Preparing the winter garden required some serious help from some earth moving equipment. Thursday evening Albert came by to take a last look at the work to be done and first noticed Mihaly mushrooms (I cannot find these in any mushroom lexicon, it must be the local or folk name. Anyone know what the official name is?) in the back yard, then sorrel growing wild in our lawn. Not having shopped for dinner, we were both amazed and thankful for this info and cooked the mushrooms with sorrel sauce for our meal. 07:30 on Friday morning a large CAT machine showed up at our front door from Szögliget (thanks for the recommendation Simon and Dora) to level the ground behind the house between the remaining plum trees. I say remaining, because over the last 12-14 years our lovely neighbors have systematically denuded our property. I know because we had to pull 14 stumps in the back and 9 in the front yard. The machine could not maneuver very well in the given space, and perhaps a Bobcat would have been better. But, it was still a huge help and a big change.  We still worked all day manually dragging the stumps to the side and removing the bigger rocks.

On Saturday we visited Simon and Dora to help them press apple juice. This stuff was so good, we took home 6 litres for ourselves but ended up drinking 1.5 litres a day. After a couple hours of work we took a break and a shot of nice agyas palinka made with the roots of a pear tree, giving it a nice yellow shine. They loaded us up with a basket of Jerusalem artichokes and apples, as well as a small box of wheat to try planting.

Our primary goal for the weekend (Oct. 19) was to visit the Cabbage Festival at the beautifully renovated local museum in neighboring Bodvaszilas. Organised by the Friends of Bódvaszilas, a small core group consisting of Krisztian, his father and a couple others. They are an extremely busy and effective little band. Krisztian and his dad were the ones who helped us dry our fruit last month.  I have never been overly fond of cabbage, but I have recently been re-evaluating my stance. Kata makes some great kaposzta fasirt, and now at the festival I tried a wide range of delicious cabbage-based vegetarian dishes. For the meat lovers there was stuffed cabbage (a large portion for 600 huf). I really liked the pecina, a kind of flat bread made on the top of the sparhet (100 Huf for 2). The cabbage pogacsa, cabbage strudel and holiday langos were also yummy. Tasting was free and continuous, while a proper serving could be ordered and paid for if you wished. Thanks to the ladies that worked so hard in the kitchen - everything was delicious! Many of the dishes actually tasted like apple, even though the main ingredient was cabbage. This is because they spiced the cabbage with things like cinnamon. The menu, which I cannot really translate into English, included:

·         - sülvegrulya hordóskáposztával;

·         - pecina  (káposztás laksa) ;

·        - káposztás grulyahaluska (sztrapacska) ;

·        - töltött káposzta;

·         - káposztás pogácsa;

·        - káposztás rétes;  and

    - kelesztett káposztás (ünnepi) lángos.

There was also piping hot delicious bread langos which was reminiscent of the traditional bread I used to buy all the time in Kosova. The bread and the unnepi langos were both baked in an outdoor stucco oven, the inside of which they occasionally mopped down with a wet broom made from corn husks.

Performances were by the Bódvaszilasi Nyugdíjas Klub, Szögligeti Hagyományőrző Pávakör, and the
Pallér Zenekar.

Strangely, there were no actual cabbages, neither as display nor as decoration. Krisztian made reference to the famous Bódvaszilasi cabbage which has disappeared. The village would very much like to reintroduce this variety but lack the seeds to do so. If anyone happens to have some of these heirloom seeds, please contact them.
Email: gyumolcseszet@bodvaszilasert.hu
Tel: 06 20 / 354 7260

On Sunday, after 4 hours of backbreaking soil preparation, we planted our first crops. Simon and Dora gave us some wheat which we sowed in three long rows by the back fence. We also planted a bunch of garlic, medvehagyma and some matador spinach. Tall, purple-leaved lettuce was strewn around a couple elderberry trees out back. And lastly, we planted a bunch of hazel nuts near the drainpipes of the house and will find more permanent homes  for the resulting saplings in the spring. We are very excited to see what will become of our test fields.

The bad news is that our huge labour to salvage enough fruit for our first palinka was a washout. Our 200 liters were taken to the palinka fozde, but only a minimal alcohol content resulted and we had to through it away. It could be that the stables were not warm enough. We will try again next year.