Life on a farm

It's amazing how many times people have expressed their jealousy of my current situation. How great it would be to be surrounded by all those animals. Commenting on photos of baby pigs and cows, saying how cute they are.

Life is great, I feel I have expressed that enough through my blogs. However summer is a time where crops need cropping, and work for most people resides at home! That's great I hear you say, it must be lovely to work at home all day. Work on a farm is tiring and hot and the fruits of your labour come to fruition at this point.

This is good in some respects; going to the garden to grab a fresh, warm, sun ripened peach, or a bunch of grapes. However, it is also at this point that those cute little baby animals turn into meal sized critters and the slaughter begins!

I still to this day don't know how people can do this. My host grand- mother cries when she has to kill a chicken, it's always a sad day, she still cries now at the loss of her favourite bull, which she didn't kill, she swapped it for a smaller bull and somebody else took care of the dirty work!

Why does this make me sad though? I don't know! These animals are not only free from cruelty, they are loved throughout there lives, cared for, at times, like babies. Yet I fail to account that without the death of animals we, as a species, would not have evolved into what we are. Monkeys are perfectly adapted to forage fruit from trees, and those that came down, learned to graze and even occasionally kill an animal. However our design and evolution stems from hunting ....primitive man, making "primitive weapons"** and using them to catch food for their families.

**the term primitive weapons commonly described weapons that "non-primitive"*** man would not have a clue how to use!!!!

***non-primitive man includes us, the mollycoddled mass of our time, who without electricity or technology, would maybe last about 1 month! Exceptions being dole walling scum who would probably last about a week as they would be more interested in where the drink and drugs was coming from to worry about learning to hunt and forage!

If/when society as we know it crumbles under its own weight, it is the "second, less privileged worlds" that will carry on the genes of homosapien into the future and become the new man, whilst those of us who live wrapped in blankets of dollars and pounds will be using that same comfort blanket to cover the faces of those too weak survive! Bleak? Maybe so, but let's face facts here, or let's do what we always do, pretend it's not put problem, and that it will never happen to us!

What is that smell?

It was just another normal evening in the village of ochkhomuri, everyone drinking cups of tea whilst watching the nine o'clock news. I was feeling pecking and knew leila had just made me some fresh cheese. This, and the smell of fresh bread, permeating the air had worked up quite an appetite. Food this fresh always tastes great. The smell was delightful. I switched flicked on the kettle and I poured the water into my cup, watching the swirling of the tea as it oozed from the bag. I love little moments like these, it makes you realise why the fast food junkies of the west are often so depressed .....preparation is healthy.

Of course this is simple logic to some of us, I also understand that not everyone has time to prepare a meal,, but remember I was only preparing fresh bread and cheese! However, it's this preparation that makes us desire the food more, therefore becoming more hungry as we make it. This may burn off some fat, but more importantly it's that sense of accomplishment, the satisfaction caused by the window of patience you just created for yourself.

However, had I been given prior notice that on this occasion my satisfaction was not to be achieved, I would have been very grateful to have been handed a nasty little bit of processed cow bones and offal fried up and served as what they like to call the "Mc-Cheese burger"! I'm not on a high horse now though; I used to fall victim for these desire of non food, and still to this day get the occasional craving! However, I digress!

As the tea swirls began to encapsulate all of the water, staining it a warm coppery crimson, I began cutting my cheese, only to be distracted by the sound of Ilia's Lada chugging down the drive; followed by commotion. Ilia came into the house and began spouting of fast Megrelian, the local language I still fail to understand. I knew only one thing, there was something in his car and everyone, besides Tea (pronounced tay-a), was going to look at it. I asked Tea what was in the car, she smiled and said ....."go have a look". Naively I wandered outside to see what all the commotion was about, only to be halted in my steps by a wall of putridity that stained the air ahead of my tracks. I looked in the car, there were two huge baskets with bags inside, stained and bulging at maximum capacity. The smell was making me sick to my stomach, but I couldn't move out of intrigue as to what was in these bags; whilst hopefully getting an answer to what this totally foreign smell was! I felt something wet against my toe and for a second thought nothing of it, until it began to trickle down the side of my foot! I looked down and recoiled in shock! .......Eight cows legs freshly killed and bleeding all over my foot! I immediately rushed to wash my foot in the shower, I heard the sound of laughter as I went. To these people this was just an everyday occurrence, but before coming to Georgia I had never really been close to live cows for any period of time, never mind dead ones!

This place is full of surprises and now full of the lingering stench of death! More over, the dog keeps finding entrails and dragging them into the house .....and all those people that worry about a dead mouse or bird that your cat may bring home as a present for you, just imaging a cows brain slumped on the floor in front of your dog!

Live in an Oven

"It's too hot", "It's too cold", "It's too normal", "It's not normal enough".

Being English, I like the rest of us, I am prone to complaining about everything.... most of all the weather.

However, I have a reason to complain today. The news report this morning basically said .......DON'T GO OUTSIDE. Apparently the solar radiation was peaking causing immense heat and obvious health risks. The temperature today at peak was at 47*C and is now sitting at 44*C at 4pm. The skies are blue the sun is out and everything looks amazing ....and all the locals are complaining. I, despite the constant drip of sweat from my nose, am loving the weather, it's good its too warm for words and there is no place to be dry in the shade it is 40*C and indoors its worse than outside.

However, it's now 4pm so we are braving the river, covered in sun screen. Being English I have never been in such temperatures as we always go on holiday outside of these heats ......and I see why! However, when you live here ......what can you do? .......suffer it, or enjoy it. I choose the latter by remembering how bitterly cold the alternative is. 

The plus points though .....going to a tree and pulling off a fresh, juicy peach, nicely warmed by the summer sun and digging in to it and being able to sit outside wearing only a pair of shorts, hunting for shooting stars among the milky way. 

Enjoy Summer! Whatever type of summer you have!

Devastation

So where are we at? It's a strange one. I woke up this morning wanting to write a blog, but had the strange suspicion that we were still out of electricity and would need to further save my battery on my phone. How right I was!

Last night's storm was the worst I have seen to date. However, my regional representative assures me that it is not the worst that is to come. Devastation has swept the villages south of the western Greater Caucasus mountains. Crops have been flattened fruit torn from trees and lie bruised on the ground, rivers have flooded many farmers fields and the damage is quite costly to a lot of people's livelihood.

I have not properly assessed the damage to our own crops as of yet. However, if it is a fraction on what I have seen this morning, things will not be looking good.

BUT WHERE IS MY ELECTRIC?!

I'll tell you! Lying in the bloody river!

How many times I told the folk of the village, "If you fix the problem now it wont be a problem"

Truly a stitch in time does save nine! Now we have an electric mast lying in the river with the electric cables it once supported drooping down into the water below.

I can't be too sad and in fact I really value the life I have been given, after seeing what I saw this morning. This is because it was only when I noticed the cause of the outage that I realise the damage happened when we were in the second river. If this makes you wonder about the relevance of I was has on this situation. It was only after a debate that we went to this river! We were going to go to the first river and would have been in the river when the cable fell.

Sometimes you just have to trust your gut and something about that day made me not want to go!

So.... Although there is light at the end of the tunnel, I do hope my electric comes back on.

Also, just to set the record straight, although this is very severe weather and it is across most of Europe. This is not the end of the world. Those of an older generation, and those that can remember back will remember severe changes when the seasons change .....it is only in the years of late that have seen the seasons blend. If anything this weather is more normal than what we have seen in previous years, but it doesn't mean we are prepared for it!

Until next time ........................Whenever that may be.

From one extreme to another!

Degree by degree each day gets hotter and hotter, the air suffocating you with humidity. As every hour passes you see your reflection in the well, edging further away from you with each bucket full that is removed. The ground scorched and dry, dust in the air, staining your clothes as you clamber through the midday sun.

The locals, being farmers pray for rain, whereas, the children all want the sun ...and of course the food that comes from the sun. It's strange how looking back you remember the mindset of a child ...being a teacher helps. Life is about playing, in all senses of the word, eating and trying to figure out what the hell hormones are.

Three days ago the prays of the locals came to fruition... The rain began well technically it started a week ago but the worst of it three days ago.

When it first started I was walking leisurely to the river, not noticing the huge black cloud rolling up behind me getting taller and taller with each step, through the midday sun, that I took. I then jumped into the river swam under the bridge and then, after coming out the other side, witnessed what had been chasing me. With a large clap of thunder and a bolt of lightning striking the ground about 1km away I jumped out of the water, along with three others and we sat under the bridge for an hour as the storm edged eerily across our heads striking the ground with each blast.

Two days later the big storm started thick black, clouds, as if filled with ash and soot, stained the sky. Blocking out the sun and turning this once bright, scorched landscape into a dark, cold and windy land. Then, with a clap of thunder, which I can only describe as being like dropping 100 baking trays onto a tile floor .........after everyone ha gone to bed, the rain came.

The rain here brings a whole new meaning to the term hard water. Thick drops of water fall rapidly from the sky, bouncing off the floor like hail. Litres of water tearing across the roof accompanied by the sound of a gale. However, as all constant sounds, repetitively builds to form background noise of your day.

Until 5am this morning of course.

Woken abruptly by my bed shaking, I panicked thinking I was in an earthquake; to be strangely relieved to find out it was just lightning hitting my roof. Trying to get back to sleep was impossible; with every slip into slumber the room would shake violently, rattling my glass, light surround like a wind-chime. I moved to the other side of the bed ....in case it fell from the ceiling. For two hours I lay there as the room shook violently around me, with every roll of thunder.

The storm has cleared three times in as many days, yet for every time the sun breaks through the thick, black plume, another forms maybe half an hour behind it. As I write this the light and heat from the sun has pierced through the plume; hopefully now for the last time ....However, only time will tell.

Strange new world

Having not yet spent a full year in this country, there is still a season full of surprises waiting around the corner. Having now insect proofed my room, so I have a cool place to to work, I find myself hiding away from the scaled up versions of my fears; giant bee's, wasps an even giant flying beetles..... Then only to be laughed at as the Mosquitos break through my defences in a desperate search for the British blood.... Diet has nothing to do with it.... New blood is their goal and, as the heat rises, children and foreigners fall victim to this ill fate, scratching like flea ridden dogs in the sun! Spiders of all shapes and sizes can be found in all corners of all rooms and the scuttling sound of cockroaches venturing every inch of darkness almost provides the lullaby you fall asleep to. However, I never could of imagined that an insect could bring me joy. Having already spent an hour outside on the balcony feeling the house shake with a passing storm, I was in high spirits. Then I went down for some food. My host Grandmother called me hurriedly to go to the back door. I dropped what I was doing and ventured outside. Look! Look! she said point into the darkness. I got out my torch and shone it in the direction she was pointing .....a fence. Switch the torch off! Now! There staring into the darkness I witnessed something I had never in my life seen ....... Fireflies.. magestic little creatures floating about the air beautifully, and as I stood there fixated I was filled with elation.

Deafening silence.

Born and raised in the city, The sound of a thousand cars, driving endlessly along long motorways and tight city streets, formed the background to my life. I often used to hear people say "I going to go to the country and get away from it all." yet however remote the British countryside is, it's not a patch on this place....

This place, and in particularly the sound of spring had proved to me that silence doesn't truly exist, without being aided by a human invention. The sound in a village however, is far more deafening than that of a city.... But promotes a whole different emotion. The sound of birds, frogs, goats, cows, pigs and other such creatures, replace the dull monotony of a constant hiss of motorised movement. Yet for all these sounds are entirely natural and on their own a whole lot quieter, the sporadic chorus of noise becomes deafening; but wholly peaceful.