Po-ta-toes (boil ’em, mash ’em, stick ’em in a stew)

This week’s project? The title gives it away. Potatoes! But first and foremost, not their preparation, but their harvesting. Now that the weather is still quite dry, but the potato plants themselves have withered, it’s the perfect time for us to dig them up. And that’s exactly what we did. It felt a bit like searching for Easter eggs, especially since we didn’t just dig up the regular yellow ones, but also red and even black potatoes.

However, that wasn’t the only thing we harvested this week; grapes and walnuts were also ripe and delicious. While the walnuts make themselves quite noticeable when they fall on our roof, we drove on a whim to the abandoned house of Filip’s parents in Zhelen, where we harvested what the birds had left for us.

Otherwise, this week was pretty quiet, mainly because we were hit by illnesses that left a couple of us bedridden. Those lucky ones who weren’t affected (including myself) were faced with the task of managing all the daily chores with significantly fewer people and simultaneously making sure our sick friends lacked nothing. Not so simple.

Fortunately, support arrived with the arrival of Serena, our new Italian volunteer, who came on Wednesday. A great help!

A particular success for me was the repair of one of our hoses. With only a little support from Inka over WhatsApp, I managed to replace the broken piece of hose with a connector. A new valuable skill.