pre-Búcsú and Búcsú

Hot day’s afternoon was spent helping out in the making of the Kiskassa ragged cheese and sausage scones (=Kiskassa rongyos pogácsa) a true cooperative effort; Margit and Ilonka kneaded it, shaped it, we with Ashleigh our newest wwoofer, helped put on the sausage and cheese and carry the trays to the houses where they were baked. Ilonka was very upset as the result did not rise as high as she meant them to, but they taste fabulous and in no doubt they will be eaten in seconds tomorrow at the biggest annual village event (búcsú), the festival of Anne – which I presume is the village’s saint. It will be two days of exhibitions, displays of local art, folk-dance both Hungarian and local ethnic German, a ball on Saturday night, bicycle race, etc. Tomorrow morning I take our contributory tomatoes to Nora’s where there will be a big lecsó cooked for the 50 people that will be considered guests of the village and the organisers of the event. I forgot to make pictures of Ilonka and Margit today, I hope for good pictures tomorrow. (Éva)
well, it's next day now, exhibition, dance, eating and more eating... we were too done for to go down to the ball... (Éva)

pictures from Lois

another day of collecting hay, freeing overpowered cabbages from nasty weeds, parket laying and stuff like that - Lois's cd with great pics arrived! Just a taste - the storm looming above with village church and Alan and me and the wwoofer called Sam - as someone complained that we cannot be seen on the blog... (Éva)

beetroot soup, fishsoup, pörkölt in couldron

In spite of the heat wave – nearly 40C today – our heroic wwoofers Maya and Nicole from Victoria, Canada put in a good few hours in the mornings on the field – and so I looks much less like a jungle now. The clover made decent hay.. The tomatoes are incredible, in the polytunnel as well as from the plants that were pre-grown there. Alan nearly finished grouting the kitchen floor tiles and managed to get the 3phase motor going, so now we can grind our own chicken food. We have a working w on a brand new, to us, keyboard that Vic and Maggie kindly brought all the way from Brighton.
For 3 days we were fed in the evenings; first by Maya, excellent cold beetroot soup,
next day Kálmán, the flying one, turned up with a pot of fish-soup local style, and yesterday we went to Magdi’s name-day do, bogrács (cauldron) full with meat made with lots of paprika flavouring cooked outside. And strudels. And chocolate balls with black cherry inside. There were 16 of us, the girls helped to liven up the usual crowd, a very pleasant evening. We contributed the wine, a fresh container from Villány.
Well, ok only 5 liter of it. We are frugal.
The pictures – Christine The Incredible Wwoofer thanks for everything again!!
More mutant cucumbers – an my arm... Kálmán’s flowers, tonight’s tomatoes gathered with the beetroot that was taken out for testing the size. In not necessarily in this order, for some reason the ordering of the pictures is sort of random. (Éva)

Huszárok

Hussars, yes, they vvere (still no vv on keyboard due to knocking a full glass of vvine on it) in the village vvith horses and everything. They vvere fed and vvatered in the
Pensioners’ club. All very nicely kept, folk-costumes and shiny, beautiful men and beast… They impressed Christine, the vvorkaholic vvoofer from Tennessee, and Nicole and Maya from Victoria, Canada. They are again lovely to host, very helpful and easy to live vvith. VVE vvere collecting raspberries at a friend’s in the village, and an hour vvork resulted in enough fruit for 4 liters of syrup, hich is a vvonderful drink diluted vvith soda vvater. The mutant cucumbers are still grovving. The nevv chest-freezer is arriving tomorrow so the processing may go on… Clary goat seems to behaving much better since Alan fabricated a feed tray so she can munch more comfortably vvhile being milked. The floor tiles for the kitchen at the renovation project have been laid, Alan is rightly proud of his novel tile cutting technique involving some kung-fu I think. Hm - are these posts very sort of non-philosophical
and non-controversal, hich must mean boring!! at least the vv-s or their lack is interesting... (Éva)

haycollecting and Pécs zoo

we were offered free hay, turned, ready for collection, so the youth brigade, with new wwoofer from Tennessee called Christine, was activated! See pictured - Eva, Christine and Lois. Next day it was day off for non-wwoofers - Christine enjoys being a workaholic, so we left her home to work for three. We went up to the TV tower - a crumbling construction from the 70's, badly in need of a renovation - the lift was broke, 450 steps - but the views and the meal in the (thankfully) non-rotating restaurant were excellent. Then we went to the zoo - discovered on the way to the tower - and it was a pleasant hour, as it was under cool trees and most animals looked comfortable and well looked after. Attached here is the sign welcoming visitors with the quaint allegedly English. Nearly as bad as mine... (Éva)

90cm it is

as per demonstrated the harvested monster in Alan's neck.
His eyes don't look bad on the picture - but they are swollen and wrinkly - he went in the polytunnel near the tomato plants - a mistake. But the doc gave him a decent tablet and he is on the mend. Magdi had a butterfly-swarm - she gave us a call, she was actually frightened - tons of the butterflies - (a dead one pictured) appeared in her yard today. Most of them gone now. Looked them up, - bogáncslepke in Hungarian, no idea in English, shouldn't do any harm.

other cucumbers and the Lois pea-picking technique

what else one can say? The size of the spinach amazing, too. Cooked, freezed, whatever, coriander also today. Next to spinach you can see the first tomatoes.
All organic, and first season, remember. But there is a jungle out there.
Rapid weeding days so that next wwoofers won't get frightened.
For enquiries about -that- technique, send e-mail... (Éva)