Kalaka, garden-raising photos by Edible Estate #12 / Blood Mountain Foundation photographer, Andras Kare (and yes, that is the mayor of Kispest Budapest who brought his son to help garden, being interviewed for TV news in the center)

…the name for ‘the old Transylvanian tradition of the whole village getting together to do a job, usually building a house but can be other things as well’ which I learned from a landscape architect friend here in Budapest, perfectly describes the collective frenzied focused gardening activity on day 1 of 2 planting Edible Estates #12,  that had us moving, digging, raking, shoveling, sprinkling, mounding, edging, and building morning til night in the company of friends, family, and neighborhood gardeners (plus the mothers of the Szende-Lenard’s, who were in the kitchen most of the day preparing a huge pot of something very meaty – but also making me a special vegan Hungarian divine mushroom dish – before finishing the day by raking each of the new planting beds perfectly smooth) – going from scrappy weedy messy sandy chaos, to curvy and ovaly slightly raised planting beds (enclosed by beautiful terra cotta roof tiles that the Szende-Lenard’s had piled up in the yard) where tomorrow we will get plants, seeds, trees, and bushes in the ground, then topped with some crazy beautiful mushroom mulch, another local specialty.