New Duties!

Be happy for us! We hardly did ANY weeding this week. Whoo.

We planted peas and beans, we pruned the trees in the orchard (and I got to use the saw, ooooooooh, impressive, I know), Steve taught me how to drive a tractor!, we side-shooted a bunch of tomato plants, we picked a TON of nettles for the pigs who are getting fatter and fatter (and thus closer to slaughter) every day, and when the weekend hit, we went out with Aaron and Orsi and biked much, much farther than I would have liked. :P

Some pictures of things we experienced this week and/or would like to remember after we leave (in three days!):

Notice how the weeds stay away from the flat part of the plant bed. That's right, weeds.... Stay away.

Some other general fun, mostly with the animals:

Those last pictures were of, as Barbara christened it, the "Madeline and Steve love carrot", which immediately became our midday snack.

On Sunday we rode bikes with Aaron and his girlfriend Orsi out to a farmers market about 6km away, then to the Sea of Stones. I'm sure you'll be able to figure out why it is called Sea of Stones after a look at the following pictures:

So that was our last full week on the farm.

You get a prize if you can name the fruit or vegetable pictured here:

And no, it is not a dinosaur egg.

Yet Another Castle Ruin.

Remember that flat-topped mountain in one of the pictures I posted from Hegyesdi Var? The one called Csobanç?

That was where we found ourselves this weekend.

We took a nice 5km bike ride out to a town called Diszel and rose up a dirt path along some small vineyards and farms to get to the foot of the mountain they call Csobanç (pronounced something like "Cho-bahn-ch").

Confession #1: the dirt road was long and although not that steep, still too steep after three miles of biking. About three-fourths of the way up, the dirt and incline proved to be too much for me. Steve zipped up ahead while I gave up and walked my bike up the rest of the way.

Oh, how my muscles and cardiovascular fitness have deteriorated. :(

Csobanç is quite a bit higher than Hegyesdi Var was and took us about an hour just to walk up. But it was a beautiful view (and made Hegyesd mountain look quite midgety in comparison). The castle that once stood atop the Csobanç was attacked by the Turkish army in the mid-1500s.

From this view, you can sort of see how small Tapolca is and how much shorter Hegyesdi Var is, though you can't hear much of what we're saying due to the wind. From this view, you can get a better idea at how big the Balaton is.

Once more, because pictures tell a better story, here you go: photobomb.

And Confession #2: remember that dirt road leading up to the foot of the mountain that I told you about in Confession #1? yeah, well, I decided it would be a good idea to not pay attention while coasting down (albeit at a moderately slow pace) and I hit some loose gravel and fell off my bike. EMBARRASSING. Plus I'm pretty sure my wrist is sprained (will that get me out of pulling weeds??) and I'm going to have a huge bruise on my knee. Steve heard my nonchalant yelp of panic and turned around to see me sprawled on the side of the road under my bike. I crawled to the side with a busted pride and throbbing wrist and decided to be angry for a few minutes, but with no one to feasibly blame but myself, I gave up on the pouting and we continued on to Tapolca where I bought a bag of mini Choco-Cocos (like Almond Joys but without the almonds. Knockoffs of Mounds bars or Bounty bars.) and a peach yogurt smoothie to make myself feel better.

It worked. :)

Also, I would like to acknowledge the fact that my husband didn't laugh at me till we got back to the farm, although he did admit that if he had been riding behind me instead of in front of me and had actually seen me fall, he probably wouldn't have been able to help himself. :P

Oh, well. That's the price I pay for not paying attention to my surroundings.

On Our Own.

This was our first week alone on the farm.

No more Michael.

:( *moment of silence*

We bid farewell to Michael on Sunday evening with promises of trying to get together in September when Steve and I would be in Austria, and then he was gone.

And now we're all alone.

On Monday evening, Steve and I went with the family out to Lake Balaton for the first time. It is the largest lake in Central Europe. It is only 14km across at its widest point, but it is 78km long, which means that at Szigliget, the area of the lake where we went which is fairly close to the middle, we couldn't see either end. However, the Balaton is very warm because it is very shallow; its average depth is only about 3km (about ten feet) and at its deepest point it is less than forty feet deep.

We also had more langos after our swim and we watched a very long parade of birds flying overhead. It was a very pleasant visit to one of Hungary's most famous places.

In other news, Steve got a new job on the farm: splitting, sawing, and stacking firewood. Aaron, Naomi's boyfriend Barney, and Steve were on firewood duty all day for three days and still only filled up maybe two-thirds of the wood barn. Aaron told us that in the average winter, they go through most of that firewood. Wow.

And where was I when the boys were off doing manly work?

Why, I was picking weeds, of course.

It was a very long and irritating week for me because I expected to "graduate" from weed duty and move on to more complicated, higher level farming jobs, I guess. But those weeds are relentless - farming isn't like the corporate world, where you get promoted to better, cushier, more advanced positions. Steve got promoted using the wood splitter (which looks like a giant drill) and the circular saw; although it wasn't as boring as picking weeds and nettles, he ended up with splinters, blisters, cuts, bruises, and more general fatigue than I did. I was just bored. But I suppose this was a lesson in patience for me, and a lesson in farming: the weeds never sleep. Neither do the animals, nor the weather, nor the fields. Farming is a 24/7 job with no promotions, no vacations, no paid sick days. It's hard work, farming is.

One of the highlights or my nettle-picking endeavours was pulling out a nettle by the roots and finding a toy car! Even though I was by myself, I couldn't stop laughing (and what a much-needed laugh it was). I should've left it; maybe it would've grown bigger? :)

Some other pictures from life on the farm, since pictures are more interesting than any story of mine could be:

Saturday was Hegyesd Village Day, which is basically a picnic with entertainment like kids singing songs and there was a cooking contest (there were multiple fires around where people we cooking stews from fish, beef, lamb, wild boar) and Barbara came in second place! Look at how happy she is. Excuse my run-on sentence.

Steve used the weed-whacker (also called a strimmer) to clean up the areas near the house.

Pre-sunset. Be jealous. It was a hundred times more breathtaking in person.

Steve loves the cats and they love him back.

One of Steve's other jobs was helping Barney fix up a wall in one of the family's guesthouses down the street.

One of my other jobs was pulling elderberries off their stems so we could make EVEN MORE JAM!!!

And so concludes week three on the farm.

House of the Rising Sun.

Our three-day weekend was also Michael's last on the farm. Friday was a glorious sleeping in day for me (I slept through breakfast) and we spent the day relaxing and being lazy, reading and chatting. On Saturday we hitchhiked into Kapolcs for the festival's final weekend, but the highlight of the weekend was the grand opening of the House of the Rising Sun.

For about the past week and a half, Aaron has been refurbishing the farm outhouse. And by refurbish - I mean that it was a concrete structure that was used as an outhouse twenty years ago and recently The family decided they wanted it ready and available for use once more. Aaron has been shoveling out ages-old poop, re-concreting the bottom, building a wooden door and seat, painting the inside and outside, and otherwise redesigning and refurbishing the "outdoor dunny", as they call it.

And on Saturday, Michael's last night on the farm (*tear*), we had the opening celebration.

Opening ceremony involved Michael somehow getting his hands on a guitar and all of us - me, Steve, Michael, Aaron and his girlfriend Orsi, Naomi, and Barbara - belting out various songs like Bohemian Rhapsody, Wish You Were Here, and Final Countdown while Aaron wrapped the dunny in toilet paper so that Barbara could "cut the ribbon". Michael mentioned that he was still learning guitar and didn't have many songs in his repertoire just yet, but for some reason "House of the Rising Sun" was our favorite and we sang it over and over and over, and as we popped open some bubbly that we mostly spilled on the ground in our excitement (and because it was nighttime and we couldn't see), Barbara cut the ribbon and the outdoor dunny was open to the public!

Animals, Pie, and Sausagefest.

We have survived yet another week of nettle stings, naptimes, conversations about GMOs, and playing with the animals.

The boys carrying a crate of nettles European-style; the boys with Wallace (dog) and Foxface (cat); Steve taking the sheep back to their pen.

Most of the fun this week revolved around the animals:

As most of you know, I loooooove chickens. So whenever I made it out early enough to let the chickens out of their coop in the morning, I had a good laugh at the chickens running around. And with the compost pile right next to the chicken run, I could feed the chickens grubs!!!!

One day, Steve, Michael, and I were taking a short break from working to watch the pigs root around. The fence you can see in the video is electrified, as are all the fences around the farm, and the animals stay well clear of it. However, since the pigs dig with their snouts and therefore can't see, and since they were blindly heading toward the fence in search of food, we were convinced that one of the pigs would get too close and give his ears a shock on the fence.

So we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

We waited for probably fifteen minutes before giving up and going back to work.

Not five minutes later, we hear a squeal and a scuffle. Upon returning to the pig run, we see it: a rooted-out path dug past the fence. One did indeed get zapped!

In less impressive news, a new WWOOFer, Babette, a Hungarian woman in her thirties, came in for the week and she and I mucked out the rabbit pens. *wrinkles nose* Rabbit refuse smells like ammonia. It was gross.

In more impressive news, the boys spent all of Thursday chopping last week's slaughtered cow into pieces.

You may remember that last week, we witnessed a cow get slaughtered. Well, this week, we got the cow back in huge chunks from the slaughterhouse. It was the boys' job to break it down so that Barbara and Peter could have people come over to pick up their orders. So Steve, Michael, and Aaron spent the entire workday chopping meat, cutting steaks, sawing bones, slicing and cubing fat chunks, and various other meat-processing exercises.

Babette and I spent the day preparing food for lunch, baking pies, and making elderberry jam. [This really means that Babette cut up some potatoes for lunch and peeled some apples for the jam, and I diced a dozen onions and sliced up three cow livers and made liver and onions for lunch, cut up six cow kidneys for steak & kidney pie, cleaned out and sliced up a cow heart, and boiled elderberries for the jam.]

This, my friends, is a cow heart that has been cut open.

At lunch, we were asked if we would be interested in working overtime in exchange for Friday off. Of course, we said yes. So after an hour-long break following lunch, it was back to work.

I strained the elderberries for the jam and helped Babette knead the dough for the three blackberry and apple pies we were making before heading over to the too-full, too-testosterone-y kitchen where the boys were making SAUSAGES!!!!

Steve stuffing sausage; the boys showing off their creation: a THIRTY-EIGHT LINK GIANT SAUSAGE!!!; Babette, Barbara, and me putting jam in jars to set; the blackberry apple pies - Babette did the lattice pattern on top with the extra dough that I didn't eat. Can you believe it was her first time making pie?? Very pretty and tasty for a first-timer.


I think it was about ten o'clock at night before the beef was ground, the sausages were stuffed, the elderberries strained, the jam reduced and bottled, the pies baked, and dinner served.

It was a long, long, tiring day. Who knew food processing was so laborious???

But at least it ended with a belly full of sausage and pie, a good night's sleep, and a three day weekend!

Hegyesdi Var.

See this mountain?

That is Hegyesd Mountain (Hegyesd means "pointy" in Hungarian). Steve, Michael, and I have been talking about hiking up that mountain ever since we got here. And this week, we finally did it!

It is actually referred to as Hegyesdi Var; the word Var is in reference to the castle that once stood on top. The mountain (which, to the Austrian Michael, is way too small to even call a mountain) is about half a mile from the farm. The picture above is from right outside the main house at the farm.

After about an hour walk/hike up the steep hill/mountain, we made it to the top. This is what we saw!

The hike up:

The picturesque village of Hegyesd and the surrounding area:

Yes, that is a pterodactyl flying behind us.

That flat mountain on the left? That is Csobanç: our next endeavour.