A few different people have commented recently about how central food seems to be to our existence at Nový Mlýn. The kitchen is the heart of the house (even though the kitchen is currently in the lounge, with no drainage or running water). As the dishes are put away after one meal, it’s about time to start preparing for the next.
We eat, on average, 3 or more times a day – the usual times plus elevensies or afternoon tea if someone decides to bake a cake, make cookies or flapjack. After some hard physical labour, food tastes particularly nice, and we deserve the extra calories! If people weren’t working hard, then they would risk gaining weight staying here.
This summer we’ve started making our own pasta, basic cheese and bread (with the help of a fantastically useful bread maker). We also incorporate wild food into every meal – nettle & lambs quarters have replaced spinach, ground elder is a tasty bulky herb and chickweed appears in all our salads. We also have Burdock root (a Japanese vegetable), wild sorrel and watercress around and about. Of course, we’ve been picking the raspberries and bilberries from the forest… and adding these to honey to make a syrup. The terrible weather in recent days has also meant that we have fantastic mushrooms right now.
This is also our first year of growing vegetables at Nový Mlýn – a crop of potatoes (complete with a colony of Colorado Potato Beetles), a forest of courgette plants – though only two actual courgettes so far, many tomato plants, peas, carrots, parsnips, rocket, essential coriander (the green seeds are lovely in salads) – however it is the edible wild greens that we’ve had the most success with – I plant peas, and lambs quarters appear…
We also now have 8 hens, who each lay on average six days out of seven. When we have more than 4 guests with us (frequently over the summer) we have to top these up with bought eggs, unfortunately.
Finally, 2010 has been the year that we’ve started to experiment with cider making! The valley is full of apple trees, after all. Our first batch from windfalls is busily bubbling away. The neighbour didn’t seem very optimistic about our prospects, but Czechs don’t have a Cider culture – they drink either apple juice or distil it into hard alcohol. You can only buy (very expensive) cider in specialist pubs here. We eagerly anticipate the results of our experimentation.

I saw a fascinating video recently about how to fix the wings of a butterfly – I think  made by someone who works in a sanctuary – rather than someone who lives with a cat who likes to hunt them. Today Pavouk turned up with another flightless specimen and I knew what to do… rather than rescue it to allow it to spend the rest of it’s hours earthbound.  As there was less than 40% of the wing missing – I held the two wings together and snipped them so that they were even – and he flew off. I wonder what distant storm will be caused.

Rosie and I went gathering mushrooms the other day. It had been raining heavily so excellent weather for it – we found a great patch of Chanterelle, a couple of Porchini – including the Luridus variety, as well as Chamomile and some wild raspberries.  While we were out I got us (a little bit) lost and we had to hop across a stream to get back on course. It was there we made our discovery…

Gold! Well… Clay! Which you must admit, is just as exciting (and far more malleable at ambient temperatures).  When we got home I referred to the self sufficiency book my dad bought me and it provided detailed instructions on how to test the clay for PH balance, treat and process it… that book is so good. If we ever loose the internet/civilisation, we’ll be okay.  So, we ignored the instructions and got straight on with making stuff. Rosie did a ceramics course recently – so she’s the expert!

The next day I got out my enamel kiln. The kiln is not large – in fact you could just about fit an apple in it. It was given to me by a friend of my mum’s – when I was a teenager – because she knew that I liked all sorts of crafts – and I’ve kept it ever since.  Apart from a little smoke it seemed to be working fine and the (dinky) pots were successfully fired. The clay turned from grey to fleshy pink – with lovely sparkly bits (which John says are puwer gowld!).

So far I’m a little stuck on what we can actually make from the clay – smaller than an apple, yet not tat. We’re fine for tat – we can make loads of it.  I could make ends for my home made knitting needles… bottle caps to keep wasps out of beer in the garden… John says that literally anything can sell in his gift shop in Bechyne – so the challenge has been laid.

So at last, last month, we finally caught up with (what passes for) civilisation.  We had our new (second hand) Whirlpool washing machine and a shower attached to the boiler in the bathroom. It felt really great. For a glorious moment… then I got electrocuted by the tap on the shower – (luckily before I’d started running the water). The washing machine had blown up and taken out the boiler with it – leaving the taps and shower live. At least it was me, rather than a visitor who got the shock.

The problem was that a plug in the bathroom (which was part of the old wiring) had been wired the wrong way – reminiscent of the copper wire that had been used to bypass the fuse system (which we discovered in the early days). Luckily nobody died either time – but it does leave the lingering impression that the house had been booby trapped.

So, yet again we are without hot water and a washing machine. When the weather is good we’re fine as we have the solar showers and bath outside. The repair cost for the boiler was greater than the cost of the boiler itself – so we’ve ordered a new boiler with three inputs – meaning that we can heat the tank from a back boiler on a stove, from a solar system input as well as a backup in the form of electricity.  That’ll be arriving next week, and the Whirlpool washing machine has been repaired – they phoned us to ask us what the maximum we were prepared to pay for the repair would be – then they charged us this amount. Our cheap second hand washing machine has stopped being.

Still… we hope to rejoin the 20th century again this week.

Wanting to stay as close as possible to nature – we decided to try Shellac as a varnish on the stripped floorboards. This is bought in the form of flakes and dissolved in a very strong alcohol – it would have been nice to use a local alcohol – and would have certainly smelled more pleasant, however it needs to evaporate completely – so Slivovice was not the thing to use. Shellac is a secretion from a bug, which is then scraped off the trees and processed. It is the same bug which is used for the production of cochineal – and in fact, Shellac is used in food production – such as over the brightly coloured coatings on Skittles. Yum. As with anything in our immediate environment – including skin creams, the fact that it comes in an edible form gives me confidence that we’re not inadvertently poisoning ourselves by using chemicals which have not been tested a, in combination with other chemicals, and b, over the course of lifetimes rather than weeks to check of ill effects. Shellac has been used for hundreds of years in the form of French polish. It has a long history as well as uses in the food industry.

We have two litres of Shellac made up, I’m interested to know how far this will go – so far I’ve used it to treat the areas of floorboard which have woodworm damage – long dead woodworm which has attacked the wood from the sides, rather than the top – suggesting to me that the woodworm was in the wood when it was cut into planks.

The filler I made up with sawdust and shellac hasn’t been successful – perhaps because the sawdust wasn’t fine enough. I was hoping I could fill the woodworm holes with this mix, but it’s not quite right yet. It’s nice having the chance to experiment anyway.

Most people are aware of the quantity of man-made chemicals we now carry in our bodies – with all sorts of nasties even being present in breast milk. Fire retardants are particularly vile, and, as with most modern day decisions, ‘you pays your money and you takes your choice’. Fire retardant on pillows: you are less likely to set fire to your head, and more likely to get cancer.

Whitewash is essentially a mix of calcium hydroxide, chalk and water. I can buy it ready made for 165kc for 15kg – so it’s much, much cheaper than paint. It appeals to me for the same reasons we’re experimenting with Shellac. Once I’ve got the basic repair and decoration finished I plan to experiment with pigments added to the whitewash – though I will certainly not be using pig’s blood as they did to produce ‘Suffolk Pink’. Nice. I was thinking more along the lines of leaves and berries for a hint of colour.

I’ve been painting with the whitewash for a few days now. If you get it on your skin it’s incredibly drying – it’s important to wash it off quickly or your hands will become dry and cracked (rescued only by the Body Shop’s Hemp hand cream).  I’ve been using a domestic whisk to mix the paint – which settles over time into a watery layer over the heavy, cream cheese consistency, lime. Once mixed together thoroughly this should have the appearance of yoghurt.

A few days ago I used paint which hadn’t been mixed properly thinking that it might save me time on additional layers – it went on well, however when I came back to it today I found that it had cracked into small squares and was loose or peeling off the walls on about half of the places I’d painted. My only excuse was I was rather unwell with a horrible cold, but it was a bad job. Mike said it could have been the paint itself, but I know that I tried something different and it’s worked well in the other rooms. Lesson learnt. I then had to sweep down the walls again, vacuum up the mess and start again. The brilliant white emulsion is faster and doesn’t rub off on other things (like a paint made of chalk does), but I’m far more concerned with our health and the health of the house – why add VOCs to your home if you don’t have to?

The house feels verry verry quiet.  We had been gearing up for the visit of our 24 cyclists for some time… clearing out the courtyard for the hog roast, building the frame for the solar showers and laying down the hosepipe covered by tin guttering to heat the water, and clearing away as much clutter as possible.

Friday was a wonderfully hot day, but as the first of the cyclists arrived, so did the first signs of bad weather – a storm cloud made it’s way over from Tabor as they did.  As more people arrived, so the rain became heavier.

The last cyclists had not been able to find our road, and instead had stopped at a farm in another village which had the same house number as ours.  The perplexed farmer had no idea why two girls who spoke no Czech were pointing to their T-Shirts and expecting to put up tents in his garden.  Shortly after their arrival here, as we were serving the food, the light show started. A wonderful, wonderful lightening storm – if you weren’t trying to cater for 36.

As well as the Global Agents (Gala’s description), we also had Olivier and Arno – French couchsurfers, and Janni from Finland. Our workaway.inf0 guest Jessica, Shane, Nat and Keith from The English Centre, Tabor. And of course, Pig John (as he now wishes to be known).  After the barbecue we watched the storm from the porch.

Have you ever noticed that if you get commercial washing powder on wet skin you get a slimy feeling that’s impossible to wash off? It’s not hard to guess that the clever chemicals that make your whites whiter than white ain’t great for just about anything else in the natural world. If your clothing is not covered in cooking oil, mud, tomato sauce and grass stains etc. – ie you are over the age of 12, and continent, you don’t really need high temperatures and harsh chemicals do you?

As all the water we use at Novy Mlyn is taken out of the ground and (eventually) returns to the ground, we don’t use any harmful cleaning chemicals in the house. Instead we’ve researched the alternatives (and use vinegar a lot).

After fixing the drainage from the house last week, we installed our (second hand, energy rating:A, Whirlpool) washing machine. We decided to order soap nuts as these are a natural product which will not contain the vile chemicals of commercial detergents – we ordered these from a seller on Ebay and so we needed to wait for a few days for them to arrive… too long to wait for our first wash so we researched a traditional washing soap recipe – a 100g bar of soap finely grated, a 50g packet of (inexpensive) bicarbonate of soda and a teaspoon of borax – makes enough ‘powder’ for several loads of washing. This worked well with the longer 40 degree cycles, but the soap remained undissolved on the 30 minute quick wash cycle.

Currently the washing machine drains into the bath. I was quite shocked with the amount of water used – 40 litres even with the 30 minute cycle, therefore we are reusing the water by draining it into the mop bucket to wash floors and flush the toilet.

So, we collected a kilo of soap nuts from the post office today – it cost 13.50 GBP including postage. They are waxy shells about the same size as marbles and a kilo looks like a lot. They smell peculiar… the instructions I’ve read say that your clothing won’t smell peculiar after washing – we’ll see later today. You use 4-6 of them for four washes, so a kilo should last the year… as long as we’re not left smelling odd! One inconvenience is that you have to pre-treat them if you are planning to use a 30 degree cycle – they need warmer water in order to activate the soapiness.

I pre soaked the 6 shells in a cup of boiling water for about 5 minutes, and put the water into the washing liquid compartment of the washing machine and the shells in the little cloth bag in the main drum with the washing.  The washing is now on the line – the sunlight itself acts as a natural antibacterial and bleaching agent.

Once you have used the soap nut shells 4-6 times you stick them on the compost heap. All back to nature and with clean clothes to boot.

It chucking it down. Raining cats and dogs (or raining wheelbarrows as they say in Czech). Oh the irony of our relationship with water.

On Saturday we were forced to change the drainage system for the water leaving the house. After we had bought rods for the drain, the neighbour told us that the pipe was actually broken about two feet from where the drain entered the ground. Why? A question which remains unanswered.

Instead we are feeding the water round to the (lower) front of the house (through the cellar). On Sunday I started digging in the reed bed filtration system. This is a set of troughs which will contain various special plants which use various things found in grey water from houses as nutrients (grey water is not contaminated with sewage – which has to be separately treated for safety reasons).  I’m just waiting for the list of species required. Luckily there is an institute of botany specialising in aquatic plants in nearby Třeboň, so I will be able to see which of these are native to the Czech Republic and available locally.

Today we dug up the drive way into the property as there was no drainage under it, meaning that a stream of water would pool in front of the house in heavy rain. Minutes after Mike, Dad and John put down their spades, the heavy rain started and we were able to see how effective it was.

Now the valley has flooded and it’s still raining – there have been deaths due to the floods in other areas of the Czech Republic and this water will now be headed down to lower ground. I went and checked on our neighbouring horses, who were not happy about the thunder and lightening, but able to stand on a bank out of the way of the water.

Our visitor from workaway.info helped me construct a ‘goat’ today – ie a wooden frame on which we can hang the solar showers over the stone fish pond (drained). We have moved the old bath over to the back of the garden, by the pond, so that when we have multiple guests (such as the twenty cyclists who are coming to camp in a couple of weeks) we can heat water in the bath – it has a black cover and gets hot in the sun, which can then be used to fill the solar bag showers. This seems like a distant dream right now… with this torrential rain.

(British children’s rhyme: It’s raining, it’s pouring. The old man is snoring, he went to bed and bumped his head and couldn’t get up in the morning).

Last year I researched which essential oils were disliked by moths and put little glasses in various cupboards and drawers to ward off unwanted visitors.  When I went back to them, the scent had faded and a sticky oil residue was left on the containers – which was a pain to clean off.

I cheated a few weeks ago and bought a commercial bio  ‘lavender’  moth repellent – but it stank out the room – even with the wardrobe door shut, and I started having difficulty breathing.  The lavender I planted earlier this year is not yet thriving.  I would be happy to have a good supply of it.

Eventually a solution has occurred to me… I’ve gathered some pine cones from the forest and put the essential oil (geranium to deter flies, and peppermint and cedar to keep moths away) on these – it’s soaked in without touching the shot glasses. Tomorrow I’ll add some chilli and cloves to the glasses and put them about the house.