Home museum

Blacksmith Iisakki Rauvola, together with his wife Amanda, moved to Kokemäki’s Mäki-Vekara in 1915. The removal vehicle was driven by the future owner of the Verkara house, Kalle, family name, Anttila, who soon began to be called, in the old Kokemäki tradition, Vekara’s Kalle. The hosts are also known and recognised nowadays in accordance to the name of the countryside house, although the laws on surnames also give everyone an official name.

Aunt Amanda bought the Mäki-Vekara together with her brother Nestor. Nestor's eldest son Kalle began to grow things at the farm in 1915, and he first bought back his father's share in the early 1920s and in 1928, Amanda's share, when she moved to be a freeholder in Rauma. Kalle was underage in 1915, in other words under 24 years old, so the farm was formally under the name of his father, Nestor, although never moved to Vekara.

Many of the necessary supplies and tools required in running the house came in the removal vehicle. Mäki-Vekara had been driven to bankruptcy due to the actions of its previous owners, thus many of the required tools were necessary to bring and purchase for Amanda and Kalle to being able to start house-keeping at Vekara.

Vekara is one of the houses of Sonnila, with its main building being from the 1790s and moved to its present location. Additionally to the main building, there are still buildings such as Vekara’s old granary and a blacksmith’s workshop which are from times before Kalle’s ownership. The workshop was where Iisakki Rauvola, known as a skilled village smith, made his tools. The other farm buildings were built by Kalle or during the times of the following owners, Tuomo, Matti and Tommi.

An idyllic courtyard

The barn building was completed after the civil war and the dryer-bar building in 1952. A large number of buildings have also been lost from the yard, such as an old residential building after the war, as well as two floored buildings.

The courtyard area of Vekara has kept its ideal during the Anttila’s time and new constructions have been performed to follow their spirit, evidence of which is the residential building of Tommi’s family located in the courtyard of Vekara. Its a pity a windmill was dismantled after the war. The grinding stone of the river mill however tells of past generations.

Vekara’s old artefacts, through Kalle and Tuomos’ actions, were collected in the old grain granary, which now operates as the Antilla Vekara museum. The museum artefacts began to be collected in the 1950s, when Tuomo, my father, was in the habit of putting aside old household goods. When the granary was no longer be used for the storage of grain, it became the ideal location for the old items that tell of the life’s work of the family’s males.

Old goods were placed in the grain storeroom

At first, only old goods were collected in the granary, when they had to be stored somewhere, but in the late 1960s, the granary began to form a real museum, which tells the history of one family and one farm. Isaac’s workshop, next to the barn, was the location for the placing of horse equipment and carts.

Tuomo's enthusiasm in regards to home district matters led him for decades to participate in the operations of Kokemäki society. I was along with my father’s travels as a Kokemäki agricultural museum guide and in building Kokemäki’s outdoor museum area. Assistance in organising the artefacts of the museum was given for decades by home district counsellor Esko Pertola. The personnel of the provincial museum would have liked to have listed the contents of the museum in the 1970s, but my father did not want the museum to be so official. Perhaps this work will be performed at some point in the future.

The artefacts have many stories

The museum is open to anyone who is interested. You are welcome to acquaint yourself with the rustic atmosphere of Vekara. The spirit of the family is present in many of the old articles. The objects of the museum reflect, among others, how the master of the house, Kalle, followed, during the years 1914-1918, the Russian soldiers making bread dough in a multi-metre long flat bottomed row boat, in which the following generation rowed on the River Sonnila. The forged key for the museum itself has its own history, when, in 1917, the house’s servant Lauri Itvola made a gun out of the key. The group of ten Russians staying in the house feared the outbreak of a rebellion.

The oldest objects in the museum are from the 1700s. The artefacts reflect work and human inventiveness. The gems of the museum are a wooden bicycle tire or a manual washing machine.

Your visit to the museum will extend a long time, if you begin to read copies of the Satakunnan Kansa or Uusia Suomi newspapers that my aunt Anneli Anttila stored from the times of the Winter and Continuation Wars. You’ll arise as night begins to settle down on Sonnila. The artefacts always tell stories to visitors of the past generations.

The workshop, alongside the granary museum, has undergone changes. The horse rods were moved elsewhere and the workshop was converted into a smoke sauna in 2003. The old workshop has remained externally unchanged. The spirit of Anttila- Vekara can be sensed in the sauna, as the sweat arises from the bather’s skin.

Tommi Anttila