Nový Mlýn - green tech south bohemia

Hmm, now we have our stuff at Novy Mlyn I have a new problem… moths. So, I did a little bit of research & came up with some strategies.

There are two different types of pest moth that will affect us - the sort that like to eat our food - such as cereals, grains & pulses, and the sort which will love to eat my knitwear & yarn - especially anything containing nice and tasty wool, cashmere & angora. Geraniums are used extensively to deter flies, so I have mixed geranium essential oil with a carrier oil and placed it in bowls between the two layers of window in the bedroom. I have made a similar concoction with peppermint to deter the clothes moths. I will ask my friends to bring a huge bag of cloves & whole chillies over from the fantastic Pakistani shops in Birmingham, and I need to buy some oranges so that I can make orange peel & clove pot pourri, which is also said to have moth repellent properties (finally I get to find out why pot pourri exists!). The whole dried chillies I will thread on string interspersed with bay leaves to hang in the kitchen cupboards (when we get kitchen cupboards!).

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We need 24 curtain rails. We’ve checked out the local stores & what’s available is expensive & low quality & badly designed, so M suggested we contact a blacksmith and ask him to make them for us directly. I phoned to arrange a meeting with him, but later that evening he texted me to say that he was not interested in doing them without being paid. This came as quite a surprise because I think it would be very cheeky to ask such a thing. He said that there is a rumour that we are looking for sponsors for Novy Mlyn - meaning people to do work for free. How strange! I am curious about there being rumours about Novy Mlyn … I wonder what this is all about? As ever, reality is far more boring than the stories people tell each other. We will see what happens on Friday morning.

It’s probably difficult for anyone who’s not lived without drainage to appreciate this… something marvellous happened yesterday. I poured some water down the loo - in a ‘devil may care’ can’t hurt to try it again kind of way - and it went down!!!

On Monday night we had a short conversation with an older guy who was passing by. I have no real idea what he said, but this is the impression I got (remember my Czech is really rubbish and I currently understand 1 word in 5) … it was him who wrote ‘god’s work’ on the side of the barns, as some kind of funny joke. Our neighbour had been ordered to unblock the drainage from Novy Mlyn. Equally he could have been talking about the Iraq war. I only came up with this interpretation of the conversation on Tuesday night, after discovering we had drainage from the toilet.

Now, in a radically eco way, our plan is to have separate 1’s and 2’s toilets. I think that the Monday night guy said that our drainage goes straight into the stream. So, our temporary solution is to use the bathroom only for number 1’s and continue using the outdoor toilet for 2’s. This will make staying at Novy Mlyn suddenly much, much easier. And we can use the ’super solar shower’ and hang it over the bath. Once we get the GROW system over from the UK, we will be able to put all waste water through this, rather than into the pretty little stream called ‘apple brook’, and run a basic composting unit as soon as we can purchase this.

Can’t wait to take an ‘after’ photo to contrast with the image below! I spent hours yesterday scrubbing the place from top to bottom. It now looks like a slightly grubby student share bathroom, but the bath has come up well & I’ve managed to remove all cement, watermarks & unidentified other coatings. Must find my camera. Now, if by ‘flushing’ you include emptying a bottle of rainwater, and in saying ‘hot shower’ you’d get by with solar heated rainwater - we’re perfectly set up to start inviting guests to stay at Novy Mlyn!