Food For Thought - Getting the Wheat

Down on the Farm

Like a lot of people around the world, I’ve been rather busy. Busy not directly because of the difficult circumstances of the world economy, but certainly because these difficulties have made me think a bit and partly it’s about how to survive.

This was are coincidentally related to some ideas I got from a report I read on the BBC internet site about development in Eastern Europe.

The reporter spoke to an old man who told him that he was so happy they had a supermarket and he didn’t have to grow tomatoes any more.

It occurred to me that this old man had better have a source of income, because the problem with buying the tomatoes from the supermarket is that you need money.

And of course somewhere somebody has to actually grow the tomatoes as they don’t appear there just by magic.

You might say what it has got to do with life in Bulgaria?

Well the fact is that Bulgaria is very much an agricultural country, and enormous numbers of people have smallholdings where they grow considerable amounts of food.

In my own case, for example, we grow mainly apples and walnuts and this year the crop has been bad, in fact completely disastrous.

However, there are a a couple of other things I think are worth looking at  because they are about how to deal with the local circumstances.

Last week, and one of the reasons why I’ve been so busy, my mother-in-law phoned up to remind me that it was time to collect the wheat.

Now, does this mean that I’m a farmer?

No, no I’m not.  I live right in the middle of Sofia.

But the fact is, that like many other people in Bulgaria, my family, is having land returned that was collectivized under the communist regime.

What happened was something like this:

My father-in-law and his family were large landowners and their land was turned into a collective farm.

That land still exists and that farm is still working but the arrangement that we have made is that in return for having the land to work the the farmers give us a certain amount of wheat, every year.

Now it’s time to collect it.

Is this a good idea?

It all depends on the wheat - the quantity and the quality.

I’ll tell you how it goes.

I'm John Rocha, Blog Master of Bulgarian Vistas.

I like to write from experience about living in Bulgaria, holidays in Bulgaria, Bulgarian food,

famous Bulgarians and ....

Don't forget the free Bulgarian e-cards you can send to your friends if they're interested in Bulgaria.

Hope you enjoy my blog.

If you do, I'd appreciate a bookmark at your favourite Social Sites.

I always welcome your comments which I can take up in later posts.

And ... You can subscribe to comments and my Bulgarian Vistas RSS feed. Or you can subscribe by email.

All the best John