Tuesday 17th March
Today seemed like a good time to pull my finger out and write something on my Blog, so here we go.
I went shopping in the village this morning, first time for a week and so much has changed, I have never walked around any shop with a face mask on and it was fairly surreal but comforting to know that safety is being observed at this time and I guess we will get used to it, no-one was panic buying and the shops were quite well stocked, so far.
On the 6th March the first coronavirus case was confirmed here in Slovakia and since then things have progressed at a steady pace, the government took action to curb movement of people fairly quickly and in my mind they did a pretty good job,
To date the schools & universities, churches all non essential shops are closed, you can buy food, pharmaceuticals, fuel, animals foodstuffs plus banks & post offices are open, all airports are shut, the borders are shut, all sports facilities are closed so no more ski-ing this season, visits to hospitals plus non essential appointments or operations have ceased, plus we have been told to stay at home except for essential movement to shops etc.
As you can imagine it is pretty quiet here most of the time but now it is becoming very quiet, we are very lucky having a home in the country, with land, we can’t do very much in our garden as the weather is always very volatile in March-April but the last two days it has been +14c and at the weekend they are forecasting -14c, quite mad, we normally start planting veg stuff at the beginning of May, which is the start of our growing season, I don’t think this will be a normal year.
We still have chicken and our three ewes produced seven lambs one died after a few days but six is a good amount for us and will keep the grass well trimmed in the growing months, we have been out and tidied up now the snow has gone, otherwise we are spending a lot of time inside, I am catching up up on my scanning of Maria’s grandfathers negatives, sorting out websites and other computer stuff, Maria has been busy ordering seeds, potatoes for the garden plus learning how to make face masks as there is a shortage for us mere public, what do they say about necessity….
Wednesday 18th March
I hope to write this every few days or when I have something to tell you, today it was ridiculously warm for March, 18c in the shade, we have just pottered around in the garden and started tidying up the fields ready for the sheep and hay making, we are expecting the weather to change in a couple of days. Had the first death from the virus, it was inevitable I guess……