Agricultural report

I know I posted yesterday, but today we have done some very useful and at the same time fun things, so I must report it. The hint in the title would suggest that we have been working in the garden. True, but only partially. First of all we harvested our onions. Pratically all of them, with only one or two exceptions, had their upper bits wither into a yellow heap on the ground. So we thought that must mean that we have to pull them up. They looked gorgeous and we then started to think what to do with them. About this later!

Once these were harvested we set about picking up fallen fruit, initially apples and plums. This summer the start of the cefre season falls in mid-July, so the plums are going into the cefre barrel to be rotten down for palinka, the apples for a bit of apple sauce to go with the roast pork dinner tomorrow evening with our Dutch friends. Yesterday when coming off the hill in the car we met 3 of our 4 Dutch friends walking up the hill towards Viragos. About 5 minutes later there was a downpour and they didn't look properly dressed for such an eventuality, so I fear they all got soaked. We'll find out tomorrow evening if they did!

We have also spotted a couple of other parts of the garden which has come on by leaps and bounds in the last week. First of all the two tomato plants that Roy grew from seed have produced some nice looking fruit. They look like plum tomatoes, but I am not sure, because these are a bit peculiarly shaped, even for plum tomatoes. Anybody knows what exactly they are?

And finally, the grapes amazed us. These are nothing special: they were given to us by a good friend in the village who had passed on since, but we love looking at them and remember him. They are very nice tasting, but because they are the basic grape onto which the varieties are grafted, the bunches are quite small and full of pips. On the other hand, this year they are looking larger and more numerous than ever before, so perhaps they like the overly hot weather and thrive in it. As we only got them to provide shade over the Bunkhouse patio, eating them is a bonus anyway, but spitting out the pips tends to get a bit tedious after a while.

And then finally finally, let us return to the "What to do with the onions?" question. Roy went to the shelf, grabbed the old Mrs. Beeton's type cookery book for a recipe on pickling onions. He really misses his pickled onions nowadays, so we decided to pickle the small ones. We had to soak them in salty water twice and then spice the vinegar a bit and bottle them like that. The recipe never said how long they have to stand in the vinegar before you can eat them, but we'll find out later, no doubt. And here endeth the agricultural report. It was fun and hopefully we will be able to eat and/or drink the results later.