Slovakian Countryside

So this weekend we went on a beautiful drive to get to the Oravsky Hrad (Castle). And Orava is one of the most traditional regions of Slovakia. Very religious and seemingly very agricultural.  So I saw some pretty cool things.

First though, we had to go through Donovaly (which is a beautiful ski resort town).  So we had mountains, and ski lifts and cool chalet's.

Then we saw cows. Which i hadn't seen in Slovakia yet.  So this was exciting. The owner was even out with them with his dog.

We saw a couple tractors out in the fields.

But mostly we saw older men and women out in fields doing work by hand. One guy was spreading manure by hand. He had it in a trailer but he was spreading it on this field using a shovel (keep in mind this field was not very big... Maybe double my Grandma Nawrot's front lawn? But that is still alot of work!) There was a cute old lady with a hoe in one field.  But I think the most amazing moment was when we saw this:

Yes, this is two men ploughing a field using a horse drawn plow. I really wanted to stop and talk with these people. But we were on a schedule... I don't think I'll ever forget this though.

There also was hay drying on these racks that are kinda triangular?  We saw one guy putting the hay on it, and yes this is another job done entirely by hand. I'm guessing it will go on a hay stack somewhere when it is dry.  

So all these farm things made me think of how hard it used to be to be a farmer.  I don't even know if my grandparents plowed with a horse... maybe on their parents' farm?  

But the last cool thing we saw totally could still happen on my farm.  HONEY!  They were selling honey on the side of the road.  But the coolest stuff was hazelnuts in honey... the idea sounds good... and they looked good... but I didn't buy them.

So that is all for the Slovakian countryside for now.  I'm sure there will be alot more to come.