hot busy days

a bit of a breather today, a quiet Sunday, from the steady flow of very pleasant guests, wwoofers are on their way hitch-hiking to Istambul, Alan's watching the first match of the season (Újpetre playing at home).
It's 35C outside, a bit cooler inside, though I had hot boiling pots of tomatoes for bottling - not much peace for this wicked soul...

The festival was a success, the exhibition of local artifacts - about 6 pieces from our household - was well laid out, the guest craft-people, the veteran cars/motors, the hot air baloon and archery all happened, as well as the quality singing/dancing culture programs. Saturday was exhausting with all the cooking - I was down there early morning with the wwoofers to help with the preparation of the communal bean-gulyás. With the crowds and the heat it was a very long day, especially with the dance the previous day, where we managed to turn out in good numbers; besides me and Alan, the wwoofers, two Canadian and a US guest guys. Alan went up in the hot air baloon, got his head slightly singed he says, though not visibly. The burner was a bit lower than one expected...

Other news: we got 3 Indian runner ducks. They very entertaining, and useful - eating insects and weeds, but not tomato/paprika/aubergine etc useful plants! I don't know how, but they are very clever like that, as well as washing there food before eating it. Except flies which they can eat directly from the air. Got them from the village from the lady who first told me about them.

We had a freak gust of wind the other day, and the Savonius broke its frame and fell over, alas.

Can't do justice to the festival with pictures - got some with the hot air baloon, you can see the apple grinding process as we made some apple juice; you can see Eva's typical breakfast,Alan with his favourite aubergine - I cannot save the blow -up pics of the ducks - they have to wait.

come to the 4th Kiskassa Festival of Light!!!

yes, it's kicking off on Friday afternoon! It goes on till Sunday evening!
details (in Hungarian, but you can get the gist of it...)
http://iwiw.hu/i/esemeny/fesztival/Kiskassai-Fenyfesztival-IV-45965

there will be lots of local performers, exhibition of old traditional tools and artefacts, hot air baloon, the usual kiosks with weird stuff on sale, the communal kemence will be used to bake local variations of lángos, lepény and rétes, there will be pony rides, arrow shooting, veteran bikers, a big dance on Friday night with the biggest local band called Harold (!!) and much much more.

meanwhile there was more volunteering - mostly by Alan, this time shifting rocks... our random wwoofers (ok, so they are sort of ship-wrecked, so it was such an unusual story, we had to let them come... and they've helped tons, even if they don't have experience with this type of work.)

Tons of the vegetables/fruit need our attention - it is the busiest time of the year picking and processing stuff. Beside the potato mole-cricket calamity, everything is doing well except the cucumbers, they are represented with one lacklustre plant, but even that is producing enough for our salads. The aubergines, paprikas, tomatoes are fab, not to mention the sweet corn...
so no pictures, as thay would involve food and food production, and Alan's dad gets bored by that... I made ketchup! Alan made yellow plum chutney. And he is plonking away on his guitar in every free moment he has, he is a master of the slide.

meanwhile our council members (including yours truly) were severely dissed by an un-named person in the village newsletter, which is supposed to be the voice of - council members. If you want to see true press freedom, read our newsletter! (and avoid most of the Hungarian media...) Well, my answer will be in the next issue, with my name on...
Lois where art thou hope all went well in Brisbane.
Happy Birthday Sharon!!!!!