Hello from Romania

[Maykal]

Hello there,

I've been living in Romania for the past 8 years. I've always been very interested in doing things myself, particularly when it comes to food and drink, but also DIY and crafts. At the moment I live in a flat, so the opportunities for growing my own are quite limited, apart from some herbs on the balcony, but in the future I would like to buy a house in the beautiful countryside here so I can expand my hobby into more of a way of life.

I love to cook with seasonal ingredients (which, here, work out a lot cheaper and tastier than the imported stuff) and I'm also interested in Romanian culinary traditions. In the last couple of years I've also started to brew my own. I started off with beer, from kits, but just recently I've moved into meadmaking due to the availability of locally-produced decently-price honey. I've got my first batch in the fermenting bucket as I type.

Greetings to all,
Mike

[Lillia]

Nice to meet you, Mike; I've just joined last night~

[Maykal]

Hi Lillia,

Nice to meet you too and thanks for the welcome!

[demi]

hello mike,

i live close by in macedonia. there are quite a few of us living round about the balkans.
my husband is macedoian, im from scotland and we just arrived back in macedonia after being in scotland to have baby number 2 ( as im sure you are aware, the hospitals here are like somthing out world war 1 )
we bought some land with an orchard close to the town so this year we will be delving fully into self-sufficiency.

welcome to ish

[Maykal]

Hello Demi and thanks!

I was in Macedonia a couple of summers ago, although I didn't get the chance to explore anywhere outside of Skopje. It seemed like an interesting place though.

I know what you mean about the hospitals. It's probably not much better here. The private ones are good, but the state ones are dire.

What kind of orchard have you bought? Apples? What are you planning to do with the fruit you pick?

[Maykal]

Oh, and congratulations on the new addition to your family!

[Millymollymandy]

Hi and welcome!

[demi]

skopje is a concrete city, not very attractive. its a shame thats all you saw as the contryside and the mountains are stunning. i imagine much the same in romania, with quaint litte villages of tumbelling down houses with red tiled roofs and the abundance of monestrys and churches covered with ancient frescos and extravagent decotation. and of course there is Ohrid lake, a unesco world herritage site and popular tourist destonation.

anyway, thats enough punting

we have a mixed orchard with apples, pears, peaches, apricots, figs, quince, cherries, grapes, wallnuts, almonds and hazlenuts.
we sell the fruit. my father in law did it last year while we were away. he also grew potatoes and various pumpkins and sold everything from outside our front door ( we live right in the center )
so this is our investment and full time job now. we're growing all our own fruit and veg and getting chickens for meat and eggs and a couple of dairy goats for milk. planning on keeping the meat chicken and goats in the orchard to eat the fallen fruit, for pest controle and to fertalize the ground. once the weather gets cold all the chickens will be killed and put in the deep freezer and the goats brought back to our house in the center and kept in the garden over winter as the road to the orchard becomes impassable in the snow. we've got an outhouse in our garden that we'll be keeping the egg hens in and its big enough to devide in 2 to make room for the goats. the garden also needs fenced off so the dog cant get to the animals as im quite sure shed try to eat the chickens.

what are you planning to do?
hows the weather at your end? we have snowed in villages here, they're having to helicopter in food supplys for them. and there has been a few avolanches.
we're ok though because we are in a main town. the main roads are clear but the side roads are terrible. the snow has been melting slightly during the day then freezing again at night so its all hard and icey everywhere. our car has gotton stuck a few times.

[Milims]

Hi there and welcome

[Maykal]

@Millymollymandy, Milims, and SusieGee: Hello to all of you!

@demi:

Luckily we drove from Romania to Skopje so we did see a little bit of the countryside on the way. I was there for a sporting tournament so I didn't get a chance to escape. We did have one day when our team wasn't playing and I had thought about busing it down to Ohrid for a few hours, but unfortunately I got roped into umpiring that day and had to stay in town.

The set-up you have there sounds idylic - that's pretty much what I would like to do eventually. Bucharest is pretty much like you said, but it's bigger than Skopje and despite having its fair share of monolithic 80s concrete blocks, it also has quite a few charming neighbourhoods, and thriving old town for nightlife, and some good parks. Ultimately I would like to get out of the south (fairly flat landscape) and move north of the Carpathians into Ardeal/Transylvania. It's just as you described - little villages, traditional lifestyle, most of the peasants living in rural areas are self-sufficient out of habit and necessity, rathan that it being a lifestyle choice.

There was one property I saw in a beautiful little Saxon village in Transylvania. It was a decent size; three main rooms, a place for a bathroom, a large loft, and three cellar rooms below. It also had pig pens, a chicken enclosure, a large barn with a seperate room, an annex with a traditional bread oven, about 1000m2 of land, around 50-60 grapevines, a couple of apple trees, a couple of plum trees. The village itself has a 500-year-old clocktower and a ruined castle up on the hill (the part to which starts at this property).

Ideally I'd like to buy that place (or a similar place - there are lots of great bargins here) and slowly renovate it over a few years, using it in the meanwhile as a summer house or holiday home. Then I would like to move out there full time, once I've established an income source, and live off the land as much as possible.

It's been snowing on and off for about 3 weeks here. We had a couple of solid days of snow Sunday/Monday and I think in total it was about a metre deep! The last three days have been fine, though, and today the temperature was high enough that the snow started to melt a bit, which at least meant you can walk around without slipping. The roads are all clear now, but the ploughs have just piled it all up on the side of the road, so there are 2-3m high mountains along all the main roads for pedestrians like me to climb over when we want to cross! Fortunately, I can get to most places I need to be on the metro.

[demi]

the property you describe sounds lovley.
we have a wee house to do up on our property but thats a future project. we want to move there too but my eldest is going to start school in a year next september and just now we live right next to the school, our garden backs onto the playground, so it doesnt make sence to move 5km away until the kids are at least in high school or even left school. so thats a long way off.

but we have a lovley old turkish town house in the center that we are in the prosess of rennovating at the moment, which is a major project as it was in a dier state when we started. i like living in the center though, everyone knows each other here all our friends are close by and everythings walking distance from us, its a good place to live, i love it :)
i also love it up at the orchard though. my heart is torn between the two!

[MuddyWitch]

Welcome to ISH

MW

[Maykal]

Thanks MuddyWitch!

[bill1953]

Hello and welome!

[Maykal]

Hello to you too Bill1953!