Happy Birthday Grandad!!!!

Sorry being a day late, we did think of you before the day and after the day, but as it is us, not actually on the day! Because it was a busy one. Alan was preoccupied having
upset tummy, we were waiting for the wwoofers, who eventually materialised with the last bus 11:30pm, and we had the closing program of the Festival, which brought here
Pintyő from Pusztakisfalu and her friends. The lovely weather continues with chilly nights. Had a record egg-number today, six, even if one was on the dwarf category -
what sort of chick that would have been if we had a rooster I wonder...
still, well don hens, 6 eggs from 8 of you, not bad at all.

sunshine pictures, what else

quiet day

well watered me

that is, the Easter stuff, with parfumes.
I was well popular for some reason this year, even though we had no painted eggs to give, and forgot to get small money, so there was no money rewards for the boy population visiting us with the verses and the sprays. Alan says the house could pass for a turkish brothel. How goes he know, one may asks.
The pictures show one of the visiting teams, and the cat on duty.
still cold, but allegedly we ll get the summer for next weekend,
when we expect our new wwoofers, Patricj and Eliza.

the global aspect...

We had the usual cheerful eggcollection with dazed toddlers,
even the sun came out and the goatkids were great success.
However, isn't it weird, that most of these village kids had never seen goats?
Looking at them making pictures of goats with their mobile phones, here in the back of beyond of the farm fields covered countryside, well...
Gus was in heaven with ten kids throwing sticks for him simultaniously...
ooo I'm sleepy, those eggs were hidden very early in the morning...
painted in Nora's summer kitchen by an enthusiastic team.
and Festival of Light, I forgot to tell you about - so here is a view
of the Kiskassa exhibition

at last... billies for Clover

she waited for a sunny day, obviously.
So from 3 goats to 8 goats! That's a proper herd!

Winter wwoofers Nicolas and Sara dropped in on their
way back to Belgium, just missed out on these new arrivals...

No egg-donations so far for the easter egg-search project.
How have I landed this egg-collection duty, anyways??
Nora brings sixty, I manage to give a trayful (30) that should do
in my opinion anyways. Well, we'll see if on Thursday in the Telehouse
some community/kids minded hen-owners turn up with loads of those
fertility symbols.

you can see one of the very young, still not fully licked billies,
the three older new ones having a morning sunbathe, and Alan's new field in a more artistic angle.

had our march guests

yes, 3 lovely napolitans. I think they enjoyed themselves here, they had a nice meal in Villány, as we suggested - we got a prezzie! Mozart chocolates! If you read this, dear Valentina, please write a good review for us for hostelworld.
Alan said he'll tell you all about the volunteering work he did yesterday with half a dozen other selfless Kiskassa citoyens; they renovated the culture house roof and got it ready for the "Festival of Light" our art exhibition, kicking off in about a week time I think.
Alan is in the process of registering us with 2 more backpackers' internet sites,
we'll see what that means - either still no business, or an absolute chaos, and probably not much in between.
The pictures show Bonzo the chained beast in his newly acquired basket, a curious chicken, and kid acrobatics.
We went for a walk and could smell the sweet acacia buds - lets see if the allergy kicks in.

girl power!

yes, the twins are both girls, too, called Clo and Clee, Clo being the one with the assimetric coloration - one frontleg black, one is white! They are doing well.
(I don't mean just the legs!)
I had a nice time in Budapest, though my mum is not very well.
went to see a Hungarian film titled Panic, and it was not bad at all.

International Women's Day! Sunflowers!!

Which means flowers around here and not much talk
about any improvement of our lot... Two carnations, one from the shop, one from
the village do this afternoon, which included the first ever village quiz!
It was a success, the Culture House was full. We had 10 teams and six series of questions all conducted by the enthusiastic mayor, who also insisted handing out the flowers to each woman present with a kiss!! Oh, and there was free beer and pop drinks, and chocolate prices for every team...

As for the aforementioned sunflowers - we were graded yesterday by a representative of the Hungarian Village Tourism Board!! And out of 4 obtainable sunflowers (=stars)
we got 3!! The lady was very satisfied with our facilities. Now we have to pay the substantial 20KHUF and we are on our way to be legal.

ok, so we didn't come quite last at the quiz, which is quite an achievement,
as the questions were about the village past, (and hungarian
present day pop music...) very interesting, too,
e.g. there used to be a little local train here. And two more villages nearby
less than 50 years ago. The church was built in 1772. And it is
sinking because there are old turkish graves under it, it is not just
slipping down the hill as I thought, but the walls are moving out in all direction.
There is a collection for its renovation, send any money
to the mayor, Szilasi Tamás, Kiskassa, Polgármesteri Hivatal 7767 Hungary.
Especially if any religious persons are reading this blog - here's your chance to
do something good for the cultural environment...

scarecrows and more sausages

as soon as I typed the other day, that we havent lost any (goat) kids yet,
Alan was rushing in for help, yelling that he couldnt (sorry it wouldnt
do apostrophes) find Cleo. There was a desperately bleeting Carolyn - no usual
response from kid, deathly quiet, which was weird - they always answer their mother.
So I was convinced its fallen with a broken neck or some other terrible mishap.
After about 10 minutes of panicky running around in circles, peeping under Alans fallen savonius plastic rotor I discovered the sweetly sleeping little dunce, obviously had enough of the cold wind and forgot to tell mother about her hiding place.
I forgot to mention that last saturdays storms managed to knock over prototype savonius windmill number 2... Pictures show scarecrow, scarehawk and the newly smoked salami, ham and sausage lot, Alan insisted including another record of them...
Hope we wont have many vegetarian guests this year...

bone-rattling winds

winterish, brrrrr, but with a bit more rain - even a bit of snow
yesterday...
I include below a nice little story Lois sent - it's seasonal,
Sunday will mark our 35th, yes, unbelievable, wedding anniversary.
As they say, you definitely get less for murder...
I wonder what metal is this number? We forgot to prepare
so will leave any special outing for a later date, as the
day before is Saturday, the 8th, the Women's Day village quiz (wow -
I do hope for the mayor's sake that it'll be a success... hm
there'll be free beer...)
and on Monday I'll be off to Budapest as I haven't seen much of my mum and dad
when we were there a week or so ago.

Little Cleo seems fine, we'll have milk to drink in a day or two -
in fact we need to milk this first-timer nanny goat, she's already
producing too much milk
for just one kid. Seems that we ended up with all our goats producing
just one instead the usual two, but this way they seem to survive better -
we haven't lost any yet - touch wood in the usual skeptical way.
Goatman in village said last year his three nannies produced 7 kids, but
only 2 survived. But then Alan hasn't got good opinion about his goat-rearing skills...
Tomorrow a woman comes to assess what sunflower-rating fits our village-tourism setup. I sort of planned to clean the windows for the occasion, but it's so cold out there... I wonder how many sunflowers we lose for dirty windows...
Where are those workaholic wwoofers when you need them... (none is expected now till
April).

THE BOTTLE OF WINE story:

Mary was driving home from one of her business trips in Northern Arizona when she saw an elderly navajo woman walking on the side of the road. As the trip was a long and quiet one, she stopped the car and asked the Navajo woman if she would like a ride.

With a silent nod of thanks, the woman got into the car.

Resuming the journey, Mary tried in vain to make a bit of small talk with the Navajo woman. The old woman just sat silently, looking intently at everything she saw, studying every little detail,
until she noticed a brown bag on the seat next to Mary.

'What in bag?' asked the old woman.

Mary looked down at the brown bag and said, 'It's a bottle of wine. I got it for my husband.'

The Navajo woman was silent for another moment or two.

Then speaking with the quiet wisdom of an elder, she said:

'Good trade.....'

new kid on the block

had no internet since thursday, major national breakdown
of suppliers, allegedly. Anyways, goat kid Cleo was born to
Carolyn on thursday. She was doing ok till yesterday,
being a bit weird, such as chewing hay on her very first day...
as barmy as mother. But has a bit of quick tummy as not suckling
a lot at the moment, lets hope she ll pull through.
After some gorgeous warm, near summery days, its dark and cold today, but had some more rain, which is good. Luckily we had no part of the serious storms, even tornados of the rest of Hungary.