Ecofarmer

re-settled in Hungary from Rochdale, Lancs, England, and into a little village, doing a bit of greenish farming hoping for a quiet life... but stuff just happens...

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

yes, maybe there'll be spring...






this is what I haven't put on the blog a few weeks ago:
"Lovely day here had a spot of rain last evening with that beautiful
smell that sometimes happens.
Birds are chirping madly, though I haven't spotted any swallows, but
it sounds like they are around.
Everything is budding after all, though I haven't looked at the figs
closely in case they don't."

well, since, things are looking distinctly livelier, everything is budding, maybe even the figs. Pictures show our crocuses, the weird siberian bush, the tulips, raspberries all ready to birst into something green or flowery, plus the proper flowers from Pécs Sunday market. We were given 4 plum trees, Alan planted them, now we'll have to see if they've taken. Alan is planting tons of stuff, even on the top field again. Let's hope it will rain, it hasn't since the snow's gone. WE used all the rainwater, we do need rain. Nice to have decent amount of eggs, when for some weird EU new laws managed to limit supply and the price doubled. Also we have about 1.5l goat's milk now, with the kids still suckling quite a lot. Still no swallows and again no sign of the storks.

About the mayoral elections: yes, she won, but the council body decided not to give the pleasure to the gleeful inhabitants of the expected in-fight, and so far the new mayor Erika, as well as all of us representatives are working well together, we had a work-meeting and an official meeting and managed to make decisions for everyone's satisfaction. There are a lot of good communal events in the pipeline, such as a poetry afternoon for national verse-day, a communal village cleansing/beautifying Saturday, the usual Easter egg painting and egg-search;
the May day picnic and bogrács cooking competition.

The village citizens guard had formed; don't worry it is not the nasty stuff, basically walking about, checking stuff, taking calls from distressed old people, that sort of thing; as part of the national society, with the support of the local police, apparently. Alan is part of it, so it can be only good... They will have an identity card with their photo and a yellow vest and a Kiskassa tshirt. They are not allowed to do more than any other villagers.

We had a string of visitors so it must be spring. We had Marta, Jutka, Bori, who's a helper with KiskassaBlues that might happen, among others.

However the wwoofer failed to materialise, she weirdly cancelled on the day of arrival,
and as I happened to be in Budapest, I was planning to meet her on the airport, lucky I checked the e-mail on the morning, saved me a futile trip to the airport.
Well, this never happened before - wwoofers tend to be responsible people, never mind.
I'll have Erzsi, Timi's mum, (Timi just started a job!!) to help this week to
clean up the hostel. She starts tomorrow.
we had a look of my backbone mr image with Marta, fascinating, but
couldn't figure out where was the problem,.
by the conclusion it should hurt more:
Spondylosis et spondylarthrosis med. grad.
Hernia disci intervertebralis L.V.1.d. nagy kiszakadt részlettel (=big fallen-out part!!??)
but besides the bit dead bits that seem to get more feeling slowly,
I don't hurt as such, just on the days after I've been more active than should have been, I find it a bit more difficult/slow/uncomfortable.
very good excuse to be lazier however.

We had a very decent village dance couple of weeks ago, the best music so far, a proper band from Boly, doing not only the local usual dance numbers, but a wider variety stuff from Dire Straits to Illés, and not too loud, We had a full house, with a lot of people from Újpetre. Marta was totally amazed how well the locals dance. Even we had a pleasant jump about.

The new football season started and Újpetre managed get itself disqualified from the match last week when a player flattened the ref. and a fight started as usual. Consequently on the next match there were more stewards than spectators, including our Alan an ardent supporter and member of the club.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

waiting for spring



Really fed up with the cold after those few nice warm days.

having lost 3 little goats (got 2 good ones left so far including giant and very tame Attila)
one doesn't feel like blogging... should have waited for the outcome of today's mayor elections, which probably brings the victory of evil Erika, over untalented but not (so) evil Csaba...
leave you a cliff hanger...

We had a posh meal in Pécs -our 39th anniversary dammit... as Alan says, quite a bit longer then a life sentence, and who am I to quarrel... We went to the Chinese restaurant, we haven't been there for a few years. It lost a bit of it's shine and elegance, and we were more or less the only ones there - mid-afternoon is not a usual dining time - but we had all the attention of the staff, which was nice. Meal was tasty and big, we took most of it home.

Our first outing for a very long time, though Alan of course had a big outing in England.
He had an adventurous return journey; I had a call from Prague... They landed there as a door was loose or something. They applied the relevant elastic bands and they were on their way in no time, he managed to get the train to Pécs that was pre-booked.

Weather insists on being chilly for weeks now, albeit with sparkling sunshine. At the time of the year when we are convinced nothing would grow. Well, all looks more dead than usual, lets hope those severe colds haven't done too much damage.
Especially worried about the figs of course. Just learned a newish cake recipe,
instead of apple bits, I used the green fig compote bits which are not great to eat to tell the truth (more sugar next time) but in the cake it was indeed an inspired idea, very delish. We had a couple of (friends' friends) guests for a couple of days, nice youngsters (Belgian-Finnish) and appreciated said cake. In exchanged they helped Alan bringing the hay we bought from village man,
due to the length and severity of the winter we run out of hay.

(Indian runner) duck eggs are in incubator meanwhile they started to lay again
as do hens, which is nice as the price of eggs doubled in the shops.

Leg is still a bit wobbly, but pain is usually if at all, more of a discomfort.
Will have the MRI on the 21st. before my first trip to Budapest this year.
We still to finalise our travel plans with the girls - it will be Marbella, Andalusia
again, Olga exchanged to an even better apartment, nearer to town and beach.

I was supposed to include a picture of Alan's lettuces growing in water thingie, but as don't feel like going out in the cold to make photos, and he's supposed to explain what it is, sorry, next time! I have instead the usual cat-picture that gave the title - waiting for spring!
and the window greens ditto. I wanted to include one of me in the middle of sciatica and -25C outside a few weeks ago, but I thought better of it, no horror stuff shown on this blog...