Bean Day On The Farm

Another day planned on the Yambol City farm, but it had been snowing overnight as I woke up to a white Yambol City and had doubts whether any grafting on the land would be done today. All I kept thinking about was my lettuce seedlings I have planted two days ago. All the Bulgarians had planted their under home made clotches, mine were exposed to the elements, had they survived the snow?

By lunchtime all the snow had disappeared, the sun was out and it was just like a summer day. So off I go with a plan for beans.

On arrival I checked the lettuce they were all in perfect order and now thriving in the rich dark chocolate coloured soil, this was a relieve - I had got away with it and previous thoughts of the first failure disappeared. The ground now was perfect for sowing, not too damp to work with as I hacked away at breaking up the soil ready for the laying of two sets of green beans. Within no time the first variety had been sown in five channels. This was done using the same techinique taught to me a couple of days with the potatoes which was to prepare a soft bedding and cover the seeds up making a grave like mound only this time on a smaller scale.

By the time the second variety of beans were sown the factory was closing for business as the workers began to set off home, I could have stayed longer, but didn't want too overdo it. Most of the workers there tell me to just spend 20 minutes a day there, 'Leka po leka' they'd say, which roughly translated means little by little. I know there is no rush and always start off really slowly, but of course I'm English and after a few minutes it's 100 mph again over a four hour session. It's not even April yet when the real work on the land really begins - I'ts a good job I'm fit otherwise this could be very bad for your health, even fatal.

There was another 10 minutes or so before the factory locked up so it was out with the radish seeds and sowing a 4 metre line parrallel to the lettuce already standing to attention after two days in their new home. The radish don't take up much space and won't affect the progress of the lettuce crop. Jobs were now completed for the day.

As I walked out through the factory gates onto the road where the Lada was parked, I could see the plot clearly. How lucky we are to have this to work on and get the rewards later in the year, the money our family will save on food will be quite substaintial during the coming year. There is also the additional produce from the village farmhouse that will stretch saving even further! Life just doesn't get better than this right now with 8 months of warm weather to look forward to as well.

Back home, Galia had prepared a simple meal of salad, fantastic bean soup as small glass of rakia and ice ridden ayran to wash it down. This is a life well worth waiting for.

Why Move To Bulgaria? - World Blog Surf Day

It is World Blog Surf Day today (28th March) and Golden Prague has organised just that. A series of blogs written by expatriates especially for this special day. Essentially a world surfing tour from many expat bloggers telling why they are where they are.

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Why did I become an expatriate in Bulgaria? This is often a question asked and not an easy explanation either. There are so many reasons that this happened, but the main reason was perhaps running away from a previous life that had made me ill. It has taken some time to work out that answer and many other expatriates if they are honest with themselves will own up to that fact.

To know what I see and have now found in Bulgaria you really need to know the yearnings of the past so forgive a little history into why I live in Bulgaria

Every since I was a kid aged 6 or 7 years old I'd see a hill in the distance and I wanted to go to that hill. Later as a teenager in London the 70's, green living got a hold of me and the combination of wanting to be somewhere else and self-sufficiency was a pipe dream.

It wasn't until I was 46 that the opportunity came to pass. Owning and working a smallholding I thought was an impossible dream. England was too expensive, then Wales and Scotland became beyond my means and finally France, which was affordable during the 80's and early 90's was left too late and we were priced out there as well.

It was now 2004 and eBay was being surfed, a house was being auctioned and there was only 8 hours to go, and the price was under £2000 with no reserve. I thought it was a scam or a joke and followed the auction through. The house with land was sold for just over £2000! I didn't believe it, but did after I looked into other property in Bulgaria going for roughly the same value It was quite a revelation and an affordable opportunity that I thought had hit a brick wall.

Within 3 months of seeing this site I had done masses of research on Bulgaria, visited it and actually bought a farm smallholding online! Within 6 months of viewing that auction and indeed knowing where Bulgaria was, eBay I escaped the financial and rat raced rut that I was was living in the UK and was living as an expatriate there. It wasn't panic or a mid-life crisis, but a sudden realisation that Bulgaria and me just clicked.

Now there are many things I regret in life, many based on not acting quickly enough, but moving here was the best solution for me and my lifetime ambition. I have sacrificed more than most can ever imagine to get here and many said I was crazy to make the move. To me now on reflection the poverty and simplicity of live here is the great appeal, it was only poverty based and a complex life based on mortgages and credit through a material based culture in the UK.

Many other considering it may prefer more 'up market' countries to move to. Bulgarian life is very rough at the edges for most people here, the infrastructure here is quite unstable. Politics is corrupt in the main and a sense of helplessness from the everyday Bulgarian know there is nothing they can do about it. Mafia infiltrated industry is the only reason it survives as it does here. There is four levels of living here, the rich, mainly Mafia based businesses, the town folk who work for a living and the old pension people in the villages. Then of course there is the gypsy community were in the main live on the fringe of Bulgarian society. Please excuse the generalisation, but that is how I see it here in a snapshot.

Bulgaria is it's own monster and you live and get on with the monster or you try and fight it from your foreign perspective. I gave up fighting the monster quite early on after meeting it face to face everyday.

The Bulgarian countryside is beautiful if you ignore the rubbish that is thrown everywhere. The wildlife and nature excels here and is a major attraction along with the Black Sea Coastal resorts, not totally spoilt from over development yet if you look around. And then there is the skiing resorts if you like skiing and can afford it.

The people seem to be very cold initially, but once you get acquainted you will have a friend for life who can't do enough for you. All you need to do is talk and the thaw starts straight away.

Finally, I am indeed luck enough to now have a Bulgarian partner whose family I know live with. This truly is the most Bulgarian of adventures one could get. A very simple life now is led day to day as that is how most Bulgarians live, on a day to day basis.

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Please now can you consider surfing onto Ricky Yates Weblog. He is an Anglican clergyman who moved to Prague to become Chaplain to the English-speaking Anglican Episcopal congregation in the Czech Republic. A great insight of this Chaplain Brit now living and working there. http://rickyyates.com/

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.