On the Farm: Day 4

Clara

I'd like to apologize to all those who played "Candyland" and "Pretty, Pretty Princess" with me when I was a child.  I'm sorry for cheating and changing the rules so I could win every time.

Tonight I played games with Clara for a couple hours.  You can't resist when a 5-year-old asks, "Willst du mit mir spielen?"  And let me tell you, Clara knows how to put on the charm.  The first game we played was a board game similar to "SORRY!"  Don't ask me the name of it--the only word written on the game board was "Ass"...I think it means "ace" in German.  Sylke explained the rules to me before we started playing, but there was really no need.  Half-way through the game, Clara decided we just got to keep rolling the die over and over until we rolled a six.  Then she would move both our pieces, ensuring that hers always stayed in front of mine.  After that, we played another board game that Clara made up rules for as we went along.  All I had to do was sit there and smile, because she played for both of us.  The last game involved me sitting on a stool and watching her go crazy with balloons....kicking and hitting the balloons whilst yelling German gibberish and laughing.

picking some apples

Day 4 on the farm was a bit boring, honestly.  I started off this morning picking apples at the far end of the property.  There were so many beautiful apples on the trees!  And they were all on the top, where I couldn't reach them...  But I still picked about 100.  It was a bit time-consuming, because I had to separate the ones with blemishes from the "perfect" ones.  Sylke has a basement where she can keep the perfect ones, and the rest she'll keep in the kitchen to use up.  I'm going to make an apple pie this weekend to help her do just that.

Before lunch, Sylke had another task for me: English proofreading.  Sylke's English is excellent, and she gets hired to do random German-to-English translations for people in the area.  Today she translated two letters of recommendation for someone applying to a master's program in Scotland.  But she wanted me to take a look and make sure everything sounded okay contextually.  This proved more difficult than anticipated, because although the words and sentence structure were technically correct, sometimes it just didn't sound right.  But I tried to do as little correction as possible, in order to maintain the integrity of the translation.

After lunch, Sylke went to pick up Clara from kindergarten and run a few errands, so I was left to prepare for making ketchup!  I cut up all the onions and tomatoes, and boiled them with the spices/sugar for a half hour before turning off the stove.  We ran out of time tonight, so we'll have to finish jarring the ketchup tomorrow.  While I was making the ketchup, one of Sylke's neighbors came over to hang up a shelf for her.  And since he was here, he also changed the doors on the new fridge that arrived today.  He's a nice, old man, but has such a thick Sachsen accent!  We still had some conversation, even though it was hard to understand him.

Of course, the rest of my duties today included: 1. dishes, 2. feeding the chickens, and 3. practicing!  Also, remember those raisins we were going to try making in the oven?  Guess what?  It worked!  We left the oven on 80°C all day and by evening we had sweet raisins!

in the oven

ready to eat!

I think the horses are starting to like me, because I was able to sneak a few apples to them today.  The big, old one is named Chatoo (pronounced like "Chateau"), and the small, young one is Max.

Max

Chatoo

They also have 2 rabbits here.  One is white and thus named Flockie, the other has spots and hence called Fleckie.

Shoot, I just saw a HUGE spider crawl behind my bedframe!  Now how am I supposed to go to sleep?!?!?!