HOME(S)

Or, why we have two.


Sometimes it may seem confusing posting pictures and stories of two kitchens and two different bedroms, from two homes. Where do I-we- really live?

Well, we live both in the apartment uptown in the city, and out on the farm. For me the city home has been my main home, for my husband the farm.


It is not uncommon over here to have a "summer house" or country/weekend cabin, either owned or rented for the summer, often shared within the family trough generation(sisters, parents, uncles aunts and cousins and so on), and often rather plain and simple without running water. Like my family's place in the archipelago, bought in the 1930's, which does not even have electricity, or the small cabin from my grandmother's side. But the farm house is not like that.



Even though we tend to stay out on the farm during the weekends and holidays and practically the whole summer, it's not what one would call a leisure or vacataion house or a weekend home. My husband grew up on the farm and was living there when we met. He now runs the farm with his brother, who live in another house on the premises. So there is a lot of work involved, and Eddi often goes out to the farm after work to work some more, even when we stay in the city.

The farm is about (a little less than) an hour away from town, so it's possible to live there and work in the city.

But why do we then have the flat in town? It of course results in a double set of bills. And it can be a bit annoying dragging  kids and cats andthings between two places. And as I sometimes tend to joke, hard to keep plants alive in two homes.

Well, there area lot of things to it,  but in short it has been the most -and only- practical solution. Eddi's two older boys, now in school and high school,  live with us every second week and their mother lived in the city so they went to school there. Our flat is close to their school, my studio and Eddi's work. And while I was working from 5:30 in the morning or until night in the harbour the shorter the way to work the better.


We rent the flat from my grandmother and after I sold my old small flat downtown we renovated it before we moved in. It's in the same part of town where I grew up in (so we both have ended up in our childhood homes, sort of).


We have been renovating and renewing the farmhouse too, as you know. And as it tends to be with big old houses it is something of a never-ending process, and there is still a lot to do. Like open up the roof and take out some more windows so we can get a few rooms more and more use of the upstairs. And open the floor down to the ground in another room downstairs before it can be renewed...

As we have been renovating the house on the farm we have also been staying there more.  One day we will move there out permanently, as keeping two places and going back and forth is not the most economic solution.  But if that is sooner or later is yet to see, now it's one week at a time.

And well, one week at at time is actually literal, as from the start of this year, with a very short notice - as everything tends to be so from that behalf- the boys moved with their mother (for every second week still) to a small town west of the farm, and now go to school in the countryside. So from now on, for now, we will basically live every second week out on the farm and every second in the city.

Bedside in the city. (this is my most pinned and shared image btw. Sadly not the most credited one...)