Skalitsa Springing Into Action

It seems quite unbelievable that now from worrying about not being able to grow crops this season to now having two plots and other that I can take up if I wish. There is now a never-ending supply of food making resources at my disposal.

The Skalitsa farmhouse is a weekend project well under way, the Yambol town plot is also in progress, but the third offering was from my brother who has a home in a village 15 kilometres from Yambol. I have pruned all his vines this week, but had to decline managing the rest of his extensive grounds as this is too much for me as well as the time and cost of travel is not practical.

So this weekend arrived and the forecast was warm and sunny and the forecast was right for a change! Galia and I arrived to a display of colour that just made us gasp. the tulips where now in full bloom and a carpet of red on the fringe of the garlic bed under the vine trellises. What a difference 5 days has made as the greenery had now come into play on the field and the onions and garlic now clearly visible on the plot that was planted not so long ago.

Within ten minutes I was in my blue village outfit and working away on the land preparing for the sweet corn, melons and carrots. In my element was an understatement as Galia looked on at this crazy Englishman sweating away with his labours breaking up the soil in preparation for the honey melons that were laid a few hours later. These were sown and plastic bottled put over the top weighed down with a brick creating mini greenhouses and will probably remain for a few weeks until they greet the hotter weather towards the end of the month. This is the Bulgarian way and now mine.

Then two beds of sweet corn were prepared, both had to be square to aid cross pollination and set regimented with enough space between for the weeding that will be needed throughout the season. Again, this was quite hard work and that was the buzz for me and the mystery for Galia who again thought I was possessed with my eagerness.

Galia helped with the sowing after the groundwork had been completed, three corn seeds per hole as an insurance; the strongest on germination will just remain. Again, all these crops don't need daily watering and should survive 4-5 days without any supplementary water.

Carrots were sown at the back of the strawberry patch and watermelons at the front of the house where a bit of space was found. The soil isn't too good there so I don't expect a bumper crop, but there's nowhere else now with all the farming areas filled.

In the summerhouse the tomato and cucumber seeds had germinated with this warm weather and they would be taken back to the Yambol plot with their thirst for water. All is under control and it feels great.


The vines are now weeping as we sit in the sun under the trellises being dripped on, we just move to avoid them never every getting annoyed, this is spring, this is nature starting another cycle gathering up momentum, this is a wonderful feeling watching it happen before us.

Galia loves flowers as she gathers bunches to take back to Yambol for Baba. What a treat and all for free! That’s the beauty of it all, no reliance on anyone but ourselves and nature.

Yambol City Farming Begins

So, the City farm was laying fallow in Yambol and needed more than just a bit of elbow grease to get it up and running into a food factory. This was the main reason I came to Bulgaria to produce my own organic food from the land. Now the opportunity had been given for me to do that locally and it was about to begin.

All my tools for growing were in the village farmhouse, there were a few tools in the factory outbuilding that I could use but the most important tool was the Bulgarian ralo (рало). This was a tool that every Bulgarian that works the land or garden has. It is one of the biggest discoveries for me since coming to Bulgaria and would never be without it as it is like a multi-tool for the land doing the job of a spade, fork, trowel, pick axe, axe, hammer and mallet all in one. I now have three of these, having spent 10 Lev on my third one to be kept on site of the City farm. I could quite easily write a post solely dedicated to this tool and how to use and maintain it.

The potatoes seed still in the boot of the Lada and my farming outfit along with the traditional blue dungarees and matching jacket, thick knitted Bulgarian socks fitting snugly into my Bulgaria rubber galoshes and I was off.

Five minutes later I was on site, they knew I was coming as a local resident who called Maria (surprise! surprise!) was waiting for me. She is a typical village woman who happens to be in town albeit the outskirts. In typical bundled layers of woollen clothing and headgear because there was a slight wind on this warm and sunny day she didn't waste any time in putting my potato planting to rights. What I didn't know was that she had been instructed to teach this 'green' Englishman how to plant potatoes. I thought I knew having done it in the village on many occasions, but I apparently hadn't a clue after extensive instruction from a woman who has been working the land for over 50 years in the same way she had been traditionally taught.

After just a couple of hours the potatoes were sown and the ground that had been worked looked just needed a couple of wooden crosses and would replicate a graveyard. Having said that, the amount of bones that were dug up was quite amazing, I assume they were human bones as they were fed to the numerous security dogs around that barked at any movements made from non-familiar faces.

The technique used for sowing potatoes seemed quite complex at first, there were many stages of preparing mounds moving half of it laying the potatoes then the fertilizer and building the earth mound back again and finally slightly flattening and smoothing the top. Alongside each elongated mound are water channels that had been made both in line with the mounds and channels bordering the length of the whole patch. Each channel is dammed at teach end creating an effective reservoir system when watered.

The afternoon session was finished with a simple task of planting 60 lettuce seedling simply using my index finger as a dabber. Once the soil had been worked with the ralo as a forking tool, the sold was very easy to work with. the biggest problem was lucerne, an animal feed herb that is perennial with roots dug in as deep as half a metre.

This was only the first session and will now be a daily trip for me on my bicycle as everything I need to farm is on site now. There is even more excitement looming as we return to the village farmhouse this weekend to tend to sowing sweetcorn and more potatoes on the land there. This really is a dream being fulfilled right now thanks to the generosity of Galia's family giving this land to us to work on.

NOTE:
Galia was there watching all this from the office window, this was her first outing for over two weeks confined to bed. It was a lovely day and good that she could get out and catch up with news at work. She won't be working for at least another few weeks and improving every day.

Ping Pong verses Tennis

It was a total disappointment pulling my onions up this weekend. They were worse than last year and last year was bad!

What was the reason behind the failure? There were many reasons but the main one was I was only there once a week over the last three months. Guests were staying at the farmhouse over those months and it has been a struggled to get there to tend to the produce with the rush on each time I was there.

This year I grew then the Bulgarian way with trenches made and the sowing of the sets made on the slant of the mound. The water is held in the trenches and they should have done really well. This Bulgarian heat during May and June really saw them off as they needed watering every two for three days, not once every seven.

Then there was the timing of the planting, they should have been put in during March to April, I was in the UK thinking about putting them is at that time. This couldn’t be helped as things turned out.

As the row was picked I was reminded of ping-pong balls; that was the size of the bulbs that were coming out. In fact they weren’t much bigger than the sets that were put in, perhaps just doubled in size for most. It was a feeling of failure on my part but there isn’t anything you can do about it, you need to be there most of the time to have success, what did I expect. And there is everyone else saying, you can buy as many onions as you want with the money from renting the farmhouse. But that certainly wasn’t any consolation to me; it wasn’t the money but the waste of time and effort put in and the 70 km drive each week trying to resurrect the dead.

So with my tail between my legs we went back to Yambol Sunday only to have salt rubbed into the wounds by stopping off at the roadside in the village of Roza. A man was standing there with a 20 kg bag of onions selling them to passing traffic. These were the size of tennis balls as we took a closer look. Then we were invited to look in his garage where there were at least 100 netted bags stacked, again all the onions were tennis ball sized and as firm as you can get. It was with a deep heart that we bought one of these sacks, put it in the Lada and drove home with it.

Galia was very happy, they were being sold for 50 stotinki per kg and in the market in town they were going at a leva per kg. I suppose that’s the crunch of it. As we spoke about this, it was made quite clear to me that if I was a Bulgarian I wouldn’t have bothered going back each week tending to onions that ended up as ping pong balls. What was the point? In the end I had to agree and to be quite honest made me feel better. The only problem in the first place was my English attitude to die for a pointless cause, even when I knew that the hope for successful tennis sized onions was over in early June.

So next year will I bother if guests are staying at the farmhouse? Mmmm, I’m still thinking the English way!

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