Owning a house in true countryside of Poland - stories

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 :)

I had no idea,. How? Those manuals on rabbit care read nothing about it.


I sometimes feel like it but don`t forget What immortal hand or eye / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?)


Yes, I will do a good job and lose a lot of weight, carrying a ton or two of soil onto it. ):)

I mentioned weeding. I care for the first 30 metres of the orchard/veg part. Beyond it, it becomes terra obscura.

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Today I am picking raspberries. Two kinds of busy races are going on around the bushes:
I am racing to pick as many as possible before the scorching sun kills me
Bees and bumblebees are racing to collect their sweet stuff from as many flowers as possible too.
We are not disturbing each other.

Did you know that when you close a bumblee bee in your both hands it won`t sting you as long as you don`t squeeze it? I read about this trick in a book decades ago and learnt how to do it. When my school mates saw it, they thought I was a real tough guy. :):) I show it to my kids and they also think daddy is a badass. Especially that I also catch big spiders to show them.

I'm not saying she will chew through a fence post overnight, but rabbits do like to chew wood - Google it. A lot will depend on how intent she is on digging and escaping. It's natural for them to want to burrow, but maybe she is bored on her own in her enclosure. Younger rabbits in particular will chew.


Do you just leave that bit of land then? For sure, it would be ridiculous to weed all that by yourself, it would be a thankless task :( It looks pretty though :)


NOOOOOOOO!!

That might be the case, although she is accompanied by the tortoise.


I only mow it. But I am working on sowing certain plant which grows low and covers the ground very exactly. I don`t know its name. I noticed it 5 years ago and been collecting seeds and scattering them in other places since then. And I see the results.


Yes, the barn is inhabited by giant spiders which shocked my kids when they saw them.

Each year is different. This summer I have done a hundred minor things around the house and garden.
Last year I made two big ones: painted the house and built a smokehouse.

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Yes, but I doubt there will be too much interaction between a rabbit and a tortoise ;)


I think I would have heart failure.........


Do you mean somewhere to smoke e.g home-made sausages, wędliny etc, or barbecue area?

Yes. last year I smoked sausage, trout and chicken.

Today I am doing an experiment: the whole salmon and two chickens.

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I'm feeling hungry just looking at that! Presuming the sausages are home-made too, but minus the amount of spices etc you put in last time....

I can already tell you that the fish smell will ruin the chickens flavor.
From personal experience I have found that out the hard way.
I now have two smokers, one for fish and one for meat.

Those spices created a strange taste after being smoked. Similar to sth strongly herbal. I couldn`t predict it.


Thanks, but my family`s and my own tastes aren`t so well developed and we don`t mind mixing foods. They said that today`s chicken was delicious.


Good. That reminds me Orthodox Jews in NYC, seperate sink for dairy and another for meat.

No, look, this spider is harmless, I touched it and nothing happened, it only has long legs, that`s all..

PS. The truth is that on the next day I spotted an even bigger spider in the barn but it was too fast and I let it go.

Five zlotys coin in the background.

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What did you put in them? I think I would just have used some black pepper, a liitle salt, and paprika. Do you ever go the whole hog ( excuse the pun ) and smoke hams?


I know it is but they freak me completely. I think it's their legs. Without legs there is nothing frightening. Plus they move too fast, and they always come in pairs. Pretty sure they are larger out in the country too, more plentiful food perhaps. That one of yours is big :( The only good spider is a dead one :)

I added juniper and a lot of mustard seed.

No, I just built that smokehouse last year and haven`t smoked hams. Too little time.


We never kill spiders. I taught my kids to take them out in a glass. In our summer house, there are a dozen spiders in the bathroom or toilet and nobody cares.

We have a grill every two weeks. It is unhealthy, I know, but we usually do it when we are visited by family or friends. :):)

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So you were making kiełbasa jałowcowa..............personally I think juniper is very strong tasting and don't like it. You need to make some time for smoking hams, sure they would taste lovely!


Every 2 weeks is not so bad, not like you're having it every day....
Do you have English friends to visit at your farm?I noticed that the sign is in English.

As for the spiders, I won't get near enough to take them out in a glass.............

Jupier is strong and the sausage come out very bitter. First cats behind fences, we say.

Grill every day? I would need to be transported to hospital instead of to school in September. :):)

Only once did the family of previous owners from Canada come to visit us there, to see how the house and garden changed coz they had remembered them from childhood days. They didn`t recognise the place.

Fortunately, Polish spiders don`t kill people. And remember, what doesn`t kill you, it will strengthen you. :):)

Just heard on the radio that PiS goverment is introducing 3000 new public transport routes over the next six months, subsidised, to give many villages and rural areas , like the one Pawian lives in, a bus service for the first time, after brutal rationalisation from the former PO traitors. Good news for rural areas and villages. Old babcias will be able to hospital in the nearby town. Another win for poland and the polish people, no matter how hard the pom-pats grind their teeth in frustration :)

Not really. Why should we have to subsidise people that choose to live in a rural idyll?

but of course new public transport routes are welcome in england and you would applaud labour doing that , to fight against tory cuts from the fast . , because england is a larger economy blah blah blah. I have heard your blatant double standards, duplicitous hypocrisy and shameless anti Polish sentiment on other issues before , and its the same here. I am just sorry you are too iq-limited to see the first grade logic fail in your viewpoints.

That`s BS, they only promised it but won`t really make it happen. Don`t fall for PiS` tricks - it is pure politics to win the elections. They will create one route or two of state bus transport to show on PiS TV and that will be all.

But don`t imagine there is no transport between cities, towns and villages at all. Of course there is, but private one. If my car broke down, I can travel from my village to a nearby town by mini bus which goes every 1.5 hour. Then, another mini bus from the town to the big home city - they go every 10 minutes.

The whole route takes 60 kilometres and would cost me about 10 zlotys.

Shyt, I never thought of taking a picture of a mini bus - so see one from the internet.

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the goverment said they will subsidise these private mini buses to go on villages that are not served at the moment, hence the 3000 new routes, it is not about pks buses anymore. that said i am glad there is public-private transportation to your village, do these buses run on schedule or they wait until bus is full?

That`s a wonderful idea, but I am afraid it is only an empty promise. PiS will have much bigger financial worries than public transport when recession strikes.

The buses run on fixed schedule.

I went on one of those when I went from Rabka to Kraków, cost me about 9 PLN. Bargain!

Except they won't, because those hospitals are going to be shut by PiS. Try harder before repeating government propaganda.

By the way, "the government said" - where are the 10,000 flats they promised? What about the 1m electric cars? Or why haven't they built a single kilometre of motorway this year?

they are upgrading the railways at a very decent pace delph, besides giving these minibus drivers and businesses money to go to unserved rural areas is a lot easier than building public/goverment housing , which due to the neo-liberal policies of the PO, there is no experience in the gov sector for this yet. As for PiS closing hospitals , don't be ridiculous, your ideology as always blinds you. In fact I would say that the next stage of PiS electoral strategy will be health and education, as that is needed by their electorate, and their is a diminishing return in more handouts and tax cuts. be patient wait a few months till october and prepare to cry again as your 'team' gets wiped out again :)

i wonder if e-podroznik.pl trip planner covers all these micro business running mini bus services all through rural poland?

Exactly.

Unless one travels occassionally. Let`s imagine sb going both ways Rabka Kraków 5 -6 days a week like that. 18 PLN every day, multiplied by 5 is 90 PLN weekly, monthly 360. Yearly, without holiday time, about 4000 zlotys.

Hmm, is it still a bargain, compared to the expenses you have for a car insurance, fuel, repairs etc.??
I think it is.

pawian, did you buy your farm as a foreigner, or as a Polish citizen? I ask because I'm interested in the purchase process.

As a citizen. But don`t follow my example coz I bought it a few years ago. Later PiS passed the law which allows only farmers to buy agricultural land. I was lucky.

Thanks for your answer. I can't follow you: I'm not a Polish citizen. But I believe there's still the opportunity to buy a house and rent the land it stands?