work work work

... and play, as I was away in Budapest for nearly 4 days. Tons to catch up on,
stuff to be processed, it is August after all! So only time for pictures; our first and only water melon turned out to be a sweet little thing! We had clusters of hostel guests, we had wwofers come (micheala, Katrina)and go (Georgie, Oliver), cakes from Anna, heat upto 35C cold fronts, as today... new grasscutter... weird spider - what is it? Couldnt identify it.

busy week...

started with 4 wwoofers, now we have two of those and two honourary ones,
Evelyn and Victor, friends' son here for a few days to practice his not that bad English. So with the odd hostel-guests - nearly every other day - we had packed days.
Especially as Anna's pigs now have the run of some of the back, and their learning about the electric fence, and the goats putting up with their restricted track to the fields was well, trying at times. Especially as Alan's eyes are getting better very slowly, as he had to fix the fence often in the middle of the day. Pigs dug up the underground wire for example... We got some plums (normal, not the yellow yet, got a few buckeful from Anna, the first lot turned out nice, 1kg sugar into 10kg of plums! The second lot is cooking as I blog) tomatoes, aubragines, marrows processed.
And it has been hot, but this time the house kept cool. Georgie and Olviver decided to move to the stable accommodation, and they also found it comfortable so far.
We didn't have a lot of skype callers yet... we have the webcam and everything!
Though wwoofers talked to their family and friends, so it wasn't quite a waste of effort, Marta, thanks again... Pictures show Alan having a go at Oliver's trombone, Evelyn at milking, Georgie at onion platting...

musical wwoofers

... and aren't they all? We had hardly any wwoofers who
resisted grabbing Alan's guitar and then proceeded playing something impressive...
We had a violinist, banjoist, drummer... and now a brill trombonist, Oliver, jamming
with Domentx, who luckily stayed a few days longer making the jamming possible...
The cold front failed to arrive, so the workers, when not making music, are
pulling out by hand all the nasty ragweed remaining. Of course, once out, the goats suddenly feel a new-found urge to munch them from the barrel where it was collected for safe disposal. But all the hay was collected, too, we have more of the stuff than ever.
Two lots of not single-night hostel-guests failed to materialise, but we got a couple of new bookings... I wonder where all these lost had got to, I hope,
safe and well, even if they made me stay up waiting for them. A phonecall or an e-maild would be nice, even polite...

skype

so, nice wwoofer put me on this skype thingie,
so our skype name is durantevaalan
call me so that we know if it works!!!
that's all for today...

kánikula

Who would have thought that we were thinking about putting on socks a week ago?
We are well into the 30sC with upto 34 today. Yet our lovely, cheerful, in fact rather giggly and industrious wwoofers, Marta from Barcelona and Domentx from Basque country,
are soldiering on; the garden looks tidy, the front loan manicured... they are going to be the first dwellers in the stables, as we shall have a bit of a wwoofer overlap, with
Gorgie and Oliver from New Zealand arriving tomorrow. And various oz and US hostelguests to liven things up. Like last búcsu Sunday, when we had a lot to do and a lot of guests, if some of them just arriving, performing and moving on... It all went very well,I have never seen the culture programme so well attended. Vic was great, as usual; the belly-dancers were suprisingly good, they changed the music from the rather rythmless tribal that made me lose interest into something much more exciting.
The meal at Nora"s place was excellent, prepared with care by Józsi, a lean roll of pork-steak stuffed with ham, cheese and mushroom sauce, served with rizi-bizi and cabbage salad. Yummy. The youngsters with stamina gone off to a private party aat night, but we with Alan were spent and not even gone for the usual short appearance at the dance this time. Which had a live band, but alas not better than usual, we were told.
Yesterday we had a tortilla competition, both were made from the same ingredients, but different and both very nice, and a special done with aubragines - I learnt yet again a very good and easily prepared dish. It was so much nicer than the ones we tasted in Spain, which were much too dry and tasteless. Now we know - to be consumed fresh and hot! And made from fresh organic, home-grown ingredients...
loads more seem to have happened, with all the comings and goings here but this is all that could be
recalled by my limited mental powers... oh, yes, we were given a beautiful if a bit aged rooster, to pass his remaining years without all that dreadful competition from the young... he is as noisy as any, I hope he'll tone it down a bit once he realised that the place is safe; though the oz guest girls said they slept well, couldn't hear any of it. Also shown is our only successful raspberry plant so far.