yes I know I had to put the posts in backwards, but I thought it'd make more sense

Lots more photos on flicker (click on top left image of Tom foraging in Devon)

So where are we and why are we here?

Rather unexpectedly for late October 2007 we find ourselves not telling tales of northern Greece, Italy and Slovenia, but instead of village life in Bulgaria, and in particular our new little house. Within hours of arriving here in early August, we had already decided that Bulgaria definitely had the potential to be our favourite country of the trip. On a bit a whim and casual suggestion from Gemma, we decided to try a bit of WOOFing, save a bit of cash and hopefully meet some nice, interesting people. We picked a farm run by an english speaking lady (not wanting to make it too complicated for our first WOOF experience) and a quick call later and we were booked in for a week. Upon arrival, we happily got settled into our volunteers tasks and communal living and in no time at all it began to feel like home. The eco-friendly lifestyle and organic farming methods, both being principals we ourselves aspire to, an interest naturally developed in how Kathy, our host, came to live here (and maybe how we could too!). Realistically we both know that to ever have either the capital or luck to buy anything approaching this, in Ireland or England, is well beyond our reach. Renting, with perhaps a small outside space is the best we can hope for. Bulgaria however is a very different situation. Needless to say, following such revelations, many nights ensued of mulling over the pros and cons and discussing practically if and how it could ever work. Eventually we decided to go and look at a few houses we knew were for sale, just to see what your money can buy – of course we didn’t have any money and had no intention of buying at this time, but surely it can’t hurt to look… Of course as you’ve already guessed, we saw a house we loved and to cut a long rambling story short, we are now both highly indebted – both with thanks and finance – to our lovely respective sisters – and find ourselves the proud new owners of that said house.

How old d’you have to be before a bungalow is acceptable?

So this is our house, taken a few weeks before we bought it. Looks a bit imposing from this photo as we’re on a bit of a hill and so the foundations at the front are actually head-height and the cellar entrance is only just below ground level. Still a bungalow though, as are most houses here, partly because during the snowy winter months any upstairs rooms would be too cold to live in, and also the big earthquake in 1986 brought most of them down anyway. Since then a few 2-storey houses have been built in the village, but they nearly all have the staircases on the outside. Our house is in fact quite unusual in that you can access all the rooms in the house without going outside.

With every good house there comes a cowshed

As well the 4 main rooms in the house we also have a variety of outbuildings, for our currently fictitious farm yard friends. Presently we have few concrete plans for these spaces; one has become a tool room (though rather devoid of equipment at the moment owing to us being caught somewhat off guard in terms of restoration preparation); another is slowly gaining a reputation as a good place for “bits and pieces that might be useful in the future” to hang out; the big barn is full of old corn storks which are proving to be worth their weight in gold with regard to fire lighting potential; and one of the chicken houses is doing a marvellous job of pretending to be a garden shed, now that we’ve sawed a human size entrance in the side. The pig sty remains empty, but definitely has goat home written all over it. Pigs are a very popular animal to keep here, all our neighbours have a least one out the back, however as our ongoing quest to find any kind of meat that is NOT PORK for sale in this country, I currently feel a pig would be somewhat of a waste – unless of course we learnt how to butcher and could make rashers, another thing sorely missed on the supermarket shelves.

Welcome to the jungle

As the house has not really been lived in for at least 5 years, the garden and land is unsurprisingly in need of a little re-taming. This autumn our main aim is just to clear what we can so we can actually see what’s there, get the lie of the land so to speak. There is a small, rather neglected vineyard which needs some attention – although quite what, is a subject we must learn. To the side of this are 3 well established fruit trees (apple, plum and pear) and we have just planted 7 more saplings; cherry, 2 peach, nectarine, apricot and 2 apple, hopefully creating a sort of orchard area as they grow and mature. Behind this and running the whole length of the property is a wide semi-wooded gully. We expect this serves as a run-off for the spring snow melt and so there is little point trying to cultivate much here, at least until we are clearer as to the nature of the ground throughout the whole of the year. What might be both nice and feasible though is to encourage more tree coverage, in particular walnuts as they grow in abundance in Bulgaria, and just keep it as a wooded glen. Up behind the house is a good size meadowy field. It will take a good deal to prepare this land for growing veggies, and so at present it is not really on our priority list. The only work we’ve undertaken round here, and sometimes I’m sure Tom feels like it has become an all consuming task, is to cut down and dig out the 2 trees growing right up against the house. After lifting the rugs in the kitchen and finding roots growing along the floor(!) preventing further damage and damp from entering the house seemed a good place to start. One month on and one tree is totally out, for the other it’s days are numbered, only the recent spell of wet weather has delayed it’s extraction.

Muscle Max

Much of the front garden was shoulder height weeds, living a rather care-free existence until our friend Max arrived. Wielding a freshly sharpened corsa (very similar to a scythe) he reduced the whole area down to ground level and made mincemeat of the very solid concrete fence, diagonally dissecting the garden. Now as you can see, we can actually see what we have and my head is full of plans and ideas of how we might use this space in the future. Thank you Max very much.

The heart of the home

The kitchen is supposed to be the heart of the home, and one day ours will be. At the moment unfortunately we cook outside of one door, have a sink area outside of another, and prepare food in the hallway somewhere in between. It can feel like we spend our days walking in circles, trying to be in 3 places at once, but hopefully not for too much longer. The need to gut our current kitchen exposed itself on the day we moved in and discovered an ant nest in and under the walls. We think they came in on the tree roots and had made a home in part of a rotting beam supporting one of the walls. With wood out, brick supports in and several trench excavations, we think we’ve got rid of them… but then we thought we’d got rid of them a few weeks ago too, so never say never. We also discovered a network of rat tunnels under the rugs and a few old nests complete with mummified past residents. The large sink unit was originally going to stay, but closer inspection revealed it was really rotten inside due to a bit of a bodge plumbing job and so we plan in time to reuse the sink in the outside kitchen. For now we are left with a shell. The mud floor needs digging out a good few inches down to a solid flat level, we then plan to lay a few inches of concrete (I can’t wait for that job) and then bricks, tarted up to give a cobble-stoney effect or something, see what turns out. It would be great to get this done before we leave this time, but we’ll see.

Sometimes you have to create chaos to achieve calm

We frequently wonder if a Bulgarian couple had bought this house, whether they would have made nearly so much work for themselves. Our neighbours think we’re bonkers catching dormice and driving them a couple of miles down the road before releasing them (well perhaps we are a little). No-one can understand all the effort we’ve gone to to exterminate the ants – funny how there seems to be different rules about what creatures are acceptable to kill, perhaps if the ants had cute fury faces we’d feel different, either way, neither is particularly welcome. We have taken up 6 pieces of what would probably be deemed perfectly suitable linoleum in the living room and are intending to lay wooden floor boards – and to complicate matters further we want to put in some kind of damp course – totally unnecessary according to any Bulgarian we’ve asked – in fact we might even have to lie about why we want the polythene so that they will sell it to us! Anyway, here is a picture of our hallway the day we moved in, and also one of it now. While certainly the house looks more lived in, I am looking forward to eventually returning to some kind of happy, tidy medium.

If it ain't on the list it's not a priority

After a little too long of us both referring to an imaginary priority list, i.e things we need to do to get the house safe and sound before winter, we decided to sit down and actually write one. Of course it’s a working document and some days it feels more is added than accomplished, but we’re getting there. The majority of the exterior jobs (not including gardening) are done or at least started. First job was to build a compost heap, so we had somewhere to empty our bucket –embracing the concept of human manure (and the pit toilet is full, enough said). Tom was an apprentice for a day replacing the broken tiles on the roof. We’ve put up guttering around the back where the trees and damp had been coming in. Most of the windows have been scraped and a form of putty put in – being made from sunflower oil it has a very different texture to what we’d be used to, more like play dough, but the biggest problem with it is that the birds love it, and we are on constant watch for their destructive attacks.

Am I working him too hard?

Inside the house we now have light in the dark room, thanks again to Max and a very long drill bit. Unfortunately rats and mice are still able to get into this room, so we’re currently operating a keep the door shut policy and we’ll deal with it when we have time. Eventually this long wide cupboard will be our bathroom, but that is a good few years off, this autumn we only hope to seal floor, walls and ceiling and take some measurements so we can start to plan. Two rooms and the hallway are quite habitable, so one is very full of all the furniture from the kitchen, living room and a bedroom, the other is where we eat, sleep and sit by the fire in the evenings. Not a whole lot different to living in the van! We’ve found two great second hand shops in Popovo, and I think we’re probably their best customers, now all on first name terms we are greeted warmly every time we drop in, because more than likely we’ll see something we need or want – slightly different things, good job the money goes a great deal further

Not quite Picasso

As the weather is turning cooler so our focus is turning more to the kitchen and living room. The later now plastered and had its first coat of whitewash today, definitely not quite mastered the professional finish, but it will be a talking point in the years to come, I think the style is called rustic, but it’ll hopefully look passable with low level lighting. The kitchen is still just a store for sand, cement, plaster and a whole host of other materials I knew nothing about 6 weeks ago.

We also built a small fence today from the trees we’ve cut down from the vegetable-garden-to-be. They’re not much good as fire wood as they’ve huge thorns, but perfect fence material - except while you’re making the fence, ouch