Eeeek! Catch up! Castle and Fortune Cookies

I’ve realised I’ve got a bit behind scedual… So much happens everyday and if i don’t get it down, well, I never will!

On our day off Petr gave us a lift to Konopiště, the castle where Franz Ferdinand (the guy who’s assassination became the excuse to start the world war) lived with his wife. Petr told us that Ferdinand lived there because he married under himself, but he still got a castle so she couldn’t have been that bad!

Its a proper princess catsle!

You can just imagine Repunzel in that tower!

We found this interactive board and managed to get it working in english where we learnt that it had been a classic gothic castle but when Ferdinand bought it he renovated it. You can just imagine it being the hight of fashion at the time cant you? Oh no, my castle isn’t all gargoyles and stone, I much prefer a baroque chateaux darling.

We didn’t go inside but wandered around the extensive grounds. Ferdinand was a keen hunter so the castle is full of stuffed animals he’s killed, where as outside there are the beautiful forests where he killed them! There was a big lake but it was empty, perhaps for cleaning Petr later said.

In the moat there was a bear! he didn’t look to happy. It was the first time I had seen a bear and he was much smaller than i would have thought. A long eared bear appaerently, from Asia, so I’m not too sure what his connection was other than another tourist attraction.

We had a long walk through the woods which was lovely. We saw pheasants, a red squirrel and what looked like a black one! They where all to quick for photos! The forests are still used for hunting, and are kept by the hunters!

We found a funny cabin like thing to have our picnic in before heading back to the castle for icecream!

Here are some more photos of the grounds:

At the bottom of the hill Petr was finishing lunch with the rest of the family but we kept entertained while waiting for him. There was a fenced in area of the woods where deer are kept! And one particular stag was quite frindly! We fed him grass and stroked him! He was so soft and had such huge amazing eyes!

The others werent quite as fiendly, but i managed to chuck a doe and her baby some grass when the stag wasn’t looking!
The funky curled horned sheep is actually natural to the czech republic! Unfortunately, the blurred photo was the best one.

Can you believe all this cost us nothing?! Apart from the ice cream which worked out at about 60p. It cost to get into the castle but thats it. I guess it must be the hunters and the state that keep the upkeep!

That night Esther and I decided to make cookies. Our limited ingredients (no butter) led us to a fortune cookie recipe. Basically just egg whites, sugar and flour. Perfetc!
We prepared ourselves for disaster and went for it! The recipe described how to make them into the shape but the instructions didn’t make sense at all! So we decided we could fold them into all sorts of shapes.

The batter was pretty straight forward, then we just plopped teaspoonfuls on a tray and into the oven for 5 mins!

I decided to give the real shape a go. I picked up a flat warm cookie, folded it in half and brought the edges down over the side of a cup and IT WORKED! perfect fortune cookie right there! We where amazed! The back up plan of random shapes flew out the window as we manically came up with scribbled fortunes to go inside them!

And the best part is they tasted delicious! We put some cinnamon in the mix too ;)

They where a success with everyone, the fortunes actually made sense to some!

So now we need to make 30 of them for friday too!

This is the recipe we used

Tortilla for how many?!

Being the cheapskates that we are, we have been working out what we can cook using only the produce from the farm. We have an abundance of eggs and potatoes so we have been thinking of things that involve these ingredients. David came up with the bright idea of spanish tortilla. We could even make a couple and have some for the next day! Whats better than a fridge full of tortilla?! He got the recipe from his mum and enthusiastic about our plans we told Tom later that day. He thought it was a great idea and suggested we make it for dinner. So tortilla for three became tortilla for five. David agreed, warning that he had never made it before. Tom’s mum and sister would be visiting and one of them had lived in Spain so they would just love it! Five soon became seven. By now he was calculating how many tortillas we would need. The idea of leftovers floating away… And what to have with them?! He came up with making a bit of a spanish tapas party with stuffed eggs and beef croquettes. Esther and I suggested a big salad and we all started to worry less. Tom said David could do the cooking as part of his work hours that day which was nice of him. Esther and I couldn’t help much because we had set tasks of our own:
Roasting the giant pumpkin and bagging it up in portions to be frozen. This pumpkin was huge. It took a wheel barrow to move it from the barn to the kitchen door where we cut it up into more manageable pieces before attempting to lift it! Between roasting and scooping we where also washing and packaging the chickens from that morning.
It was a busy night to say the least.
We did manage to give David a hand between it all. Peeling the odd egg, holding the odd collander, a mix here and there.
At some point somebody mentioned friends. Tortilla for seven became tortilla for nine!
He did fantastically.

24 eggs and 3 hours later we had two huge tortillas, 10 stuffed eggs, a pile of croquettes and a huge salad.

Everyone was hugely impressed. We all loved it! It was the first time he had cooked for so many people. And there was even two slices of tortilla leftover.

Petr and Tom asked him if he would do it all again for a group of people that will be staying in the hotel next week.

Tortilla for nine will now be for thirty!

Balancing Kittens and Killing Chickens

The kittens are super cute! There are three in total, all from the same litter but two are quite big and fluffy and one is teeny weeny, shes called Luna and makes up for her size in affection! I still haven’t got a photo of them as I don’t take my camera with me when I’m working and thats when I’m around them the most. Because. As I have been trimming lavender I have been low down and the kittens make the most of it by coming up for some attention. I am now pretty good at working with a kitten cuddled in my lap, or balanced on my shoulder, or on my head! Luna’s favourite place is curled around my neck between my collar or sitting in my hood :)

I ended up trimming the whole herb garden and managed to finish it on the third day I think… Here’s how it looked before and after, ok well I can’t find the before one :/ this was taken the morning of the night it snowed so its a bit misty…

And while I’m at it, here are some of the peacocks! Again, a bit misty…

Another job we have been doing is clearing leaves, we needed to get it done before it snows so everyone has been chipping in every now and again. Here are the bags we filled with leaves:

Friday, Bloody Friday

I’m very glad we didn’t take any photos for this post.

The night before Tom told us we would be helping with killing the chickens the next day. He said that they do it a very humane way and that he believes that everyone who eats meat should be able to kill it. Which I agree with it. But didn’t like the idea of. We had been talking about how he used to be a vegetarian and how a vegetarian workawayer had started eating meat at the farm so we weren’t too worried.

That morning we went to the chicken barn where we met another tiny czech lady who also didn’t speak english and equally as friendly and happy! We all stood around vaguely gesturing for a while wandering what was happening. Eventually she started getting chickens and putting them head first in what looked like upside down traffic cones without tops, so there heads poked out the bottom and they couldn’t escape. Five get lined up at a time and then their necks are cut. A big pot of water was over a fire which we dunked the bodies into and then began plucking them. I imagine the hot water must loosen the feathers, the smell of boiled chicken and death was sickening. But I remained calm and got on with the task. Thankfully I didn’t kill any of them, but David did. I thought there would be more to it than just cut off their head, at least a precise place, but it appears not. There where 20 chickens and 2 geese. One of the geese took a while to die, the knife wasn’t sharp enough so the head didn’t come straight off… It was quite horrific.

So, err, now I’m vegetarian

Although 3 days have passed now I’m still getting used to the term. The idea settled in pretty quick while I was plucking away. I guess I feel that if this was humane killing then I really don’t want want to support the industry. I don’t think I could enjoy chicken the same again. And its not like I was a great meat lover anyway.
I have since spoken to Tom and he explained that chickens really are the most stupid animals believable and have no idea what is about to happen to them while they are sitting in the funnel awaiting their turn. And in fact there was another free chicken wandering around the whole time, even having the odd peck at pieces the cats missed. Yeah, I know. He explained that its about the life they had before, which is pretty good here. So I do feel a bit better about the whole thing but it didn’t make me change my mind.

So far the only time I have missed it was not eating roasties because they where cooked in goose fat, but I actually prefer them in olive oil as it is. We had really good pumpkin soup instead :)

First day on the farm

The farm is huge and very smart! Big gates and cobbled courtyards. Peacocks and kittens strutting around. In fact there are so many cats that its hard not to step on them at night!
On the first evening we where shown to our apartment by one of the owners, Mia, who is part Malaysian and very friendly. The apartment is so nice and HUGE! We have a room, there is another volunteer called Esther who has another and on sunday two more girls are arriving who will be staying here too.

I love how high the ceiling is and the beams :)

The bathroom also has one of those huge corner baths but i couldn’t get it all in the picture…

Thats Esther :) shes really friendly and from Israel.

Anyway, once we picked our jaws off the floor we went to the restaurant to meet Petr (czech) and Tom (british) who are well, the managers I suppose. They made us potato pancakes for dinner and gave us all the low down on how things work. So, in a nut shell: we work for 5 hours a day and in return we have our apartment and all the food that is sourced from the farm. The only things we need to buy are milk and bread (and biscuits ;P). It is so satisfying taking a little crate to the greenhouse and choosing dinner! They have all sorts of meat and everything os organic! We can manipulate the hours we work by doing more one day and less another and so on.
Tom has had a horrible accident with a giant door falling on him so he’s hobbling around in crutches bit with the biggest smile in the room! He didn’t break anything but his skin cells are dying so he has a huge hole right to the bone! He is usually the one who shows volunteers around and how to do things so things aren’t as organised as they should be seeing as he should be in bed resting.

The next morning Petr gave us the job of feeding the animals with a tiny czech lady who’s name I can never remember and who also doesn’t speak a word of english except “water”. The result was a morning of miming and confusion (we later found out that yes in czech is “no”!!) but it was fun if frustrating at times. She’s very sweet though, she never stopped speaking. I have no idea whether it was to us or the animals though!

We fed chickens, we fed goats, we fed sheep, we fed geese, we fed pigs. I have never seen pigs so big! There was one which was GIANT! The photo doesn’t do him justice. He weighed 475kg. Thats nearly half a ton!

Unfortunately, he got killed two days later. Sorry to put a damper on things. But thats farm life. He was 7 which is old for a pig apparently and too lazy to have sex so he became useless to them.

Moving on swiftley: after feeding the animals I trimmed lavender and David got given the manly job of digging and sifting compost!

That night Petr asked if we could make dinner because Tom was feeling really bad and so we agreed a d suggested we make a roast because thats what Tom had mentioned he was going to make. He got a chicken out of the freezer and then we didnt see him again! The kitchen is industrial and we had to find the fridge, forage in the garden for the veg, work out how to use the amazing oven. Luckily Esther actually got a tour so had some idea of where things where. Petr came down at 5.45 and ask if we’d be done by 6 because thats when they like to eat. As we had spent so long looking for things, defrosting the chicken and actually cooking it would still be 40 mins which led to him making their daughter something else and putting her to bed as dinner was ready. Not the best way to end our first day. But everything was nice if not a little cold… And we got some leftovers for lunch the next day :)

Welcome to the Czech Republic!

So we arrived in Prague on sunday night, it was already too late to get to the farm where we will be staying for the next month leading us to look for a hostel. We already had a few in mind so it was just a matter of finding one, easy. Ha. We decided on heading towards the international bus station Florenc as we figured it’d be easy to find and there are a couple of hostels close to it
We got a connection bus from the airport to the train station which looked close to the bus station. David, who luckily is in charge of buying things, immediately picked up on the bus driver trying to rip us off and made sure we got the right change :) thats 50 koruna I would have lost! Once we got to our stop, it was a matter of finding Florenc. David knew the general direction from looking at google maps in the airport. About 30 mins later, a few stops for directions in broken english, we found the bus station across a huge busy road. So that was a fun crossing. It was then a case of finding the street where the hostel was. The station was so huge and spread out that we completely lost our sense of direction and luckily found a tourist information shop just closed. The guy kindly opened the door and even walked us to the end of the station to point us in the right direction. We got there eventually and found a hostel called Davids Apartments, it was a bit more expensive than we had been aiming for at 630 korunas, about £20 for us both, but we where so tored by then that we couldn’t care less. We got the keys to our “shared” room which turned out to be a double bed in our own room! It was nicer than our hotel in Bristol that claimed to be 4*!! Its a shame we didn’t get a photo of it… Bit heres the courtyard:

That night we found a nice pub to eat in. We chose off the traditional czech menu, thankfully in english! I had a sweetish creamy sauce with pork and bread dumplings, which, from what I can gather is bread steamed or poached instead of baked. It was so filling! I couldn’t finish, especially as it seemed to get sweeter and sweeter. It was nice though. David had Goulash, he chose to have it in a bowl made of bread which was pretty exciting. Although we are still at loss as to how you eat it all… It was nice too, stew like and very, very rich in flavour.

The next day we went exploring. We had decided to get a 2.20 train to Votice, the town near the farm. However Tom, one of the managers, had texted saying he would be in Prague for a hospital appointment and may pick us up. David ignored my suggestions of seeing of we could leave our bags at reception or in lockers in the train station so we headed to Old Town with our stupidly heavy 40L backpacks! Idiots.

We had a great time looking around though, besides the sore backs, the architecture is beautiful in Prague. We went to the square and considered one of the many free tours in various languages that are on offer but decided to leave it for a bag free day. After resting and people watching for a while we wandered across Charles Bridge. We imagine Prague must invest quite a bit in tourism as not only are there free tour guides everywhere but also this couple of dressed up girls (or maybe they are just out for fun?), a huge amount of street vendors and living statues which the police take no notice of.

So to cut a long story short, after 3 unanswered texts, 2 missed trains and an hour in a cafe (nursing the most delicious honey cake and empty espresso cup) we got a call from Tom asking where we where. He was at the train station and we weren’t? It turned out he hadn’t got any of my messages and had just assumed we where continuing with our original plan. Yes I know I should have just called earlier or we should have just got that 1st train but hey, maybe I’m just a bit of an idiot, overly worried and yet not active if that makes any sense… But it was ok, he was very apologetic and promised he hadn’t got our texts and said they could get us from the station later. We got the next train once we found the station (the longest possible way, going back PAST the hostel so we could have left our bags there!) and where collected from a tiny abandoned looking station.