You don't mess with me!

Someone else you do not mess with, Chanel. She might be
low down in the hierarchy but she doesn't like to be messed
with. Often we just ignore her and let her do her own
thing, knowing she will eventually follow the others. 
Cross her and spit happens!

Some of you may already be aware of the errrrmmmm, incident we had over the weekend. We'd just finished our morning coffee and I went to the loo. As I sat there, Ian shouted, "Come quick, the boys are out!" "I can't" I shouted back, feeling a bit helpless. There was something though about the urgency in Ian's voice and the fact he said the boys were out that suggested something was very, very wrong. The boys are out, usually means Ian wanders over and shouts for them or slowly drives them back to where they should be, it doesn't demand that I come as quickly as possible. So as soon as I could, I slipped on my wellies and pulled on my coat as fast as possible and I sped out of the caravan door. 

Lolly is getting tall these days

Turbjørn's neck has been a bit better just lately, but at least
it means he keeps well out of the way when there's an 
incident.

As I looked out of the greenhouse where our caravan now is, I could see what the problem was! It was complete and utter mayhem. The girls were running about and errrrrr so were the boys, all eight, no severn of them. Turbjørn, bless him is not up to any running about and any sign of trouble, he is out of there. So he was grazing quietly on the grass just outside the boys paddock area. Not where he should be but certainly not in any trouble. Meanwhile I could see Ian dragging alpacas by the neck, into or out of the girls paddock area. Separating, whoever he could. Not the best way to move them but all he could do under the circumstances.

Silla, did you have to sit down? You were awfully difficult 
to move

I ran over to Silla, who was obligingly sitting down for a male. She's supposed to be pregnant but this makes us think she's not. Anyway, there were three randy male alpacas intermittently trying to fight with each other and mate with her. Every time one tried to mount her I would push him into the others, over and over and over again. I was starting to wheeze when Ian eventually managed to get to me, having removed one male alpaca from the girls paddock and get as many of the females into the paddock area as possible, or something like that anyway. I was too busy fending off Brencis, Mr. P and Jakobs to take in all the details. We manhandled Silla into the other paddock meanwhile continuing to fend off Brencis and Mr. P. 

Mr. P. can be rather persistent when he's after the girls

Poor little lass, she looked so small surrounded by the boys.
No harm done anyway.

Looking around we saw Karla suddenly surrounded by quite a few of the boys. We hurtled up to her and managed to get between her and boys and shoved her through the gate, then Mari, who was also still on the outside. I can't remember the order of getting the girls inside the paddock areas but we managed to get all in, bar one. Antonia was the last one, but she was not having any male near her and somehow most of the boys realised that and didn't seem particularly interested. We don't think she's pregnant as she has a way of throwing off any male that tries that is really quite sneaky, but she was still fending off all advances anyway. 

Mr. Tellus was not going to miss out either!

I mentioned that Silla was sitting down, so was Aggie and Chanel. At least we know Aggie and Chanel are not pregnant as we decided not to mate them, so that was okay - sort of. Fortunately alpaca mating is a long affair and with all the mayhem we don't think they've had a chance to get any pregnant. We certainly don't want babies born at this time of year, although we will have to make sure sometime, I guess. Amanda and Ilvija were definitely resistant, so that is good news, but not quite the confirmation of pregnancy we would like. We would rather wait for the scan, which should be happening next month. Much less stressful that way.

At least you are where you're supposed to be

Come on guys! Pack it in! Stop fighting!

I don't care who started it!

He might be young, but he had more of an idea of what to
do than George did! I would rather have found that out
when he was supposed to be on mating duty, not before.

Next job! The boys. Surprisingly they didn't seem that interested in heading back to their own paddock. Ian tried to encourage them with food leading them away and I came up behind waving the herding sticks to keep them concentrated on Ian and not on Antonia who was still wandering around. Nope that didn't work. Instead we managed to get Antonia in with the other girls. Phew! Boys on the outside, girls on the inside. Turbjørn meanwhile sneakily helped himself to the food in the trays that Ian had to put down while we put Antonia away - smart lad that one!

Safely out of sight or are they? The boys are now in a field 
on the opposite side of the hill to the girls

Yes Mari! Eating through the fence hasn't been helpful!

So we caught our breath and tried to decide what was next. The fences aren't absolutely secure as the ground is so soft due to all the wet weather we've had just lately and some of the posts are in need of replacing due to Mari eating through the fence wire. We were worried that the boys might try to break through. While I paced backwards and forwards with the herding poles, Ian went to get some food to get the girls into the alpaca houses, at least there they would be secure. At one point I yelled to Ian to hurry up as Brencis was leaning on one part of the fence that was ominously toppling inwards. I managed to move Brencis away from the fence, or rather shoved him away, and Ian came as fast as he could. I helped Ian encourage first one group of girls and then the other group into the alpaca houses. They were on edge and so a bit reluctant. At least the girls were now safe. 

No girls in sight, right!

Yes! George still had the "right" idea, just the wrong timing!

Back to the boys. We gave them a few minutes to calm down and then tried to encourage them back. They still weren't convinced that they should go back. We'd just get some of them heading in one direction and then some would turn around. Eventually, all but Mr. P grouped together and slowly, slowly we moved them towards their paddock area. Some were standing their ground a little more than normal to me, but eventually they went through the gate. Ian sorted them out while I went to look for Mr. P. 

Peace and calm! Well when the wind doesn't blow over
the hunting tower.

Mr. P saw me coming and decided to go around the fence in the opposite direction. I was going to drive him back when I realised if I followed him around, I stood a chance of herding him into an area where I could catch him. Once again, slowly, slowly with the herding poles, ........into the corner and ....caught him, at the same time I discarded the poles. He was a bit resistant but I hung on. I had seen Ian was heading in my direction while I was herding Mr. P. and then go back, I assumed he'd gone to get a harness. I was so relieved to see Ian harness Mr.P. up and them both of them toddling off back to where he should be. 

Just like I said boys! No one messes with me! Got it?

We normally only have two cups of coffee in one day, but this was a three cup of coffee kind of a day. As I sat there, wheezing like I had been smoking a packet of cigarettes a day all my life, I smirked to myself, as I thought about what I had just been doing. "Ha!" I thought! "No one messes with me! I can fight off three and at one point, four randy male alpacas trying to mate with a receptive female." Not quite sure that works on a CV, but you know, it makes me feel I can take on the world! For a while anyway!

Cooling down

At least here they are just chasing each other
around. It will do some of them some good and
a good work out to warm themselves up.

We had a heavy frost this morning and several, large flocks of geese were making a determined headway southwards. Yes! Winter is creeping up. Not quite here yet, but you can hear its whisper in the cold northerly breeze, or the crunch of the ice underfoot on a frosty morning. Today was one of those glorious late autumn days, crisp in the morning and bright sunshine all day. The boys came out fighting, only Turbjørn didn't join in at all. Something was in the air as they are not normally like that. The younger boys usually get a bit argumentative in the evenings, but never in the mornings. The nip in the air didn't leave all day, but at least it was better than the damp, wet days, which we've had a few too many of just lately.

The physio came out to see Turbjørn this last week.
He had a painful spot on his neck, not just the 
stiffness he normally has these days. She gave him
some laser heat treatment on it and Ian is giving
him regular treatments with the heat pad again. Mind
you, he's not that bad as he's still sitting outside when
it rains. He was so wet one morning that Ian couldn't
use the heat pad - he would have sizzled.

Oh oh! This is looking serious

Sunday morning I cut down the shrivelled remains of the Jerusalem artichokes and started the process of digging up the tubers - at least enough to clear some ground for Ian to dump the alpaca manure and expand the bed widthways. The rain set in for the afternoon, but fortunately I had some proofreading to occupy my time. I also dug up the dahlias that I raised from seed this year. The tubers are drying off in the little greenhouse ready to be taken back to the apartment. I also cleared and mulched another bed and so now nearly all the beds are settled down for their winter sleep. 

Not just the odd flock of geese this time. Lots
of flocks have been flying over. Winter won't 
be long now, so they say!

Wish vegetable gardening was this easy. Just
put the animals out on the grass and let them
eat it down. Not much mowing goes on these
days.

I need to work on the garden for next year, as it has started to get out of hand and take too long to deal with. I'm thinking of a very low maintenance to no veg gardening next year to give me time to get the flower and herb garden sorted and make the veg beds more manageable. It doesn't mean we will have nothing to eat from the garden, there are plenty of herbs. 

There are some gardeners on our land who we 
do not appreciate. The moles have been
working overtime. They are all round the
greenhouse and have even been digging up in our
new greenhouse now. They are in various places
in the fields. They also dug up the ditch and
blocked it so Ian has taken up the small bridges
and has re-dug it. So far they haven't been back-
close but not back yet! 

Such a glorious golden autumn

There are also plenty of wild edible weeds that we eat a lot of in spring and I can sort of cultivate them too. Nettles are really nutritious and if we cut them back they can be harvested later too. I've already put some potatoes in to see if they will be okay over winter. I know I've tried it before and it didn't work but then again the winter was hard that year. We seem to have lots of potatoes that grow up anyway where I haven't planted them and they are cheap to replace, so no big worries. 

...panning round a bit more

Such a profusion of colours, all bathed in a 
golden light

I might also buy some plants instead of trying to raise them myself and put some seeds in that can overwinter. I tried it before with parsnips and that worked really well. Those sorts of veg don't seem to need a lot of work and so can just sort themselves out with a bit of mulching later on. . Once I have the garden under control I could then think about late summer and autumn vegetables as they seem to be doing okay. The garlic is already in too. It is easy to put that kind of thing in after the potatoes have been removed (I say removed rather than dug up as I don't use a spade - no need and a lot fewer losses from spade or fork damage). After the potatoes the bed is clear and just needs a quick raking over and then mulching. 

Then we had the damp squib of a day which
drained the colour and makes the photos look
like a slightly faded one from the 70s. Karla 
and Lolly were wet through this week, but
none the worse for it.

Generally they get on, but sometimes little Lolly
pushes Karla to her limit. Karla is smaller in
height but much stronger than Lolly. But 
Lolly can outrun all the girls I think with her
long legs and boundless energy.

Another aspect I really need to sort out is compost. We have plenty of manure and that, but not a convenient place to compost it all. I need the compost for starting seeds and it seems daft to buy it in when we have so much stuff that could be composted. I could do with doing some hot composting to get rid of weed seeds and then bagging it up, but I just don't seem to get organised enough for the beginning of the year. April and May is just such a busy time, both for the academic and agricultural year, that trying to fit in finding compost, raising seeds, finding sticks for beans and so on, all gets too much. Starting earlier isn't an option either in our short season, as the ground can still be frozen in March and we still risk hard frosts and snow. 

Like miniature stained glass windows.

Looking gorgeous there Mr. P

Ian will have to get cracking with wood chopping, as now we have finally got the wood to the apartment and down in the cellar there, ready for our return in winter. I say we. We both stacked the horse box and Ian did one run to the apartment on his own. I had work to do and there was rain forecast which makes getting the horse box on and off the land tricky, so he made a start. We both went another morning to finish it off. We made it before it rained anyway. It would have been done earlier but we had a problem with a delivery of flour. I get my organic flour online and it was too heavy to use the post box and it had to be sent by courier. Well there are problems with our address since the administrative changes as there are now two places in our larger municipality with the same name and the courier got the wrong one. I always wince when people swear in my language. I'm not the swearing sort and so this just kind of compounds it. I did feel sorry for him though as I know they are on a tight schedule. 

A soggy Brencis

Mr. Tellus with a few glistening jewels

I heard last week that the paper that seems to have gone on for ever has finally been accepted. I sighed a huge sigh of relief but then got a message that they would like a summary of the paper for policymakers and the general public. Oh boy! Just condense 18 months of work into 1000 words please! Don't use anything too technical! Okay but it's one of the most technical papers I've ever written.... so....anyway it's done and sent off to my colleagues to comment on. Work seemed to be piling up this last week but at least I've managed to clear some backlogs in the last two days and can now get back on with the more routine side of things - whatever that is. 

A two-tone George

Golden morning rain with Freddie and Jakobs

A rainbow in our forest

The other end of the rainbow on the hill

Two-tone George on a frosty morning

Josefs and Freddie fighting

Still at it

Josefs taking a breather

Morning jog

Father and son wrestling now.

Now it's Freddie and George's turn. But don't
worry, Ian calmed them down after a while and
no one was hurt.

Ice on the car

A disagreement this time between Freddie and 
Jakobs.

You're supposed to fly south!

A glorious autumnal day

Have we missed winter? Did we fall asleep and not wake up for months? It felt like that on Sunday when a small flock of large geese flew north east. After a few minutes one lone goose flew south west. It was honking away as if to say, "I told you all, you're flying the wrong way, but would you listen? No!" I knew how it was feeling. There are times I feel like I'm just flying the opposite way to everyone else, but I think we all feel like that from time to time. 

....but winter is on its way. The photo looks 
greener than it did that morning

...to prove my point

Well, Latvia is in a state of emergency again for the next three months. People are simply not getting vaccinated in enough numbers. The government are organising mobile vaccination clinics and hopefully that will help in the more rural areas. There are also more restrictions on non-vaccinated people, which seems to be providing an incentive to get in line to get the jab. Meanwhile Sweden, Norway and Denmark have reopened after they have vaccinated a high proportion of their population. It's not rocket science. Vaccines work. It brings down the incidence. It reduces the severity of the disease even if you do get the virus. But as long as people are not getting vaccinated in enough numbers this whole stupid situation continues and the virus goes round and round and round.

Mari. Ian mulched this long, dry grass today

Two trailers! There's a kids story in there 
somewhere. 

Not sure if ivermectin is a thing in Latvia but I understand that it is elsewhere in the world. Marvellous! So not only do we have a virus circulating around due to a lack of vaccinated people we are storing up problems for resistant parasites, as people take ivermectin as a precaution against Covid19. There is already a huge problem in the livestock industry of resistant parasites. So mange anyone? And yes people can get it too and it's called scabies. Or maybe a nice intestinal parasite like roundworm or a wonderful case of lice. Oh life will be fun when we can't get rid of these things because they are resistant. It will add to our woes with failing antibiotics due to overuse. 

The girls enjoying the sunny spots these days, 
after spending the summer seeking the shade.

Silla!

Well life for us does carry on in our little rural bubble, especially as we've closed the farm to visitors for the winter, so I don't think we slept the winter away. Our caravan is now back in the greenhouse. It didn't seem to go in very easily and it took a bit of too-ing and fro-ing to get it up the ramp and in but at least there were no disasters - close but not disasters. It's a good job that this autumn hasn't been as wet as last year, because it was mid-November before we got the caravan in the greenhouse that year. The weather this October though has been mainly dry and over the weekend it has been glorious, if a little cool. This last week we had a couple of hard frosts that finished off any tender plants, but we still have plenty of hardy stuff in the garden.  

Spot the babies! They're getting big now

Not long before Ilvija will be scanned to see if
she's pregnant.

The dark blue grapes have now been cut back, a bucketful of them steamed and some of the remains sieved. I did give up after the third attempt at unjamming the hand food strainer though. This was despite using the right insert in the strainer that is supposed to handle grape pips. Oh well! The tub full of pulp was added to what might be the last of the autumn raspberries and steamed in the pressure cooker to add to porridge over the winter. Another job done. We still have other grapes and they will have to be cut soon, but they've held up under the frosts. 

Aggie. She's a funny one. She seems like she's
almost getting motherly with Lolly. A bit late now.

Aggie's eye is slowly getting better now. She's
had more antibiotics and now on a steroid
cream as well. It might be caused by ingrowing
eyelashes but we will check again, once all
the swelling has gone down.

Today was glorious again and so I took half a day off to stack wood in the horse box with Ian. That's another job that needed to be done before winter rains set in. That was enough for Ian's back and so I will take another half day off to help him stack it in the basement. It felt a bit of an odd day, frosty first thing but then a relatively warm wind from the south. No wonder those geese were confused. It felt like something was in the air, a wind of change. I'm basically an optimist, despite the rant above, my optimism keeps me going, pushing forwards for change. It's six years since the song, "Winds of change" hammered into my brain (link). Six years ago seems like a lifetime away and so many situations have taken a turn for the worse. More countries feel precarious or on the edge. 

Lolly has grown well on grass and bottles of milk
from the neighbour's cows. Ian has dropped one 
of her feeds in preparation for weaning and also
to ensure she is ready for when we do go back
to the apartment and cannot give her late night 
feeds.

Karla looking dreamy

But it is times like these when change happens. A generation has gone since the Scorpions sang their song and now it is time for a new generation to rise up and step away from the path that others have trod towards destroying the planet on which we live. Change scares us, but staying the same scares me more. I want to pass on a living, breathing planet to my children and grandchildren. Not a shrivelled up wasteland that we are preparing for them at the moment. We've seen in the last couple of years that if nature is given space it can grow in abundance. It can fill the gap. If we don't! It's not even worth contemplating. So I will continue on my path of looking towards the landscape changes that will be needed to give nature and people space to breathe. The paths that involve political change, individual change, system change, the lot. That path will also continue on our own land, as I give myself room to breathe and space to think. It's been awhile!

Vanessa soaking up the sun again

Sometimes there two are the best of pals and
sometimes they're not. Like kids really!

Chanel is still giving us cause for concern. She
might be having a course of ivermectin. At least
in this case it will be used for what it is intended 
to be used for as an anti-parasite medicine to treat
mites.