A harvester swings in the Kivistö rockery in Vantaa as Jani Sinivuori thins the land at the upcoming housing fair area.
Finland's developing bioeconomy desperately needs more Jani Sinivuoren He enjoys his job as a harvester driver for the Oldenburg Forest Service, but he no longer wants to work as a gig worker. Sinivuori likes to go home for the night at the end of the working day.
He got enough of gig work in Sweden, where he cleaned up the aftermath of a winter storm in 2005 as a motocross racer in Oldenburg.
“That’s when I started working at the company. I spent half a year in Sweden. There was an incredible amount of wood there. I think over 60 logs were made from one hole,” Sinivuori recalls, while guiding the power grab to the next pine tree. He fells it, prunes it and cuts it into pieces for the forwarder to pick up. The operation takes half a minute.
“In open felling, you have to be able to do at least a couple of hundred mots a day. But you can't do that in a field job like this. And that's not the point,” Sinivuori says and grabs the next tree. The harvester's cabin spins and shakes. The six-wheeled machine bounces only slightly as it passes over a large rock.
The 43-year-old Sinivuori's road to becoming a harvester has passed through the building construction department of Nummela Vocational School.
"Life has trained me for this. And I've taken a few courses along the way. I did some work for Tasa Oy during my studies. They asked me if I could go and do some work on the weekend. I'm still on that path."
Sinivuori thinks that a harvester might not be the most social job after all, as the work can be quite lonely at times. He has experience with friends who try out the harvester.
"They go specifically to try it out. They spin around in place and quickly disappear somewhere else. They usually go in good weather and I think they don't really care about the darkness of autumn anymore. Or they just miss their mother."
Text: Jaakko Liikanen
Photo: Matti Immonen
