Page 256 [256]
254 PAL Géza BALOGH — Luca KaszAs — REBEKA MÁRTA Kiss
Our team’s largest research project to date was an INTERREG fruit research project
that ran from February to November 2021. The first step of our work was to map
the old fruit trees of the village, then to collect grafts and budwood for breeding,
which were propagated in the nurseries of Marton Drimmer in Sopronkévesd and
Ferenc Miské in Kondoros. The core of our research was our summer fieldwork.
During these sessions, we conducted semi-structured interviews with elderly
residents of Késpallag about their memories and experiences of fruit growing and
consumption. Our interviews were guided by Zsolt Szani’s questionnaire on a
similar topic (Szani 2014), which our team supplemented beforehand with
additional site-specific questions and other ideas that emerged. The ‘fruit’ of our
research was a publication titled ‘“7 have the love of the earth...” Fruit cultivation
in Késpallag’ (Balogh-Kiss-Gonda-Werlein 2021). At the end of October, we
organized the Késpallag Fruit Growers’ Day, where, in addition to presenting of
the book, we held several lectures on fruit-growing, round-table discussions, and,
in addition to professional programmes, we also offered quizzes, children’s
programmes, a dancehouse with csdngé dances and a lunch cooked in a cauldron
over an open fire.
One of the most rewarding aspects of pomological research was sharing
enthusiasm for the subject. The topic of fruit proved to be truly diverse in its
simplicity, as everyone has a connection with fruit; beyond the traditional
knowledge of agriculture, the topic offered a wealth of life stories, anecdotes,
individual experiences, habits and even individual and communal traumas.