Fishing and Mustila Arboretum

Week three started out busy for the Cal Poly students.  We had Silviculture in the morning where we reviewed the contents of our paper about FinnMETKO and our first practical forestry skills field trip.  In the afternoon Anna Tall gave us a Crop Science lecture about agricultural production in Finland.  We had many questions and learned a lot about what kind of food is grown, how much of it stays in Finland, how the climate effects cultivation, the importance of agriculture to Finland’s economy and much more. Afterwards she took us out to the school fields to see some of the crops students had grown. There were all kinds of grains, herbs and vegetables as well as experimental plots where different amounts of fertilizer had been applied for yield analysis. It is clear that students here get great hands-on experience in their field (literally) before graduating.

After our lessons we were driven to Athari where we went fishing on one of Finland’s beautiful lakes with a fisher named Ari.  We had great luck, reeling in two fish each! The varieties were perch and pike. We kept about half of them and threw the rest back to grow some more.  It was awesome see forested land, cottages and a beautiful sunset out on the water in good company, especially when the fish were biting!

We stayed in Toumarniemi, a school forest facility, Monday night so we could leave at 5:30am with the other students for a trip to Mustila Arboretum in southern Finland. Covering 120 hectares, this is the largest arboretum in Finland and has been a test site for exotic conifer, broad-leaved tree, vines, bulbs, perennials, and shrub species since 1902.   As I mentioned earlier from Anna’s lecture, Finland’s cold climate has a dramatic effect on the types of plants that it can support.  The harsh winters kill off a lot of introduced species making them unsustainable to plant, no matter how pretty or useful they might be. However, over the 110 years of operation many foreign species and hybrids have been found to thrive at the arboretum and are on display for the public, some even for purchase.

We were taken on a tour to see the collection of vegetation and though we missed the famous rhododendron and azaleas blooming in summer there was much more to see, especially for forest lovers. The autumn leaves of the deciduous trees provided beautiful colors and the assortment fungi found all over was highly entertaining in itself.  The stands of spruce, hemlock, cedar and fir were impressive, showing influence from other regions such as Siberia, Japan and North America.  The decades of hard work dedicated to finding species suitable for the site is something the workers are proud of, as they very well should be.  Seeing this arboretum was highly educational and provided a lot of contrast to the Mediterranean climate we are used to in California.

Anna teaching us about the student crop projects