cider making

Spring is here at last, beautiful, and the male stork arrived days ago repairing the nicely lifted nest (thanks to the local bird protection league). As I have no picture, I put some on about the cider venture; Pali (Dark Dog) got the apples, Alan supplied the press and bought the containers. The cutting up went swimmingly, I thought it would be difficult. The pressing itself took ages, Alan thinks he has to make a more specialised press, maybe an old wine-press was meant to deal with grapes and not with apples, however well chopped. Anyhow, we do have about 50l of applejuice fermenting hopefully the right way...

My dad is very weak, had a kidney infection that was treated fast at home, but the sudden fever made him even weaker. I am going up to Budapest to see him again in a couple of days, planning to be back for Easter, when there'll be a Festival of Light again in Kiskassa.

There was big turn-out for the voluntary work today to clean up the road, Alan and liza took part, too, I had a couple of good excuse to stay home, an English lesson, and waiting for Turkish hostel guests - not yet here at 17pm. We had tons others however, Mustafa and co stayed, their house got finished on time and he was given his resident status, the officials approved. It felt as we did it...
but everyone was happy, including the locals who made a bit of money doing a very quick and good job.
We had a family of 8 from Utah, very nice people, just for one night, they wrote very nice things into the comments book.
Alan and Liza agreed, that they were mormons - we were too shy to ask - they drank no tea, coffee or alcohol, and had 4 kids... but they did drink hot chocolate...
The pictures were made by Liza, who is very good at it, we have some excellent cat and pig portraits, maybe next time...