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This year Easter is unusually late in the year, on May 5th. This of course does not stop me from writing about it unusually early, starting this Monday and ending we will see when, ho! It`s just that there is so much to say about Easter… I personally love this holiday, so does everyone here on farmhopping`s team. I can think of like a million reasons as this blessed day has always had special family value for me. On one hand, it’s the family gathering, Christmassy moment. Yes, we could use more of those days in our family :) On the other, the food, oh, the food! I guess every family adopts some of the traditions passed on from generation to generation and here I will tell you a bit about how my family celebrated.

It all begins with the egg dying, so, so much fun. We did the eggs on Thursday before the holiday. As you can imagine, everyone always tried to come up with the most creative egg, we`ve never limited ourselves to just the traditional red, green, yellow, blue colors. There was this one time I put a lot of effort into winning the competition, I remember generating ideas on what egg I`ll make for weeks and weeks before dying day; I had my sketches, all kind of prep work so as to make sure mine is the best. Since I was something like 6 then, which makes my brother 1 and a half, ergo my mother virtually exhausted pretty much all the time, just like my dad… well, you get the picture, no one had put that much effort into preparing their egg, so they all admitted mine was the best. Funny thing is, I have absolutely no idea what did the egg look like, can you imagine, after all that.

Then we have the church visit. Gosh, such a beautiful thing that is. It`s late in the evening, we go out and it`s so thrilling, because we are never allowed staying up so late, nevertheless going out. The church is packed, outside there is this huge, friendly crowd, everyone quietly waiting for the service to begin. Then it begins and it ends, one the clock strikes midnight the bells ring, we take out the eggs we brought with us and start this year`s game of whose egg is the strongest. You cling your egg with that of your opponent; the one that survives most fights is called borak and kept until next year and is a sign of good luck. The tradition is to light your candle in the church and then manage to bring the sacred light home. The loveliest part is seeing all those people on the street, after midnight, everyone carefully caring a lit candle. Some of my earliest childhood memories are about Easter breakfast, it happens on the morning after church, on Sunday. We almost never sat together for breakfast, but on this day it was the rule; there was always milk with cocoa, the amazing kozunak bread, yellow cheese. M-m-m-m. Easter breakfast was on the very Easter day, as the evening before that we all went to church.

Then is lunch, we were always invited at my aunt`s house, where we had the doubtful pleasure of meeting relatives we haven`t seen since last Easter :) Anyways, the magical lamb she served was making up for all the meaningless conversations and overall boredom we traditionally experienced at such gatherings. I never decided on which I love more, lamb or kozunak bread, oh. Believe me if you wish, but just thinking about all the delicious food makes me almost faint, I want it now, why does it have to be another two weeks until the holiday… but that`s it, you know, that`s what traditions are for, to be kept. Last but not the least, I must mention the new tradition farmhopping is trying to establish: ordering fresh lamb or goat meat for the holiday :) In this way you will be supporting farm Perun`s mission for protecting endangered Bulgarian domestic breeds such as the Karakachan sheep and Long-haired goat and in the same time consuming clean, tasty, natural food. More details on how to order(valid only for Bulgaria, though, sorry) are here: http://www.farmhopping.com/bg/farms/view/2/