Preparing an Erasmus Project

With Monday off for Children's Day, we seize the opportunity for another 30 hours are Güneşköy.  After such an early warm start to spring, never having had any real winter, Saturday was so cold we were back wearing layers of warm clothes.  ibrahim insisted on sleeping outside - in the darkness, the night calls of an owl and a nightingale resonate across the silent valley. 

 Our 3 week old chicks stay inside for the day; in the evening, Celal covered the sprouting seedlings with an extra sheet of plastic - YES İbrahim's bag did have frost on it in the morning... A classic cooling for 23rd April: Turkish Children's Day, when children frequently freeze in summer clothes during school festivities.  

Up by 6.30.  Iranian Omlette for breakfast - potato kuku, easy and very nourishing.  Then time to work on the Strawbery Planter: an old pipe, strawberries that would have been ploughed up, vermicompost and soil.  

Some new visitors asked so many questions, we need to give more information to for anyone planning a visit - please ask any questions!  

At this time of year there is so much to to:

• Preparing the soil for planting, even a motorised plough fights its way through the couch grass knotted soil.  
• Observing nature, to learn a little more about the amazing range of plants and animals whose land we walked onto 16 years ago. 
• Developing new plans
• Improving what we had already started
• Mending what has been weakened in time. 

The construction of the pillars of the Ankara-Sivas high speed train viaduct is nearly finished - only a few heads to be finished in the next two or three months.  Then there will be a wait for the giant "MSS90" structure that will build the horizontal section 90m above our heads.  Like a giant caterpillar, it is able to span wide gaps in mid-air, taking 2 weeks to bridge a 70m gap...

I realised my plan of building a vertical strawberry planter