turned cold brrr

lucky I picked some lettuce yesterday - they had shapely frozen leaves this morning, geese could eat some lollipops. Weirdly, later when the sun warmed them they seemed perfectly all right.
On Wednesday we went to see the Somos concert at the usual venue in Pecs, they were good - and happily open to other stuff than their Csango music, most good world music players are like that. In the middle of the concert they shown some indian drumming they learned and produced a very authentic looking dancer who did some danderous stunts.
Before the concert we had a nice if pricey meal in Murphy's and I listened to an astronomy lecture. (not a lot of new stuff, yet, it was still interesting, the hour went very fast) Also tried a newly opened thing that called itself "cukraszda" but they had no cakes except a few sad strudels. Dodi gave us a lift home.
This morning Alan went with Zoltan to see a little tractor for sale,
so that he could get expert opinion, but the seller chap wasn't in, so they went for a walk and found a load of these large mushrooms. Luckily Zoltan good at these things and pronounced them safe - so we had a large portion of them deep fried tonight.
Off to Budapest again tomorrow. Have I mentioned, that when last week I asked Alan to do a bit of vacuuming, he re-arranged the house, but did a bit of clearing/cleaning out, looks good. We put down the carpet I found on Pecs market ages ago - it is really good quality thick thing, looks good.
we didn't manage to give away much of the pumpkins, we might have a bit of Bonfire Night next friday and roast a lot. I should try parkins...
Also I forgot to mention, that there will be a referendum in the village about the speeding large machinary of the agro coop that shake our mud-brick houses to bits, and about the would be drainage system. We received our first campaign leaflet today a bilingual one from Sigi, one of the German settlers. He wants voting against the speedies and also against the drainage - he has a point, there wasn't enough information. Also he mentioned some plans about an old people's home, he is against it - I haven't heard a thing about it.

after wet it's back to normal mediterrean

yes we had a few very humid, dark days with all-night rain.
But daytime was dry and warm (sweaty even). Alan did a lot of painting - I forgot to picture that, next time. Lovely kiwis helped in that too, and left the house cleaner than it was for a long time - an other thanks to them for all the unexpected money - we thought we'd have no more visitors this time of the year - and all the work and all the good time! And thank you for the nice page in the guest-book, including the New Zealand flags!! Jenna baked the pumpkin pie of the picture. That was a bit of a dinner party, Zoltan, Anna and Ricsi were taking part, too. Anna and Ricsi were not convinced with the prawn cocktail or the goat curry, but liked the pumpkin soup and the rhubarb crumble with custard... But all others were I think... a very pleasant evening.
Meanwhile the next batch of cider is ready - a bit vinegary for my taste, I preferred the first batch - but evidently drinkable. Still have to bottle the 40liters or so in the barrel.
The mushrooms had their second flush, but quite dry, we poured some water in the sacks - we'll see if that did any good.
If the weather keeps warm I hope we get more figs - they seem to be on the verge of ripening. That's it really, quiet days of nothing much happening out of ordinary, which is good, even if a bit boring...

back to balmy

yes, up to short-sleeve 20Cs today!
Alan had a trip to Balatonalmadi yesterday with Pali, collecting
a nice canapé that used to be ours, another not so good bed, and an absolute ton of whole windows, doors, louvre-doors. I have no idea what Alan plans to do with them, I think basically just didn't want them go to waste... Meanwhile I had English lesson with Timi and Dodi, after which we climbed into their little van with lovely kiwi guests Jenna and Nick to sample the first mulled wine of the season, that Timi made and it was wonderful, so I have a new recipe.
We walked home, collecting 2 liters of white for further experimentation.
Above mentioned hostel guests-cum-wwoofers helped to herd goats, lift sacks of corn we got from Anna, walked dogs, and gave neat haircut to a very deserving and suitably grateful Bonzo. They seem to have enjoyed all this as decided to stay for 6 days instead of their initial 2.
Jenna is a teacher, so Tunde, who came for lesson, had a chance to sample authentic New Zealand accent.
Tomorrow is the 1956 memorial bank holiday, which will be celebrate with an ordinary day of walks, goats, food and English lesson.
The goats - well Miska is definitely in a better spirit, he breaks through less electric and other fences now, and more to catch up with his ladies, than to run away from them, which is a bit of improvement don't you think?
No new pictures, so just a thing that grabbed my fancy from skeptic today, and here is a great url to see new pictures of Saturn:
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/10/saturn_at_equinox.html

wow!

Thanks for the comments! Glad Raimundo, you're still following and
Brad - I feel famous! All refreshed and motivated here comes the next episode of Kiskassa life - hm - nothing much to report...
well, the night out in Pecs was pleasant,
first we - well Alan and Dodi mostly - played pool than the chinese meal in the fairly posh place - unfortunately I remembered wrong, they had no indian food, never mind. The chinese set meal we had was ok, and people on the large side shouldn't complain about stingy portions. It was a bitterly cold and wet night.
Next day I went up to Budapest to stay with my mum, do an official thing, meet the girls, Eszter made excellent pictures of the narrow boat adventure.
I intended to return home on Saturday, but hungarian railways interfered - well there was an accident somewhere in Miskolc, which paralysed half the services - the disadvantage of making the Pecs intercity go passed Budapest. I decided to avoid stress and postpone the journey one day.
Unfortunately I missed Tamas (who set up the Hungarian WWOOF - good luck with it) and family.
Just as I was settling back to the old (worryingly varied) routine we had a booking for tomorrow - I thought this would work out well, as the Dutch Peter is to leave tomorrow (he'll be our neighbour for 6 months or so if all goes well, he's renting Nora's house). But guess what - in early afternoon we had an other couple
at the gate! Pierre and Rosy, who wanted to wwoof initially a few months ago, and I had to turn them down, but suggested them to drop in as hostel guests - and they did! Lucky we had the heating on. Also lucky that Zoltan deferred today's lesson for tomorrow, so I could quickly clean a bit next door, make beds and other hotelierish stuff I meant to do tomorrow.
Still managed to collect more paprika, cucumber, tomatoe and aubergine from the polytunnel - so will make the last aubergine paste of the year... and we are hastily eating as much lettuce as we can, as they seem to be coping with the weather and insist on looking good.
The chickens are laying heroically, ignoring the turn of the weather. Collected all the walnuts we would need - considering that we haven't touched last years yet as we had loads from the year before. Should try to get an oil-press going.
I know, you want to know about the goats' goings-on or off - well - this is a cliffhanger!! Goat news and pictures with the next post!

32C no more

- winter arrived with biting winds and well under 10C,
we had lots of rain, too, which is good.
We still have the Dutch people here half price, as they are still looking for a long time rent, but they are a tad choosy, which will make all locals with places to rent cross with them and us as well. Who said helping people was a good idea??
Meanwhile a bit of cloths re-arrangement and (bit hasty) preparations for the winter is going on... pictures and details when its all done.
We were invited to the Pecsdevecser harvest dance, and inspite of some
initial misgivings, it was a friendly and merry affair, we had a good time and plenty of jumping about. All drinks and pogacsa were free!
So one could even put up with the ethnic german music that prevailed cca 70 percent of the program. But the family business that provided it was flexible, when a drop-in italian guest jumped on the stage to sing "Marina, Marina..." they could accompany him.
He was from Naples, working in Germany for the last 20+ years, and I looked pleased with Timi and me singing those old Italian tunes to him, some of us even in Italian...
We collected the pumpkins - a little bit too early as Zoltan said, we should have waited for the first frost... but I can't see these few days making a lot of difference.
The one I tasted wasn't quite sweet for eating roasted, but the experimental pumpkin soup was absolutely marvellous. So there is at least one use for them... With Halloween getting popular here, we might offer some of them to the local kids.
And now we are getting ready to a Pecs night out; for the meal we promised Timi, Dodi and Kaszi for looking after things when we were away, we plan to give another try to the Chinese retaurant that does indian and thai and seemingly everything else oriental.
Pictures shows mostly pumpkins and a bit of flying Timi in the village dance.
I've just noticed other blogs have a proper commenting group. How come I don't?? Is there anybody there??

of goat teeth

We had the vet out to give worming jab to the goats, we left Miska out as it was our belief so far that he was useless. The vet had a look at its teeth, and had no teeth on top, at all. So, we concluded, Miska is too old that's why he seems to be senile, not eating a lot and not particularly interested in our beautiful nannies.
So I rang up the shepherd who sold us Miska to complain about the missing teeth. To which he said our vet is not worth his degree, as goats don't have top front teeth. I thought what a cheek, and looked up wikipedia. There was a lot about goats, but not a word about their teeth. Then I put in google "goat teeth" - and there came the definitive article - guess what: goats do not have front top teeth!!
The old shepherd was right, and our vet is apparently, not worth his degree. So I rang back the shepherd, told him he was right, but also, that the billy is still not operating right. To my surprise he said we could take it back. So we decided to let him have a bit longer - maybe the nannies are not on heat. It is weird how easy it was for the first two breeding years - the borrowed billy'd done the job in 2-4 weeks, we had beautiful kids and milk... well, we just have to hope Miska will get more lively, or that the local youngster will measure up.
Got some wood from the owner of said local goat.
And some goodies from Anna; a nice lot of dry salami, the textile softener she usually gets me - necessary to add here, as the water is very hard, the machine needs the treatment as well.
We still have the half-price Dutch guests, we hope they go next Thursday, it seems they will rent long term the house of her next door - Ica. As I was the one suggesting this deal, if it happens - I expect no thanks, only aggro... It was upto 32C today, weird or what?

october heat

yes, it somehow has been very busy. I was back at my mums in Budapest for a few days as well, since last blog. There are still loads of pears, apples to process (Nora's - we actually managed to forget to pick our own apples - all cca 2kg of them were fallen and far gone - never mind)
and up to now there were still tomatoes, paprikas, aubergines and okra, beautiful lettuces, late reddish.
The new goat seems to be a waste of time again; he tries to be as far from the nannies as possible most of the time, which involves breaking through any fence on his way, and he is very smelly. We'll give him a few more days, then gets returned to the Vokany shepherd and we'll demand our money back. meantime it turns out that there is a good billy goat here in the village for hire. I wish we knew...

We had the great communal potato harvest last saturday - I hope I mentioned, that our mayor had the good idea of using the communal workers (the unemployed who are made to work for their benefits) to plant potatoes on the larger plots owned by the council. Now it was time to gather in the products. More than 70 people turned out to help, which is a good number from a village of 280, a lot of whom are pensioners. It was a long, hot but very enjoyable day, with good atmosphere, lots of laughs. Early in the morning Duna tv turned up, so at 6pm you could see Kiskassa and a glimpse of Alan in their news!
We were very tired and thirsty by 3pm - we could have finished earlier, but we waited for another tv crew (M1) which was a mistake, as they turned up 2 hours late, took an hour or more messing about, and the report had never appeared in their news, maybe we were not picturesque enough or too communist, never mind. Anyway, after 3pm when all was done, we walked to the culture house where we had a hearty communal meal. I think everyone actually enjoyed this "socialist work" as it was called in the old times... There wasn't as much potato as the mayor hoped, wasn't enough for sale, but most household ended up with a big sack - all helps.
I acquired a new student, Tunde, who's trying for the intermediate government exam. She went to a special English class at secondary school, so all she has to do is to recall what she learned, which won't take long. So again, a structure of revision has to be designed...
The Cats became very shy - probably because Gus learned how to jump the middle fence and spent too much time in the front annoying them. They do appear sporadically, when I manage to persuade Gus to stay in the back.
Mushrooms started to grow much sooner than expected, we had our first meal out of them today, I made no pictures - some readers were complaining about the food centredness...
The second batch of cider is also ready, not very sweet, but I prefer no addition of sugar, but Alan and Pali will decide such technical questions.
Pictures reflect the fantastic hot weather we are having for October - we had 31C today. And you can see that the useless goat keeps its distance. I am worried in case we get another drought.