For the first few weeks of february, the farm has been coated in a layer of snow. But in the last week the temperature has rocked to 10C and the snow has vanished into the past leaving a farm in need of some love
The evapouration of the white carpet reveals holes under concrete and fences and lots of doggy poo! So, today we pressed onwards clearing up the farm. Today was spent clearin' out the rubbish from under the mulberry, I've dug out most of the metal left by the previous occupant(2 large trailer full) and added it to the garage of scrap metal. Also, we recycled a (literal) carload of glass bottles and other crap which was dug out of the ground. Just before the rain came, I managed to uproot a few massive trees from the Veg patch. Hoepfully, we can plant some peppers, tomatoes, squashes
Saturday, 20 February 2010
Sunday, 24 January 2010
Stryper
A while back, Andy saw that Stryper were going on tour to celebrate 25 years! like an excited bunny, I frantically search to see if there was a European tour and after too many emails, i found out that they were going to play Prague our close city.
So, on Thursday the 20th, we (Andy had just assumed that Samm was coming and didn't actually ask her!) left work at 4:00 from Szeged and head to Budapest on the train. Here we spent the night, drank beer and hung out with matt brennar before we left the following morning at 9:30 to prague.
Skipping boring travel details and trying to get tickets, we arrrived, burgered up and then waited for the gig to start. On the way in we were asked if we had guns, knives or drugs! A first for a CHRIStian Band! Samm was dreading the size of the venue, with us being squeezed into an ocean of moshers but when we got inside, we discovered it was a quite small club and we squeezed into the the front row. There were about 5 rows of people and then the rest of the club
The Age demographic was Bizarre 8 - 70! I kid not!
Stryper were damm loud (my ears stopped ringing on sunday) damm good with the all the harmonies and guitars nailed. They also were also rather fit and non fat! They launched into the gig with 6 monster hits non-stop and they rocked hard with numerous rock posses. They did lob the bibles into the crowd!
We crashed at the czechinn hostel( most excellent and highly recommended) and then on saturday we meet Mark and Joanna for pancakage for breakfast and the start of a cool friendship
Tried to sleep on the 9.5 hour journey home, we eventually turned into bed at midnight!
A most excellent event
So, on Thursday the 20th, we (Andy had just assumed that Samm was coming and didn't actually ask her!) left work at 4:00 from Szeged and head to Budapest on the train. Here we spent the night, drank beer and hung out with matt brennar before we left the following morning at 9:30 to prague.
Skipping boring travel details and trying to get tickets, we arrrived, burgered up and then waited for the gig to start. On the way in we were asked if we had guns, knives or drugs! A first for a CHRIStian Band! Samm was dreading the size of the venue, with us being squeezed into an ocean of moshers but when we got inside, we discovered it was a quite small club and we squeezed into the the front row. There were about 5 rows of people and then the rest of the club
The Age demographic was Bizarre 8 - 70! I kid not!
Stryper were damm loud (my ears stopped ringing on sunday) damm good with the all the harmonies and guitars nailed. They also were also rather fit and non fat! They launched into the gig with 6 monster hits non-stop and they rocked hard with numerous rock posses. They did lob the bibles into the crowd!
We crashed at the czechinn hostel( most excellent and highly recommended) and then on saturday we meet Mark and Joanna for pancakage for breakfast and the start of a cool friendship
Tried to sleep on the 9.5 hour journey home, we eventually turned into bed at midnight!
A most excellent event
Sunday, 10 January 2010
First Week back to work
On the 4th of Jan, Samm and I started the struggle to get back into a work routine after a couple of weeks off on holiday.
The morning rituals starts at 6:30am with the alarm going off and then two Zombies stagger around in the dark, trying to feed the dogs and get out the door by 7:15ish so that Andy can get to work for 8ish and have a car parking space near the university. This routine is disrupted by snow, fog and general tiredness.
Today We go to the gym, church and come home and bottle ginger beer and rosehip and hibiscus wine
The morning rituals starts at 6:30am with the alarm going off and then two Zombies stagger around in the dark, trying to feed the dogs and get out the door by 7:15ish so that Andy can get to work for 8ish and have a car parking space near the university. This routine is disrupted by snow, fog and general tiredness.
Today We go to the gym, church and come home and bottle ginger beer and rosehip and hibiscus wine
Saturday, 2 January 2010
GingerBeer
Just about to dive into the kitchen to start making our Home-brew of ginger-beer.
As there are thousands of recipes online all offering different advice, I'm starting with this recipe from http://www.selfsufficientish.com
Ginger-Beer
1/2 oz dried yeast
1/2 pint water
sugar
ground ginger
juice of 2 lemons
Put the yeast into a jar, add the water, 2 teaspoons sugar and 2 teaspoons ground ginger and mix well. Cover the jar with a lid or cling-film. Each day for 7 days add 1 teaspoon sugar and 1 teaspoon ground ginger. Finally, strain the mixture, add the lemon juice to the liquid and reserve the sediment. The liquid is now ready to use. For future use, keep the sediment and divide equally between 2 jars. To each jar add 1/2 pint water, 2 teaspoons sugar and 2 teaspoons ginger and proceed the process all over again, as previously.
I think that after the first stage of fomenting, the ginger-beer could be transported into a demijohn and we might be able to make some ginger wine!
As there are thousands of recipes online all offering different advice, I'm starting with this recipe from http://www.selfsufficientish.com
Ginger-Beer
1/2 oz dried yeast
1/2 pint water
sugar
ground ginger
juice of 2 lemons
Put the yeast into a jar, add the water, 2 teaspoons sugar and 2 teaspoons ground ginger and mix well. Cover the jar with a lid or cling-film. Each day for 7 days add 1 teaspoon sugar and 1 teaspoon ground ginger. Finally, strain the mixture, add the lemon juice to the liquid and reserve the sediment. The liquid is now ready to use. For future use, keep the sediment and divide equally between 2 jars. To each jar add 1/2 pint water, 2 teaspoons sugar and 2 teaspoons ginger and proceed the process all over again, as previously.
I think that after the first stage of fomenting, the ginger-beer could be transported into a demijohn and we might be able to make some ginger wine!
Wednesday, 30 December 2009
Cool Discoveries!
We have made some interesting discoveries whilst living here in Hungary and in no particular order, here they are ...
- The Mars hill podcast series on the beatitudes, this has been amazing!
- Szalona - Hungarians live on pork! Even in the vegetarian meals! Szalona is a very fat bacon which sometimes has no meat in it but it is smoked! The traditional way of cooking Szalona is to use an open fire and cooking a large chunk on a stick over the flames. you drip the melting fat onto a piece of bread and eat! DIY pork dripping! Very nice, very tasty. very good with beer and very bad for you. Its is also a great bacon substitute when cooking the full English breakfast. Its rather good in cooking as you can cook every thing in the melted pig fat rather then adding oil!!
- Adam and Joe! This is a bbc6 radio show which goes out on Saturday morning and the music is terrible play-listed junk! However, the best bits from the show (sans music) are compiled into a podcast and you have the ramblings of two 40 year old Englishmen which is extremely fun! Think 95% blue peter, 5% naughtiness!
- Samm (Sammcheese) and Andy (Vancheese) regularly twitter about random stuff and please check out our feeds - they do get posted as well to Facebook and Andy's feed are conglomerated at http://vancheese.livejournal.com.
- After much battling, it looks like we have a working sky box - we can't get the BBC/ITV/Channel 4 programs but we feel connected to the world!
- Turo Rudi's! These are the best healthy chocolate option that ever existed, they are chocolate coated cottage cheese with some kind of jam in the middle, the are delicious :)
- Turo Gomboc, these are cottage cheese balls, covered in naturaul yoghurt, bread cumbs and powdered sugar, YUMMY we get there at the local milk bar in Szeged, Boci a MUST try!
- Mensa meals. These are fantastic depending on where you buy them. They are basically like school dinners but better. You get soup, a main meal and sometimes a pudding of some description all of roughly 600 forints! Excellent if you are going to be out late and won't have time to cook dinner in the evening these have been a life save for Andy and I at times. The only downside is that the veggies and fruit are a bit on the slim side.
- Pickled Veg. We have now truly graduatated to the lifestyle of Hungary! We have to have our pickled oninons, cabbage and gerkins for lunch or it just doesn't qualify
Snow and gone!
Whilst the UK suffered under millimetres of snow, We had about half a meter of snow appear whilst we were helping at a friend's CHRISTmas nativity event (right on the other side of Szeged to us on roads that are not gritted very often etc.) reaching out to the local children in his community and their families in his back garden in a gigantic tent with no heating!
Despite the Arctic conditions, the event was a hit with 50 people, singing songs in English and Hungarian followed by the best homemade donuts EVER washed down with mulled wine or tea. For once, the people of Hungary drove slowly (Hungarians are well renowed for their formula 1 style driving unfortunately without any of the skill) - the home journey took an hour instead of twenty minutes. Fortunatley that very morning we thought we'd better get our act together and put the winter tyres on, so we were really pleased we had when the snow started to chuck down. We ended the evening hanging out a friend's house whilst waiting for friends from America to arrive from Budapest which normally takes 2 1/2 hours by train it tool them 5 hours because of the bad weather.
Unfortunately, we did not have a “white” CHRISTmas as the weather went from being -11 to being plus 13 in a week so on CHRISTmas eve it was like spring! We had a really fun CHRISTmas, a friend Matt who teaches English in Budapest stayed with us and we had fun cooking food (goose and turkey) and spending time with other friends from all over the world. A bit shattered now though as started going to bed at 2/3 in the morning :)
Church stuff.
Church move.
At the beginning of our move last year we started attending the church that I went to when I lived here, it was good to have a base. However, it just did not seem to sit right and we felt that it not the place that we are suppose to be so we started looking around for somewhere else that God might want us to be. We hopped around for a bit and have now begun settling in with a penetcostal group here in Szeged. We have connected with a few of the people there which is good to feel a connection somewhere and the encouragement from others and support to branch out and do stuff with them and also have them be involved with any future plans we have. Andy has already been asked to share something as part of a talk at the end of January. I got involved with the Children's work and the girl's group which I have really been enjoying. As with everywhere you go, nothing is perfect but this where we feel we should be for the time being. This move has helped in making us feel more settled and at home spiritually.
ICF is an International Chrisitan Fellowship mainly made up of students from high school through to the medical University to teachers here at the Szeged University. It is a motley crew of fun people coming togehter to eat and share life together. The group has been around in Szeged for a couple of years but some of the “founding” members have moved on to do other exciting stuff elsewhere in Hungary or abroad, so there is still a core who know each other pretty well with new people enriching the group. We changed venue to meeting at Erik and Sara's flat which has really helped to facilitate more of an intimate and friendship building environment with people meeting up outside of ICF and I know that I have grown in my frienships with people might not have otherwise done. So as we go into a new academic term we are really very excited about continuing on getting to know each other better and Jesus, we hope to draw in more new people and reach those who would not otherwise have the space to know Jesus in a new and creative way.
Hospitality
Andy and I love having people over, playing games, staying just generally looking after people we love it. We have already had a few people stay with us on our farm and is has given us a real glimpse (a taster) of what we would love to see happen with the farm. We both lived in a community house whilst in Bristol and even though it had its highs and lows. Since we have left we have both said how much we miss the sharing in lives of other people. So, as space permits and money we will continue to have people come and stay with us. Ultimately, when we have the possibility to invest into and renovate the farm we would like to have people live with us.
Joint Youth Unity Meetings.
Recently over the last two months or so there has been a movement amongst the youth leaders of various churches here in Szeged to meet together to plan to do a monthy or bi-monthly joint youth event. It came out of the realisation that we know very little of what each other is doing and that if there was more communication and sharing hopefully there would be ways to work together. We have had one joint youth event so far with many more (I hope) in the future. Andy and I are hosting a get-to-know-each-other-fun-evening at our farm (this links in with the above vision) with the hope of people chilling and enjoying each others company and friendship. So watch this space and see what comes of it.
ICF is an International Chrisitan Fellowship mainly made up of students from high school through to the medical University to teachers here at the Szeged University. It is a motley crew of fun people coming togehter to eat and share life together. The group has been around in Szeged for a couple of years but some of the “founding” members have moved on to do other exciting stuff elsewhere in Hungary or abroad, so there is still a core who know each other pretty well with new people enriching the group. We changed venue to meeting at Erik and Sara's flat which has really helped to facilitate more of an intimate and friendship building environment with people meeting up outside of ICF and I know that I have grown in my frienships with people might not have otherwise done. So as we go into a new academic term we are really very excited about continuing on getting to know each other better and Jesus, we hope to draw in more new people and reach those who would not otherwise have the space to know Jesus in a new and creative way.
Hospitality
Andy and I love having people over, playing games, staying just generally looking after people we love it. We have already had a few people stay with us on our farm and is has given us a real glimpse (a taster) of what we would love to see happen with the farm. We both lived in a community house whilst in Bristol and even though it had its highs and lows. Since we have left we have both said how much we miss the sharing in lives of other people. So, as space permits and money we will continue to have people come and stay with us. Ultimately, when we have the possibility to invest into and renovate the farm we would like to have people live with us.
Joint Youth Unity Meetings.
Recently over the last two months or so there has been a movement amongst the youth leaders of various churches here in Szeged to meet together to plan to do a monthy or bi-monthly joint youth event. It came out of the realisation that we know very little of what each other is doing and that if there was more communication and sharing hopefully there would be ways to work together. We have had one joint youth event so far with many more (I hope) in the future. Andy and I are hosting a get-to-know-each-other-fun-evening at our farm (this links in with the above vision) with the hope of people chilling and enjoying each others company and friendship. So watch this space and see what comes of it.
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