Volunteers of 2022 in Barnag

This Monday Szilard and Veronika (from the Nádas Bormühely vineyard in Etyek) welcomed us to their cellar along with other members of the community to make sour cherry juice. They got a lot of sour cherries from a local producer that we pressed, using the same press that they normally use for pressing grapes to make wine. While the press was doing its magic, we got the task to clean the boxes that the cherries had been transported in so that they wouldn’t be all sticky. 

This Monday, all Szatyor people came together in our house, in Etyek. Many people involved in Szatyor Association, especially those from Budapest who work at the Szatyorbolt shops visited our garden and together we made had some team building fun. 

The herbs in our garden have been going wild lately with the heat and thunderstorms going on. So we decided it was time to give these guys a little trim and dry herbs so they would last us over the winter. We picked all sorts of herbs, mostly rosemary, sage, estrogen but also different types of mint and hung them to dry in our outdoor kitchen and greenhouse. It was nice, everything smelled so good and it all gives a cool look to the place! We also started harvesting greens in our garden like salads, lettuces, mangolds and green onions. We are excited for the veggies to start showing up in the next few weeks!

Today is June 21st, in France on that day, we celebrate music and free concerts take place in towns all across the country. June 21st is also the summer solstice, longest day of the year, also called midsummer and particularly celebrated in Sweden. 

Starting in the middle of May and till the beginning of June we had a series of hands-on gardening sessions with kids from local school. Since this time is perfect for thermophilic crops, we decided to sow some zucchini and beans so when the seedlings are ready kids could take them home and transplant into their own beds.

Last week I took a break in my ESC volunteering project to attend an Erasmus + training course in the beautiful eco-village of Sunny Hill in Slovene Istria. 

Over the past few months we've been working with our neighbor Marci. He has a place called 7 drops where he hosts events and he and the owner of the place, Judith asked us if we could help them set up some raised beds there. So we made some raised beds that we filled with branches, leaves and compost soil. 

Spring is here! 

 Finally we got our freshly glazed ceramic items that we made throughout our first months spent here in Szatytor!

Its the middle of April and our community garden perked up, covered with soft silky green grass, embellished with white and pink fruit trees, liven up with bustling and cheerful hens - our beautiful newcomers that we are caring about from now on.

Recently we were hosting soap-making workshop with Tünde Udvarnoki. It was nice fresh rainy afternoon and we decided to make it outside, in our summer kitchen for both aesthetic and safety reasons - soap making might be quite unstable process and its better to do it open air. Tünde brought some equipment, like blenders, scales and bowls alongside with all needed ingredients - oils, butters, essential oils and lye - the main component that turns oil into a soap.