The Scorpion and the Plunger

I know it's been a while since my last post....we've been too busy to get to town until now....and I feel the need to begin with my saga from last night.

After another long day of weeding (I'm not kidding when I say we weed for six hours a day - except for the days it's eight hours - 6 days a week) I had the honor or horror (depends on your point of view at the time) of taking the first cold shower. Now, usually, this means you flush the bugs that have accumulated through the day down the drain. Well, last night was a special night. The scorpion was back and he was in the tub. What to do? So first I grabbed the lotion bottle because it's one of those with that comes to a flat edge at the top, and scooped him out of the shower onto the strip of tile that lays haphazardly between the shower and the wall. Good, no problem....I step into the shower and feel the cold water on my face. But, oh no...couldn't be that easy! He decides to slide right back into the shower. OK, plan B. So I grab the plunger and put it on top of him. Neutralized I figure, safe enough. About 30 seconds later, I see his pinchers come out from under the plunger, and then, lo and behold, he comes scurrying out. OK, this is not good. I'm wet and cold, and showering with a scorpion who's probably pretty ticked off at me at this point. Immediate action needed. So, I grabbed the plunger again and scooted him out of the tub onto the wall. I think he must have been more terrified of me because he ran into the wall as fast as he could and then looked back out at me before continuing his venture into the many crevasses that lay beyond the part tile, part brick, part plaster walls. I showered with one eye always on the ground, just to be sure.....and emerged victorious (aside from the 5 or 6 mosquito bites that come standard with every shower each night).

It's funny though, will all the bugs, critters, lizards and snakes that we come into contact with every day....the most vexatious are absolutely the mosquitos. If they carried disease, I would certainly be dead by now. We've been working more in the herb garded lately, and while I love the smells of the lemon verbana, sage, lavender and rosemary...it's mosquito heaven - especially in the evening. Worst place to be bitten? So far - the stomach. They take forever to go away, and itch more than the rest.

On a more positive note, the straw bale house is becoming much more of a home. We've even taken to baking our own bread! It's pretty cool - we separate the wheat (from the bad stuff like little stones), they mill it, and then we use it. The recipe is simply whole wheat, salt, olive oil and warm water. Takes about 30 minutes from beginning to end to make and eat - perfect! We've tried it with olives (grown on the farm) and rosemary from the herb garden so far. Both batches were fantastic if I do say so myself! Oh, and I found out that you can't eat olives from the tree...without being soaked in brine, they are "horribly bitter and disgusting" - Anke's description.

We continue to gather fruit and try new things....for example - passion fruit and cactus fruit. The cactus fruit is a bit more dodgy - there are tons of little thorns that need to be burned off the outside before they're safe to eat. When we harvested them yesterday, Adam and I had our share of those little thorns all over us...I couldn't imagine having them in my mouth! Ouch!!!! And really, the fruit isn't worth it to me...tastes like papaya....but Barbara loves them, so she's in heaven. Tomorrow, we make quince sauce (like apple sauce).

We have breakfast together every morning - fruit and mueslix, and now we have herbs for tea - lemon verbana and mint is my favorite. It's really nice to start the day together and gives us some time to wake up before going off to kill some weeds and destroy some homes (all those poor little ants).

Anke's parents and grandparents are coming to visit on Sunday, so the last couple weeks has been all about making everything look nice. So, that herb garden, that looked more like a jungle last week, needed tons of work. The veggie garden, the grapes, the trees...everything needs weeding, and some haven't been done in a year! It's a lot to do in a short time, but we're getting it done (and making her look good) so she can be proud of what she's doing when they come. Apparently they'd prefer her to be earning money in a job anywhere, or really doing anything but farming, so it's even more important for her that things look fabulous. Oh, what we do for our parents ;p

It's rained twice now. Just for part of two different days. I'm happy to report that the only place that the roof leaks is in the bathroom - easy enough to clean up, just not so conducive for using the toilet while it rains. We shelled beans one morning, the other rain was on our day off - go figure. We are apparently entering the rainy season soon...another reason all the weeding needs to be done quickly. We're learning about different plants and such, but we both wish the work was more varied. If for no other reason - our aching knees.

We've learned a lot about our hosts over the past couple weeks - they have very lofty goals, they take on waaaay more than they can reasonably accomplish, they are the king and queen of bold statements (all organic farmers, except vegan of course, spray their farms with animal blood), they have a general disdain for people who don't want to work on farms, they profess the desire to be self-sufficient but then don't want to shell beans or clean wheat to use (so instead they buy beans, rice and lentils from the store), they complain about people being wastefull and utilizing too many resources and then plant 100 Ginko trees (in all they have 2500 trees planted on their land). They have more planted than they could possible use - ever, but don't want to sell to the people in town because they don't want to deal with "those people"....but if they do sell things, they'll give people who want to come work on the farm a good price and try to "rip off" the others. They love classic movies (Romeo and Juliet, the Graduate, Sound of Music) and like to watch them over and over and over again. Over all, they are very nice people - just a bit off....perhaps misguided. Interesting, though...definitely interesting.

We've decided to stay until September 27th. We'll leave the morning of the 28th and head for Corfu - an island between Greece and Italy - to celebrate our birthdays (both on the 29th) and relax for a bit. On the 1st of October, we head for Italy.

Wish I had more time, but that's all I've got for now. Hope you're all doing well and staying happy and healthy.

Much love!
Lor