Bulgarian Watermelons - Was It Worth It?

Was it worth it? The amount of time I spent watering those Bulgarian watermelons over the last few months is unqualified. Quite often and especially over the last few weeks, I’d cycle a 74 kilometres round trip just to water them and of course on the hottest days in Bulgaria, which is why they need watering more often anyway!

The time and effort was made with some people looking at what I’m doing feeling that only an Englishman would cycle in the midday summer sun just to water some melons. The question raised was why don’t you just buy them from the bazaar? Well the most obvious answer is quite simple, money! One melon weighing around 6 kilograms can cost 4 or 5 leva, that is sometimes a whole day's earning right now! To be quite honest water melons are a but of a luxury, even with a glut of them on the market stalls. Many people who know me here of course think I am loaded with money and living off a large pension from the UK. This added to their own reasoning make it even more difficult for them to understand why I bust a gut to grow my own.

There is also another reason why I take so much trouble with making sure my watermelons are water regularly. This is the first time I have ever grown them, I took on advice from my neighbours with the system used to grown them and of course, growing my own produce is my passion and one of the main reason for coming to Bulgaria. The aim is to produce food that is on par with the food my village neighbours grow, as they produce food that to me is the best in every aspect.

So the first water melon was cut last weekend weighing in at 8.5 kilograms. It was too heavy for my bicycle but it rolled into the Lada boot quite comfortably. We got it home but didn’t try it until today just as I got back on my bike this morning from another 74 kilometres trip to water the remaining watermelons. Baba had already cut the melon and the lush ruby red inside of the melon was making my mouth water before even getting a sniff. Well the moment was here, was the effort worth it, was the watermelon going to live up to he standards of my village neighbours? It was a nervous Martin about to try the fruit made from the reservoir of sweat from his brow over the last few months.

Well it more than lived up to expectation, I can honest say that this was one of the best watermelons I had eaten. Baba and the family all gathered and congratulated me on that raving success. “It’s better than you neighbours!” Galia said comparing, as we sampled some of their watermelon last weekend - That is after the flies had their say on the fruit.

Was it worth it? You bet!

Free Food Well On Its Way Now

Can I firstly thank everyone who sent Yambol their condolences over the last week; they are appreciated and make a difference.

After the catastrophy we spent the weekend in the village farmhouse and just reflected on lots of things. How lucky we are to be here doing what we do and having people around who care. Family here is everything part of everyday life, never shut out and that is very new and reassuring to me, but that's normal to Galia.

Relaxing is something the farm doesn’t do as the work lay before me on the land. It was a full two days of watering, weeding and setting up another Bulgarian growing system that was taught to me before after the failure of the melons. We now have more crops that should survive with this new system. Also we have our good friend and neighbour who has offered to water the crops mid week now the hot weather is upon us. This certainly helps relieve some of the worry from our side. This same friend and neighbour had also gathered up all the hay that was cut over the last two weeks and stored it in the hay house. Mind you, this hay is winter feed for his horse, but he would have done it anyway!

The evening in Skalitsa are fantastic sitting out in the warm evening air as fresh as you can ever get and no noise whatsoever other than the night noises that used to scare me when I was first lived there. I know what every noise is now and can relax with that thought.

My first encounter with a snake in the field whilst cutting hay took place on Saturday, it was more scared than me. I saw a movement in the long grass and then as I approached the speed of this snake was amazing as it darted toward the outside toilet with me in pursuit. Within a few seconds it had covered 10 metres and was in the hut. I wouldn’t be going to the toilet for while with this 1½ metre snake occupying it. It wasn’t a poisonous snake and like I said was far more scared than I was. It must have been to dart into the toilet so quickly!

And so the weekend ended Sunday afternoon and back to Yambol where we were invited for an evening of eating and drinking with family, we refused as we were too tired. Monday it was the factory farm, which was doing pretty well right now. We have almost finished all the lettuce that we have grown; it is becoming too hot for them now. The potatoes had the first round of Colorado beetles that are hand picked and destroyed on sight, they don’t cause a problem if checked and destroyed regularly.

More advice was giving on the melons growing there as moats were made for more access to water. The branches that were pruned from the fruit trees in Skalitsa in the winter now support the tomatoes on the farm and work pretty well. The peppers need no support other than another pepper! What do I mean? Well you plant two peppers seedling in the same spot and their roots wrap around each other and this gives them a good base stability and no need to stake them up. Last year all my peppers fell over as they were planted singly.

The factory farm really does look like it will provide all the tomatoes and peppers that will be eaten from July onwards and many preserved for the winter ahead. There will be big savings from these crops and of course that was the whole purpose of growing them anyway. It is really strange me working on the field and Galia a stone’s throw away working it the factory office…

Failed Crops, But No Worries

It has been the busiest week so far this year trying to get everything planted out on the two plots of land in the village and town and trying to keep on top with blogging. Well the blogging has had the foot off the accelerator recently and I apologise to fellow blogging friends for not paying visits recently. There just aren’t enough hours in the day and the candle has been burnt at both ends recently.

It is a time where everyone here in Bulgaria is out tending to crops. Not only do they need planting right now they need watering, sometime two or three times a day with temperatures soaring to over 30 degrees and we are not in the hot season yet. When the seedling are put in the have to be treated like babies, tended to every moment until they are established. They are at their most sensitive and the slightest neglect at this stage can ruin a whole crop. This has happened to me already as I left the town farm for 6 days as it was a six-day weekend holiday and the factory had closed for that period. A crop of beans had failed when I got back from lack of water. In the village the strawberries newly planted in the autumn had hardly any fruits on as they needed watering every two days – I am not there for five days at a time. Strawberries were not a good idea with the time I spend there. The melons both the watermelon and the honey melon both failed to germinate because of the 5-day absence and neglect.

On another front the two patches of sweet corn that was sown were almost another complete failure. I have to transplant half the seedlings from one patch to the other as over half had died due to not being tended to on a daily basis. I have now put more melons in their place and a massive reservoir channel dug out with advise from locals. I won’t find out whether this has survived until this coming weekend and it will be 6 days without water as we are not due until Saturday this weekend.

It was my own fault. I knew these types of crops would not be a success, but I went ahead regardless with a little hope tucked away. Hope was all that was there as I had to rethink and be realistic about what can and can ‘t work without water for 5 days. The garlic, onions and potatoes are thriving, these were my original plan and they all worked. The grapes look after themselves so no worries there. The biggest job however is the field, some 6000 square metres of meadow that needed to be cut. This had to be done with a scythe; everyone uses this tool in Bulgaria and last weekend it was out with the sharpening stone and a weekend of haymaking.

It is really quite a sense of pointlessness as I started getting stuck in to this massive field when I was asked where my horse was from one of my neighbours who were doing exactly the same thing in a field adjacent to mine. He of course knew full well I didn’t have a horse and my donkey was long gone salami to gypsies a couple of years ago. I said that Galia son Ivo has a rabbit in Yambol and this was rabbit feed for next winter. We both laughed as the joking went on. In all seriousness, I was cutting hay for my neighbour’s horse although he didn’t know it yet. If the hay isn’t cut and left to seed next year’s crop would be poor so it was also for that reason as well.

It was a long haul, but I loved it, no Galia there as she was working her Saturday in lieu of the 6-day weekend so it was make your own dinner in the evening. I couldn’t wait with a couple of lettuce and radish for the town farm brought o the village and onion and green garlic with sirene, olives and sunflower oil, red vinegar and salt as dressing. A glass of my own homemade sliva (plum) rakia and ice cold Ayran alongside. All on a table under the grapevine trellises looking at the field that had just had its hay cut and now drying out in the warm evening air. It wasn’t the same without Galia though and as I sat down on my own I really couldn’t see the point of preparing all this without someone to share it with and a reminder of lonely times before I met Galia working on the farm – Another story altogether.

Things are looking great here, both in the town and village – Yes we have had crop failures, but that’ down to my bad planning and faint hope that I should have dispelled from the start. There is still plenty of time to replant and that’s what I have been doing over the last few days. Exciting times here.

Skalitsa Village Farm - Planning Crops

Back to the Skalitsa farmhouse and jobs on the farm were waiting. There had to be potatoes sown (yes more). Not knowing what the weather was like we knew that generally it is always different from the Yambol weather even though just 35 kilometres away and we never usually know until we get there.

Arriving is always exciting here in the village, it had been six days since I was last here and the onions and garlic were making a move skywards already, the tuliups had began to open their head and the bird life was deafening around us. A stork had already taken up residence in a local telegraph pole and the whole scene was about to burst into life. Galia now having seena stork placed here Martenitsi on a lilac tree with the others we had put there from the past years.

Looking at the ground, there must have been a lot more snow yesturday than in Yambol, it was too heavy to work with even though the very warm sun had been drying it out for a couple of days. Therer wasn't much I could do as far as planting and digging was concerned to my attention fell on the black covering that had lay on an extended part of the land for a year.

The plan was for each year to cover a section of land each year with the black nylon material to stop the grow of lucerne and couch grass, then each spring uncover it and another section will be ready for putting crops effectively the area for growing will be bigger each year.

As I uncovered the strip on turned it over for another strip to become ready next year, the area left was perfect now for digging over and planting, but far to wet, it would have to wait another day or so to dry out. Now this method is my own English method and looked upon as very strange from neighbours who query what I do. All they would do to prepare fallow land is plough it up with either a tractor or a horse and plough prior to winter, and another session prior to April, the frost would have also done the business and it's ready for planting in spring. I suppose I should succum to this method which was used in my first year here, but it's about getting this system organised and only being here a couple of days a week makes that quite tricky. Besides which, my neighbours would have certainly taken over telling me that the whole area should be farmed - Not what I want, but as usual they always know what is best for me.

By the end of the weekend and a little drier all the working areas were prepared for the sweetworn, two melon varieties and pumpkins. All these could go without water for up to a week and less stress on my part. Also the strawberry patch was weeded, there was a 70% success rate of the newly planted seedlings from the autumn, not too bad. the runners that form later in the spring will fill in the gaps so no worries there. Again, they can survive a while without water in the summer as they have established quite deep root bases now and they will be under the shade of the vines leaves overhead that will form a canopy by the end of spring.

It is all about organising and choosing the right crops for the right growing environment. Hopefully the thought that has gone for the Skalitsa farm will make me sleep better in Yambol knowing that the crops have a good chance of survival this year with minimum maintenance.