This blog collects notes from Höfen, a small village in Southern Germany, where Kathrin from public works was living and working for a year.
I've never seen so many buckets. Everywhere. Small, big, coloured, white, black, you name it. And they all have a particular purpose. Bucket for sweeping the floors. Bucket for the dirt from sweeping the road. Bucket for kitchen compost to be taken to the garden compost. Bucket for paper rubbish. Bucket for collecting freshly pressed apple juice. Bucket for leaves. Bucket for ......... The photos just show a small selection. One day I will document the "bucket-per-person" density here.
We first asked Erna and Hanna if we can collect the fallen
aplles from their fields. Then spent two hours collecting as much
as we could (lots!). Washing and shredding (twice for juice and
three times for schnaps). Followed by pressing. Nine buckets make
three crates. Three crates make 50 litres of shredded fruit, or
roughly 28 litres of fresh juice. We made 200 litres mash for
schnaps and 28 litres of fresh apple juice. How many buckets of
apples did we use?
Some of the fresh juice was later given away. To Erna and Hanna for
the apples. To Waltraut for always supplying us with blackberries.
To Anna who is just very nice. To Gertrud because my mum owed her a
favour. And to Michael and Rita who gave us their kids' plastic
tractor when we got here.
Mud. LOTS of mud, some puddles, and not much else.
We had an International Village Shop honesty-box style ("Kasse des Vetrauens") last Sunday - as part of Höfer Waren 2010 and the launch of the International Village Shop website. The whole afternoon was more about making things (wrapping fruit in clay that was) instead of selling. In previous years we had much bigger stalls and sold always more than expected. There were reasons not to focus on a trading table:"people always feel obliged to buy something". So here we go - we had a small shop on a shelf with an honesty box, and only those who really really really wanted to buy something did. Total turnover: sixeurosfifty.
