Hi from Bulgaria

[merlin]

H everybody,
We have lived in Bulgaria since 2004, it has worked out for us and seems to be as near a balance of s/s and real life as it gets. It is quite relaxed here and we can have live stock etc whilst still living in the town, I will post some pics and films one day. We have a vinyeard, sounds grand, and we think it is, however, all towns and villages have a 'vineyard zone' just on the out side, cheap as chps to buy and we make about 250 lts of Merlot every year for nothing :-) it suits us. I found this forum from a link from a beer making forum that I have been on for a time.

[jimmyhague]

sounds excellent. i used to live on Bulgarian red wine in my youth, must be fantastic to taste your own. does it age well?

[Millymollymandy]

Hi and welcome - we are always happy to see photos as we are a nosy bunch!

[demi]

Zdravo Merlin!

we are neibours!

we live in Makedonija

im scottish and my husbands macedonian. we've been in scotland for the past year to have our second baby and we are just about to head back over to macedonia ( in 9 days!) permanantly. we've got an old turkish town house in the center of the town and an orchard with some land for crops on the outskirts ( 4km away from the center ). when we get back we'll be getting chickens and goats, not decided on wither to have pigs or not........( its horriffic having to kill them ). my husbands been working in scotland and we've been saving money to finally finnish rennovating our house ( we've been at it since 2008! )

how long have you been in bulgaria for? have you learned the language? are you enjoying living there?

i think macedonia is fantastic! such a beautiful contry, breathtaking sceanery and wonderful people.
i have a few issuse about animal welfare, the unbundanat amout of strays and people keeping dogs permanantly chained or caged, feeding them only on bread and having kids throw stones at them . iv also seen a few dead donkeys on the streets
and silly superstitions that people have, like 'the draft and kill you' which results in people refusing to open doors and windows in the summer when its 40 degrees!
and all the corruption going on in polatics.

but apart from that everything's

[merlin]

I have been here since 2004, love it. my partner is Bulgarian so I have picked up 'the good life' habbits almost by defaut. I can speak an amount of Bulgarian, I do find it difficult though, I'm 50, so old dog new tricks and all that. Bulgaria is EU, so the stray problem and bts like that seem to have been taken care of, probally by some Eurocrat, but I think it is better for it. I love the freedom to just do what I what, within reason. I was talking to someone in the UK the other day, you tend to forget just how restricted life is in the UK after being away for some time. The chap next door was loading three barrels of mash onto his horse & cart the other day ready to go to one of the town stills. I told him he would be arrested for distilling a cupful in the UK, he simply did not belive me!
I have made a little web site with short films on it about making bits and pieces lke cheese etc, I will make a link when I have the 25 posts on here.

[merlin]

In terms of the wine, I think it will age well. I am drinking three year old Merlot at present. We have had the vineyard for four years, it is a lot of work, but we have all the stuff now, so really it is free from in on out. I keep it in the secondary fermenter almost up to just before I need it for the following year, then bottle it.

[demi]

when we were looking for land last year we nearly bought a vinyard. but we wanted milti porpose land so we'd of had to pull up some of the grapes to make way for other things, which seemed a shame. also it was a bit too far out of the town for us.
we ended up buying 2 acres of land, 1 acre mixed fruit and nut orchard and another acre of plowed land for crops, and a sort of a house ( needs a lot of work ) and a barn for animals, set in a beautiful location with stunning views of the surrouonding mountains, cycling distance from our house and walking distance away from the lake. we also have another almost 1 acre of land just a few km futher up the road which we just discovered we own ( inherrited from my husbands late grandfather ) .

we plan on doing up the house and moving here permanently once the kids have grown up. till then we'll be cycling there and back everyday to 'work' in the summer and plan on bringing bringing the milking goats to our house in the center over the winter to stay in the garden with the hens ( as in the snow the road becomes impassable )
this year though we are just focusing on finnishing rennovating our house in the center, keeping hens in the garden and growing veg and maintaining the orchard.
next year we'll be investing in the milking goats.

we've got so much to do though, it is rather daunting thinking about it.
we've got to clean out our old well in the garden as its been used as a drain in the past. we need to dig down deeper to find clean water as we plan on going off grid.
we've got a sink hole ( i think thats what its called ) out at the orchard that needs dug out as its collapsed, and it needs to be made into a proper well so no one falls in.
we need to convert the outbuilding in the garden into a suitable chicken coup and section off the garden so the dog cant eat the chickens ( and the future goats )
we need to do the same for the barn at the orchard as well.
and we have the mammath task of compleating the rennovation of our house.
and we have to convert/extend this other house at the orchard.

[Milims]

Hi there and welcome

[MuddyWitch]

Welcome to ISH

MW

[safronsue]

welcome from another neighbour! I'm in northern Greece, from Brighton originally, greek hubbie. Would love to visit Bulgaria one day, it sounds lovely. You could give us some tips on wine making as we're rubbish at it and now the old man's gone we'll have all these grapes. See you round!

[merlin]

Sounds good, we are just an hour or so from the Greek border, next to Turkey. The weather here is great for growing, and we get four proper seasons which is really nice. Where are you, do you know your longditude and lat?

[safronsue]

40° 18' 4" N / 21° 47' 11" E apparently, but it doesn't mean anything to me. :) i know what you mean about the 4 seasons and i love it too. we're high up, 700m above sea level so winters are harsh, summers hot and dry. how much land have you got there and what do you do with it apart from making the lovely merlot? you mention some live stock. we've got an acre and too many pets..no animals that actually earn their keep apart from hens and they live in another field. garden is in a bit of a mess atm but we have loads of fruit trees, you name it, and i'm sort of planning a forest garden with drought tolerant perrenials.

[merlin]

The vineyard is less than 700m2, and I recon we actually use less than a quater acre (1000m2 ish) for our food and animals. Like I say here in Bulgaria keeping goats is easy, they only need 'parking' at night, not a lot of room required. They join the shepard as he goes past in the morning with all the other goats, it is cheaper than buying food about £1.25 pr goat per month, every day. Chickens, well you know how they are, broilers twice a year, we don't keep a pig, but a lot of people do. I make quite a bit of brandy (don't drink much of it) from the plums and things, so I exchange that for pork, don't eat a great deal of it anyway. It sounds like we live in the middle of knowhere, but no, towards the edge of the town (12000 people), it's normal to see goats in the street, people keeping pigs in the back garden etc, no it's not smelly, people respect each other, normals shops in the town if need be, it's my kind of ish -ness

[demi]

zdravjte!

videh go vaseto video za pravene na sirene i mnogu mi se aresa ! obavezatelno ste proba da go napravja !

[merlin]

Radvame se che ste haresali videoto :)
Pishete kogato go napravite :)