subsided the new fledgling Estonian government (Republic of Estonia ) was confronted with a  difficult decision in rural policy. When Russia withdrew from the Estonian rural area, all collective farms ceased to operate. The machinery and plant were removed, buildings often destroyed (out of spite in some instances) and the market, Russia, closed. Ownership of the land was now officially vested in the new government of Estonia. What to do? The government had neither the resources or the desire to farm the land itself. Descendants of the families dispossessed of their land 60 years ago believed, justifiably so, that the land belonged to them. Meantime the world had moved on, and small acreage no longer constituted a viable commercial farm, and in addition, this new generation neither had the finance or often the skills to establish a rural enterprise that would be financially viable. In the end the Estonian government took the view that the land should be returned to the families from whom it had been "stolen". Now, often urbanised families, had ownership and access to scattered small blocks of land, many with old, scantily equipped cottages. There was little or no real agricultural industry as such in those early days. To the people, this was justice, vindication of their rightful ownership, and they held these little plots in high esteem in memory of their forebears who had been forced off the land. The early days of nationhood for Estonia were not easy, and food shortages were among some of the problems facing this emerging little nation. Families who had received back their small family plot and hopefully a cottage started to use these properties for growing fruits and vegetables, preserving many of them for the long winter months. Wh.ere skills and money was available, cottages were renovated and made more liveable. Nevertheless, when winter came and the snow threatened families moved back to their apartments and their centres of employment, as these farm cottages were now not capable of being lived in through the cold months.


So the "Summer House" was born. A gestation and birth forged by both the dark times of the occupation and the light times of independence. Shaped, as always, by the larger movements of technological advance and social change. History, by its very nature is episodic, new pages are written every day, new eras emerge and evolve. This story is not over, it is never-ending. The "Summer House" itself is evolving. Food is readily available year round from the modern supermarket. Convenience is becoming the byword of a modern society, so the task of growing and preserving ones own produce is less palitable. Mobility, travel, work life diversity, all of these factors are influencing the evolution of the Summer House and its place in the life of Estonian families. Agriculture in Estonia has developed enormously from that first visit we had 14 years ago. Now broad acres of cropping, large dairy farms with up to date technology are common place in the rural areas of Estonia. Foreign capital and the aggregation of small land holdings either through rental agreements or purchase facilitating this growth in agricultural production. For the moment the Summer House remains. Maybe it is evolving more into a Holiday House as we have in Australia. History alone will tell the future story just as it shaped its past. My personal hope is that Estonians will find a way to preserve this history, to maintain those connections even as they pursue their place in a modern world.

Well as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, spring has come albeit late, so summer is just around the corner. Our neighbouring family have loaded the car and left to spend summer at their Summer House. The tradition lives on. By the way, cars and driving is another aspect to life in Estonia that differs in some ways from our experience. Maybe next blog we can talk about life on the wrong side the road. See you then.