St. James’ Park

Black hands again.

I’ts walnut time again and that means everyone is walking around with black hands - you see people everywhere carrying sacks of nuts and people drive around with loudspeakers shouting ”orihee, orihee” (орехи is BG for walnut) and its also the time of millions of peaches. They’re actually nicer than they were last year but its still hard to use them all! I’m making rakia again, I’ve bottled loads, I’ve made peach jam, peach chutney, peach cake, had peaches baked in honey – and the other day I reached out of my bed room window and picked one to eat in bed.

I’m having a volunteer free couple of weeks and its really nice and peaceful. There has been so much work going on and so many people around that I feel i need to have some space to engage with the land again. The trees are starting to turn red and yellow and the light is quite lovely now that the sun isn’t burning my head off. I’ve advanced a little further into the field – Laura from Manchester was here for a week and we spent most of the time digging next year’s potato bed – its half way along the field between 2 walnut trees – then I read in my biodynamic book that walnut trees are not good for growing vegetable nearby! This will have to be an experiment.

My potatoes are out now but it was probably the worst crop I have ever grown – a combination of drought, no manure and Colorado beetle – but next year I have a plan! (and I have some manure now).

I had a lovely visit from Jenny from the Co-op in Manchester last week – she helped me with a load of bottling, found a place for a swing and was generally very encouraging about the benefits of having a break in a place like this. She enjoyed the simpleness of the life here and she learned how to light a fire-that is always an easy thing to do especially if you normally live in a city and don’t cook with wood.. Actually the whole thing about cooking on a wood stove is a whole new way of thinking-you cant just turn up the heat when you want to – you have be a couple of steps ahead of the fire. You really have to anticipate what the fire is going to do next and be ready for it. Also the two cooking stoves and the other wood stove are all quite different when it comes to lighting them. You have to learn how to live with the fires and I guess in the winter, it’ll be a different ball game cos I’ll also have to think ahead of the weather. I don’t want to have to go out in a snow storm to chop kindling. I’m thinking about the logistics of where I store my wood (I’ve just bought 10cu. Metres of mixed wood and its coming next week) but I bet there will be times when I have to go out in the snow to get my morning fire going! I don’t anticipate getting it together this winter and I’m sure I wont have enough to eat. I do have 24 pumpkins! Any interesting pumpkin recipes will be useful.

Laura and Tom are in their house up the road and they’re having a great time getting it oragnised. They had a wonderful infestation of ants but I think they’re winning. Bookluk is the Bulagian word for rubbish and its very important to try to acquire as much Bookluk as possible when you buy a house here-the barns here were full of bits of wood, tools,straw, bits of metal, old stoves and loads of etc. Its all been so useful-if you want something to do a job, you just wander about for a bit and then you’ll find the perfect thing! Laura and Tom got Bookluk in their house instead of the barns- they got loads of old clothes-we had a dinner party one night and all dressed up in old polyester dresses and sombre suits-they also got lots of great kitchen thing-pots and pans and lovely glasses plus a great 70’s standard lamp-so kitch. Elain and Keith also got house Bookluk(as well as ants) – loads of communist memorabilia and more clothes.

I almost forgot about my last volunteer – Aslak from Denmark. Max rescued him from another volunteering project that wasn’t working out very well. He was great and did all the big heavy things plus he started the bathroom with Tom. We’re converting the spooky spidery little room into a shower room-although I haven’t touched it since they left- I’m waiting for a rainy day-meanwhile the weather has gone back to being hot.

I a now full of admiration for the Danish education system- Aslak’s English was amazing and he’s\never been to an English speaking country. We had some great conversations about language and also about puddings. We started this conversation with Alex from Holland who didn’t understand what a pudding is. After much debate in which Laura and I were the only ones qualified to make the definition, being English, we decided that custard is the defining factor and that things can have potential to be a pudding ie if it could have custard poured over it! These were long conversations! Aslak is now thinking of doing Erasmus (student exchange) in England and exploring puddings around the country. These discussions were prompted by Laura and Jennie bringing some Birds custard powder. Its great when people arrive with cool bits of shopping and I got a lovely Red Cross Parcel from Jennie Hayes- thanks-the Mars Bars were fantastic.

It’s the first of October tomorrow and I have to keep remembering that winter is just around the corner – there was no snow last winter but judging by the amount of berries on the trees, it’ll be different this year. Its such a big unknown- I don’t know what happens here when there is 2metres of snow for weeks on end and it gets to minus 20 –might just

spend a lot of time in bed!

I think I’m now qualified to say that yes you can get sick of peaches! They’re almost finished and I’ve added peach nectar t my list of ways to use them –that was pretty brilliant actually. We’ve now moved on to quinces- I have 2 trees full and so has Laura. Yesterday, being the correct day biodynamically, we had a mammoth session of making quince cheese – a bit like lemon curd but pink. If you’ve never seem a quince, they’re like very big, hard furry pears. It actually took us all day to do this – peeling ad chopping, chopping wood, cooking on the open fire for an hour, pureeing, cooking again and bottling 25 jars plus having visitors ad cutting my hair- but now we have Christmas pressies for all our friends in the village. Must make some cute little frilly lids for the jars.

At the beginning of the summer I was being really challenged by the whole bottling thing-I never seemed to have the right lids for the right jars, not enough jars(everyone has about 500 in their cellar), I didn’t have the right huge pot to boil the bottles in – but now I have all the right bits of equipment and best of all I’ve found a shop in popovo that has a room full of jars of all shapes and sizes. It’s a doddle now-just got to wait and see what they all taste like!

I’ve also got to think about what to do with loads of meat- Alan’s days are numbered now. That’s going to be hard but I’m not thinking about it just yet.

Now here’s an interesting thing –I have a thing on my website now called GoogleAnalytics which tells me how may people have logged on to the site, which pages they’ve looked at and for how long and it also tells me where they are they are logging on from. Big Brother via Google! So I want to ask you to now go to www.stjamespark.biz and I can check who is actually reading this blog!

So for those of you who have got to the end of this – who hasn’t talked to me for a while? Send me an email with a bit of news from your life. Lots of love from the lovely autumn sunshine of Bulgaria.

Winter 2007 21^st Nov

It was minus a lot last night and although the sun is shining today, its really cold and the sky is clear so it’ll be very very cold again tonight. I remember last year when Svetlana said that if I stayed here for the winter I would die. I laughed and put that down to general Bulgarian pessimism but now I see that she was right! There is something so very real about winter here – theres nothing pretend about how cold its going to get and how hard it is to actually keep warm – I keep looking at my wood pile for a sense of security!

I can feel a sense of hibernation coming on – my energy has changed and I’m slowing down. My diet has also changed – it was just the other week that we were still trying to eat all the tomatoes in the garden and having lovely salads now all i can think about is hot stews and soups which is fortunate as I have the ingredients for a great many soups –pumpkins and meat. In the summer I was always up around 7.30 or earlier now I have my breakfast in bed and stay there for ages!

I have a new perspective on this house now – so far I have only really lived in it in the summer and then actually I don’t live in it – sometimes I’m never in the house between getting out of bed and going to sleep at night so my thoughts then are about the outside and the field. But now it’s the opposite – its too cold to do anything outside so I’ve started thinking about how the house could be more efficient in the winter. Its like life has two very distinct halves here – summer and winter – even though there are 4 clear seasons, spring and autumn are short and then before you know it, its either 45degrees or minus 20.

I bought a thermometer today so I can give accurate temperature readings.

I’m curious now to see which of the trees will be the first to bud in the spring and what happens to the plants sitting in the soil. Some plants are so amazing – how come spinach doesn’t die in minus 10 or when its covered in snow? I’ve still got leeks in the ground and parsnips but probably the most amazing plant is Jerusalem Artichoke. I planted it to see if it was good for shade – the plants grow to 8-10 feet. It was and it also wasn’t bothered with the drought or the heat – it still grew and now the tubers are still in the ground and they’ll stay there all winter till I need them. They’re not everyone’s taste as a vegetable – a bit of flatulence guaranteed- but the garden is going to be full of them making shade next year. I gave some to Vasilka today – she had never seen them before but was impressed by their resilience. Hope she doesn’t mind a bit of wind.

Oh my God-there’s a jackal or something howling in the garden! (real action news!) I heard one the other night but the dogs were out and they went crazy – barking for ages. They often do that, especially Tino as people who have stayed here will know. Now I know that he wasn’t just barking at shadows. He’s locked in the shed right now which is why they’re able to come so close. I just went to the door to see if I could see them and Little Jackie ran in with a mouse and at the same moment Wor Geordie pounced on another mouse behind the logs. Plus Tino was going crazy barking in the shed – peaceful silence one minute and animal chaos the next. It was also too cold to leave the door open to chase the cats out so I’ve shut the door to my bedroom and left them to it. I wonder if I’ll know the difference when I hear a wolf.

It feels a bit like the edge of the world here right now. Not in a scary way but I was just looking up the field and realising that beyond it is woods and wild land. It was daytime when I was thinking that though and now I’m thinking I wont be walking out in the dark again for a long time. I can hear the jackals now down by the spring.

Cant decide whether to keep Tino locked up and they come in the garden or listen to him bark all night or maybe he might get eaten! Jess has developed a new character too – in Ireland she learned how to be an Irish Farm Dog and run after cars and bark at everything. Here there is actually something to bark at plus there are some quite ferocious dogs around here so she’s learning how to be mean and nasty – not often but I have seen another side to Jess sometimes and she’s a bit scary. But I don’t want her to get eaten by the Jackals. It’s a pity I’m scared to go out cos there’s a lovely almost full moon and I do want to see them. I’ll wait till somebody is here.

I’m going to learn a bit about animal tracks – easy to spot in the snow. Keith, my Scottish neighbour who was a gamekeeper and who yesterday sawed through his foot with a chain saw, knows all about tracking –he reckons he’s seen large cat tracks. Keith is ok but in plaster for a good while. But we now know how the hospital system works.

A few normal kind of things that happened yesterday- I got up early and went to the Wednesday bazaar in the village – its just small but has all the seasonal equipment – thermals, hats etc and a good second hand stall. I bought some great green shiny leggings and angora socks. Chatted with a few people, pretended I didn’t know Tino and met Laura. We went for a coffee in the secret supermarket and in my best Bulgarian I arranged to buy some Rakia from the guy who has the eggs. Later as I went to collect it, I passed the little old lady at the Turkish house chopping some logs – the axe was almost as big as her and I commented on her muscles – she responded by effortlessly slicing a huge log in half.. Then I met Norm, the cow guy and he introduced me to his turkeys which I hadn’t seen before. He said he would kill one for me – that was kind but I’ve no idea when he meant which means he could arrive at any time with a freshly plucked turkey. I then bought 5 litres of really nice looking plum rakia and walked home as the temperatures plummeted and everything started to get crispy – then the jackals came out………