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...

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

good omen(s)


so, Cassandra picked the coldest day of the horrid returned weird end-of-March winter, but this time Alan helped with the new little one (beautiful but male called curry) making a warm corner (dug up a special lamp from old Hornung - we still discover fascinating old farm implements) and with rubbing and nugding when necessary. It is still around zero, but the lamp is switched off - mother and kid prefer sleeping in the hay, and doing well. I wait with the photo being superstitious just a little in a strictly skeptic way. As for omens - a pair of robin redbreasts decided to take up abode in Alan's workshop - even though he was busy in the last 3 days cleaning and re-organising the place. He wants to have a warm snuggery there suitable for early goat deliveries for the future, I bet we'll have another 5 years without such silly arctic weather attacks.) And today, when Alan opened the door to the polytunnel, he found a redstart family of 5 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redstart) flying about there. Cannot figure out how they got in. Strange bird-behaviour, must be due to the funny (not ha-ha) climate. Bogdan is working very hard, last weekend he had his first days off and went to Pécs - by hitch hike again- and was duly returned Sunday afternoon by the nice owners of Ananász hostel in Pécs, who were curious about us for ages apparently and they sent guests here even before checking us out. We had a lovely time at Jenő's and Guni's on Thursday, they have a most impressing collection of ethnic percussion instruments to complement their tibetan sound therapy set of bowls. It was great fun trying them all out. And we had cake and wine to help us with our bing-bonging and ting-tanging and csilingel-ing. We moved all the food from Pali's freezer from the Old Stables, which is also getting tidied up, and so we have a full freezerful to go through before we start to harvest any new produce. Though as things stand now with the forecast of more rain, I have my doubts if any veg-growing will happen this year. However, we have 5 goose-eggs carefully hidden deep in the nesting box straw by our very conscientious new goose lady, and Ermintrude is producing nearly two liter milk on her own, with Cassandra not yet being milked for weeks. I made the seasons first kőrözött, and it is rather good, if I may say so, and I plan to make a proper hard cheese from the lot I am dripping at the moment. We had an English - or is it Welsh - leek-n-bacon soup today followed by Hungarian style (with onion and paprika) tökfőzelék (so much like I remember from my nursery days nearly 60 years ago...) with sausage and fried eggs... Cause I haven't been talking about food for ages... Pictures next time! But don't expect bird portraits - I am not an adept photographer. But hope to manage a few cute ones of the village toddlers' Sunday's Easter egg collection, where lamb and goat-kid acquaintings are planned, as per usual, in the front lawn nicely tidied by the sheep.

Sunday, March 17, 2013

the good news...


... are that Alan is much better though he needed another course of antibiotics, nearly back to normal though tires easily; and that the years first wwoofer Bogdán arrived, and he's a nice lad from Romania, from the town of Hunyad originally, he've been living in Temesvár for the last few years while at university and working. He sent a wwoofer photo before departing 4am yesterday to successfully hitch-hike here by 4pm. And the geese started to lay. Maybe there will be enough laid and the lady geese will sit on them, and we'll have little geese, we;ll see!! I know, I know, now you want the bad news... well, Ermintrude managed to drop her nice two little goats just when the sudden cold snap snapped, and next morning they were dead. The truth is, that I didn't let Alan attending to them, as he was not well yet, and it was very cold. So, that is sad, but hopefully we'll still have milk and Cassandra wisely waited with hers so far. The weather was far from being as hideous as in the rest of the country where motorways were closed down by snow with hundreds of cars stranded and electricity and connection to little villages failed for days. We had the sudden -10C with horrid northern winds and a bit of snow, but nothing worse. Erzsi put 23 indian running duck eggs in the incubator and 20 chicken eggs, so we'll try to raise these when the time comes. The factory hens arrival was delayed due to the weather, they'll come next week. Tibi came to help to saw up the wood, and and Bogdán helped tons with this and other stuff an his first day. I made rakottkáposzta to make him feel at home, but he's never ever had anything quite like it. He needs feeding well, he is very skinny.

Friday, March 08, 2013

bummer


just when we were happy about the success of our locarb (basically no bread and no cakes - not easy!) and eating less diet - Alan lost nearly 4 kilos, I 2 over 4 weeks, and Tuesday Alan was rushed to hospital with a severe pain that turned out to be a gall bladder infection. Which occurs to people who diet apparently. He was allowed home in a few hours and with the aftereffects of painkiller and other medication it seemed it was all over, but life wasn't meant to me that easy, and he had a hard day yesterday, but the initial really horrid pains did not re-surface which is good. This morning he was markedly better, the main thing is to take it slowly, as we learned, and now we have to make up our mind how to do low carb as well as low fat... but this not eating for three days did a world of good for further destroyed kilos, even I lost some more due to stress and having to cope with animals. I am taking the sheep to the front lawn - they are at their best behavior, no goat-like silliness. Goats have to stay inside for now, they are dropping little ones soon anyway, - hopefully waiting until Alan is better. It looks like that I have to appear tomorrow at the village traditional International Women's Day quiz without Alan (I am baking a cherry/walnutty cake) especially sad as tomorrow marks our 40th wedding anniversary, as they say, longer than a life sentence...