mid-May cool

How time flies! Cassandra recovered fully giving us tons of milk again- until yesterday she was down again, very ill with a bloated stomach. No idea what she could have eaten, the others are fine, why couldn't horrid tempered, selfish Elmintrude get ill instead? We had a nice new vet out as the other we don't trust was busy elsewhere. Which reminds me, I think I forgot to mention that both dogs are now not only had their annual compulsory inoculations, but also the compulsory chip. Now if they run away we just beep at them or something. Anyway, Cassy is not much better today, if not worse, we can kiss goodbye to all that milk, probably. The other only gives under a liter per day, which is enough for us, but not for cheese... well, less work is the silver lining. Got new ducks besides the indian runner babies that we have 3 and a half (one of them is a bit stupid and staying tiny) these are muscovites, adults, 3 layers and one drake, they are very beautiful, getting on with the geese ok, and were very cheap. Not easy to catch, we went to an Újpetre farmhouse to collect them. First thing Alan trimmed their wings. The 10 new youg chicks are running free in the front lawn with one hermit adult that was literally picked on by the others. The stables had been cleaned up and the private room, but no sign of any more bookings since the two we'd had so far. No photos, the camera is somehow disabled to connect to the computer, I take it to a camera place in Pécs to find out what is wrong. So I got a photo of Eszter's daughter Ella with the first grandchild, called Abris, don't you think they are just beautiful?

work work and suddenly summer

Kids gone home ages ago, and hard craft by Alan, Jolie and Ron, who was an overlap wwoofer with his family was done on the land. It all looks good, heavy stuff by Ron included cleaning out goat room 1, and digging a big hole for Alan's winter green house experiment. He arrived with wife Kata and Béke (3) and Csongor (1), a bit of a shock to the system, as these little ones are being brought up interestingly. All lawns are cut, flowers about, though had to do some cooking... We all took part in the mayday village picnic, Erzsi was the main chef to create a cabbage-meat- dumpling meal for our team of about 15. It was very tasty, even though it came only fourth in the cooking competition. Jenő won the bawling (3-pin, the Hungarian version called teke) It was a very hot day, after the pleasant communal meal I decided to cool down at home rather than beating everybody again in table-tennis. Other farm news: had our first sorrel harvest, most things are planted, figtree and grapewine look pretty, though the raspberry that was murdered by Charlie probably wont produce fruit this year. I have high hopes for cherries. Elmintrude stabbed Cassandra's udder, was a bit frightening, we had the vet out, but with injection and treatment the recovery was swift, we do have near 3 liters of milk per day. Time of cheese making. Photos are mostly of the picnic plus the baby grass snake that managed to sneak in the house - I did meet an adult of this snake family living in the outbuilding of the hostel house. Don't worry, they are more frightened of us, and are beautiful, useful and harmless... They eat mice and other non-preferable life-forms.