thermal bath, wine, some agriculture...

We were busy! With guests an’all – some of them keen to help with weeding.
No more wwoofers – we had quite a few inquiries but then not even a polite “sorry we are going somewhere else”… Still, we are self-sufficient in milk, our Clary is producing more than a litre per day. We have lettuces, tons of radishes (the local “icicle” type), loads of spinach, rocket, sorrel, something called garden salsa
(quite spicy taste, don’t know what it is used for but froze some anyways)
and the field looks good, though always too many horrid weeds.
The wrongly named Lucky, the chicken that was hurt by an overzealous Bonzo, after a few weeks of careful nursing and looking better, suddenly was found one morning feet up. Well, there you go. I succumbed to a cold that we think arrived with a dear old Australian friend, and Alan decided to forgo his attending several social events in the UK and to stay to look after me and farm. He was all packed up to go, prezzies and everything… Managed to re-arrange and re-paid for train/air tickets…
The neighbouring house that stood empty for years was bought by the local people who sold theirs also in the village rather well, with our help, to an English couple. There is noisy activity now, to renovate it but it is good that it will be lived in and attended to. The weather was awful for a week, with tons of rain, but our field is on a hill and drains well. The only thing that looks a bit sad is the sweet corn. We’ll see… It’s still a bit chilly but clear and sunny now. The peas are ready to pick in a few days – we have to turn into a processing plant to freeze all that, maybe a bit overdone on the pea-front, about 20 times as much as we grown in England and we had quite a lot of them there… The football world cup starts tomorrow and more guests are arriving, who said life was uneventful in a sleepy little backwater of a village?

Ok so Eva has shamed me into writing something. Matt and Chelsea left and they were a great help and should be in Romania? by now. If your reading this; Vic managed to retrieve the bucket and the cable from the well using ancient Yorkshire know how honed over centuries of dangling bent pins into moorside streams, becks and brooks. They found a house they want to buy near Pecs.
I’m just about to start painting inside the next door house and the floors kitchen (s) should follow shortly afterwards. I’ve no idea what I mean by shortly as it took me all afternoon to drag out two storage heaters yesterday.
We’ve had Melody and Lois visiting which is about as much fun as you can have with your clothes on. Szonya was here as well which is so nice. It’s a symptom of the modern world when your kids are spread around different countries, it makes it much harder to nip around for a cup of tea. Until Szonya moved back to London none of use where even on the same continent. Eva, Szonya, Melody and me had a trip to the thermal baths at Harkány about 15 minuets drive away from us. It also has massage etc and if your into that sort of thing, is well worth a visit. Especially good is sitting outside in the 36 Centigrade pool while its raining. Look it up at http://www.harkanyfurdo.hu . We also had, along with Lois, our by now becoming traditional trip to the wine cellars of Villány. I still can’t get used to how cheap and good the local wine is. Having said that I would love one day to make my own if only to justify my thirty meter deep wine cellar.
Well I’m off to clean next door, you never know I might finish it eventually.

Alan

the picture shows rainbow seen from house 1 and the other shows Vic with the tackle
that got us our chain and our bucket back from a deep well...