Owning a house in true countryside of Poland - stories

Not a barn. The barn is a seperate building. The house contained the stable, sty and cowshed.

Yes, yellow looks great with all the greenery around and in the background. As for the blue colour, I changed my mind and decided that I don`t like this contrast so the front door side guttering and the roof over the porch are yellowish green.

Demolition. A pity, but no longer fit for purpose.

This one miniature rabbit that we have is a bit wild and she loves escaping. A few days ago she learnt how to jump over 1 meter high fence in her enclosure (which I made last year). She escaped a few times within an hour and I didn`t know how. I finally made the fence higher in one corner and it worked. Kids had fun catching her, though

Wild but so cute. In off-season months she lives with us in our apartment.

One might ask why we don`t let her hop free around the garden but keep her in the enclosure instead. Firstly, the garden is too big - if she dug a hole in a nook under a tree or bush, I wouldn`t find her for a week. Secondly, the village cats visit us every day. I have nothing against it but I saw them in action killing young hares in the area, so if the rabbit was free, they might treat is a prey. But when kept in her own place, they sort of know it is a farm animal and stay away. Thirdly, the enclosure is big enough for the rabbit to run her races inside, so the open garden is really the last option to be considered.

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Wait till she starts breeding and you will soon have a rabbit farm,not to mention what these buggers do the lawn.I suggest grill it while the meat is tender.

What happened to your farm house in the true countryside of Poland ?


And if it does get to big to grill they are great in a crock pot stew.

Breeding is possible when there is a male rabbit but I am not going to get one. The lawn is not like a typical British lawn after 200 years` care. ):) Currently I pay more attention to trees and bushes, grass is less important especially that weeds are abundant in the area around my place. I tried to strive for a nice lawn at the beginning but realised after 2, 3 years I will never be able to keep it clean.


Jonny, using Past Simple tense by you is illogical. I mentioned it many times here that we treat that property as a summer house. When the summer ends, we come back to the city. As the summer hasn`t finished yet, we are staying in the summer house, so how sth could have happened to it?

Do you get it or not? :):)

Yes, thank you for your kind patience explaining that to me as I missed your post about you having a summer cottage in the Polish countryside.

I didn't understand that it was just a seasonal place.

The skies, especially sunsets, are amazing because their atmosphere is brought out by the complete silence in the surroundings (I don`t count crickets).

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Your rabbit is so cute Pawian! It's hard to believe she can jump that high to escape! I would write more but it's a pain using a mobile and internet isn't great where I am. I won't be home for another couple weeks so won't be posting as often.

Amazing sunsets! :):)

I only posted 3 pics of a sunset, could a few more because the colours and cloud patterns vary each time.

Take your time, I guess you are on vacation, enjoy it as much as you can. Good things always last so short. Happy moments are like butterflies, love is eternal longing.

The rabbit is always outside while two cats are always inside. We prefer not to let them out cause the grey one always goes wild and climbs those tall walnut trees. I had to take him down a few times because he was too scared. My kids still recall one rescue operation 3 or 4 years ago - it was a real challenge and I was a bit scared too becaue the cat was about 8 metres up. :):)

Inside they climb everywhere, too:

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The same with the slider turtle. Firstly, he loves sunbathing but when sb approaches, he immediately takes a dive. You can`t play with him at all. It is unfair. Secondly, if not for the fence, he would wander off far from the pool. Once he did and we were looking for him for an hour. I am thinking of making the pool bigger, maybe next year.

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How many pets do you have?Must have a huge house with the family and pets in the city.We have a cat that our daughter forced us to keep for her and is a freaking liability to travel etc.Reminds me of our house keeper Babcia who lives in Poland now has ducks,rabbits,dogs,cows,pigs,piegons,chickens,a horse and plenty more in her village house in Poland.The yard looks like a zoo and the work she has to do feeding and cleaning and taking care of a garden with veggies and fruit trees.I tell ya Polish babcias are tough,at age 70 something she also rides a bike to a church in the village everyday.LOL Pawian you sound to me like her in cpl of decades when you be her age.

I will answer your nice post point by point.
We have a snake, a tortoise, a turtle, two cats and a rabbit plus 15 white/grey/black/mice.

In the city we live in an apartment which is big but not big enough to avoid clutter and congestion.

Your daughter is a good girl. Don`t let her lose that love for animals, it is a precious characteristic. I brought our two cats home either from the street or our block`s staircase when they were small, they had been left out as unwanted pets. Actually, I am still dreaming that one day my kid will bring such a stray animal home and demand to keep it. I would be thrilled that my personal example wasn`t wasted. But kids are getting older and older and nothing.

Even when we had those animals and we traveled extensively around Poland, it wasn`t a problem to leave them at home, cause relatives or friends came and fed them .

Your babcia probably loves animals just like me or she keeps them for meat. One day when I retire, we will keep more farm animals but never for meat. I would treat them as farm pets. . I wouldn`t keep a horse, I respect them but they are too big, riding them could be dangerous in the old age, so what for? I like ducks, their quacking sounds nice and walking is funny, but they drop shyt all over the place, that might be unpleasant. Cows, pigs - as a boy I spent a lot of time in the countryside, I love the smell of the sty and cowshed. but what would I do with a pig when it grows big? I wouldn`t be able to sell it to a slaughterhouse. A solution might be to keep that smaller Vietnamese pig.

Pidgeons- no, I have never liked pidgeons too much and I don`t understand people who keep them as a hobby. They are called flying rats in the big city.

I would like to keep a goat because I love goat milk and cheese. The taste is amazing. And bees - having a few bee hives might be exciting.

Yes, some Polish babcias are tough. There is one in the village where we live in summer, in our neighbours` house, she is over 80 now but still goes to the field to help her younger family with the crops. She doesn`t have to and I often hear when they shout to her to stay home, but she is stubborn and prefers to be active.

Below, a rare moment with 4 pets. They are in the loggia of my room, on the left you can see the entrance to the tortoise/rabbit enclosure

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lol I hope your last name is not Zabinski?Reminds me of the movie"The zoo keepers wife".J?K
I dont like to take care of pets so dont like them,but if you do good for you,enjoy them.

Nooooooo!!!!!
Each to their own..... but for me that would be horrific.... I won't share my house with ANY pets.

Fantastic Pawian. My lab would sit in there very happily too.

I bet the turtle will be the hardest one for him to kill.

Also fancied getting goats Paw but was put off by their strong smell

Our neighbor has an enclosure with about 15 danielki and makes pretty good money from that

Aww. All together harmoniously :) I would be more than happy to have a houseful of pets. No more for me though, too upsetting when they die :(

Keep an eye on the mice though or there'll be a whole lot more than 15 of them!

Couldn't hurt a fly. Maybe a small one.

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hahahaha no, it isn`t but as a boy I read all his books which were available in my school libraries.


You should keep a pet. It has been proved by scientists that possessing a pet, especially a furry one, delays multiple diseases in humans because pets help us get rid of stress.


I see. Well, I remember we always had pets when I was a child. Later, as an adult, I constantly brought some animals home. It is easier to say which pets I didn`t have than the ones I had.

Yes, one of the prices you pay for a pet is a messy home. You can see my loggia in the photo - it looks like after an explosion in the compost pile - pets come and leave when they wish, they enter my room freely and bring this mess with them, next this mess is spread into the hall and other rooms. I gave up dreams of having a clean nice house long ago.


Thanks for the warning hahaha but I met a few goats in my life and their strong smell is quite pleasant, on the same level as the countryside smell of a sty, cowshed, stable and manure in the fields. Besides, their milk and cheese have strong smell and taste, too, so I am not afraid. Goats give milk which I like and they are more comfortable to keep than cows.


Well, that`s life and we have to cope with it somehow. First our pets die, then our relatives, then we die and leave our relatives in sorrow. This is so natural. I have buried 3 cats already and a few dozen smaller pets. Yes, we all wept during cats` burial but it was so human. We shouldn`t be afraid of experiencing such moments cause they are pure life.

Last week I told you about that small hamster I found dead in the drive. I prepared a small coffin, younger kids made a funeral and we buried it in the miniature birch forest next to the house.

When our first snake got food poisoning and died in 2012, it was winter time and the ground was rock frozen. I put it into the freezer and waited when it was possible to bury it. We all attended the funeral. That was also a good lesson for kids to teach them that each living creature deserves human respect.

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I am afraid not, at least not at the very beginning.. :):) The grey cat would run away to my wife`s loggia on the right. The ginger one would attack your dog immediately and he can get really crazy in such moments. The rabbit would hide in her cage and stomp her back legs against the wooden floor, it is quite noisy, funny too. Only the tortoise would remain placid and relaxed.

You would have to leave your dog for a few weeks so that my pets get used to it or even become friends. Are you ready for such a sacrifice?

hahaha

Back to rural topics.


Yes, the hardest work of all is digging up and taking away old concrete foundation where minor farm buildings once stood. Each year I chop off a few pieces and take them to a rubble heap in the field. The work is drudgery although those foundation layers aren`t so thick (could be worse), I still have to break them into smaller plates to be able to lift them at all. Not to mention they are buried in the ground. I need to remove them cause they make the grass over them grow badly.

That debris pile will be a nice rockery one day.

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Jesus! Minor farm buildings? Moving that rubble is what the wife is for surely?

I think I wanted to write: chip off.

Today I mowed the front and back garden within the fence. It took me exactly 1.5 hour. I use a strong push mower but it is still labourious cause I need to manouvre between dense trees and bushes - forward, back, around and up and down, too, a hundred times. That is one of the reasons I delay buying a riding mower - it would be a bit useless in the gardens. But one day I will buy one to cut the grass and weeds in the orchard behind the house.


You mean you make your wife carry such rubble in your construction sites? You are a sadist! hahaha

LQQKS like a service dog, is it?


I spend 3/4 hrs in my country club gym every day,which helps me on those above mentioned benefits without any responsibilities.

Yes, pets pose serious responsibility. But adult people, especially males, shouldn`t fear facing it. :)

Each season I order a few dozen new plants - I can`t get rid of this planting spree, sort of. This year: blueberry, mini kiwi, and a lot of flowering perennials.

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Yes of course, but I haven't changed my mind about more pets since I had to have my Labrador put down. You are obviously a real animal lover Pawian :)

All those funerals though........


Blimey! How much bigger has the debris pile got since you took those photos? Enough there for more than one rockery..........or have you made a start on it?

Not really. I got a shock yesterday when I doscovered she was making a tunnel under the fence of her enclosure. I started destroying it and she defended it! She jumped at me twice and slightly hit my leg with her nose as if she wanted to bite me. :):) You mother....ing human, don`t you dare to destroy my hard work towards liberty! hahaha

Shyt, that means I will have to put a part of the whole fence into the ground cause she can dig a tunnel anywhere. If she completes it within the night, in the morning she will be gone and I will look for the wind in the field.

At least I am not going to be bored next year........


Personal satisfaction, good atmosphere and health benefits from keeping pets greatly surpass the suffering we feel when they die.

I love animals in the sense I can observe their fascinating behaviour. E.g., have you ever seen a snake kill and swallow a large rodent? Also, Cargo mentioned he prefers less responsibility in life and that is so human. I could be nuts because I have always loved to impose more and more responsibilities on me and some of them come from animals. I think I need to go to a specialist. :):)


It will be a big one. The problem is we executed a lot bottles and jars on the pile and glass is everywhere. I need to take care of it cause I know glass pieces tend to show up on the ground after wet days.

Yeah, rabbits look cute and cuddly, but they can be quite destructive. You'll have to put chicken or mesh wire below the surface all the way round the enclosure. Don't leave a break where the posts are sunk as they can chew through wood and she may get out by chewing her way through a post. Sure you know all this anyway! She is trying the rabbit version of 'The Great Escape' :)


No......but I would probably be the one trying to rescue the rodent! I know that that is natural behaviour for the snake but not sure how I would feel seeing it close up! I find animals to be very therapeutic. I've had 3 cats, 2 dogs and many pet rats, hamsters and a rabbit when I was a teenager. Now, I have what looks to be a feral cat constantly camped out in the garden. I've been feeding it scraps of meat, but I can't get too close, he/she hisses like mad and constantly swipes with very sharp looking claws......


Massive! But I'm sure you'll do a good job and it'll look lovely when it's finished :)