Hay

Tuesday night, Hobo had suggested that we collect the hay for Steve sometime early in the morning as it was too hot by 10am. Sure enough, he turns up at 10:40! We loaded up the hand cart and took around to Steve and then Hobo suggested that we have a beer break at the shop. (The shop keeping a supply in the fridge)

There was an interesting bit of street theatre with the woman in the shop as she wanted to catch the post van. So she quickly shut the shop (we hadn't paid yet). She went to the Posta van and some people turned up and waited. No problem but coming up to closing time she'd just locked he shop when two people turned up desperately needing something or other. She'd wanted to catch the ice-cream van now and looked down the street to see if she had enough time to open the shop and serve them. Of course it came past while she was in there but Hobo flagged it down.
After the beer break it was back to storing the hay.

I seem to have mastered the art of unloading the cart as it only takes me 2 or 3 forkfuls to clear it but it takes Hobo much longer to put it in the hay room. (To be fair, it does need a bit of fiddling with.) There were another to loads to get from the garden so of we went again. While stacking the handcart up I managed to knock the head off the fork! Looks like the nail had worked loose. So bit of a QUAD repair and by this time, black clouds had come rolling in. The temperature had dropped noticeably, thank goodness, and it was starting to spit. Hobo said this would be the last load today because of the rain and off we went. It was starting to rain properly while we unloaded and Hobo wanted to get the cart back to the owner before it really opened up.

So, there's me and Hobo running up the street towing the hand cart and as well as the rain, it starts raining hailstones! big ones too, like broad bean sized! (Nice and cool though). After dropping it off we quickly made our way to the pub absolutely drenched. The locals inside waited 10 mins and never got a drop on them.

Oh, and Steve's new kid arrived. Lots of talk on the lines of "THIS time don't sell him but keep him to make sausages with".

Food

A bit of a milestone tonight, apart from the meat and spices, all the ingredients for my evening meal came from the garden.

Onions

Harvested the onions today. Very disappointing. I had planted more than last year but seem to have only a fifth of the crop. Very roughly about 3 weeks worth. On the other hand I have a lot of onion seeds so may next year will be better.
The tomato plants are doing well. i planted them in a new plot so hopefully they won't get blight this year. The biggest is starting to fruit and if they grow as big as last year I'll have tomatoes for months!

Pickles

I spent the morning getting hay in for Steve's goats. Steve gave me a half litre of home made cider vinegar.

In the evening, I used the vinegar to make a pickling brew for some of the walnuts, for the rest I used plain white vinegar. I dated one of the jars and gave it to Hobo in the evening. The Hungarians don't really have a word for pickle and the closest, "pácle" can also mean a walnut coloured paint which led to an amusing conversation in the pub!

Pickling

Well, according to my favourite weather site, it was going to rain at two this afternoon so I decided to fire up the wood-stove to do some washing up and to prepare the green walnuts for pickling.

June, a photo by A John Walters on Flickr.

I haven't checked to see if I've written about this before but the process involves pricking the green walnuts and then soaking then in brine for about two weeks (changing the water at least once). Walnut juice stains just about everything it touches, including plastic so I wore gloves. Took about 2 hours, including coffee breaks, to do them all. It'll be worth it though, I thoroughly enjoyed last years which is why I picked so many this year.

2pm came and went with no rain and the forecast changed to the evening. Typical.

Strimming

Did some strimming today. I noticed that the Walnut tree's fruit were a lot bigger than last time I looked, in fact they looked a bit bigger than the lot I harvested last year for pickling. When the strimmer ran out of petrol I took the opportunity of harvesting the walnuts. I got about 8L (last year I had 3 half-litre jars of pickled walnuts so this is a big increase). I just got all the ones in easy reach thinking that I can get the rest as walnuts when they fall off later in the year.

I then went back to strimming after mixing up a fresh batch of 2 stroke fuel and oil.


It was only after I finished that I realised that today was Friday and not Thursday so I wouldn't be going to Körmend tomorrow after all. Bugger! Means I'll have to pedal there Sunday to get some cash.

I got a nice collection of bites and nettle stings, hard to tell which is which to be honest.

Painting Finished

After_1, a photo by A John Walters on Flickr.

After_2, a photo by A John Walters on Flickr.

Much Better!