APPANOOSE COUNTY —
One thing Jenni Adam, 31, learned during a decade of moving frequently for her work grooming harness horses was that she couldn’t do it forever. Someday, she would have to settle down.
When she and her husband, Ernest Adam, 47, decided to settle down, they chose Appanoose County.
Adam said she first got to know the area about five years ago when she spent a summer doing a practical training period with farmer Jerry Probasco for her bachelor’s degree in natural resources from a university in Finland.
She met her husband, who is from Illinois, while working in the United States as a groomer. For two years, they lived in Finland. In September 2010, they moved to Appanoose County, where they now live on a farm south of Moulton.
“I just liked the people,” Adam said. “I’d been traveling a lot anyway and I just like to see new places and get to know the people. It seemed like a nice place.”
Adam said her experience in southern Iowa is not that different from Finland, where she grew up in a town of about 3,000 people.
“People here talk a different language, but that’s about it,” Adam said. “A small town is a small town.”
Finland does have more wooded land, though.
“You cannot see as far as here,” she said.
Adam said her biggest moment as a groomer in Finland came in 2003 when she took care of the horse that won the St. Michel race, the second biggest race in Finland. She was named Groom of the Year in Finland in 2003.
She said the highlight of her grooming career in the United States was the 2005 Hambletonian Stakes, a race for 3-year-old trotters. She groomed two of the horses in the race that year.
“Neither one of them did any good, but it was still great to be in there,” Adam said.
Adam said she misses her family, but they were already used to her living far away for her job. She has not been to Finland since she and her husband moved here. Her mother and stepfather, though, recently visited over the holidays.
Adam said sometimes she misses the food, especially rye bread and fresh fish.
“At home we fish all year long, so we usually have fresh fish all the time,” she said.
One frustration for Adam has been her job search. Her concentration in her natural resources degree — which she likened to an agricultural degree in the United States — was on business and marketing. In Finland, she said, she did secretarial and customer service work at a vocational school where students learned to work with horses.
She worked at Wells Manufacturing from April to December 2011. Now, she is doing some work as a veterinary assistant and dog groomer at Country Village Animal Clinic on Highway 2 while continuing to search for work suited to her background in agricultural business and marketing.
“It is kind of weird how since we’ve moved here I’ve applied to so many jobs and you barely hear from anybody,” she said.
Adam said she learned a lot working as a horse groomer.
“You work with different kinds of people and you learn how to get along with people,” she said. “It’s been a very, very, very nice opportunity that I’ve been given.”
Adam currently owns two horses, a 10-year-old trotter and a brood mare.
People
Related Photos
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Jenni Adam, a recent transplant to Appanoose County from Finland, stands in front of photographs from her days as a horse groomer. She is holding her 5-year-old dog Nyyti, a Cardigan Welsh corgi, who also made the move from Finland. Photo by Brooke Sherrard/Daily Iowegian
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Jenni Adam poses in 2005 with one of the two horses she groomed during that year’s Hambletonian Stakes harness race. Submitted photo
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Finnish horse groomer chooses Appanoose County
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