Goats leg and doutnik

Thursday 26^th July

I woke up just a daylight was beginning to show through the air vent in the van. After a while I decided I needed a pee and went outside; the quiet and stillness of the morning was profound. I went back to the van to try and sleep more but it eluded me. Around 4.30 I gave up trying to sleep and got up to make tea, and eat the last of my cornflakes with the not so fresh cow milk Jana had given me the day before. I knew Honsa would leave early for work, so I decided to wait for him and tell him about not having lunch or dinner yesterday.

 About 6.30 I heard the sound a tractor, it was Honsa. When he came out to get on his scooter, I went to chat with him. I explained to him as tactfully as I could that Workaway means exchange of labour for food etc but his need for food was different from mine. He agreed saying they eat early and late with not much in between. He apologised and offered to give me money to buy some food. I declined this. A little while later he came to the van with a round wicker basket with a big handle. In it was an assortment of jars in which were soups, stew and fish he had made, also some pork fat which he told me keeps better than butter. Honsa is very resourceful and will prepare a lot of soup etc at one time and bottle it. He had previously explained how he boils it twice for a long time to kill the bacteria. I told him it was too much but he insisted I took them all. I said I would return what I didn’t use.

Later, Jana asked me to look after Marian and Zorka. They played around the dried out pond and broke up bulrush heads to let the seeds fly in the air. Jana had told me the Czechs call these doutník, the same name as cigar, not surprising really because they look like a big fat cigar.

It was another really hot day and in the afternoon, Jana asked me to help her with a job. It was to remove the plaster cast from the leg of one of their male goats, except it the cast wasn’t made of plaster, used to be, but not is made of something like fibre glass, and really hard to get off. The goat had broken its leg about six weeks previously. The goat was tethered to a tree near the dried out pond. I thought it was going to be a real struggle with the goat but it was very placid once on the ground. I held its head down, holding on to its horn whilst Jana chopped away at the cast with a pair of secateurs. It was real hard going and I was a bit concerned she might dig the blade into the goat’s leg but it never complained. Only once did it try to get up. Jana explained that the vet was too busy to come and so she decided to do it herself. After half an hour of cutting, the cast could finally come off and the goat hobbled to its feet. Its leg was very weak but the goat’s only concern was eating grass.

Before

After

Afterwards, Jana wanted help nailing boards in a corral; apparently she is going to use this space to train the donkey and mule to carry heavy loads, such as milk buckets. The posts already in the ground were from tree trunks and because of their age, were iron hard, it was hot and hard job nailing in the boards. 

Whilst we were in the  field, a friend of Jana’s arrived, her name is Elizabeth. Elizabeth works as a forester and takes care of the forest, as does Jana. She told me she would happily sleep under the stars in the forest at night. Her hobby is re-enacting native American history and culture. She told me this when I enquired about the unusual tattoos on her upper arms.

At 6.45, Jana announced it was time to “Go to beer.” A very welcome suggestion. After one beer, I went back to the van; I was very tired.