Category: Waldschlössl-Posts

The bushes we planted all around the garden over the past few years are finally bearing fruit – and what a harvest! 🫐

We’ve got gooseberries, Siberian honeyberries, blueberries, goji berries, raspberries, jostaberries, currants (both red and black). Strawberries are growing in one of the raised beds, and wild strawberries are peeking out from the greenery all around the garden. And now, slowly, the blackberries are starting to ripen too.

We spent the last few evenings – and a cloudy morning – picking, snacking, making jam and pressing juice.

A huge thank you to the best helpers ever: Laron and Leno – without you, our baskets would have been only half full! ❤️👩‍🌾👨‍🌾

Video here

As many of you know, we’re planning to open our café next year. Our goal is to offer our guests fresh fruits and vegetables from our own garden for as long as possible. To help extend the growing season – both in spring and fall – we’ve built a greenhouse with 45 square meters of floor space.

The greenhouse is neither insulated nor heated, but we expect that it won’t cool down as much at night compared to the outside. That’s thanks to the surrounding granite stone walls and concrete, which retain heat and release it slowly.

The frame is made of galvanized aluminum, and the roof and side walls are constructed from toughened ESG glass. It’s a solid, heavy-duty build – something we deliberately chose, as the greenhouse needs to withstand strong winds and hail. We wanted something that can handle such stress easily and last for many years.

The greenhouse has 14 roof windows and 4 side windows, all equipped with automatic, temperature-controlled openers. There are also four manually operable windows at the back wall, and of course, the doors can be left open too. That should prevent it from overheating in the peak of summer and harming the plants.

Watering is semi-automated, just like with our raised beds. A drip irrigation system is connected to our well water and needs to be switched on and off manually.

We’ll be testing the greenhouse thoroughly this year, and we’re hopeful that next spring we’ll be able to start planting delicate crops earlier than before.

Video

“Don’t you ever long for home?” – I also felt that the question sounded like a cliché. However, I was simply interested in the answer.

“I do what I love doing and it doesn’t matter where I am.” I am sure I cannot quote Eszter’s answer word-by-word, but perhaps I do not even need to be verbatim.

Eszter is a caring mother of two lovely girls; and beyond this, she is a genius of trail runners (3rd place at Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run last year), and at the weekend she became the Hungarian champion at the Vienna Marathon. She is one of those people who will always bring back memories from the times when I was twenty years old. When I was dreaming about a small, enchanting café where we could meet people… like Eszter, her mother and her friend, Kata Kertész. Three wonderful and strong women. Talking about trailrunning, motherhood, training, motivation and challenges. Talking without taboos.

Thank you for the marvellous morning!

Our beehouse has come to life again – quite literally! Not long ago, six bee colonies made the journey from Carinthia, lovingly provided by Christian’s dad. Christian and Leno brought them home in a daring night drive.

Five of those colonies are already strong and productive. The sixth one is our first breeding hive – and with space for up to 18 colonies in our beehouse, there’s plenty of room to grow.

We’re hopeful the bees will adjust to the breezier conditions here – they certainly weren’t used to this much wind back in Carinthia. Spring’s blossom season wasn’t ideal this year due to the weather, but we’ve already spotted the first tiny splashes of honey in the upper hive.

We’re optimistic that in the years to come, these bees will help pollinate our fruit trees – and who knows, maybe we’ll even get a taste of forest honey this season.

We can’t wait to see what this beekeeping year has in store – and when we’ll get to say the words we’re all waiting for: “Time to spin some honey!”