Ronivaara · Kuusamo, Finland

Our story & people

A family home, two horses and more than twenty years of building, learning and living alongside animals.

It started with a home and two horses

The plan was to get two horses and ride into the sunset.
-Sanna

Ronivaara became Sanna and Harri’s family home in 2005.

They came with two horses. Before long there was a third, and then another.

At first, Ronivaara was simply the place where the family was going to live and keep their horses. The old farm needed work, the horses needed places of their own and everyday life began to find its shape around them.

Ruska Laukka began in 2006.

The work grew gradually from the life already happening here. More horses came. The family grew. New kinds of work developed, and more people found their way into the life of the farm.

There was no finished picture of what Ronivaara should eventually become.

Much of it has grown from one very practical question at a time: what do we need here next?

More than twenty years later, Ronivaara is a family home, a Finnhorse farm and a place of work shared with many people.

The beginning is still easy to remember.

It was a home and two horses.

The plan grew along with the life around it

Some things at Ronivaara began with an idea. Others began because a horse needed something, everyday life needed a practical solution or someone saw a possibility worth trying. Little by little, those choices became part of Ronivaara.

Sanna and Harri – different strengths, the same Ronivaara

Ronivaara has grown through Sanna and Harri’s shared work, but their ways of looking at things are not the same.

That has been useful.

Sanna tends to see possibilities.

An idea leads easily to another question: could this work here, what would we need to learn and what might happen if we tried it?

Over the years, a business suit and high heels gradually gave way to rubber boots, horses and work where people, animals and the everyday life of Ronivaara became increasingly connected.

Curiosity has stayed.

New ideas are interesting, but at Ronivaara they eventually have to meet everyday life. Some become part of the work. Others change along the way as more is learned.

Harri often looks at the same idea from the practical side.

How will it actually work? What needs building, repairing or changing? Can it be done sensibly in the place that already exists?

Years of work around the farm have given him a very concrete knowledge of Ronivaara – not only of what has been built, but of what works in daily use.

One can see what might be possible.

The other often sees how it could actually be made to work.

A great deal of Ronivaara has grown somewhere between those two viewpoints.

A family grew up with the farm

The family did not live beside Ronivaara while something separate called Ruska Laukka developed.

They grew together.

The children grew up with horses and other animals nearby, people coming and going and the farm changing around them. Home, work and family life have often shared the same yard.

There have also always been jobs that do not belong neatly to one person’s role.

Someone needs a hand. Something needs carrying. A horse needs moving. A busy day needs another pair of hands.

Family members and people close to Ronivaara have stepped into those moments many times over the years.

Sometimes the most important help has been very simple:

someone saw what needed doing and did it.

The Ronivaara family became bigger than one family

Over the years, many people have become part of Ronivaara.

Some came to work. Some came to learn. Others first arrived through customers, cooperation or friendship and gradually became familiar faces around the farm.

Some have stayed for years. Others have been here for one part of the journey.

People have brought knowledge, ideas, humour, different ways of doing things and their own hands to the work.

They have also left traces behind.

Something one person taught may still be used years later. A way of doing something may have changed because someone asked a good question. A shared day can become a story that is still told long after the people in it have moved on to other things.

This wider circle has become what we call the Ronivaara family.

It does not mean that everyone thinks or works in exactly the same way.

It means that many people have been part of making this place what it is.

The people change. The shared responsibility remains.

Different people have stood in the same yard over the years, bringing their own skills, ideas and ways of working. Whoever is here becomes part of the same everyday responsibility for the animals, the people and the place.

Different work happens around the same yard

Today, people come to Ronivaara with different kinds of professional knowledge and different jobs to do.

There is work with Finnhorses and other animals, riding, guiding and tourism. Ronivaara is also home to professional work with people, including social, rehabilitative and therapeutic work.

For international visitors, this professional work is a separate part of Ronivaara rather than part of the tourism experiences.

What connects the different work is not that everyone does the same thing.

It is that it happens around the same animals, people and place – and requires people to know their own work and work well together.

Meet Ronivaara’s hosts and professional work

Still learning after all these years

Ronivaara is still changing. Sanna likes to discover, learn, develop and do better.

Over the years, new knowledge, different people and practical experience have changed the way things are done.

Sometimes we get a new idea. Sometimes an old way is looked at again.

Sometimes something is tried in practice and finds its place in everyday life.

And sometimes the best answer is to keep doing something that already works well.

That is probably one reason Ronivaara has never felt finished.

There is always something more to learn – from horses, from people, from experience and from the ordinary days when an idea finally has to prove that it works.

The story is still happening here

Ronivaara’s story is not something that ended when the business was established or when the farm reached a certain size.

The people around it continue to change. New knowledge comes in. Children grow up. Someone new arrives. Someone who has been here for years knows immediately where to find the thing everyone else is looking for.

And the next ordinary day begins.

That continuity matters to us.

Ronivaara is still the family home that began with two horses, but it also carries the work, ideas and memories of many people who have been part of the years since.

When you visit, you arrive in the middle of that continuing story.

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