What is Kivisalo community village?
Community villages
Kivisalo community village is a new way of planning moving to countryside and making the plans become reality in a controlled way. Kivisalo is also a possibility for individual and communal living and working in the countryside enabled by joint ownership and control of properties. It is also about right of occupancy, home saving and a possibility to develop different kinds of ways of well being and living.
The community village of Kivisalo is a systematic continuum for national community village project started in 2004. In addition, it is a historical continuum for different kinds of communities founded earlier.
Kivisalo in a nutshell
The Kivisalo estate consists of 121 hectares: 102 hectares of forests and other land and 18 hectares of arable land. There is also a headland and a separate forest in Kipasalo ca 5km away. Kivisalo estate has a main building and some outbuildings. The coastline is 5.1km long.
History of Kivisalo
There is a long history of joint ownership and controlling of the estate dating back to the 18th century. The joint ownership based on a verbal contract faced difficulties in the 1980´s. Ending of the joint ownership was considered inevitable. It became difficult to take care of the estate in a logical way due to an uncontrollable breaking off of the succession and since the minor share holders divided their shares to their heirs.
The Kivisalo estate was formed in 26. 9. 1796 when a large estate in Ohtaanniemi was divided into smaller units. The owner was Tobias Miettinen (1745-1817). After Tobias Miettinen and his son Henrik Johan Miettinen (1807-1849) the estate was owned by Henrik Johan Miettinen (1840-1902) and it consisted of ca 141 hectares.
In those days the estate was almost totally self sufficient. The only goods needed from outside of the estate were salt which was needed in preparing and conserving food, iron for the blacksmith, lye for soap making and oil for the lamps. In time also a village shop was founded. Salt was brought from St Petersburg by rowing. Other goods needed were brought from Kuopio and in the winter time the trip to Kuopio could be made across the frozen waters, on ice. Some of the farm´s own products were sold in market places in Kuopio.
The estate was kept undivided and in joint ownership afterwards, also during Juho Miettinen´s time(1861 05 01 – 1938 02 28). He purchased the shares of his three sisters Ida Heléna (1863-1915), Johanna (1866-?) and Maria Eveliina (1869-?) in 1901 and in 1936 he and his wife Hilda Maria (1870 05 25 – 1954 05 25) arranged their four children to have a full ownership of the estate. The children were: Otto Albin (1899 06 17 – 1968 07 23,farmer, juror, judge), Iida Helena (1901 04 14 – 1983 07 11, Sunday school teacher), Eeva Sohvi (1907 05 15 – 1981 12 31, shopkeeper) and Erkki Einari (1912 06 15 – 1942 07 05, farmer, corporal, was killed in the war). They took care of the farming, stock raising and shopkeeping on the estate. The last sibling to live died in 1983.
The other children who moved away from the estate got their shares of the inheritance in cash and in other kinds of personal estate in 1936 with which they bought land and properties. The children were: Hilda Maria (1892 05 07 – 1969 03 27 farmer´s wife in Lintulahti, Karttula), Juho Henrik (1894 08 26 – 1942 07 14, immigrated to USA in 1913), Lauri Aukusti (1897 01 30 – 1965 10 20, shopkeeper, paymaster), Helmi Johanna (1901 11 21 – 1975 08 21, nurse), Antti Arvid (1910 01 07 – 1980 02 08, train-driver) and Taimi Elina (1919 01 08 - , undergraduate, wife of a priest).
Things could not be arranged in a controlled way in the 1980´s when thinking about the future of joint ownership of the estate. In the 1990´s the Kivisalo estate (Rno 9:2) was divided into two separate estates (Rno 9:59 and 9:69). After all the unfortunate and hard processes the Kivisalo estate (Rno 9:69) ended up consisting of 120 hectares.
