proper gulyás

... as cooked by emigres from Germany... one of todays pictures.

Another little goat was born this afternoon and we can think of a name now, cause it’s a female. Only one again – but then it means we can drink goat milk sooner.
Trifin, the Breton wwoofer made nice pancakes today.
The dry weather continues, one is not well motivated to weed the poor looking field. Alan decided to cut the lucerne with the sythe, it does a better job then the cutting machine he says. He managed to do nearly half today and not complaining about his back yet. Picture shows new goat, ofcourse, and the tree-frog we’ve seen at the bogracs-birthday party at Rhenhart’s at Pecsdevecser, and Alan relaxing at the same. Hm, have to catch Alan sything for the blog.

of new goats, and bears.

You cannot make a bad picture of a brand-new little goat…
Born last night to Clover (the white younger nanny, with the fierce looking horns)
Only one, and only billy – well, never mind. It has no name, as it will be either eaten or sold, such is farm-life… Alan was up quite a bit, as neither the little one, or his mother were very cooperative. But all seems well now.
The other picture shows “bear onion” which I have discovered at Pecs market;
It’s marvellous crispy leaf , including the stork, and tastes like garlic! Why bear?
Well, Hungarians are pre-occupied by bears, what can I say? We have bear-cheese for example… If you know what it is in English and can send me seeds, please do. There were no seeds of it to be found anywhere.
The dry weather is continuing, today’s cold-front brought clouds and wind, but it stayed basically still hot and dry.
These factory-chickens are still a bit off their rocker, two of them were still
pecking at food out there in the dark, doing serious overtime… Eva

surprise communal meal

The day before yesterday - too busy to blog - we went down to the closing program of our little village art exhibition in the culture house; all of us - Maggie and Vic from Pusztakisfalu, Margaret and Reinhart from Pecsdevecser and us - bought pictures or in our case, the lovely ceramics (only 1680HUF!) to be collected. After the performance of the Kiskassa ethnic dance-group - good humoured but a bit tedious due to the slowish and repetitive polka-type music - based on local german ethnic traditions, but I'm being my usual picky self - anyway, there came the surprised feast! Gigantic pots of pörkölt and an other of potatoes were dished out of with a seemingly endless flow of both the red and white variety of the local grape-product.

Very nice altogether, Józsi sported his full blindingly white chef-gear with the meter long hat, sorry no picture, I did not take the camera unfortunately.

Yesterday was a welcome quiet day, with Alan sheparding his sister's lot back to Budapest.

I gave a paid(!) English lesson to a very personable Medve-cheese salesman, who has plans to try his luck in England in a few months time. I was given a box of túró-based lollypop made without sugar. I let Alan taste it first, he likes túrórudi after all.

Got up this morning @ 5:30 to let hens out - see what change this makes in the presently non-too-productive egg-laying. Hope not a lot.

of goats pigs snake etc

only pictures today; a morning set of goats, you can see our "new"

mangalica piglet behind goats that are heavily preggies but this is not well visible

because of the angle. Also we found a baby water-snake, (don't worry, after the photo-op it was released to the wild) and a newly re-occupied and nicely painted swallows' nest. (Eva)

long easter sunday

after that fretful night the day as lovely if a tad too long. We got the tots for egg-collection as it was not a lot of places to hide eggs. They duly arrived with parents in tow, with their little baskets and optimist disposition... Serious business was conducted, eggs found and duly counted... We are a competitive country now you know... Then I made the big pot of gulyas for

the multitudes - just a dozen. There was a lot of gazing at the new mangalica piglet (old tradicional hungarian breed, curly hair, apperantly nearer to the wild cuisins) quite a bit larger than our potbellies, but they went to sleep together nicely, no bullying trouble so far.

(I try for the picture tomorrow, meanwhile attach eggcollection moments. Eva

egghiding dawn

first of all the good news; Carolyn got up and sit on her bedside chair.

As far as I understand, she is going to be moved to a rehabilitation hospital by her insurance on wednesday, which will be probably somewhere in the US.

Woke up to dog barking and remembered that though I got up last night to check if we left the gate opened for egg-hiding parents, I forgot to see if the higher gate was closed so that Gus 1/won't frighten them b/won't eat the egges. Well, the egges seem to be alright, so 1/Gus is useless as a guard dog 2/was too sleepy even to eat some of the eggs...

the picture is from the last Budapest trip, birdmen of the Fishers' Bastion.

april already

Well, Carolyn had a few worse days back on intensive, but she did bounce back again, so let’s hope from now on a steady improving… she did ask about the potbellied Vietnamese piglets, her sis thought she was not quite with it, but she was! They are doing fine, though still very timid. Goats are now on their usual piece, the front is well “mowed”, hardly any grass left to hide the eggs for the easter eggsearch.
We planted flowers! We have one called “Duranta”, picture included at it’s present stage, it’s supposed to grow tall with beautiful blue flowing blooms, hopefully…
Gustavo is leaving tomorrow, after tons of painting, planting etc, so that’s the other pic. Alan commented on an ecology article, I incluse that after this.(Eva)

Jonathan Porritt has a point when he cites population growth as a potential problem. Also no sensible person would argue with him about the need for comprehensive provision of family planning services throughout the world. However his idea that restricting immigration into the UK helps in some way to solve a population problem is bizarre. It’s as if he thinks we don’t all live on the same planet, and all use the same resources, however unfair the distribution may be. If he examines the facts he presents he should be able to draw the conclusion that the countries with stable or declining populations are those of the developed affluent west. Perhaps he should be examining ways of exporting this affluence world wide rather than keeping the poor at the gate. Not the affluence of big cars and wide screen TV’s but the affluence of good education, decent health care and perhaps most importantly; provision for old age. Security in old age would reduce one of the major incentives to have large families, that of providing a support mechanism for the parents in later life.
Doubtless some may say that we can never afford universal provision of basic needs, however we seem to be able to afford wars at the drop of a hat.