KALOCSA, Oct 5 — Working from before dawn until midnight, farmers Nikoletta Pajsan Nagy and Laszlo Pajsan fought Europe’s driest summer ever to save their red pepper harvest in Hungary.
Unable to irrigate much of their two-and-a-half-hectare (six-acre) land because power lines run across it, they repeatedly loosened the soil around the plants, which are used to make the central European country’s signature spice, paprika.
“I was absolutely convinced that we’d have to take on part-time jobs because they’d burn out,” Pajsan Nagy, 44, told AFP, while selling her family’s products at the annual town fair in Kalocsa, in southern Hungary.
“But somehow the crop turned out bigger and more beautiful than in previous years. It was a miracle,” she said, recalling some 20-hour days in the field.
