Volunteers of 2022 in Nyim

November was really about slowing down, and preparing for the winter: we still did some harvesting, we stored our potato, and sweet potato for the winter. We found some monstress ones, one of them was bigger than 30 centimeter. We could see the result of long years of mulching: some years before the roots were much thinner. We could also see how the topsoil changed in the last few year: instead of compact yellow soil we have some spots where the compostation was successful: here on the top of the soil we have a thick black layer. 

October was about slowly saying goodbye: first Adedayo left unfortunately a bit earlier than we expected, so we couldn’t involve him properly to the common goodbye event.

In September we dedicated a serious amount of time to recover from the busy and exhausting hot August, so after the rest we organised smaller scale events and dedicated our time to finish our strawbale building. We held one longer event in cooperation with the Hungarian Strawbale Builders Association, when we were almost able to finish the wall of the house. Our architect, Gabi Révész led the course with her colleague, Tamás, whos father also joined to us with a special machine what he inwented to make the bales more compact.

Last week I got to help out at the Gyüttment (Movers) festival in Magfalva. It’s a great festival, full of sweet enthusiastic people who are excited to learn and share knowledge about living sustainably and taking care of earth. As a non-Hungarian speaker, I might not be the best one to tell what the festival is about, but here is my idea of what it is about, coming from my experience and from what people told me. It’s a gathering for people who are interested in or are already living in the countryside in sustainable ways. The festival is full of workshop, from the morning to dinner time, on various topics that are somehow related to sustainability such as natural building, composting, community building, crafting etc. Unfortunately most of the workshops were in Hungarian, so I’m probably not the best person to tell about them.

During August 3 volunteers from Etyek visited us, Paula from Spain, Paula from Germany, and at the end of the month Mathilde from France. They helped us in many programmes and tasks such as renovating our kitchen, building a yurt, and also hosting events.

We begun July with a special event: “the walk for healthy born” yearly arranged pilgrim walk group visited us, as the community is connected to the topic of birth. One of our founders, Kati works with the topic of birth as a psychologist, she is one of the few specialists in Europe, who developed a method to help adults heal their birth trauma. Naturally she is deeply connected with many other specialists in Hungary related to this topic, so midwifes, doulas, neonatologyst nourses, psychologists and other experts visited her in her home, in Nyim. Our community hosted home births in the community house previously, so we shared our experience about it, and we showed our land and strawbale house to the visitors. They gave a wondernut tree to us as a present, which we will plant this winter.

At the very beginning of June we went for an on arrival training to meet and build connections with other volunteers. When we arrived, Igor from Amsterdam, our third volunteer also landed, so we involved him to the daily activities: planting, weeding, and share the cooking tasks for the day.

At the beginning of May, the biggest event was Sonja’s arrival to the village. She was the first international ESC volunteer in our community. Sonja from Malmö landed smoothly to the village, and immediately started to explore the surroundings. As a local, and a community member, I (Fanni) really enjoyed to introduce the places to her, she was wery open to everything. We walked around a lot in-, and around the village and also in the nearby town, Siófok.

I have been here for almost two months now and we’ve been doing a lot of different things. We have done gardening in various gardens, including our own community garden. We have worked on the communal land of the community, taking care of little baby trees. I really enjoy watching the plants grow and the gardens change so much. We have also worked with renovating and organizing, and decorating, in the community house, where we are also living. We have also helped at different kinds of events, doing cooking, cleaning and organizing.