Setting lots of small fires in the stove, harvesting and preserving apples and another battle with the marten

The stove is still in its running-in phase, but it is improving with every fire I light in it. As the resident pyromaniac it is my job to do the fires and I am enjoying myself. Considering that I had a hiatus of 2 1/2 years of not using a stove, I am having a good time. The first 4 or 5 days passed with lighting very small fires twice or three times a day. These consisted of only paper, card and soft wood sticks. They lasted about 20 minutes and warmed nothing. But I am sure they started the drying process. Then I moved onto slightly more wood and eventually hard wood, albeit small pieces, as well. Currently I reckon I could go the full wack, but I have decided to do this for two weeks, and am sticking to that plan.

The stove

It will be in about 5 or 6 days when I think I will start setting a big fire in it, which will be fed to stay strong all day, thus heating the room. We have noticed that gradually the outer surfaces of the tiles are getting warmer and warmer, so I hope that in a few days, the damp in the clay would be gone and normal operations can start and be maintained. The weather is still not too cold, so this time was ideal for this drying out, as we didn't need too much heat anyway.

One of the views en route down

The weather has been cold/wet on and off, although we have had some nice days too. There is a geocache which I have been planning to visit for about 10 years, as it is not too far from the village, but it has a horrendous climb up to it. Roy knew that I was thinking of going up it this week, but the bad weather put us off. However, on Monday, after a miserable looking early morning, the sun came out around 10am and it was he who suggested we went. I suppose the fact that the fridge was getting very empty had a role in his enthusiasm as well.

The geodesic tower at the top

So we quickly got ourselves together and drove off complete with caching and shopping gear. I left him to have a nap in the car at the bottom of the mountain and got going. The first 200 yards was familiar, as I have been there before for another, lower lying, cache a few months ago. This time I carried on and I must admit, the climb was harder than I expected. Once at home, I realised why: even elite orienteering, including world class level, has no more than around 5% or so of climb compared with the length of the course - here I was climbing 340m in about 1.3km, which is just over three quarters of a mile. I worked it out that that ratio gives you more than 25% climb, which was pretty punishing.

A quarry near the route up

What was very good, though, was the views. And the mountain itself was quite pretty, with turkey oak, rocks and nice little meadows now and again. I had to rest very frequently and it took me nearly an hour and half to go not even a mile. There was not enough puff in me left to finish up at the very top, where the big concrete, and now abandoned, geodesic tower was, so I could only photograph it from a distance. The only other thing I missed was the 360 degree panoramic views from the very top, but I thought I have got to the cache, saw some nice views, so there is no need to completely exhaust myself, as the descent was a bit hairy too. Thankfully, my lovely walking poles had saved me from slipping and/or falling, so I got back in one piece to Roy, who was in the land of nod, only to be woken by the car door opening.

A view towards another side

Our little shopping trip to Pásztó was quite successful. We bought all the food we needed, plus filled up the tank, plus I managed to buy myself a new set of headphones, as the lovely one from Alex has stopped working some time ago. We got home by 3pm and had a quick, but delicious lunch of pasta, feta, cocktail tomatoes, basil with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Yum, yum!!

A prolific crop on that tree

The other big event(s) of the week had to do with apples. We do have 6 apple trees, but this summer was so hot and so dry, that most of them produced either useless fruit or none at all. The only exception were two trees, one with green the other with red apples. The exact type of apple escapes me now, but I would guess they are Golden Delicious and Idared. These two showed some interest in growing some apples, but they were very slow and every time we tried to pick one, it was still very unripe. Then, when we came back from the Flatlands and the East, we found that the red ones suddenly grown enormous, presumably due to the plenty of rain in the recent weeks.

We nearly filled three baskets

 

So during this last week, we decided to pick them and sort them into the various ways we were going to preserve them. The perfect ones with no blemish or damage were to be wrapped in tissue paper, put into shallow boxes and put on the shelf in the back room of the Bunkhouse. The rest needed to be peeled and the bad bits cut out and then were made into either stewed pulp or compote. So, over the last few days, Roy had been peeling and stewing and I have been wrapping apples. The end result, I am happy to say, was almost a full tray of eating apples for the winter, 6 big jars of stewed apple and 4 jars of compote. Let us hope the vacuum has properly formed between the lid and the jar and that all will be edible right through the winter.

A great member of the kitchen staff

Another interesting development concerned a friend from the village, who when I put a photo album up on Facebook asked whether we have any windfall he could use for making pálinka. I wrote back suggesting that he turns up quickly, as there is a great deal of windfall on the ground, but they are rotting very quickly. He turned up in the afternoon and picked himself  two large plastic bucketful of windfalls. While with us, Roy asked if he would climb up on the big ladder and put a missing tile back, as Roy has vertigo and I have not enough strength in my arthritic hands to push tiles about. He said yes, and he had done it in about 20 seconds.

Wrapped and stewed apples

This latter happening needs explaining. Some time ago we noticed that after a big storm, one tile on the bottom row, one of those that is hanging into the gutter, moved. I went up on the ladder, as I have no vertigo, but I could not shift it into its place as I have no strength left in my finger any more. We left it up there, as any rain coming in would have fallen on the corridor anyway, so it didn't matter. Unfortunately, what it has resulted in was an invasion of martens, that I have already told you about. They can squeeze through amazingly small openings and we have had a lot of hassle from them since.

Dangerous work, filling jars

That morning, however, Roy noticed that the big downpour overnight has actually pushed the tile off the roof, as it was lying under it slightly damaged. He chose a nice new tile, not giving the wicked little creatures any chance to get through it, and Daniel has put it on, in the place of the old shifted one. Roy's plan was to trap a marten, if it was having a nap during the day in the attic, or if he wasn't there, stop him coming back in again. Well, obviously our eves are marvellous for daytime napping, because just after dark we started hearing loud scratching and running around noises from the attic. Obviously, it wanted to get out and the original way in and out was shut. About 5 minutes later the racket stopped, so we reckoned he found some other way out. Now the question is, will he be back or was this trauma enough for him to go and look for a napping place elsewhere? Watch this space, you will be told any further developments, should there be any!

That seems to wrap up happenings in the last 8 days. Next post, hopefully, on Wednesday next week.💗