day 5 I think

all is well, I still haven't killed any animals, I think, last count,
though I cannot say the same about sweet corns that were supposed to be planted between the beans. Anyhow, I had a couple of relatively quiet days. Which ment today a 6 o'clock ring of the bell - Marika and Jozsi had only time to help with the milking then... I'm sure the goats were surprised, too, but took it quite stoically, like they do. I actually only done the filtering, let the chickens out and went back to bed...
But this early taking care of business ment that I could get the bus to Pecs at 8:30, had a nice quick shop and returned with the 11:00 o'clock one. Got more cheese hanging netty things, a lovely pair of pumps, got money from the bank and put money on Alan's mobile whether he likes it or not - just to show that I think about him...
Meanwhile 5 people booked for friday - 2nd May - from germany, which means that
on Sunday there'll be full house! I've got the beds made, I just do some cleaning tomorrow - besides receiving Anna' long promised pigs and checking out the village
Majális, which this year happen on the football fields, cooking competition for
adults and mostly sporty stuff for kids, such as bicycle race. I wonder if I can
bribe the mayor to put me in the jury of the cooking competition...
On friday it will be the official opening ceremony for the new library with a little reception - I might miss that if I'm too worried about the arrival of the guests.
I shouldn't blog this often, I forgot if I mentioned my terrible tv addiction since we had the big satellite-dish sorting out, and have a dozen hungarian channels instead of one and a half, and umpteen english speaking stuff, I'm still learning where worth navigating.
but first I have to wash tons of dishes - I bought some pirexes - one lid was broke while I was away, i dropped another yesterday; it was a smokey glass one - the kitchen floor was covered with tiny bits of greyness. And I should attend to some cheese business. Oh, and we had our first hostelworld booking for June - 2009, from
Keith, Hong-Kong. Don't worry Alan, not THAT Keith. I think.
I wonder if he was mistaking the year??
Oh, and I brought down the hay, two talicskaful. The frame worked quite well.
I did not throw it on the loft, that was a step too far for city girl.

the second post for today...

... to catch up... I think I mentioned the internet chap to whom I managed to give a piece of my mind eventually. That felt good. To me. I remembered, better late than never, that the hot water set up in the other house was faulty, so the old chap, Ober's "nasz" turned up and fixed it in 3 hours hard work. he said it'll be more efficient now... Anna's team with her lead turned up to help to take the goats home, everyone had fun, including the herd I think... then they proceded to carry over the chickens. I closed them and the ducks, as sadly, Jozsi was not upto anything again today due to hungarian village decease (he was drunk). So another incredibly long day gone, I've done the bedding wash, cleared a bit the path at the other house, and weeded a line of lettuce, besides all those other things. Pictures show Anna's ducks and chickens ready for the night, some nice evening vistas and spring skies. If they all fit on.

day 2 late

yes, because it is day three now, but there was no internet yesterday,
so here it is a detailed yesterday, but I don't think I bother such tiresome details again...
Sparkling blue sky, cool morning. Alan phoned from Milnrow, arrived to his Dad’s ok.
Marika came over and insisted on milking the two goats – I’ve done Clover by then.
And she did them in about 5 minutes or less each – you could see the professional – she was doing 4 cows by hand for six years – the other two was done by her husband, Feri.
I am writing up what I’m doing, so I don’t forget it by the evening, internet is off since last night dammit. So after milking I walked up Carolyn the hill, cause she’s just a bit stupid and couldn’t figure out where all the other goats could be and they were too far up to hear her bleeting. After breakfast I took over some milk to the guests and put the disinfected nappies, aka milk-filtering device, in the washer. I made the next cheese – very creamy again, but trying for hard – with just salt and garlic, it does taste wonderful if I may say so. I hung it up in one of the chinese basketware thingies, that was designed for something else, but fits a portion of cheese nicely, I’ll get some more of these on Monday if I get to Pecs. And now I am off to plant cucumbers...
Or no, I do that in the afternoon, I’ll wait for guests to decide what they do and collect
the bedding, make beds, just in case I’ll have sudden late-bookers, like the last ones except now I wouldn’t even get the warning ’cause of the damn crappy internet.
Hm – as the other guest couldn’t check the timetables on the internet, he’s staying another day, too... that silver lining in action...
So I took some drinking water, watering water, hoe, gereblye, mobile, camera.
And when I was up there I realised that I left the cucumber seeds at home... never mind... I’m sure confusing the herd, I am followed and watched carefully. Still a beautiful summer day with a balmy breeze, just perfect. No internet.
Got a lettuce to go with my spaghetti bolognese – at least that’s what I think it is I fished out the freezer. The lettuce will get the Hungarian sugar-vinegar treatment.
And lettuce with lettuce for tea – no guests, workers, anybody to eat them...
Anna was over, there will be tons of chickens delivered to the closed stye tomorrow, we were given three oven ready specimens.
(Later) All is watered, closed, separated...
I have to go to Pecs tomorrow if the internet is not fixed.
monday 2pm: I didn't go, the Internet is fixed, and it was too busy a morning...
and now, I'll bloody well have a siesta!

first day - so far so good...

Alan only came back twice - jacket and change for bus...
But he's on the flight to Manchester as I type.

Milking was ok, Clary was not easy to control,
I started with Clover and Carolyn anyway, because Jozsi wasn't here yet,
but he just turned up on time for Clary, and he was doing the hanging onto the
back legs... I did alright all three, I don't feel any finger exhaustion...
maybe all the keyboard bashing over the years strengthened me...
So after breakfast and a bit of relaxing I turned the hay and chopped down the
sorrel and dug over that last patch next to the peas...
Then I did the guardian weekly crossword - (victorious giggle, it came a day early as we had a saturday that wasn't, it was a normal weekday to make up for a 4 days long may day weekend next week, this is a quaint thing they do here) went over to Marika with a bit of milk/lettuce and cheese, had lunch, relaxed a bit more, went up with the talicska and got some of the top dry looking hay down - it looked like rain - and gave some sorrel to the goats. In between I've done a big load of washing, eaten an enormous portion of chocolate cake that was a leaving present from Craig and travelling companion who came from Sommerset on a very nice, big Honda bike,
and am in the middle of making some makos guba, as the present guest, Simon Gnu from
Melbourne, Australia is a bit under the weather with a bad throat. They are thinking about staying for an extra day. So that's it really. Woody Allen's Matchpoint is on the telly which I haven't seen yet, so all in all I had not much time to miss Alan, but I did it anyways. No picture, you've seen everything by now, for sure...

preparations

Yes, I have to learn what is planted where and what to do with it while Alan is away... Though Jozsi and Marika will both help when necessary, so we'll be ok... Of course the goats can sense something from Alan's anxiety and they jumped the electric fence today... and there are now lettuce, reddish, kholrabi, onion plants and lot's of pea plants growing nicely... we are over the usual worrying period when we are convinced that nothing would grow this year... The photo is a word document, so I have no idea how it will look. I couldn't figure out ow to send the blown-up picture, it always wanted to reverse to the original non-blown-up. Anyhow, it's a gorgeous looking beetle, about an inch and a half, couldn't find it in the book. Hm. It did not do it. Bloody technology things.
So here goes the non-blown version, use your own blow up glass dears... and let me know what the xcxc it is.

smitten

First time - last autumn, after a lightening during a storm our PC's
power supply and motherboard was burnt out, even though we had a guard on the
socket set. To the advice of the Computer People we bought a large heavy thingy that
not only supposed to do this spike-guard duty, but is supposed to keep the PC powered during power failures.
Well, we had another storm yesterday - guess what - after a second of power failure the computer went down again,
the bloody marvellous thingy did bugger-all. The good news is, that the PC picked itself up again as it were, after a few
attempts... I suspect the main damage was to the line between it and the monitor after all,
but we had been smited/smote/smitten for sure...
The storks - well, one of them - started to lay, even though the nest looks a bit shoddy.

of tv, ducks, dogs and therefore shit

So Alan took the dogs for the annual compulsory jabs, while 2 men fixed our telly, we actually got zillions of channels, some even speaks English, we still to figure out what to do with it all. While that happened, Anna and her helpers arrived to settle those hundreds of ducklings we agreed she can, in our styes, as she run out of room.
With all the excitement Alan failed to close the door properly in the other house, so Gus, who was still probably excited from the adventure of the communal dog-jabbing, rushed in there, and unbeknown to us shitted and pissed everywhere. However, we did notice it when we walked our Canadian pay-guests in to show their beautiful accommodation... I think god in His Wisdom decided that we are not cut out for this money making stuff. Last week, when the English hostelbookers girls stayed, on their first morning, the binmen decided to ring the bell to every house at 06:30am, as it was the bi-annual all-rubbish collection day, and they wanted to remind everybody...
and the water company decided to do their repair to the reservoir that day, too, promising no water... (however, the girls somehow did not hear the ringing - the wwoofers did, and the water pressure failed to do anything untoward as it happened)
So all well, if ends well... it turned out that the guests are students at Royal Holloway, where Szonya teaches - and the girl, Janine is actually studying psychology, so Szonya might teach her!! Little world, as they say.
They discovered the picture of their university in the kitchen, it was a mothers
day card from Szonya a couple of years ago...) Besides Alan and the dogs, you can see the ducks, Anna s helpers, and a portrait of Jozsi.

Yes!! We are a proper village now!!

We've got a young stork couple building their nest as we speak,
on one of the main electricity post in the middle of the village.
Let's keep our fingers crossed that they make it ok.
I'll hope to make better pictures if all goes well.
Otherwise, all is usual, cheeses are in various stage of making,
and my Budapest break was nice. I played tennis and swam, had a very healthy time, except for all the chestnut purees and cakes...
Jutka's eyes doing well after the op,
looks as the technology is much improved hardly any discomfort,
she can read stuff now from the other end of the room...

overproduction!

Yes, the goats become supernannies, one of the 3 produces more milk, than two did together last year - so we have cca 6 liter of the best goats' milk every day, without trying hard,
milking just once a day, and kids only separated for the night.
Of course, we were not ready for this, so the first batch of cottage cheese and more proper cheese were/are made haphazardly, we still to acquire the proper cheesemaking
tools... nevertheless, the turó was liked bz all who are into that, and the kőrözött
is really really good, especially as Józsi brought us some snidling (chives?) to
go with it. The first cheese has that in as well, is now maturing... if eaten now, should taste like and look like feta... I suppose we can do the mature thing with the next batch. At the moment even the chickens get fed milk-butties, and cats/dogs have the stuff coming out their ears. Present wwoofers are not into milk, lets hope pay guests might drink some. We are expecting a couple of those today, for three days! They are the first bookers from a newly registered web hostel setup. Wow! If they arrive... First time we let wwoofers and hostelguest to meet... if they arrive... Tomorrow I'm off to Budapest leaving poor Alan to cope with it all...

parties, and being partly un-green

Starting with un-green business, Anna, the vullage etrepeneur acrooss the street
asked us for space for her millions of chickens, ducks and piglets,
as she is running out and her business is blooming... so we let her have
our unused space, in exchange for cut fresh meat, whenever there is a cut.
So this lot won't be organic as such - but we can do with the extra income,
as maybe Alan is right, that new Pecs dream hostel on the main walking street
is taking away our much needed custom... Picture shows Anna's crew doing the disinfecting of her new animal rearing quarters.

We've been to a Meta concert on the 9th - this is a Muzsikas style folk music band.
They just had the 25th anniversary of musicking together. The concert was in the posh
Palatinus Hotel in Pecs, the wwoofers Patrick and Elisa, as well as Vic and Maggie
joined us. It was very good, their supporting band, Szelkialto was also extraordianry, very good singing and very moving and rythmic stuff to put to poetry with exotic instruments, including throatsinging, wow!
And it turns out, that Vic and Maggie's builder, Laszlo, who's doing their latest ambicious renovation project, is a musician, playing the double base, and was one of the founders of Meta! So he was part of the birthday celebration, even if he chose to become a builder later, and we were all invited to the pub called Hokkedli.
This is a lovely place we haven't been before. A table was set up with sausages
making out the greeting message, and you should've seen the kemence in the middle!
Anyway, it was a great party, we felt lucky to be there, thank you again Meta,
Szelkialto, friends and crew, especially, Zsuzsa! Picture shows the table. Then the battery run out in the camera, as per usual.

Yesterday we had for tea the landlord of Ujpetre's Dark Dog and the family,
very nice people, with beautiful and clever kids. They enjoyed the prawn cocktail, goatcurry and trifle - this is the staple I do for the natives - worrying that they might not get as impressed by my hungarian dishes as people from Uk, US etc...
Pleasant time was had by all, Alan experimented with eating and drinking as normal, and so far he has no after effects he says, which for me means, that most of his diver -something -itis is a bit of headology...

Thanks Valentina!

Thanks for the nice comment, hope that you read our blog again, and give us some cool reviews for hostelworld.com, please,
we seem to be review-poor at the moment, that new place in Pecs
that should never be mentioned, being the horrid capitalist competition, had only one guest so far, but gave them ninety-odd percent, doesn't look good (for us)!!!
Patrick and Eliza, newest wwoofers from Canada, have been here for nearly a week, and helped a lot already. Not much else I can think of to report, which doesn't mean there
ain't any, just that I can't remember...

beautiful rain

decided to walk to Ujpetre, ended up catching buses,
which was lucky, we stayed dry. Checked out new management
in the building materials/hardware store - not much improvement there.
The council burocrat dealing with village-tourism is not much to write home about either.
So the best news is that for the last three days of evening scrabble we played with Alan we managed a 7 letter score for each!! First me with villain(s) then Alan with linnets, then me with toluene!
and,yes, there is another piece of good news, we have offers for 3 kids,
the billies will have good billy-lives, they won't end up curried in the near future.
We are keeping Clee and Cloo.