Hay season started after Midsummer. "For this, on the eve of Midsummer, they took a sauna whisk and went to the sauna, and keeping their back to it, they tried to throw the whisk over the roof of the sauna. If they succeeded, it meant a good hey season," Lang told "Vikerhommik".

"Modern-day people wonder, what is good about hey season? Hay is produced when the sun is up and it is dry. For the city people, it means nice beach weather. The agriculture people's traditions serve city people well," Lango told on the Vikerraadio morning program.

The farmer is usually a practician and mostly associates with nature. "Our national calendar has a lot to do with the old calendar when everything happens 14 days later. In addition, there are changes between North and South Estonia. When South Estonia is already warm, then Tallinn people are freezing. This is why hay must get started before Midsummer," Lang said.

Making hay affected almost everyone. "Freemen and serfs, who did not own land, worked on their master's land. Perhaps a busy family did not go haying. These sorts of folk and others did not go. Mostly, hay-making was important because an animal wants to eat," she said. If they wanted any harvest at all, the sowing was completed by Midsummer.

As a rule, servants and helpers got a day off on Midsummer. "You had to go to the Midsummer bonfire, otherwise, you would be irritated, sick and hairy next year. If you did not go, the house might catch fire and many other bad things could happen. But you also had to make sure that the bastard eye didn't look at your animals. To do this, the farmer walked around his field and put rowan branches in the corners. To not have anything happen to the house, they put pretty flowers in the house corners. These sorts of holidays were the glory days for witches."

The tradition of making a fire is connected to worshiping the sun. "Fire as a cleansing element definitely originates from the pre-Christian times. /…/ The very beginning is unknown, but the fire was important, it had to be seen from far away, and the smoke of the fire was cleansing, which is why you had to jump through it. The animals were also led through the smoke and wreaths were placed on their heads," Lang told "Vikerhommik".

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