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.