Kat­telus in the older days

Towards the end of the 16th cen­tury one of the farm­houses beca­me a cav­alry esta­te of the king­dom of Swe­den. Due to tax exemp­tion it even­tu­ally over­took the other houses. Around the mid­dle of the 17th cen­tury the­re was only one house left in the vil­lage. Later the esta­te was divi­ded by inher­i­tance and through­out the 19th cen­tury the own­wer­ship took many turns from one to anot­her. The begin­ning of the 20th cen­tury saw all the houses join­ing into one farm con­sti­tut­ing the who­le of the vil­lage once again. That’s when the ances­tors of the cur­rent own­ers acqui­red the farm. Today the 5th gen­er­a­tion of the fam­ily is in duty. Dur­ing the 20th cen­tury var­i­ous parts of the farm have been sub­di­vided for set­tle­ment, first for relie­ved ten­ant farm­ers and then after the World War II for refu­gees from Karelia.

The vil­lage of Kat­telus has always been a tra­di­tional farm­ing one even though fore­stry and fish­ing have also been impor­tant for liv­ing. At least from the 16th cen­tury onwards the­re has been farm­ing to some extent on the fields of the village.

Source: Mäke­lä, Mat­ti (1998). Kar­jalo­h­jan Kat­telus — kylä ja tila — asu­tushis­to­riaa, omis­ta­jia, vil­jeli­jöitä. Self published.

Until around 1990 the Kat­telus farm was essen­tially a typ­i­cal tra­di­tional Fin­nish farm. Dai­ry cat­tle pro­duc­tion was cea­sed in 1983 whi­le pig breed­ing con­tin­ued as far as 1999. Farm­ing has pre­vailed through­out the years regard­less. Fore­stry plays an impor­tant part as always. In ear­ly 1980ies the first few cot­tages were ren­ted for hol­i­day guests. To the mid-​ni­ne­ties even more was inves­ted to this kind of activ­i­ties. Some new cot­tages were built for short-​ti­me rent­ing and also other func­tions kept emerg­ing. Ear­ly in the new mil­len­nium the old sto­ne ware­house and adjoin­ing sta­ble were ren­o­vated to facil­i­tate grand fes­tiv­i­ties, wed­dings, birth­day par­ties etc. In the mid-​ni­ne­ties all farm­ing was switc­hed over to orga­nic. Recent­ly reti­red mas­ter of the farm was keen­ly inter­ested in dig­ging arti­fi­cial ponds and cul­ti­vat­ing cray­fish in them as also in pur­su­ing var­i­ous other mac­hi­ne-​dri­ven exca­va­tion pro­jects as an entrepreneur.

The lat­est suc­ces­sion of the Kat­telus farm took place in the begin­ning of 2011. Today we are ded­i­cated to fur­ther devel­op­ing orga­nic farm­ing and to pro­vid­ing qual­ity acco­mo­da­tion for our guests. We feel also nec­es­sary to ful­fill our per­sonal val­ues in busi­ness prac­tices and espe­cially to refi­ne our envi­ron­men­tal respon­si­bil­ity. We feel bles­sed to be able to live in the coun­try­side and to rai­se our chil­dren here in this beau­ti­ful environment.