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...

Saturday, July 20, 2013

me and me and summertime


well, guests, harvests, processing of harvested stuff, and normal hot summer weather. Didn't quite work out with wwoofer couple, but sometimes it happens, hope they still ha a pleasant time. New wwoofer arrived yesterday, she is in line with the wonderful ones we had so far this year. We had a Danish week, first Frederik and Hilde, coinciding with UK siblings, Oliver on his way to Copenhagen for a year, and now two Danish girls, who stayed on extra and are at this moment in Újpetre with Alan and Anita (the above mentioned wwoofer) and Nóra (neighbour) to a tractor show -cum- harvest festivities; I decided to cool inside instead, keeping a weary eye on wondering 4 tini-ducks and floppy goslings down to 2 & 1/2. Frederik sent to photo, and as one where I look satisfactory to my own eye, the blog gets it.

Sunday, July 14, 2013

... and more apricots


no, we couldn't find a repeat of the last season-closing episode of the Good Wife, and Hyppo passed the MOT if not with flying colours - a few things still need fixing. We had amazing amount of apricots, I actually sold 20kg and given away about 40kg, made 38 big jars of jam, 4 trays are drying in the solar fruit drier, made cake with them (see photo), frozen some and 10 kilo or more still eying me in a reproachful way in the kitchen. I forgot to mention the immense amount I managed to consume, making things a bit more rapid in my digestive cycle. Meanwhile tons of other stuff needs to be processed so it will be nice to have wwoofers again in a couple of days. At the moment we have 11 miffed Polish hostelguests, we - with the help of Erzsi, Tibi and Zsuzsi made the place really clean and tidy, but they decided that they will all stay in the hostelhouse, spurning the private room and the Old Stables, as even with the extra mattress and the double bed in the living room there are only 10 places - if 3 with the kid sleeps in the double bed... however, They said it's ok, so it is. Means that the other rooms won't need new bedding and new cleanup... The weather is a very pleasant 29Cmax, with cool nights, bit August-ish. On the way back from the MOT we had the daily set menu in the Két Szekér in Kozármisleny, and it was good. That is a lettuce next to Alan on the photo.

Monday, July 08, 2013

ups and downs at the moment


ups: apricots, cucumbers, green beans, lettuce, patisson downs: peas and the grapewine after a big storm. It took Alan a full morning to piece them together again; the red ones will be ok I think and quite a lot of the greens, too. It looked gorgeous, with unbelievable number of the fruit before... also one of those floppy goslings still refuses to use both legs and they seem to be growing very slowly. The runner ducklings - so far so good, lively lot. We are keeping the male goat population in, namely Hannibal and Curry, they are a nuisance, insisting investigating the wrong side of whatever fence they encounter. The girls are good as ever, and we are getting 3liters of milk per day. Hyppo's MOT is coming up, which is time for anxiety, but Zoltán (who'd passed his relevant English exam and got his degree at last) is being a big help, checking it out, putting things right - we had to buy parts for tons of money. The test itself is booked for Friday 10pm - keep your fingers crossed. We had Hani for 3 days ourselves, Jutka went home on Thursday.It wasn't easy... she is very clever and funny but rather single minded about her food habits and her entertainment. She loved playing cards and picked up the new ones in no time. She enjoyed the ducklings/goslings/Gus/cattoo and milking (which she can do well) but they seem to had lost their novelty by Saturday... Anyhow, we were not total failures, as she declared that she had a good time and would return again in the future. Tomorrow will be the main apricot day, we plan to pick lots 6am with Erzsi, who insists on helping with it, so we -can- do a bigger batch than I usually do. I did my first yesterday, picked about 10kg in ten minutes - there are so many, I am worried about the branches breaking under the weight. Other news: I am a fully fledged pensioner now in Hungary, too, I even got the travel concession. Cheaper trips to Budapest! We missed The Good Wife episode today, but no worry, we can watch it tomorrow...