FOREWORD

An ancient island stands three miles inland from Lake Superior. It was once surrounded by a sea of glacial ice twenty stories deep. The island today is a survivor, and too, its modern treasure.

The Hanka Farm, a Finnish pioneer homestead, lives today forever in the year 1920. We experience here through sight, taste, touch, smell, and sound a complete working farm; the fields are plowed by horses, the blacksmith stands by his forge, the smoke sauna is fired up to cure meat by day and the human soul by night. Here cattle graze so that we may consume their milk and butter. Gardens grow, flowers bloom, the fields thrive with promised bounty, for the best farming is here, on our half of Askel Hill. Haylofts will soon ache with their pungent loads. The water is pure, the horses whinny, the swallows soar.

Beware the sharp crack of the twig when going alone in the bush, for you may spy a deer or timid bear. Be mindful of your forest path, for this highway is shared by both man and beast alike. The deaf forest silence will haunt you.

Hanka Farm, alone in the bush, on top of an island, forgotten by time like an old attic treasure.

The Hanka homestead on Askel Hill houses two old folks and four grown children, in this year 1920. Here lives Herman Hanka, the Finnish sharecropper who came to America to work the mines of Calumet, Michigan, in search of the American Dream. Herman, the pioneer, traded his first homestead in Misery Bay for a shotgun and then moved to Askel. His goodhearted wife, Miina, like Finnish women everywhere, is the “ruler of the roost.” Nik, the older son, who came to America as a child, is manager of the Hanka homestead operation, and is both farmer and businessman. Mary, the older daughter, who immigrated as well, serves as a cook in the lumber camps, and takes guff from no man. Lydia, born in Askel, is the shy daughter and lives at home, a real beauty in her youth. Jallu, the craftsman, the spinner of yarns, the neighborhood blacksmith who reshapes an auto part from Detroit into a Finnish hand tool, mends what is broken and sets life on its way anew.

Hewed from the wilderness, this family home today remains preserved. We behold in their house and grounds intricate simplicity in all hand-made objects and are amazed at the deftness of their hand as they bend steel into shape, hew rough virgin softwood timber into intricately notched and fitted log buildings, and create ethnic epicurean delicacies. It is here, in the eternity of the forest, that Time stands still. Today the farm is a clean, tidy place where the handiwork of ancient Finnish culture is passed, by touch of hand and by word of mouth, from one generation to the next, from old to young, its constant rebirth not easy to be forgotten.

'Askel' Means Step by Gene Meier, Cheryl Tervo - 2nd edition 2025