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WWOOF-ing (working on organic farms) in Sapmi, Finland, near the Arctic circle. Sheep care, whitefish heritage share, barley, millet, and sweetgrass, circularity.
12 hr train from Helsinki and in a river valley of 200 people. Farm dad says this village has been bartering stuff since 1542, and during these two months of whitefish (siika) season, you wear tradition proud. It works like this: if you're part of the share, once a week you spend 24h ! fishing on the rapids with a few others. That night, you split the best fish into 4 buckets, then lottery it out between your fellow fishermen (entries are sticks and leaves from the ground, to keep bias afar). Then, you split the rest of the fish into 4 then 12 then 8 buckets then something like 7+ rearrangements of buckets, each with a stick-leaf-flower unbiased lottery entry of its own for the rest of the share members until the 500 fish or so are divided. This is the dance of Kalapuohi. This fish distribution happens almost every day. People eat this fish every day--it's a white fish, yes, but as fatty and pure as its cousin salmon--I had no idea delis weren't just using tilapia in whitefish salad 😵.
Jaw dropped of the routine nonchalance of this to my hosts--handing around the fish, referencing some complexity of the tradition's rules on smartphone with the same slick hands, coming home to descale, feed the guts to the cat, throw aside and salt the roe (post working with $$$ seafood at Youji's restaurant me is quaking), put the bones into the compost toilet with our number 2s, so often. Those hands have seen some shit. How can you not wanna know those hands???????
Jaw dropped of the routine nonchalance of this to my hosts--handing around the fish, referencing some complexity of the tradition's rules on smartphone with the same slick hands, coming home to descale, feed the guts to the cat, throw aside and salt the roe (post working with $$$ seafood at Youji's restaurant me is quaking), put the bones into the compost toilet with our number 2s, so often. Those hands have seen some shit. How can you not wanna know those hands???????