Glimpses of the farm life

This will be a short, but hopefully a colourful one - I'm too knacked. But still, it is most probably my last day in the gardens here. I'm back to London on Thursday, before heading to the warmer climates next week.

Today has been an onion day. It's been quite a satisfying job, with beautiful and very wholesome results. They grow zillions of onions here; all sorts - spring ('scallions'), shallots, white...we bunch them up and put them up to dry, where they stay until they are needed (in the picture below are two of my co-workers: Pam - a choppy Englishwoman from Porthsmouth, married to an Irishman; and Vlasta - a silent farm hero - from the Check republic).

After a day or two of hanging the onions turn brown and start slowly rotating - an amazing and eerie vision...

There is a certain clever technique of putting them up, using what seems to me like a sailor's knot! Manu - my lovely French neighbour - is tiying them up below.

I took this picture below because onions remind me of some medieval criminals - sentensed and hanged. The red hands of the executor are tiying the last knot on the prisoners' necks...

And these are the bodies of the dead..

the job is done - now we can take a break;)

Tomorrow Julia and myself are doing a demonstration for the Slow Food movement event here - it's an Eastern European night. We are doing tsepeliny (a Lithuanian national dish: potatoes with minced pork), Borsh, venigret (a beetroot salad) and fluffy little pancakes served with sourcream and honey. Hope to report when back in 40b.