Poetry of life in the countryside - memories from Konice

THE POETRY OF LIFE IN NATURE IN THE COUNTRY
- in all seasons -

Memories of his childhood on nature and nice moments with their loved ones in Konice by the ponds
during the various seasons, wrote Vojtěch Ullmann

The first snow and ice
The leaves have mostly fallen and the branches are rising towards the gray sky, bare and dark. Only spruces, firs and pines become more noticeable with the distinctive greenery of their needles. Potatoes were excavated, beets are torn outand sliced, apples and pears were harvested, and sauerkraut and plums on plum brandy have already fermented in barrels. Small fires from the leaves and potato stem have burned out, we only remember the warmth and the taste and smell in the ashes of baked potatoes.
  We enthusiastically welcome the first snowflakes and admire their fragile crystalline beauty. Dark earth and tree twigs are decorated with white dusting. Sometimes a little more snow fell at night and we woke up with surprise to the white beauty. More and more often, early frosts weave fog into lace hoarfrost and cover the water in the small puddles with shells of ice, which rattle so beautifully and crack when stepped on them. Even the ponds are already covered with thin ice, which will not hold anyone yet, but we are already trying and throwing stones and fallen apples on the ice. Their impact and reflections make a magical ringing-swishing sound.
  At the beginning of December, the ice on the ponds intensified so much that for the first time we dare to go skating with it. We skate for a while, but other friends come and the ice cracks in several places and water gets on the ice through cracks. Some find themselves in cold water and have to run home to change. Instead of continuous ice, there are later individual ice floes on the pond, on which we do not skate as much as we jump from one to the other. In the end, we also "bathed" and the first skating ends with a cold.

On the eve of St. Nicholas used to be busy - several "St. Nicholas" walked around the village with an angel and a devil, the clanking of devil chains could be heard. As small children, we were very afraid, recited prayers and promised how worthy we would be. We got some nuts, apples, candies for that. When we were older, we dressed up as Nikolaus or the devil ourselves and thought up ways to please good children (with praise, gifts) and scare naughty children as much as possible (put them in a sack and take them to hell - in the picture on the right). Below are ethnographic museum pictures :

In mid-December, the ice on the ponds was usually so strong, that it was possible to not only skate, but also play small children's "hockey" - a lot of snow fell, so it was necessary to shovel it and make a "playground". Several rosehip bushes grew on the back embankment of the "Stone" pond, the branches of which leaned over the water. When we skated, we sometimes drove to the bushes and enjoyed the frozen darts. When the arrows go through the frost, their back part has a soft sweet pulp, while in front there are hard seeds and hairs. On frosty winter nights, the long, booming, dark crackling of ice on the ponds could be heard. The ice gradually reached a thickness of about 20-30 cm. Dad cut holes in the ice on the ponds to let air into the water for better overwintering of fish. And I read books about nature by the lamp during long winter evenings (my "gospel" was "Forest Newspaper" written by V. Bianki).

About two weeks before Christmas, Mom and Aunt baked cookies. They were mainly vanilla rolls, dark spicy paws, "chrousy" from nuts, sugar and whipped egg white, and a small number of some other species. An entire arsenal of different molds was used for this. While baking, the whole house smelled of vanilla, cocoa, nuts, and other scents heralding the approaching Christmas.

CHRISTMAS
Into the winter forest for the Christmas tree
The day before Christmas, a lot of snow fell in the morning. My father and I went to the forest for a Christmas tree. There were no nice trees in the front part of the "Bor" forest, so we came to the "Shooting Range" ("Šištót") above the pond and went through the valley along the forest stream.

  The forest trees were beautifully snowed, as if carved in marble. Each path, disappearing in the bluish shadow, seemed to lead to unknown mysterious worlds. Beneath the snow-covered branches of fir and spruce trees, suspended from the ground, darkened hiding places slept. The majestic silence seemed to carry to infinity ... We slowly climbed the almost imperceptible forest path through the high snow to the hill. My father was deciding whether to take spruce or fir or pine. He always tapped the tree with his wand, the fresh snow with sparkle fell down from it and the twigs straightened - it was better to see that the tree is symmetrically (regular) grown. In the end, we found a reasonably large, dense and well-grown fir tree. My father pulled a small garden saw from under his coat, we cut a tree, took a few more twigs and went home with the tree.
  After leaving the forest, we did not walk directly along the path, but up the hill behind the garden along the fence, so that no one could see us unnecessarily. Upstairs among the hazel bushes, my father loosened two or three poles in the fence from the outside, we climbed through this hole, my father roughly fastened the poles again, and then we went down with tree along the fir "Douglas", through the gate and on the way down to the yard.
At home, dad cut a small tree to the appropriate length with a small saw and also cut the lower end with a sharp gardening knife, so that the tree would fit into the stand. Then he sometimes drilled a trunk at the bottom and inserted one or two twigs into the tip of the pruning - as needed to make the tree pretty dense and symmetrical.
Christmas food and sweets
The basic Christmas pastry is the Christmas cake, as the name suggests. We also baked a number of types of sweets. Vanilla rolls, linz circles, dark bear paws, rum chocolate balls, white coconut "crusts" made from whipped egg white snow with mixed nuts and a few others :
       A popular Christmas dish in the countryside was mushroom mix with hail, also called "black cuba" (pictured right). Dried mushrooms collected in the summer, which we let swell beforehand (preferably the day before), are cut into small pieces and stewed in lard or bacon. Rinse the hail in hot water and let it drain. Fry the chopped onion in lard, add the hail and fry it a little. Salt and pour water, then cook under a lid until semi-soft. Finally, add the stewed mushrooms. Season with crushed garlic, cumin, ground pepper and marjoram and mix well. Place the mixture in a baking dish greased with lardand bake in a well-heated oven for about 30 minutes. The mushroom mix with hail should have a dark, almost black color and a spicy aroma.
  A common Christmas meal, especially for Christmas Eve dinner, is fish (usually carp). On Boxing Day, schnitzel, followed by the usual dishes such as meat with cabbage and dumplings or potatoes.
The day before Christmas, wide noodles were made for a thick fried mushroom soup, prunes, crucifers, nuts were brought from the chamber, apples and pears from the cellar. Everything was cleaned and prepared for Christmas.

Christmas Eve
On Christmas morning we brought out a box of Christmas decorations from the upper chamber, kept in a strange, ancient tea box that had been on the top right shelf all year. They were Christmas decorations that were many years old, various flasks, stars, cups, and glass bead wheels, bells, the glittering beauty of which I remember from my earliest years.We have added collections with chocolate figurines, various nuts on the thread and other decorations and my mother and I decorated the tree to make it as beautiful as possible and complete the mysterious charm of Christmas (as long as we were very small, the Christmas tree was secretly prepared so we wouldn't see it - it was from Santa ... ). Mom and aunt warned us that on Christmas Day, nothing should be eaten until dinner to see the "golden pig". But we still secretly ate some of the chocolate from the collection while decorating the tree...

My aunt and mom were preparing Christmas Eve dinner, and from the oven smelled a Christmas cake with raisins. "Go ice skating or sledding!" - parents sent us in the afternoon so they could prepare presents in peace. So we took a sleigh and rode down a steep hill on the way from Kýrový house, between the fences to a frozen pond, where it jumped really hard from the shore. As it got dark, we were already hurrying impatiently home - for the festive dinner, gifts and nice Christmas Eve. The first stars appeared in the sky, the village fell silent, smoke rising from the chimneys, everything in the early evening in a kind of festive haze. However, it was not caused by the smoke from the chimneys, but by the atmosphere of the holidays of well-being, peace, joy - the most beautiful holidays of the year, the "Merry Christmas feast". However, both dinner and gifts were modest; our family lived a simple village life, money was never wasted...
In the kind darkness of the pleasantly heated room, there was the smell of forest needles, candy, and candle wax. There was a decorated Christmas tree on the table by the window, with candles burning. The room was mysteriously dark, lit only by candles casting flickering shadows and reflections. In addition to the candles, sparklers were also lit; I liked to watch the sizzling stars glitter in the ornaments on the christmas tree.

After dinner, carols were sung and gifts "from baby Jesus" were handed out (when we were still very little and went to bed early in the evening, we found the presents under the tree in the morning - at night "baby Jesus" gave them there). Old Christmas customs were being carried out - nuts were cracked and their shells with candle, like small boats, were launched on the water, apples were sliced, lead was poured. Then various events were told (dad mostly forest and hunting), parents remembered the "old times" and those who were no longer with us. Christmas Eve passed in quiet and joyful peace under the glow of a Christmas tree. And we all expressed the wish that we would all meet again in good health in a year ..
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Later evening, when we were falling asleep, often only one last candle slowly burn out on the christmas tree. In its light, the twigs of the tree cast long magical shadows all over the ceiling and walls of the room - it was ghostly beautiful and mysterious... On this holy night we fell asleep happily with gifts on the pillow.
On the morning of 1st Christmas holliday, we had breakfast under the tree - cocoa or tea, Christmas cookies, canned raspberries, some chocolate that we "plucked" from the tree. Dad also had a small glass of plum brandy or liqueur, which he received as a gift.

Fig.winter5
When we were little, we didn't go to midnight Mass, but my mother took us to the church at a solemn Mass in the morning for the "birth of God ". We didn't have it far to the church (as you can see below in the picture on the left), so we didn't have to get up early. But people from the surrounding villages had to get up very early when they went to the morning, and as early as five o'clock in the morning they went out into the night, often in the bitter frost, when the snow creaked sharply under their boots. The houses were still asleep, there used to be a lot of snow, and on the way to the church the lights flickered like fireflies - the old grandmothers lit them on the way with lanterns (later also flashlights), so that they do not fall. The church used to be full, there were a lot of candles, there were old large cancionales on the pews. The music of the organ, the scent of incense, candles, the nativity scene and the singing of parishioners completed the Christmas atmosphere in our souls with the charm of an ancient legend.

During our childhood, on the day of St. Stephan was no longer caroling. But there was a walk in short visits "to the plum brandy", while various stories were told, mostly humorous. The second Christmas holiday was also important for hunters - the traditional St. Stephen's Hunt took place in the woods and fields around Konice.

Some traditional Christmas customs
Christmas, especially Christmas Eve, was associated with various traditional customs (I have already mentioned them briefly above). We would cut apples perpendicular to the stem and see what shape the core would have on the cut surface - whether it would be a nice five-pointed star or an unfortunate cross. We would carefully crack walnuts so that the shell would not break, but would split into two semicircular "bowls". We would place (or rather stick with a drop of wax) short pieces of Christmas candles in them (a longer candle on the shell would tip over), light them and launch them like boats on a larger bowl of water. Everyone launched their boat there and watched where it would swim - that's how their life would continue ..?..

We also cast lead, which we took from fishing leads or tinsmith soldering rods. We melted pieces of lead in a metal saucepan or crucible on the stovetop, or on a spoon or ladle over a flame in the furnace. Then we poured the molten lead into a bowl of water, where it hissed and immediately solidified. From the often bizarre shapes of solidified lead, we tried to imagine in our imagination what they resembled - and to predict what would happen in the coming year....
Winter forest
I liked to go to the snowy forest, sometimes with a bag of hay and a small bag of grain for game feeders. During the heavy snowfall, the world seemed to disappear, there seems to be nothing but this majestic silence with gently whispering flakes of snow depositing on the branches of trees. The most beautiful forest scenery was in our forest Bor above "Šištót", Jílovec and Křemenec :

After Christmas
Around the feast of Three Kings used to be a harsh winter and a lot of snow. Carolers Kaspar, Melichar, Baltazar came, sang "We three kings are coming to you, good luck ..." and wrote "K + M + B " in chalk on the door. After the Three Kings, the main Christmas season ended, the chistmas tree was taken to the next room, where it was left for a few more weeks. In the evenings, feathers were torn, with many different stories of real or fiction, with legends and fairy tales, mostly scary...

Burning - distillation - plum brandy
Winter was also the period when plum brandy was burned (distilled) - sometimes in November or early December, but often only after Christmas. The barrels of plum yeast were loaded on a siding (usually a group of several guys arranged) and drove to the distillery. The kvass was poured from the barrels into a storage tank, from where it was transferred to the first boiler for distillation. There were two boilers in the distillery, with a firebox underneath. The first, larger boiler, about 250 l, was used for the basic distillation of the kvass into a raw distillate, sometimes called lutr, which was then transferred to a second, smaller boiler for the final rectification distillation of the finished high-quality plum brandy. Both boilers had a so-called hat-shaped dephlegmator at the begin of the pipe, which served for the secondary cooling of the alcohol vapors and prevented the transfer of unwanted impurities (such as methanol) into the distillate. The distilled plum brandy was then brought home in demijohns or metal vessels (originally used for milk), where it was then stored mostly in glass demijohns (in our case, placed in the cellar).

We burned in Vilémov (about 15 km from Konice towards Litovel), where the distillery was run for many years by Mr. Rec (striking tall, approx. 190cm). An unpleasant accident occured once. A group of the guys from Konice were returning from Vilémov from the burning. They had the finished burned-distilled plum brandy in metal cans and glass demijohns on the siding, along with empty barrels. When descending the hill (of which there are more than enough on the way to Vilémov), they did not brake on the icy road and the siding overturned into a ditch. Most of the demijohns broke and the plum brandy spilled into the snow, with only metal cans (originally intended for milk) survived. The angry mens picked and eate the snow soaked in plum brandy, to at lest taste something of it - they came home drunk...
There was also one tragic event. In the evening, a Konice citizen brought burnt plum brandy. He was so looking forward to it and it smelled so good, that he build a big kettle with plum brandy (about 60%) beside to the bed, lay down, gradually picked it up by a glass and drank. He was found dead in the morning - he died of alcohol poisoning.

Pig-slaughtering
Mostly after Christmas, sometimes before the New Year, sometimes in January, another important event of our rural life took place - the pig slaughter. The day before, onions and garlic were peeled, carrots, parsley and celery were cleaned, two large pots of groats were boiled, rosin was beaten, and salt and spices were prepared. On the day of the slaughterhouse, very early in the morning (around 5 o'clock) it was flooded under water boilers. Then, usually in the dark, a butcher came (Mr. Hampl used to come to us most often), led the pig out of the barn by the rope, and his own killing took place - by stunning and then cutting. The blood was drained into a bowl and poured into a metal bucket, which was then taken out to the yard and placed in the snow. The aunt then stirred the blood with a wire whisk for about 20 minutes until it cooled down so that it would not clot and remained freely liquid (for use in the blood sausages).

  The bristly skin of the slaughtered pig was dusted with rosin, sprinkled with hot water, and the bristles were torn off with bell-shaped scrapers until the skin remained smooth and clean. It put the most work around the legs and on the head. Everywhere was full of steam and the smell of rosin. Then the pig hung by a chain on a thick beam in the threshing floor, the butcher threw out the entrails, turned and cleaned the intestines, and then washed thoroughly it with a broom in the water in large wooden bathtub.
  The butcher, meanwhile, sliced the meat and bacon. What was intended for smoking was cut into "chips" and taken to the chamber - the next day the father pickle in brine them. Meat and offal (kidneys, liver, lungs) intended for brawn and liver sausage could be cooked in boilers together with spices (pepper, marjoram, garlic, new spices), onions, carrots and celery. Different types of meat and offal are cooked separately in two boilers during the slaughter. About 4 buckets of clean water are poured into each of them and it is heavily heated with wood under them.

  Knees, legs, ears, fat lobes, shoulders and a few pieces of skin can be cooked in one of them, where there will be a light "broth" soup. In addition to salt, add a few onions, cloves of garlic, carrots, parsley, celery, pepper seasoning. In the second cauldron, intended for dark soup, you can cook a halved head (from which the brain is previously removed), liver, spleen, tongue, heart, kidneys, lungs. It is cooked for about 2 hours, but some pieces, especially the softer entrails, are removed earlier. Part of the cuticles is cooked separately in a smaller pot, it will serve as a material for the aspic in the brawn and liver sausage.
  When it was cooked, came the most pleasant moment of the slaughterhouse - pulling out of the cauldrons, tasting, slicing into brawn and grinding into liver sausage. The smell of spices and cooked meat was characteristic everywhere. The meat is carefully removed from the soup in the cauldrons and allowed to cool slightly on trays before being removed from the bones and further processed. The light brewed soup will be decanted for further use (the boiler will be used at the end of the slaughterhouse to lard melting), the dark soup will be left in the second boiler - later it will be cooked with brawns, liver sausages and blood sausages. Basic slaughterhouse delicacies are prepared from cooked meat and offal -:

- Brawn (headcheese, pressure):
In a larger bowl, cut lean and fatter cooked meat, tongue, part of the kidneys, ears, liver, heart (all cooked) into larger and smaller pieces. Pour the light soup and especially the water in which the cuticles were boiled, some of which are also cut into the brawn, some of which are grind. Season with ground pepper, marjoram, new spices, add ground garlic. Everything is mixed well and the warm mixture fills a well-cleaned pork stomach (the lower opening in the intestine is tied up) , the bladder, but most often a sleeve made of solid parchment paper. After filling, the holes are sealed and tied with a solid string.
- Liver sausage:
Pieces of meat, lobe, lungs, spleen, cuticles, a piece of raw liver are ground in a grinder. Seasoned with ground pepper, marjoram, minced garlic, fried onion is added. The liver sausage mixture is mixed well and, if necessary, diluted with soup. It is filled by means of a cylinder with a piston into well-cleaned, thinner casings, which are closed with skewers at both ends.
- Blood sausage: Boiled barley groats is poured into a container from the liver sausage. They are mixed with a little hot soup, minced meat, greaves from "intestinal" lard and red-fried onions are added. Salt, seasoned with black pepper, ground cloves, marjoram. Finally, the cleaned pork blood is poured, the mixture is mixed well and the thicker intestines are filled with this red mixture in a similar way as in the liver sausage, including skewers.
  The brawn, liver sausage and blood sausage were then boiled in the same water as the meat and offal before, in a cauldron of dark soup, but for different lengths of time. Brawns are cooked for the longest time - at least an hour, liver sausages about 15-20 minutes, blood sausages about 1/2 hour. Well-cooked liver sausages and blood sausages can be identified by they float out and swimming on the surface of the soup. The finished brawns, liver sausages and blood sausages were spread out at the back of the chamber by the window to cool, while turning twice.
  When cooking, it often happens that some liver sausage or blood sausage bursts. If it's one or two pieces, it's not a big pity - their contents are overcook in a soup, which gains in flavor and density. It's worse when some brawn bursts...
- Pig-slaughter soup:
The water in which it all boiled was then made into a slaughterhouse soup - either light "boiled pork, bouillon", but the most delicious was the brown-black "blood sausage" soup. After cooking the brawn, liver sausage and blood sausage, the dark soup acquires a very spicy and dense taste, which is further enhanced by the addition of the remaining black pudding blood mixture and seasoned with pepper, marjoram and garlic. It is relatively thick and very nutritious. After thorough boiling, it lasts in the boiler for 14 days in winter weather.
In the evening, our task was to distribute a "slagthering delicaties" to our relatives - a couple of liver sausages and blood sausages, a piece of meat and a teapot with slaughterhouse soup.
- Lard , greaves (craklinds):
In the evening or the next day, lard cut into cubes of about 2-3 cm in size was browned ("dissolved") in an enameled cauldron. About a liter of water was poured into the bottom of the container so that the lard would not burn at first. The chopped lard was poured into the cauldron (about 3/4 of the way up), it began to stoke the fire in the cauldron and was constantly stirred with a large wooden spoon. Browning lasted about 3 hours, the lard melted and the cracklings began to float on the surface, which stopped foaming because all the water contained in it had evaporated. The fire in the cauldron stopped when the cracklings rose to the surface and were golden brown.

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My mother was usually in charge of browning the lard. We waited about an hour and then drained the browned, still hot lard into pots using a ladle through a colander with fine holes; The ladle was pressed down with force in the colander with each serving to "squeeze" the fat from the cracklings. While still hot, it was poured into buckets or stoneware pots, allowed to cool, and stored in the chamber. Similarly delicious golden cracklings.

Smoking of sausages, meat and bacon
Last - and very pleasant! - slaughter phase took place in about 3-4 weeks. At that time, the meat and bacon pickled in brine, are already properly soaked with salt and garlic, similarly sliced and minced meat, which is used to fill sausages. We stuffed the sausages into the casings using a grinder, on the end of which a conical metal tube with a final diameter of about 2 cm was attached, onto which the casing was threaded. Every about 15 cm the filled casing was tied with string. The meat and bacon scraps were pierced with pointed metal hooks, or strong strings were threaded through their ends.
Early the next morning my father lit a fire in the smokehouse, which we had built into the threshing floor in the wall, originally as part of the chimney. The meat scraps were hung on hooks or strings, the bacon pieces were placed on perches, and the sausages were hung. It was slowly heated with clean wood (beech, plum, hornbeam) and the meat with bacon and sausages were smoked in the hot smoke.

  After noon, as hungry dogs, we walk around the smokehouse, cut and taste the ends of smoked meat - these are the most delicious. Smoking ends until evening, the meat and bacon and sausages are left to cool in the smokehouse until morning and then hung in the chamber.
         Note: The later process of smoking at the cottage is described in the article "Pergola-Fireplace-Smokehouse".
I remember one incident that happened while smoking. My brother and I wanted to have fun, so we started shouting that meat had caught and burned in the smokehouse. My father ran quickly, but when he found out that nothing was happening and we were laughing, he rebuked us so that we would not lie and make fools. He put more wood into the firebox and went to the kitchen to do some more work. About half an hour later, we heard a strange crackling and hissing crackle from the smokehouse. We went to look and found that three chips of bacon tore off, fell into the fireplace and began to burn. We hurried to the kitchen to tell Dad what happened. But he said, "You bastards, you're kidding, I don't believe you." Only when we insisted and kept shouting that the meat in the smokehouse was really burning did my father go to see - and at "twelve o'clock"! The high flame was already licking the other meat and bacon, it would all burn! Father quickly grabbed a shovel, scooped up snow in the yard, and threw him through the smokehouse door, and we helped him. So it was extinguished, there was smoke everywhere and the three pieces of bacon were burned. The others were saved, cleared of swirling ashes, and the smoking was finished in order.
  A worse incident happened to our uncle, who had a full smokehouse from two pigs. No one watched for a long time, the fire burned too much, the dripping fat ignited, and then all the contents of the smokehouse. Everything burned down, including the smokehouse, my uncle was so crazy that he wanted to go to the forest to hang himself, but they discouraged him from this intention...

Culinary use of slaughterhouse specialties
The above-mentioned special slaughterhouse products were consumed in various ways and at various times after the slaughterhouse. A smaller part was consumed fresh on the day of the slaughterhouse. These were mainly selected pieces of cooked meat, liver, lungs, offal and others pulled from the cauldrons. The pork snout and ears (in picture above left) were especially tasty. Then, within about 14 days, there was slaughterhouse soup, some of the liver sausage, blood sausage, and headcheese. If the slaughterhouse was in the winter (which was almost always the case then), most of the products lasted for a month, the temperature in the pantry and pantry was around 0-4°C.

Liver sausage tasted good simply peeled and cut into rounds. Sometimes they were even baked. The blood sausage were baked in the oven on a baking sheet or baking pan, until partially bursting. They were usually served with cabbage and potatoes or dumplings. The headcheese was also cut into rounds about 1-1.5 cm thick, which could be eaten directly after peeling, but it was popular to cut them into pieces and serve with onion rings and possibly acidified with vinegar. Cracklings can be used in crackling potato dough, from which we baked crackling pancakes and pagáčky. A spicy crackling spread is made from finely ground cracklings, seasoned with garlic and pepper. Smoked meat, bacon and sausages were discussed in the previous paragraph.

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Ethical note:
The pig slaughterhouse was one of the most pleasant of the rural way of life, not only in terms of gastronomy, but also for its color and atmosphere (including a glass of plum brandy for heating...). However, I was increasingly bothered by the moral aspect of it : that it was based on the cruel killing of a living creature! Before, people didn't realize it that way, it's been a matter of course since time immemorial. However, if we want to cultivate and refine our relationship with living beings and nature in general, perhaps we should renounce this cruel behavior..?..
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Our home animals
In our farm, we initially had two cows, later only one, 2-4 goats, one pig (exceptionally a sow with piglets), rabbits, hens with a rooster, sometimes ducks. At the end of winter, calves and kids were born. It usually happened spontaneously, rarely did professional help from a veterinarian become necessary. Immediately after birth, the cow licked the calf and carefully cleaned it (pictured left). After their birth, calves and kids suck milk from their mother's udder, only exceptionally, they are fed with milk from a bottle through a teat. We had two stables for our animals. The larger one had a longitudinal wall, built of stones, below ground level, on the transverse wall there was a large trough where the cow's feed was given - grass, hay, or chopped hay, grain and meal. The smaller barn was divided into two parts, for goats and pigs. My aunt had one goat so tame that she would even come home to the kitchen to follow her. The milking was mainly done by the aunt, some of the milk was delivered to the market in special 25-liter jugs. The rest of the milk was used at home for the children, for white coffee, cocoa and was processed into butter, curd and cottage cheese.

Early spring
Just as we were looking forward to winter with all its joys and beauties (we didn't notice the worries and difficulties too much - they lay on our parents' shoulders), the winter seemed a little long to us at the end. In the highlands around Konice, spring came at least a week later than in the plains around Prostějov.

  The first signs of early spring were seen in February on the branches of trees with bark and buds and slowly growing catkins. Later, the sun is gaining strength, the snow, which used to be a lot, disappears day after day, on the slopes under the layers of snow you can hear the murmur of water. However, the actual arrival of spring was sometimes quite sudden - the gentle wind first melted the snow from the branches of the trees, then the snow melted in the sun on the slopes and fields, and finally even the deep snow in the forests left only islands. Streams of water rushed in the ditches under the ice shell. The first tiny flowers and green blades of grass appeared beneath the melting snow. But most of the land was still dark, covered with withered leaves and dry grass.
  Each furrow turned into a small gurgling stream, even the ponds overflowed sometimes. When the thaw and snow melting came suddenly, the water flooded the ice on the ponds; as we skated and fell there, a geyser splattered around our noses. The ice was sometimes fragile with vents, especially around the tributary, so we regularly bathed in icy water ....

This is how early spring manifested itself in nature. At home, however, the coming spring was known even earlier: my father, as a gardener, was still setting up new soil with manure in the hotbeds and in the greenhouse, cutting chrysanthemums, preparing plant seeds and testing their germination. We also had some seeds germinated and we were very happy about them.

Liverworts bloomed in the garden under Douglas fir trees, and my father founded a hotbed and graft fruit trees. The scent of violets wafted through the air and mingled with the earthy fumes, dew glistening in the young lush grass in the morning. A short April snowstorm sometimes flew across the landscape, but right after that the sun smiled at us again. Day by day, the earth opened more and the spring - breathing more and more fresh - could no longer be stopped.

Easter
Before we knew it, Easter had arrived. Sometimes the remnants of snow were still bleaching on the northern slopes of the hills and in the shady corners of the woods, but at the bottom the grass was already green, daisies were blooming, trees and bushes were beginning to sprout. Nature is already awakening to a joyful life, to a new beauty. It is spring here again, the whole nature sings and breathes the fresh air, smelling of budding leaves and the first flowers. According to religious legends, it is Easter the feasts of the crucifixion and the glorious resurrection of Jesus Christ, but in general they are the feasts of the resurrection of nature from hibernation. Easter is a "moving" holiday (unlike Christmas). Their date in the calendar is derived from the lunar phases: Easter Sunday is the first Sunday after the first spring full moon, which occurs after the vernal equinox on March 21. This creates a relatively large calendar range of Easter in individual years (Easter Sunday from March 22 to April 25), which contributes to the variety of weather - sometimes it is still white with snow, other times it is already blooming spring. When six Sundays are subtracted from this Easter Sunday, we get a week called "Remains", on which the Shrovetide ends on Tuesday and by Ash Wednesday (Ashes, the date of Ash Wednesday ranges from February 4 to March 10), the Easter fast begins. On the last Saturday or Sunday before the end of Shrovetide, carnival festivities such as "leading a bear" it was took place. And on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, the so-called "burial of the bass" - all the music must be silenced throughout the 6-week fasting period. I remember more from the parents' story. We children took part in the custom of the fifth Sunday of Lent, so "Deadly":
At that time, the "carrying away of death" took place - a aranged straw figure of maiden, into which all the bad things that the winter period brought (winter, darkness, illness, lack of food, anxiety) were symbolically embodied. The skeleton of the death was two wooden sticks (shorter and longer), which folded over each other in the shape of a cross and tied tightly with string. A ball with a diameter of about 20 cm is rolled out of straw or hay, it hits the top of the cross and it is covered with white cloth. The eyes, nose and toothy mouth of the Death Eater are marked on it in black. The arms and torso are modeled around the sticks and tied out from long straw, preferably rye. A scarf is tied on the head, a white blouse around the torso, and a colorful skirt at the bottom. Sometimes a cord with empty shells from blown eggs hangs around the neck. In the procession and chanting "I carry death from the village, a new summer to the village..." death was taken to the pond "Nohávka" to the place where tributary flows (below the picture in the middle it is about the place on the shore, from where the smoke from the small fire rises); there the death was set on fire and thown into the water.

During the Easter period, solemn ceremonies were held in the church according to the legends of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, in addition to the usual regular masses. On Holy Thursday at 6 p.m. there is a mass in memory of the last supper of Christ with his 12 apostles on Mount Zion, where he distributed bread (body) and wine (blood) to them and thus established the ceremony of the Eucharist - thanksgiving. On Good Friday at 3 p.m. the Good Friday Passion of Christ's crucifixion takes place. At the beginning of this service, the celebrating priest humbly bows and lies face down on the floor for a moment. On Holy Saturday at 8 p.m. it is the vigil of the resurrection of Jesus Christ; this vigil is also held early on Easter Sunday morning. On Easter Sunday, the solemn mass of Christ's resurrection is served. Easter Monday is a holiday when Christians rejoice in their redemption by Jesus. And even for those who do not believe in religious legends, it is a welcome holiday that belongs to fun and games, especially in our country the traditional Easter whipping.
On the "black- soot sweep" Wednesday, the pre-holiday cleaning took place. Mom rolled up her sleeves, soaped her hands up to her elbows, and swept soot from inside the tiled stove with a small whisk. On Green Thursday, Good Friday and White Saturday we went "knocking" and "growling" (the bells "flew to Rome"). Until we were very small, only for afternoon patrols, but then even early in the morning for about 6 o'clock. We didn't want to get up, but it had its special atmosphere to walk in the dark through the deserted streets of Konice, including the castle and the arcades around the church, where the sound of clattering wood was magically heard. The larger boys sometimes rode with a large "growl" from a wheelbarrow, equipped with a gear wheel, into the teeth of which a wooden spring plate fitted. Or they attached the growl to an old bicycle whose rim powered the growl's sprocket. It was often a hellish rumble!
Sometimes there was a fight between the two groups of the "clatters" about districts collecting money for the knocking. I remember that once we knocked around the church, we met the second party, while suddenly two ministers in the chasubles came out of the church (otherwise they went to knocked with the other party), swore vulgarly and provoked a fight. However, these were only minor irregularities, otherwise everything went well.

Easter dishes
Some dishes were prepared for Easter that were related to the spring awakening of nature and Christian traditions. Mazanec is a sweet leavened bread with raisins and nuts. The Easter lamb is also baked from sweet leavened dough in a ceramic mold and is sometimes covered with white or chocolate icing; it symbolizes Christ as the "lamb of God" (we did not have a mold for a lamb). Judases are fried from sweet leavened dough and sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon. They usually have an elongated shape symbolizing the rope on which Judas Iscariot hanged himself when he betrayed Jesus Christ. God's graces are crispy fried patties that are coated in powdered or vanilla sugar. At the beginning of Easter, before Maundy Thursday, grain, peas, lentils were sometimes sprouted and roasted in lard. Sprouted peas prepared in this way were sometimes called pucálka. In our country, the main Christmas pastry was easter cake called bábovka, which my mother and aunt made. They were mostly bábovky made from light dough with raisins and ground nuts. They were baked in the oven in round ceramic molds. Potato pancakes were also baked. Except for Good Friday, when fasting was usually observed, some usual dishes were also eaten at Easter, such as meat with cabbage and dumplings or potatoes.

  On Easter Sunday, Mom and Aunt dyed eggs. The most common way was to cook the eggs in water with onion skins - the eggs turned reddish-brown, which was further accentuated by polishing with a cloth soaked in a small amount of lard. Other eggs were painted with wax, some with prints. We boys knitted a rod (tatar, flogging) from four, six and sometimes eight long willow twigs.
  On Easter Monday, we went with twings to "carol of whipping" ("whipping ", "flogging", czech "mrskut", "šibačka" ...), and recited, for example, "Feasts, feasts, accompaniments, give painted eggs. If you don't have painted ones, at least give white ones, the hen will lay other ones for you!" and the like. Several folklore pictures below basically illustrate how it was done in our village (only it wasn't with traditional costumes...) :

We were rewarded for it, especially with aunt Anna in "Zádvoří", we received beautifully painted eggs, lots of sweets and kind words and greetings to parents in the pleasantly heated living kitchen with a nice tiled stove. At aunt Otilka at Střelnice ("Šištóta" - see "Memories - interesting places and people") we got, among other things, nice yellow rolls sprinkled with crystal sugar.
We didn't really believe in religious legends (it was probably all different, or it wasn't at all..?..), but we liked folklore customs and traditions and kept them ...
Another spring pastime was making spring whistles from cut willow twigs, from which the bark, into which a hole had previously been cut with a knife, had previously been loosened and peeled off. At one end a full peeled part of a branch was placed, at the other a cut piece; the resulting hole was blown. Later, when the reeds began to sprout more profusely, we made reed whistles.
Anemones bloomed white on the edge of the forest, daisies, dandelions, marguerites and other meadow flowers all around the garden.

Cultivating poppy in the garden
At the end of March, we sowed small poppy seeds in a larger bed in the upper garden, in rows spaced about 20-30 cm apart, to a depth of about 1-1.5 cm. It grew to a height of about 60-150 cm, in June it bloomed with beautiful white flowers (varieties with other flower colors are also used) and in August the poppies ripened. After drying, the tops of the poppies were cut off and the poppy was beaten out of them. It was stored in chamber in a small bags made of thick fabric, where it lasted at least a whole year. Only a small amount of poppy was always ground for immediate consumption. Ground poppy seeds are mainly used in poppy seed pastries - buns, cakes, strudels, sponge cakes; ground poppy seeds are also used for sweet dumplings and pasta. The greater part of the poppy seeds was usually consumed during the Easter and Christmas holidays.

Poppy plants contain a number of alkaloids - such as morphine, codeine, papaverine and many others, which have neurological effects and are narcotic. Here in the Central European region, at that time not customary to use opium poppy preparations as drugs (as is the case in areas around India and the Middle East). Only a small part of the poppy is used for the pharmacological preparation of alkaloids for medicine.
At the end of April, my father planted potatoes, in several dug straight furrows about 50cm apart. Later in the spring, the potato plant grew and flowers appeared. At the end of summer or beginning of autumn (depending on whether an early or late variety was planted), when their plant turned yellow or dried up, the potatoes were dug up and stored in the cellar.

Blooming May
Spring days run like seven-miles shoes. The water current in the silver streams, still rich in water after the spring thaw, ripples grains of sand and combes aquatic grasses. Clear water rushes in the stream, the winding banks turn green. The trees were clothed with young leaves, bright and fresh - each leaf is tender and shiny, as if varnished. In the morning sun, the edges of the leaves covered with fine hairs shimmer. The meadows and slopes were covered with green grass and carpets of flowers.

Trees also bloomed - first blackthorns, then cherries, pears, apples. Our old garden, with its many trees, was white as in winter - but the scent of flowers wafted everywhere. At the gate of the upper garden, golden rain blossomed, and a little later, further on in the garden by the cottage, blue-violet and white lilacs bloomed. And from dawn to evening, countless bird songs are heard. At the edge of the "Bor" forest (towards Zavadilka), the heavy raw smell of clay from the fields mixed with the light smell of herbs and flowers. Needles and resin smelled from the depths of the forest.
Philip and Jacob's Night. Witches.
On the eve of May 1, it was customary to light fires on high places. The night from April 30 to May 1 is historically called Philip and Jacob's Night (in the past, May 1 was the feast of Philip and Jacob). In the Middle Ages, it was believed that on Philip and Jacob's Night, witches would fly on broomsticks and gather on certain hills (witches' sabbath), where they would indulge in immoral orgies with devils. "Closer, closer, prince of hell ! I am flying to you on my steed, only to you does my heart submits" sang one witch in N.V.Gogol's story "Vij". The witches' sabbath was sometimes allegedly presided over by Lucifer himself, to whom the witches confessed their evil deeds and Lucifer advised them on other practices to harm and encourage people to do evil. Now it is seen only as a humorous opportunity for fun by the fire - with symbolic "burning of witches".

According to fairy tales and folklore, there were two types of witches. Some looked and lived like ordinary women who only secretly made various potions, incantations, fortune-telling and magical ceremonies. However, real witches usually lived in remote places far from human habitation - forests, swamps or rocks, in huts and shacks, mostly dilapidated and unkempt. Sometimes these huts were elevated, on a pole, or even revolving. Witches often had some smaller animals in their huts that participated in their rituals. It was mainly a black cat, into which the witch allegedly could transform. Then there was an owl, a crow, a bat, snakes, and toads. In cauldrons over the fire, witches brewed potions - mystical elixirs that were supposed to have the ability to heal (or, conversely, harm health), cause hallucinations, and cast spells (similarity to alchemy "Alchemy, charlatanism"). In popular culture, witches were considered evil, ugly, quarrelsome women and were called by various names, mostly derogatory: hag, granny, poisonous woman, wild woman, ugly woman, sorceresses, hags, magicians, warlocks, wizards, conjurors, enchantresses, necromancers, enchanters, charmers, conjurers, hexes, witch, baba yaga, witch, striga...
In our town of Konice, this big fire was made on an elevated spot above the playground and swimming pool, in the direction of Jesenec and Brezsko, under the Radošovec forest. The firefighters sometimes prepared some entertaining performances there. Children would run around and light various twigs and brooms from the fire and throw them high into the air. It was accompanied by a shower of sparks. Later, when the fire had already burned down somewhat, we would jump over the fire. A similar magical night, surrounded by a number of legends and traditions, with the lighting of fires and the nightly gathering of magical medicinal herbs, is on June 23-24, on the feast of St. John the Baptist (mentioned below).

1. M a y
The May color atmosphere of that time also included 1.May Day parades, which in the countryside resembled folk festivities (rather than administrative organized festivities as in cities) with flowers, allegorical chariots, costumes, songs; this is how we perceived them as children. The day before May Day, flags were hung out and posters were stuck in windows, shop windows, and on some walls, celebrating Labor Day, May 1st, and also May 9th as the day of liberation from fascism. On the morning of May Day, we dressed festively and went to the stream to cut willow twigs, to which we tied colorful ribbons - these were "waving stick".

Around 10 a.m. accompanied by music, the procession (with flags, banners and wavers) walked through some streets of Konice to the square, where there were speeches by the mayor of the municipal office, the school principal, some teachers and guests, with greetings to some groups of participants. At that time, we did not pay much attention to the frequent political phrases (they seemed to us just like empty "chatter"). The problematic aspects of Stalinism at the time did not reach us children in the countryside. It was a stupid mistake, when some despotic bosses and political functionaries tried to order people to participate in May Day parades. And similarly, when teachers forced students to do it; I never agreed to that! I only recognized the message of peace, progress and cooperation so that people could live well in the world. After all, May 1st is primarily a holiday of spring and love. The national anthem and the internationale were sung. The participants then dispersed, stopped for beer and sausages at stalls or in a pub, and in good weather, went for a walk in the surrounding nature - in the forest, by the ponds. Mom also went to put flowers at the cemetery. For most people, the 1.May was a pleasant festive day...

And on the Liberation Day of May 9th, lantern parades were held in the evening. In the early evening, about 15-20 of us children gathered in front of the school with lanterns in which we lit candles. Then we slowly walked in pairs towards Sokolovna, where there was a monument to the soldiers who fell during the liberation of Konice from the Nazis. Some of the teachers briefly recalled this history. It had a magical atmosphere and sometimes it was funny - when a lantern caught fire from a candle and started burning (either spontaneously, or through our actions...).
Calm and warm evenings had a unique charm at that time. The sun sets behind the forest and the air is full of delicate scents. We sat under the garden by the pond, in the darkened surface of which blossoming cherries and later the stars were reflected. At times, the fish slapped on the surface, and the ducks from the reeds by the shore sounded. And most importantly a loud frog concert! These bluish spring evenings under the forest by the ponds, with the scent of flowers and frog singing, are among the most beautiful I can remember.

Later in the evening, the forests plunged into the mysterious gloom, the birdsong ceased, and cold dew began to fall on the meadows beneath the forest. A moon sailed across the vast bluish depths of the sky, in which moonlight glistened silvery bushes, dewy blades of grass, water in the creek and pond. Trees and shrubs cast sharp shadows. The whole country is flooded with silver and deep calm.

The ever warmer spring days gradually turned into summer. The beginning of the summer was associated with the ripening of raspberries, strawberries, cherries and sour cherries (however, the early cherries of the "of May" were already eaten - from us and from the birds). My mother and I conserve raspberries, strawberries, gooseberries and currants in jars. These compotes were then an integral part of Christmas.

The garden smelled of peonies, lilies, jasmine and blooming lilacs, the school year was ending for us and the joyful time of the holidays was beginning. Since we lived by the ponds, summer was inextricably linked to swimming for us, especially in the "Kameňák" pond. While we were still small, we were not allowed into the deeper water and we "muddy" by the shore in the reeds. We watched with interest the various tadpoles, frogs, leeches, flatworms, divers, monstrous dragonfly larvae, algae and aquatic plants. However, we soon learned to swim and then the whole ponds "were ours". We swam, jumped into the water, dived, played water games with friends, threw mud at each other and so on. At the end of the school year, if the weather was good, teachers Kleveta and Továrek organized competitions on the pond "Kameňák" on boats, washtubs, barrels, boards, etc. It was great fun, it ended, of cours, with a bath in water.
Swimming in a pond
But I most like to go to the water alone in the early evening. The air was warm and quiet. A frog concert was heard, the water smelled of mud and aquatic plants. I swam slowly over the calm surface and watched the smooth waves in front of me reflect the inverted and many times repetitive image of the church tower, the individual images shrinking and piling on top of each other as if the tower were growing; so it was when I swam in the direction of Konice (as can be seen in the opening image of the view of Konice across the pond). When I swam in the opposite direction, in the waves are stacked and growing the forest massif "Bor", already darkened and mysterious.

The essence and secrets of nature and the universe ?
When I was larger and actively interested in the laws of nature, during this calm swimming I felt oneness with nature and meditated on the curved spacetime of the general theory of relativity, unitary theories of the field and the nature of matter. My ideas and thoughts flew from the interior of elementary particles to the farthest depths of the universe. And I dreamed that one day I would discover and understand the common innermost essence of "universe," some universal law of nature that governs it all ("Unitary Field Theory"). At the time, I had no idea how colossal and unfulfillable this task was! But dreaming about it was beautiful ...
This active physical interest in nature and the universe accompanied me throughout my life - I studied physics at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of Charles University and worked both in research and practice in the fields of nuclear and radiation physics ("Nuclear Physics and Ionizing Radiation"), the theory of relativity, astrophysics and cosmology ("Gravitation, Black Holes and the Physics of Spacetime"). I also pondered related philosophical questions ("The Anthropic Principle or Cosmic God") and epistemological knowledge ("The Path of Knowledge") -> the joy of discovering the beauty and mysteries of nature, the universe, and our soul.
At this boyhood age, I was also timidly starting to get acquainted with erotica, and nature was also a suitable inspiration for this ("SEX - opinions")...

Plants in the pond and around the shore
Several species of water-loving plants grow around the shores of ponds and in their water. Close to the shore, often in the water, grow clumps of lake bulrush, a perennial evergreen plant whose thin tubular leaves, about 20-50 cm long, have a white mesh filling inside. As children, we peeled these leaves and ate the mesh filling. Further around the shore and in shallow water, two species of reeds grow up to 2 meters high. There is common reed with long thin stems with narrow leaves and panicle flowers at the top. And also cattail with wider leaves and a creeping rhizome, flowering "cigars" at the top. When they mature, they turn black... In the summer, small floating plants of duckweed, which we used to call "frog's leaf", often grow on the surface of ponds. Sometimes they are so dense that they cover the entire water surface. We then used a net to collect them as food for the ducks. Sometimes beautiful water lily or water lily flowers floated on the water surface (the roots are at the bottom, however). Sometimes orange Amphibian Rdesno flowers grow from the bottom. While swimming, especially in the shallow part of the pond, we sometimes got a little "tangled" in them.

As tadpoles grew up in the pond and turned into small frogs, they climbed ashore, and whole flocks jumped over the surrounding meadows and even down the slope in the woods in the rustling leaves. We had to walk very carefully so as not to step on any. The shores of the pond were overgrown with thick reeds and cattails on which "cigars" grew - we dried them and then lit them and "smoked" them. At one point on the shore of the "Kameňák" pond, a blackberry bush grew, the branches of which reached to the surface. When we swam in the pond in August, we swam to the place and picked ripe sweet blackberries directly from the water. Their scent mingled with the raw air of tha mud plants and greenish water.

Summer forest
Another great hobby for us in the summer was the forest. He attracted us not only with the richness of strawberries, blueberries and mushrooms, but also with his mysterious gloom, in which our fantasies could work. I often went to the forest very early in the morning. Pink blushes spread across the sky, the sun's rays rose higher and higher, gilding the tops of the trees, and finally the Sun appeared in its radiance and spread its light throughout the forest. The warm wind smelled of needles. In other places, an intoxicating and fragrant glade buzzing with insects. For us, summer nature was associated with sunny slopes and gloomy contemplative forests, green meadows with wetlands and warm fragrant borders, gurgling streams with mysterious shadows and depths of pools under inclined willows and alders. Or on a moonlit night, a mysterious forest, darkened, with forest streams bubbling in the moonlight.

The pictures of the interior of the forest and the mossy growth come from the Bor nad Kremencem forest and the Skalka forest in the valley around Certová skála, in the 1960s during the period of more frequent rains. Today, we would hardly find continuous moss growth there. Also, blueberries, which we used to collect abundantly in the pine or larch part of the forest, almost do not grow there anymore...
For us, summer nature was associated with sunny hillsides and gloomy forests, green meadows with wetlands and warm, fragrant borders, gurgling streams with mysterious shadows and deep pools under leaning willows and alders. Or on a moonlit night, a mysterious, darkened forest with forest streams bubbling in the moonlight.

Watering in the garden
During the frequent warm and dry weather in late spring and summer, it is necessary to water the beds with vegetables, strawberries and raspberries. Smaller beds were usually watered only with a watering can, into which we collected water from the pond or from a small lake in the lower garden. Dad watered larger beds with a hose with an adjustable sprayer. Water was pumped from the pond using a powerful motor pump. A pipe with a suction basket and a non-return valve led from the pump to the Nohávka pond.

In the large upper garden, dad dug a well 12 meters deep many years ago, with a pump manually driven by a large wheel equipped with a crank. The water was then led through a wooden trough towards the greenhouse, hotbeds and beds.
My father told us how he dug this well :
"When I was young, sometime in the 1930s, I dug a well in the garden (with a diameter of 80 cm) almost every day for about 2 months in the autumn. I dug by hand, the clay and stones were pulled to the surface in buckets on a rope, I continuously built the walls with stones. It was a long and laborious job, but I still had enough strength at that time. When I got to a depth of 12 meters, water was already seeping out, but it was enough to be pulled out in buckets. I came across a larger stone that I could not easily dig out. With a longer pickaxe, I finally managed to wriggle it out, then it jumped out and a huge spring of water gushed out from under it. The level rose quickly, I had a lot to do to manage to climb up the rope and the walls of the well so as not to drown! The water level then stabilized at a height of 8 meters, 4 meters below the surface. In dry years only to a height of 5-6 m. Uncle Lojzek and I then lowered a metal pipe with a suction basket and a piston pump, driven by an eccentric on the shaft of a large wheel with a crank, almost to the bottom. The pressure pipe then continued to a height of about 3 meters, from where the water was led by gravity to the watering places".

The suction strainer was permanently under water and the piston pump cylinder was exposed to moisture inside the well, so after years they were considerably corroded, but they were functional for a long time - only then you had to pump harder....
Later, when a powerful pump was installed in the yard below around 1954, a metal pipe more than 100 meters long was lead into the upper garden, with a series of hydrants at various points in the garden. Using 12-meter hoses, it was then possible to water all parts of the garden as needed. The well in the upper garden was no longer used. After all, the "soft" water from the pond is more suitable for watering plants than the "hard" underground water from a deep well.
Above the engine with the pump (pictured on the right) was a medium-sized tree with blue ringle trees growing on it, which we used to climb and eats as children.

Grass cutting, haymaking
The beginning of the summer was associated with haymaking. In the afternoon, Dad carefully forged one or two scythes and sharpened them - they must have been razor sharp! The grass was always cut as soon as possible in the morning, often at 4 o'clock, so that there was dew for as long as possible (it is said that "the dew should be in the grass, not on the forehead"). From the meadows you could hear the characteristic hiss of a scythe while mowing and from time to time ringing sharpening of scythes. The choppers had two whetstones with them, a rough carborundum and a smoother stone, which they soaked into water during grinding in a shaped tin container called a "quiver" (scabbard for whetstone, with a bent holder), which they wore hung on a belt :

  Everywhere smelled cut grass and hay - in the meadows, in the gardens, in the summer wind. In the early morning, swaths of strong-smelling, dewy, and cooling grass scattered and shook. We had to turn it over and then rake the already dried hay and help my father to stacked in piles before the evening dew fell. We didn't like it much then, but it had its fragrant charm. The hay was stacked on wooden sticks ("dryers", "stems") so that there was free space inside the bottom. And it was an ideal place for us to play and sleep in the fragrant hay, we made "bunkers" there. Sometimes we hid in a haystack from the rain. We watched the silvery drops of rain sprinkle the blades of grass. It was felt entrust herbal smell ...
  In the morning we stretched and went for a swim in the pond, even though the water seemed cold in the morning. Or we lay down on the hay in the early evening and watched the first stars light up in the darkening sky, tremling softly with their rays. It was beauty and well-being. Later, the sky completely darkened and was densely strewn with stars with the Milky Way stretching from horizon to horizon. The sky was mirored in the water, the stars seeming to bathe in the black depths, trembling in gentle water tremors.

Dried and laid hay was loaded from the piles onto a cart, from more distant meadows even onto a horse-drawn ladder truck. Sometimes, when the sky was frowning in the early rain, it was necessary to hurry so that the hay could be loaded and brought to the barn in the dry, we often got wet ourselves. To prevent hay from falling when driving on bumpy roads, the hay ridge was loaded at the top and reinforced with a so-called pavéda - a long perch pulled by ropes at the ends. As boys, we liked to ride on a high ferry in fragrant hay. After arriving home, the father used a 3-prong fork on a long bar to feed the hay from the cart to the roof space, the mother or aunt took it, we then carried the hay on the short 4-prong forks under the beams and stacked them high under the roof, on two or three "floors". We often made a "secret hiding place" under a hay in a hidden place.

The picture shows how a large truckload of hay was loaded at Otín meadows and brought at the Shooting range to the house under the lime tree alley. Uncle Lojzek then used pitchforks to feed the hay up into the dormer window in the roof, Aunt Otilka toot over it in the attic, and we boys carried the hay away on pitchforks and stacked it under the roof.
At the time of the summer solstice, around the feast of St. John, there are beautiful warm nights, full of the scent of flowering meadows. On the eve and night of June 24, "Midsummer fires" were being prepared and lit, through which they then jumped. Geysers of sparks flew into the sky. And in the darkness of the meadows and under the forest, flying midsummer "flies" shone like sparks.
July was full of heat and often severe storms with dazzling lightning and the hellish roar of thunder. Even in the heavy downpour, Dad ran out to release the clogged streams from the rolling water. After the storm, we too ran out barefoot, waded in the puddles and mud and inhaling fresh air, smelling of ozone and earthy moisture. The forest smelled strongly of mushrooms.
Sometimes even in summer the sky frowned to heavier rainy weather, steam rose from the woods. In such inclement weather, we sometimes climbed under the roof, crawled through the plump and intoxicatingly scented hay to the bottom of the roof or to the rear window in the gable, from where you could see the garden and part of the forest. We inhaled the fresh, humid air mingling with the smell of hay, and listened in the dryness as the rain rained on the roof tiles. I remember once discovering a nest with about 60 eggs up to the top below the rafters, which I then handed to my brother several times in a wicker basket on the lower floor of the roof, and he again handed to his mother down the ladder. Mom and Aunt were happy because no one knew about the nest and the eggs would spoil or freeze and crack in the winter. Other times, however, we found only empty shells in the nest, the inside was eaten by a marten or a polecat.

Summer Garden
In spring and summer, especially during the holidays, our large upper garden was a paradise for us. On hot summer days, we walked around the garden in just our shorts and enjoyed the ripening fruit - cherries, strawberries, raspberries, currants and gooseberries, lingonberries, and later plums, early apples and pears. My mother and I harvested this fruit for preserves, jams and syrups :
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In the spring, a large number of dandelions bloomed in the garden, which then formed "bubbles" with flying fluff with seeds when they bloomed. I also liked to read in the garden, especially books about the forest and nature. And I often went to the neighboring and more distant forest...
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Mushroom picking in the forest
Summer is very favorable for the growth of many types of mushrooms. Some mushrooms also grew in our upper garden, especially near the fence around the Douglas firs. At the end of May, they were may mushrooms, puffballs, then field mushroom and parasols. However, most of them grew in the forest. At the beginning of the Bor forest, on the way up the slope, we collected yellow "chicks" - chanterelles. Further in the forest, there were common boletus, pigeon mushrooms, "pink" toadstools, parasols, boletus, porcini mushrooms, brown boletus (rarely "blue" boletus, in the picture below in the middle). The most beautiful are the red fly agarics (fly amanita), which, however, are not collected, they are poisonous. We found the most mushrooms in the part of the Bor forest above Kremenec, around a small stream with small waterfalls. Dad would go with a green backpack to more distant forests - Skalky, Bukovina, Zvonák - on his way to Otínsko. He knew places there where nice mushrooms grew, including the "blue boletus" which he liked.
We also collected a small amount of the "dark puffball" pigskin earthball (while it was young and not yet dusty), which is very aromatic and suitable as a mushroom spice (we did not know about its weak toxicity at the time, but given the small amount of spice, there were no problems with it). It also grew on the slope below our garden. In early autumn, we sometimes collected also wenceslas, which usually grew around rotting tree stumps.
A smaller part of the mushrooms was consumed fresh - they were baked with eggs, vegetables, meat, cheese, and they were cooked in mushroom soup. Larger caps (such as those of parasols, and sometimes toadstools and porcini mushrooms) were fried as mushroom slices. Some were put into preserving jars, but most were cut into thin slices, spread on wooden trays, and dried in a shed for use mainly in winter, especially at Christmas, in mushroom soup and mushroom mix with hail - "black cuba".

Harvest grain - reap
The end of July gradually maturing rye, wheat, oats and barley. The fields receive a golden hue with typical aromas and rustling sound. From the courtyards and sheds of the cottages, there was a knocking scythe again in the evening and in the morning. She was the haymaking of the second grass. And then the harvest of grain - before, the grain was often mowed by hand. The grain mower was equipped with a semicircular arch of cloths covered with canvas ("rake" or "kite"), which folded the mown grain into straight swaths or laying.
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The father slashed, the mother or aunt took the mown grain and tied it into sheaves. These were then folded into "shots" - mandellas of 16 sheaves, in which the grain was left to more dry in the field for several days. The sheaves were folded diagonally over each other in the almonds so that the ears in the middle were slightly higher than the ends of the sheaves, so that rainwater flowed out of the sheaves to the sides, not into the center of almonds on the ears. Wide rakes with a larger number of teeth were used to rake up the scattered ears.

After proper drying, the grain was taken home to the barn. The wooden steps to the chamber were carried away, and the entire barn was filled to the ceiling with sheaves of grain. Although I still experienced threshing with the flails, but only rye, where it was necessary to keep a long straight straw to bind the mats. Wheat, oats and barley were already threshed on the thresher.

We had an old wooden thresher, the rotating drum of which was driven by a pulley and a long wide belt driven by a motor. The father always painted this belt properly with tar or rosin so that it would not slip. The father put the grain in the "swallower" of the thresher with a fast-spinning drum, the mother took the straw at the other end of the thresher from the vibrating "shakers", the aunt was raking out the falling grain from under the threshing machine. It was a hell of a noise, clouds of dust and the strange smell of straw and grain hovering everywhere. The sheaves of grain were dwindling, and a pile of straw bales was accumulated in the yard.

  The grain fell from the thresher with the chaff, it had to be cleaned; the next stage began - "blowing". We had an old wooden "blower", where large blades spun by hand in a drum, which drove a stream of air through vibrating screens, on which grain with chaff fell from the hopper from above. The stream of air carried the light husks and debris away, while the heavier grains of grain fell through the sieves and then through the troughs into the prepared containers. There was even more dust when the grain was blowing than when threshing, in addition to the dust, chaff and fluff from the flowers growing in the grain flew through the air. We especially liked the flying round fluff of thistles that we chased and caught. The clean grain was then poured into bags and placed on a chamber, the chaff was pulled onto the soil in a large "rugged" basket on a rope and poured over the barns, where they provided also insulation in the winter. Part of the chaff was consumed in the feed during the winter.
Every year, my father grew garlic in a larger garden bed, mostly the bluish "Russian garlic". In November, in addition to normal cloves, he also planted several dozen small balls from the inflorescence, which grew as smaller individual bulbs in the first year, but after planting the following year, large, full-fledged garlic cloves grew. This genetically renewed the planting. In mid-summer, the garlic ripened, was pulled out, cleaned, and my father carefully pulled off the stalk. He tied the garlic cloves together and hung them in several dry, airy places under the roof. They dried there until autumn, then hung on the chamber.
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Old Chamber
At the end of the threshing floor were wooden stairs leading to the massive door to the old chamber. In addition to preserves, grain, flour, meal, lard, blackthorn (jam), dried herbs, demijohns of plum brandy, many things needed for the house were stored here - "decimal" scale (it was used to weigh sacks of grain, boxes of fruit, etc.), weights, baskets, sieves, bowls, ... In the front part of the pantry there was a shelf with preserved raspberries, currants, gooseberries, cherries, pears, jams from various fruits, glasses of cider and syrup. On the top shelf on the right, a special cabinet box with Christmas decorations was stored all year round, which was only brought down to the Christmas tree at Christmas.

In the back part of the chamber, under the window, there was a large wooden chest with compartments and a top lid. In the individual compartments there was plain, semi-coarse and coarse flour, in smaller compartments there was millet, semolina, peas, flaxseed. During the pig-slaughtering, the headcheeses, blood sausage and pushed wurst were placed on the lid of this chest to cool down. On the wall on the right side of the chamber there was a long hanger, on which hung old everyday (outdoor) coats and cloaks, grain sacks, spare threshing machine belts. There were also two old, larger backpacks made of coarse fabric, with which my father went to the more distant forests for mushrooms (and perhaps sometimes to poach..?..). On the top of the hanger were old wooden skis with buckle bindings. The chamber was also a place for us to play, secret corners and interesting objects...
Below the chamber, partly underground, was a cellar (the door was on the left next to the stairs, with three steps down) where beets, potatoes, vegetables and sometimes a barrel of fermented cabbage were stored.
Next to the cellar and the door to the kitchen was a smaller pantry with common kitchen utensils - milk containers, a wooden cylindrical butter churn with a piston for churning butter, a barel for mixing bread dough, a stoneware container for fermented cabbage, larger pots, saucepans and bowls, a small kitchen scale and weights.

Above, about 30 cm below the ceiling, along the entire length of the pantry wall, there was a flat protrusion in the wall about 15 cm wide, on which were placed boxes with sugar, salt, coffee, cocoa, chicory and various types of spices - paprika, pepper, allspice, marjoram, cumin, bay leaf, cloves, juniper, cinnamon, vanilla, etc. They were pretty in dry there. And there was also a brass mortar with a pestle, in which some types of spices were pounded.Homemade bread baking
We often baked our own homemade bread. In older cottages, bread ovens were built with stones, often as part of larger tiled stoves, sometimes separately. Bread was also baked in the tiled stove oven. My aunt took a barel for bread dough from the pantry and placed it in an open space on the threshing floor. At the bottom of the barel, a piece of old dough ("sourdough") was preserved from the previous baking. The necessary weighed (or estimated) amount of rye flour (about 5 kg), the appropriate amount of salt, a handful of cumin, yeast (if there was no sourdough) was poured into the bowl. Sometimes a little milk or buttermilk was also added. The housewife gradually added water and mixed the dough with a wooden spoon, going around the bowl several times so that the dough was well mixed from all sides. The bowl was then covered and the dough was left to rest and rise for about 12-24 hours.
Portions of about 20 cm in size were then gradually separated from the dough in the bowl, rolled out a little and lightly pressed into a straw basket ("okrínka", straw basket), usually oval, sometimes round in shape. The baskets with the dough were placed in the warmth on a bench by the oven, covered with a cloth and left to rise again. The dough was also shaped into the resulting loaves in the baskets. In the meantime, the oven was heated - with dry logs of quality wood (mostly beech, birch or hornbeam). When the oven was evenly heated, the ashes and remaining hot coals were raked out with a rake, which were poured into an old saucepan with water.

The dough from the baskets was then tipped onto a flat wooden shovel, sprinkled with caraway seeds and brushed with starch water (to make the bread crust shiny). The loaves were carefully pushed into the oven on the shovel and pressed down. Usually four loaves were put into the oven. The oven door was closed and the baking continued for about an hour and a half to two hours, checking the oven several times to see how the baking was progressing; if the baking was uneven, the loaves were shifted in different directions. The baked loaves were then scooped up with a shovel, pulled out of the oven, wiped with a damp cloth and put back into the straw baskets, or placed on a tray or board, where they slowly cooled. They were then taken to the pantry or chamber.
Later, the fuel-intensive heating of the bread oven and the laborious preparation of the dough in the bowl gradually gave way. Bread dough for one or two loaves was kneaded and risen in a larger kitchen bowl, and the loaves were then baked on a baking sheet in a tiled stove oven, which was also used for other kitchen work - and in winter also for warmth...

End of summer
The warmed glades and meadows at the end of the summer, with blooming flowers and veils of cobwebs in the branches of trees and in the tall grass, smells like thyme and beginning wilting. The grain fields are already harvested and often ploughed, with winter crops being planted. The leaves on the trees are still green, but on the borders around the field roads, the grass and meadow plants are already starting to turn yellow. On warm evenings after the harvest, when the sun slowly set and left behind a damp softness, cold vapours were already rising from the meadows by the stream under the forest. And in the morning the water under the misty haze was already autumnally cold...

Indian summer, school
In nature, the end of summer and the onset of autumn are usually gradual and inconspicuous at the beginning. However, the goldenening of the leaves, the ripening of pears, plums and apples, the cold misty morning with dewy cobwebs on the bushes and meadows are an unmistakable sign that autumn is taking the government. With a unique scent of fields and forests, moss, leaves and ripening apples, smoke from potato fields, borders and gardens. With winds from stubble, kite-flying ...

  For us, "compulsory school", however, the transition between summer and autumn was sudden: it was September 1 - the end of the holidays and the beginning of school. We didn't like the transition from holiday freedom to school duties, but on the other hand we were looking forward to friends and also to some teachers (for me it was especially Mr. Jáchym, but he wasn't the only one).
  The first three classes we went to the old school above the hill by the church, under which a stream flowed in a tunnel "underground" - this was the place of our frequent games in a mysterious gloom and the gurgling of the water. Our dad already went to this old school and told even about the tunnel with a stream under the school in his stories (adventures). In the 4th and 5th grade we went to the new school in "Příhony". A little further away is the kindergarten (pictured left) where we went as little children.

Finally, from the 6th to the 9th grade then to the old school "city school" on the square. At school, I was fascinated by subjects in the office of physics, chemistry and biology - at that time I was attracted to everything related to nature, its laws, mysteries... From 6th grade, "cross-country" students from Křemenec, Čunín, Jesence, Dzbel , Skripov. They were children from villages, used to living modestly and helping at home on the farm. I got along better with many of these boys, despite their certain "roughness", than with some "inflated from Konices" pampered by religious or well-to-do parents.

Yellowed leaves slowly fell from the trees, and with a slight rustle they fluttered to the ground. Especially after the first frosts, the fall of the leaves accelerated a lot. On the way to school, I watched heavy leaves, damp and frosted at the edges, fall quickly from a neighbor's walnut tree in the autumn mist. In the freezing morning the meadows turned white, each leaf of grass is decorated with hoarfrost of ice crystals.

Harvesting fruit, cooking plum jam, pickling cabbage, burning plum brandy
Autumn is the harvest season for most crops - plums, apples, pears, potatoes, carrots, cabbage, parsley and celery, pumpkins, beets, and corn. Dad mainly took care of the harvest of apples, pears, and plums :

The potatoes were dug up by hand using a hoe or spade, this had to be done carefully and a little sideways so as not to disturb the potato . The potatoes were left in the field for 1-2 days so that their skins would dry properly and then they were taken to the cellar in bags or boxes. For us, the potato harvest was mainly associated with bonfires made of potato tops, in whose hot ashes we roasted the potatoes. Such a piece of ash, with a blackened crust, is pleasantly warm in your pocket and its taste and aroma is unforgettable!

My mother mainly took care of the vegetable harvest. Carrots, parsley and celery were carefully cleaned of dirt and stored in the cellar over the winter, in separate sections next to beets, potatoes and cabbage heads. The ears of corn were peeled from the leaves and hung on a string under the roof, where they dried and were used continuously throughout the winter.

Potatoes, beets and vegetables in the cellar, a barrel of sauerkraut in the hall, plum jam cooked in the pantry - this was the basis of preparations for winter in every cottage. Later, burnt plum brandy, lard, cracklings, smoked meat, sausages and bacon were added.
Cooking plum jam - black jam
Plums, in addition to small amounts in cakes, dumplings or for compots, were used for cooking the plum jam and for ferment for plum brandy. The jam was cooked from high-quality shredded and well-ripened plums in a large cauldron, preferably copper. The plums were first boiled and the thin mixture was sifted with a whisk through a sieve - the pips and husks were removed (the pips were dried, then threshed and the kernels were used for candy). The clean boiled flesh, yellow - red and relatively thin - called "slurry" or "lollipop", then slowly evaporated and thickened with gentle boiling and constant stirring until excellent plum jam was formed. Finished plum jam, also called "black jam", must be thick and dark, blue-black in color.

It was a very lengthy process, usually all day and night! And with constant stirring with a wooden hoof (so that the jam does not burn), which was manually turned by the crank; we also had to help and replace the parents. The finished plum jam was filled into larger earthenware pots. After cooling, a thin solid crust formed on the surface, which was sometimes smeared with plum brandy. The pots were covered and tied with cloth or parchment paper, black jam was gradually used for cakes and buns; in the chamber lasted all year, until cooking new jams. Some of the jams were also bottled in jars.
Plum fermentation, burning - distillation - plum brandy
Fallen and shaken mature plums were collected and poured into barrels (kegs, only wooden at that time - in the picture on the left), left to ferment and in winter plum brandy was burned (distilled) from them. The wooden barrels were considerably "dried up" after the spring and summer, with the exception of one or two, which were used for rainwater. It was necessary to lift and knock the iron hoops, then we immersed them in the pond for about 2 days so that the boards soaked with water and sealing. After filling the barrels with plums, it was necessary to watch to see if the fermentation would be too stormy - in this case, it was necessary to remove a little ferment so that the foam and yeast did not overflow (after a few days it returned).

I mentioned some of the events from burning (distillation) plum brandy in the "Winter" chapter above. Another funny incident happened when it was still plum burning in the autumn, in dry weather. Along with a group of men, there was also a lady who liked to drink. And indeed, she "tasted" so abundantly during the burning that she got drunk and couldn't stay on her feet. What about her now? The men put her in one empty bigger wooden barrel in the siding, after a while she will go home and maintain her stability in the barrel. In the meantime, however, it began to rain heavily and the siding coincidentally stood under the roof of the distillery under the eaves. Fortunately, they drove in about half an hour, otherwise the lady in the barrel would have drowned! When they pulled her out of the barrel, she was all wet and her long hair was tangled and covered with skins of fermented plums, but apart from the cold, it turned out well ...
Grating and fermenting cabbage
In our garden, we grew about 60-100 heads of cabbage on a relatively large bed. After the harvest, some were stored in the cellar, where they were used continuously in the kitchen until spring. The rest was grated and fermented. We brought a large wooden grater with slanted blades from the chamber. The heads of late cabbage were stripped of their outer leaves, cleaned well, the larger ones were halved and the stiff stems were cut out; we cut out their delicate insides and crunched them with relish. Then the heads were grated ("grated") on a large wooden grater with three flat slanted blades, over which the container with cabbage was schift. The grater was placed horizontally between two pads, usually between two chairs. The heads had to be pressed down while grating, but carefully so as not to cut our fingers. The grating cabbage was filled into a barrel or cask (with a capacity of about 20-60 liters), and was thoroughly tamped.

A small handful of salt, roughly chopped (or grated together with the cabbage) onion, sprigs of dill and small apples are added to each layer of cabbage. A few rounds of chopped horseradish are also added. After being thoroughly trampled, the cabbage releases water and begins to foam. When the barrel is filled, the surface is covered with cabbage leaves, and a few currant or grape leaves can also be added. Semi-circular boards ("dínka") are placed and weighed down with stones or weights. It is initially left warm in the kitchen. After about two days, white foam appears, indicating good fermentation. The water ("brine") then often overflows from the barrel, see the picture on the right. After about 3 weeks, when the fermentation has stopped, the leaves and the top layer are removed, the surface is cleaned and poured with slightly salted water. The barrel is moved to the pantry, to the cold. The cabbage is then gradually removed throughout the winter, lasting through spring and into summer, into the new early cabbage in the garden (early cabbage is not suitable for pickling).
As the days shortened, the evenings lengthened with the damp scents of the fields and gardens. It began to drown in the old tiled stove, the resin log cracked loudly, flames shining through the doors and gaps in the hob - lights and shadows flickered on the walls and ceiling. The period of pleasant home evenings with storytelling and reading began.
Drying herbs and fruits for tea
In autumn and winter we used a lot of tea, mostly brewed from various herbs and dried fruits (only to a lesser extent from tea leaves). We dried nettle leaves, elderflower flowers, cowslip and comfrey. During June we picked a large amount of linden blossom; it is picked with the adjacent bract, at a time when about half of the flowers are open. We dried the herb leaves and linden blossom on a net or a wooden tray in an airy, shady place, usually under the roof of a shed. At the beginning of autumn we picked and dried edible rowanberries (we had two trees at the cottage) and rose hips. Apples were cut into thin slices and dried as so-called cross slices. Similarly, a small amount of plums, halved and pitted, were dried. All these fruits are much more difficult to dry than herb leaves and flowers. If the autumn days are sunny, you can dry them outside in a sunny place, it will take at least 2 weeks. In adverse autumn weather, we dried them in a slightly heated oven with the door open, repeatedly raking them. We usually combined drying outdoors and in the oven.

Dried herbs and fruits were stored in the chamber during the winter in canvas bags or jars and tea was made from them continuously. We had a black enameled kettle for this, with a capacity of about 2 liters, which was placed on the edge of the tiled stove. Tea was brewed there from linden blossom, dried rowan berries, rose hips, some herbs and a small amount of tea leaves. It had a rich yellow-pink color and a sweet and sour fruity taste.

Fisherman's fishing of ponds
Another significant autumn event was the fishing of the ponds. Several days before the designated fishing day, the fishermen came to agree with our father on how quickly to drain the ponds. My father would then go to the sluice gates even at night and monitor the speed of the outflow and the drop in the water level. Early in the morning before the fishing, the water had already been drained so much that it remained only in a deeper place around the so-called "fishing ground", which was teeming with fish. The fishermen arrived at the pond dam in an older truck with two large tubs of water, into which the fish they had caught could be put. Several fishermen then waded in high rubber boots in the mud, caught fish in their nets and handed them to other fishermen, who sorted them by size and species and put them in tubs of water.

The fishermen threw the small "weed" fish into a pile under the pond dam, where they would soon die without water. We boys would take them and release them into the stream below the pond - we were happy to see them swimming downstream and that we had saved them (they swam down the stream to another pond). My father put several carp so big that they seemed downright monstrous to us in a small pond in the garden. They were then consumed in the household, but we secretly released some back into the pond. People from Konice and nearby villages came to buy a smaller amount of fish (at a bargain price), while the fishermen then took most of it away for pre-Christmas sales. After the fishing was over, the father drained the rest of the water and, if possible, cleaned the fishing area of mud, closed and sealed the sluice gates. By winter, the ponds were filled with water again and ready for our skating. Sometimes, however, one of the ponds was left drained to be cleaned and the mud froze over, and it only filled up in the spring; we were disappointed by that (sometimes, however, we managed to stop the drain and filled the pond ourselves)...

Working in the forest
Later in the autumn, when most of the work in the garden and on the cottage was already finished, my father worked in the forest for several weeks, mostly in the neighboring forest Bor, felling and pruning trees, as coordinated by the gamekeeper Mr. Mohelník. Mostly they were spruces, pines and firs, in smaller quantities deciduous trees (beeches, oaks, hornbeams). He took with him to the forest a large woodcutter's saw for cutting trunks, a smaller saw for trimming branches, a large woodcutter's axe with a long handle and a smaller hatchet, several iron and wooden wedges. At a height of about 10-15 cm, on the side of the fall, he first cut the trunk to about 1/3 of its thickness and with an axe or saw, a triangular wedge was cut, which then directed the fall of the tree. Then the main cut was made from the opposite side almost to the wedge on the other side, the tree wobbled a little and fell in that direction.:

When a tall tree fell, there was a big bang, a crackling sound and a loud thud on the ground. We had to step back a bit so that it wouldn't kill us. Then we helped trim the branches and pull them into a pile, which was later taken home, along with the stumps and cut pieces of trunks, stored in the yard and used for heating in the winter. The trunk was cut into meter-long pieces and folded into a cube of 1×1×1 cubic meter. I really liked the smell of resin and needles - fir trees smell the most distinctly.

My mother chopped the thinner branches with an axe into sticks for kindling in the stove, my father split the larger pieces of wood with wedges and sawed them on a circular saw.

All Saints' Days (souls)
The important period of autumn in our country was the feast of the memory of the dead - "All Saints' Day" or "Memory of deceased". Our father, as a gardener, grew chrysanthemums and other flowers, and made bouquets and wreaths for the decoration of the cemetery. About 3 weeks before that, people used to go to the forest on moss, on coniferous twigs and on wicker. Other twigs were pruned in the garden from "Douglas fir" fir, then twigs of mahogany and some of the dried flowers were pruned. Our kitchen has been transformed into a gardening workshop. First, bales of moss were made, which settled and attached the wires to "twins" cut from the branches. Then spruce or fir twigs with pointed ends, mahogany and finally flowers (mostly chrysanthemums) on pointed pegs were inserted into the moss ball.

The whole kitchen, but also the side rooms, were filled with the scent of moss, needles and chrysanthemums - it was a bit like Christmas. In the end, wherever there was a place, finished wreaths and bouquets were stacked, or decorative baskets with twigs and flowers, for which customers then went.

We also decorated our family grave and in the evening we lit candles with our parents and remembered our grandfather and grandmother. The cemetery, lit by hundreds of candles, looked magical. My mother and I walked there for a long time, looking at the decoration of the graves and remembering the ones we knew (my mother knew them more, we were just looking at photographs, sometimes quite ancient). Sometimes we put a lighted cemetery candle on the water on a pond, where it then swam and shone for a long time (for the souls of drowned people..?..). We also dug out beets or gourds at that time, cut holes in the shape of eyes, nose and mouth, inserted a lighted candle, and hung such a haunting glowing skull so that it could be seen; small children were afraid of her.
At the end of November, my father planted garlic. He peeled the cloves and carefully picked the garlic cloves, which he then planted in rows in the garden, about 20 cm apart. If the winter was mild, the garlic would sprout a little in mid-December, but it would not start growing until spring and would ripen around July.

After all the saints, autumn is already relentlessly inclined to winter. The leaves are mostly already fallen, the ponds are cold, the grass is white-frosted in the morning and shines wonderfully in the sun, which dissolves the hoarfrost until around noon. In the morning frosts, thin ice on the puddles rattles. The days are often dim and murky, the fields empty, forest and field roads deserted, forests darkened and pensive in a bluish haze, leaden clouds low above the ground. The first snow can't wait long, sometimes it covered the wreaths in the cemetery even on All Souls' Day.

One of the last autumn works used to be grating cabbage on a large wooden grater with sharp oblique knives. The grated cabbage was "trampled" into the barrel together with onions, dill, horseradish and small apples (described in more detail above) . It was left to ferment in the kitchen by the tiled stove (sometimes the foam escaped and the brine flowed over the entire kitchen) and then transferred to the pantry or cellar.
Continuously, until the Christmas cookies were baked, nuts (walnuts and hazelnuts) were cracked and plum, apricots and ryngles stones were smashed. We had a small chair with a carved oval hole in the middle - the kernels were placed in a bowl, the shells of nuts and seeds were placed in a basket and then placed in a tiled stove. The kernels were dried, then ground and used in Christmas cookies. Plum kernel kernels gave this candy a more pronounced spicy aroma and taste than if only walnuts or coconuts were used.

The cycle of the year
This is how the cycle of one year ended for us, our favorite winter was coming - and then spring and other beautiful events in nature and in our lives ...

I wrote these incomplete fragments of memories of how people lived in the countryside during the individual seasons, mainly for my pleasure and remembrance. Spending childhood years in a kind family and in harmony with nature is a contribution from which one can draw a lifetime; it beautifies us pleasant days and helps us even in worse times. But maybe my peers, who have similar experiences, will be interested in some of it, or perhaps someone from the younger generation to compare the lifestyle of the past and now. They are intended for those who look at the world attentively, with joy and with love ...
An older narrative from the same places in Konice is contained in the article :
Dad's stories
Memories of rural life are followed by the talk
" Interesting places and people "

Author's apology for the pictures :
I tried to illustrate my story about nature and life in the countryside in more detail with a larger number of photographs of nature and human activities. Most of them were taken in the period 1950-70, using simple photographic equipment, films and positive photo materials that were produced at that time. Films and photographs were developed and photochemically processed in a simple home photo laboratory.
  At that time, color photography was just beginning in our country and photochemical processes were quite complicated. The photographs that I present are therefore a conglomerate of scanned black and white and color images of various quality, as they have been preserved in my photo archive.
  I had a good scanner and many years ago I had digitized most of the photographs, negatives and slides, both black and white and color, in my photo archive (numbering more than 5000 images) and further processed and used them. I tried to include those images that would best illustrate the reality of the time (some of them may have deteriorated technical quality..?..) and were in direct connection with the text of the essay.
  The task of the pictures is not to display technical details, but to visually evoke the atmosphere of nature and life at that time. Moreover, to maintain a bearable scale, they are only greatly reduced miniatures in which many fine details from the original photographs are lost.
  In several cases where the pictures were not taken at that time or were not preserved in my photo archive, I used somewhat more recent pictures that, according to my memory, resembled the authentic situation at that time as much as possible.

-> It was all I could do... Thank you for your understanding. <-

The beauties of nature - photography
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Science and faith			Gravity, black holes and space-time physics			Fireplaces, smokehouses, pergolas
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AstroNuclPhysics ® Nuclear Physics - Astrophysics - Cosmology - Philosophy

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