At last!

Taking hay to put in the chicken arks for bedding

At last we had a few days sunshine in a row without rain. This has meant a lot of feverish activity as farmers were out in the fields cutting hay while they could. We have hung back to let the ground dry as we are not in a backlog of folks relying on others to cut and bale, we have our own equipment. It is forecast to rain tomorrow and then after that it should be dry again for a longer period of time. Instead we have got other jobs done that are on the list of to-do when it is dry enough.

The finished new herb bed. So far it has garden mint, hyssop
winter savory, thyme, golden thyme, chocolate mint, garlic
chives, sage, tarragon, variegated sage and some
lavender cuttings. 

Ian wanted to get the old wood chippings up off the road, as they have been down a few years now and starting to rot, which means it gets wet rather than giving us a good road to drive on. The aim is to add a new deep layer of chippings since it has worked so well up until recently, but before we did that the old chippings had to go somewhere. Since they are well rotted now, it was decided to use them for a herb bed and cranberry bed that I intended to make, which in turn meant I needed old logs to construct them with. The logs had got covered with bracken and other vegetation and so Ian had to strim the areas, find the logs and then move them with the tractor - now that the ground was dry enough. Some smaller rotten logs were also cut with a chainsaw to provide the main base of the herb bed and give the herb bed some water retaining content that should rot down over time. I was rather pleased with the result and it now means the herbs which are not so vigorous don't get swamped by the marjoram or the autumn raspberries that are now taking over the old herb plot.

The cranberry bed is on the other side of the pond, by the
forest. It is in a raised bed just to keep the weeds at bay, so
we hope it won't dry out too much for them. At least the
wood should hold quite a bit of moisture.

The rain has caused us a lot of problems, as I mentioned before. Our friends from America have not been able to help around the place, as much as they would like. They have cooked us meals and frozen lots of berries, which is really helpful and time consuming but many of the jobs we had anticipated doing, have just not got done. They did manage to get some posts in for our fencing this last week, so all we need to do is put the wire on when we get the chance, but that was all they managed to get done one day before the rain set in again.

I think this is a damselfly rather than a dragonfly. A pretty
colour anyway

We have still been busy of course, picking mushrooms (I really must take the camera with me sometime, as there are so many different sorts this year and unusual ones I haven't seen before), weeding the garden, mowing grass and running for cover from the rain. Yesterday was a lovely day and so we uncovered some sawdust in bags that were a bit damp and needed to dry out for our composting toilet. There was no forecast of rain and so we left them uncovered overnight. During the night though I heard the rain starting and so I quickly got up and ran outside, barefoot over the grass. It was a good job the rain was warm and we live in the heart of the countryside.

This is my favourite part of the bed. I managed to divide the
golden thyme into three and planted it with the chocolate
mint. I think they look great together or will do when they
grow a little more

Ian made table for helping with the cleaning of the wool. It is a wire mesh on a wooden frame, so it can be used for laying out the fleece and getting rid of particularly dirty bits - that is for the sheep fleece mainly though as they have much dirtier fleeces and is called a skirting table. Sounds a silly name really but refers to the outer bits of the fleece, which is where the dirtiest bits are and comes from the same word we get outskirts from. Being a mesh means we can also lay out wet fleeces that have been through a cleaning process to dry. Now we can start to process some of the fleeces for dyeing more easily. Little by little we are making progress.

The amaranth in the greenhouse is growing really well. We
were worried at first that they would shade out the chillis,
peppers and tomatoes, but the tomatoes don't seem to
mind and the chillis and peppers seem to be even thriving in
the shade, which surprised us.

Our chicks this week have been proving adept at becoming escape artists. Chicken wire is expensive and so we only use it to make a small enclosure for the chickens rather than use it to fence the whole garden. I tried to extend the area for them since there are now seven of them in a small area but didn't have any more chicken wire and so I attached net bags to the outer fence. They can just walk through the outer fence as the holes are too big to keep chickens in and only to keep sheep in and wild boar out. At first I found out they were getting out by walking up the corner support post and then just jumping out, so I put net bags over that to stop them walking out. They had had their wings clipped or rather half of one wing, to stop them flying over the fence, but they have been flapping and clawing their way up the net bags so I re-clipped their wings to see if that would help and found it isn't. I feel like the farmer in Chicken Run, those chickens are up to something.

A close up of the cranberry bed

Ian has been able to get on with flail mowing in between the showers. Normally it is just to keep the grass down in areas where we live at the moment, so around the caravan and greenhouse and part of the field. This keeps the insects down to a more manageable level. Ian also occasionally flail mows areas where the animals will be moved do, as they don't eat long grass. If we had cattle, they would be put on first and then followed by the sheep or alpacas to eat the grass down before resting the area. He also mows after the animals have been on it to cut down the type of weeds they don't eat, such as ground elder and docks, so they don't dominate the grass afterwards. We aim for animals to eat in the same area around twice in one year, to give the grass plenty of time to recover.

Having a bad hair day

This week though Ian managed to clip the boys paddock fence with the mower and broke some fence posts. They were already on the list of jobs to do because they were ready for replacing fortunately. He also flail mowed the oats and clover. The clover was planned as it is being used as a cover crop at the moment, but the oats were because they had been flattened in the rain and there was no point in collecting them. So we have plenty of mulch, just nothing much in the way of grain crops and something we need to re-evaluate in the years ahead.

A nearly full moon

Normally at weekends we make sure we are on site to welcome visitors but this week we went to our friend's celebration on her farm. It is such a privilege to see how far she has come, as we knew her before she had even bought the farm and watched the first few painful years as she adjusted to the life there. She had helped run a sheep farm and camp before, but her farm is now more isolated in winter and the first few winters had a lot of snow which proved a headache. Slowly though she built up a flock of goats from a few - I think - donated ones to the point she now has about 70 including kids. She has also built up a reputation for her cheese and people come from all over to buy some and visit the farm. It made a nice change to be part of the party wishing her success in the future.

Lady V getting comfortable in the shade

We had a test drill for a well just before the rains started but not seen anything of the guy recently, so we asked a friend to make some enquiries to see what was happening and finally he turned up this weekend with another guy who speaks English and helped us with our electric supply a few years ago. They did another test drill to check out the exact layering of the area where they think there's a good water supply and it was looking good. Apparently we have soil first, then a layer of clay, then a layer of water bearing sand, followed by clay again. They are going to start to dig the well on Saturday so hopefully that is another step forward for us.

You have to look hard but the specks in the distance are the
storks flying way up high, just before they went

It was a bit sad today as we said good bye to our American friends as they set off home after their two month stay. They have been in our apartment most of the time and we have only been back to do the washing and have showers, so it will seem a bit odd now for them not to be there, when we go. We don't intend to move back yet though, we will stay out on the land until it is too cold for us in the caravan. The signs that winter is approaching are all around though, from the occasional tree turning autumnal to the storks gathering and leaving. It is an odd feeling when the storks do that. They start gathering a few weeks or days before and then one day you may see a whole flock of them circling higher and higher, then the next thing you see is they suddenly veer off and they are gone. The swallows are still around, but one day they will just disappear off too and we won't see them until they return in the spring.

Four hung around just a few minutes more

Our boys

As we were in our village to say goodbye to our friends we decided to eat at the bakery for lunch, as we haven't done that in ages. We used to go for a walk every Sunday and have a pastry at the bakery, but now we are out on our land doing tasks or welcoming visitors. Things have changed such a lot for our friend, but also for us over the last few years. None of us really envisaged doing what we are doing now about ten years ago. Maybe we dreamt of doing something similar but not exactly and certainly for us, we never imagined it would be possible to be farming alpacas, in fact we wouldn't have even been sure what an alpaca looked like exactly and we would have been like most of our visitors who get mixed up between alpacas and llamas.

Whose my mummy?

So here is Agnese in front, we know this is Agnese because
we named her, but who is it behind? Is it Veronica or
Snowdrop? We call her Snowdrop and she is not the mum
of Agnese. The lady facing into the wall is Agnese's mum
but is she really called Snowdrop or is it Veronica as we
have been calling her? Hmmm!

We had a bit of a shock this week, we might have got the lady alpacas mixed up. We bought three alpaca ladies and were given another alpaca for free, because she was old, back in October of last year. The old lady we had put down in May of this year, because she never really recovered from unexpectedly giving birth in January. Unfortunately baby died five days after being born. We then knew that two of the ladies were pregnant and they gave birth in May, one baby survived and the other did not. We decided to microchip the baby Agnese and so the vet came round to have a look at our animals, particularly one of the boys who is struggling with a skin problem and the mum of the baby to check her udder, as it is a bit swollen. Before microchipping the baby, she checked where the chips were put in the ladies. She couldn't find Estelle's chip, but she found Veronica's and Snowdrop's, only there was a problem. The names we had been calling the ladies, didn't match with the chip numbers, they were the other way around.  Now Ian is trying desperately to remember why he thought they were named the way they were. The old lady was easy to identify, as she was black in colour. Estelle was easy too, she was the youngest by far and not pregnant. Now this wouldn't matter too much, but we have got a young alpaca that needs to have a correct breeding line identified. We know who the father is for definite, but is her mother really called Veronica or is it Snowdrop? Not sure how we sort that one out yet.

This tomato was big enough to feed five of us on our
ham sandwiches

The dishwasher, aka  Joanna! (I only found out this week
that aka is actually an acronym for also known as. I just
thought it was a word. You live and learn!)

Another surprise, although not quite such a shock, was some American friends coming to our village. We knew they would probably be coming, but weren't entirely sure when and so were surprised to have contact asking if they could stay that night and then for the following week. We were able to accommodate them on the first night, but the next night we already had a request for a young family to stay who had a one year old and they didn't want to stay in a tent for a conference that was happening in the camp nearby to our land. As we had been really busy, a group of three folks came and cleaned up some of the rooms in the apartment, such as kitchen, bedroom and bathroom, so it was at least liveable in, prior to our friend's request to stay. Which worked out rather nicely I think. So our friends stayed one night and just slung a sheet over the bed to keep it clean and then we directed the young family to the apartment for the next night. We kind of got talking and it was midnight before we got to our own bed that night, but the young couple were so intrigued about what we were doing and seeing the alpacas, they organised to come and see us the following morning out on the land.

A humongous caterpillar. I think it might be an elephant
hawk moth. Certainly big enough

We have found that the addition of the new extension to
the alpaca house has resulted in rain running off the roof
and into the alpaca house, causing the bedding to become
saturated. Ian has now dug a trench around to try and take
the water away and it is getting its first test tonight.

The next morning our American friends came to help us shift bales of hay - the last load of good or at least reasonable hay, up to our neighbours barn for storage and just as we were finishing the young couple came for their tour of our land. Their little fella loved all the animals, but was completely fascinated with the chickens. It was quite amusing to see how captivated with the chickens he was, he was obviously not aware that chickens can be seen in many places, but he won't often get to see alpacas in Latvia - well not at the minute anyway.

We found the cranberries this week. Not ripe yet, but still
safe inside our giant lobster pot. Surprisingly enough no lobsters yet! 

The barley was chopped up in a garden shredder and it
seemed to do a good job of separating the seed from the
stalks. The shredded stalks will be bedding for the
chickens and some of the seed will be sifted to get pure seed,
the rest will be give with chaff for the chickens to sort
through in winter. At least the principle worked and next
year we could manage a bigger plot of barley.

Our American friends split their time between us and our friends who live on a goat farm. They helped us with some of the jobs, like gathering in the barley, some of the buckwheat and some of the beginnings of the tomato glut, but some work we couldn't do because of the weather or just too tired. For Ian, especially, it was a good time to sit down and talk about what has been happening, which was a bit like having a holiday for him. It has been a bit of a tough year and so we both feel a bit drained at times and just processing what has been happening was good for us. They also took us out for a meal, something we haven't done in a long time. We have had pizza in the big town, but that was out of necessity and not just because it was a nice thing to do (the pizzas are amazing and made by an Italian and so necessity works too), so having a meal, just for the sake of it was a refreshing change.

Barley seed

Yes that is me, up in the tractor bucket
collecting rowan berries to make rowan
berry jam. It is very tart and goes nicely
with pork, but we like it on toast too.
It is supposed to be good for sore throats,
as are most berries.

The weather this week has either been really hot or stormy. It has been 35C (95F) some days and I have been finding that it is not ideal having hot flushes in this kind of heat. Hot flushes in winter at -25C (-13F) fine, even helpful, but not at 35C. It's a good job they are not real humdingers of hot flushes, just mildly uncomfortable. One storm in particular was a sight to behold though. We are used to torrential rain and I have told you about the gulley washing storms. It is kind of normal from our experience of summers in Latvia, but one night the rain was so hard that it looked like a power shower on steroids. The gutters for the apartment couldn't handle the rain, we are not sure if they are partially blocked or just weren't up to that volume of rain, but they overflowed and ran down the wall of our home. The water then found a gap just under the window and started raining in. Ian fortunately spotted it and constructed a way of catching the water in a bowl, by jamming a tea-towel into the hole with a brush that was jammed against a piece of furniture and then the towel dripped into the bowl. It worked anyway. Ian was worried though about the animals and the barn out on the land and so late in the evening he set back off to the land to see what was happening, only to find out the storm was very localised and there wasn't a problem out on the land, so he arrived back at midnight.

See it really is me!

Our shot of the perigee moon

I forgot to mention the other week that I helped my friend who has the goat farm translate her website. She told me approximately what was said and I had to write something that made sense in English along the same lines. It was really hard. My friend speaks perfectly adequate English and we understand her pretty well, but it is still with a very Latvian way of speaking and trying to put that into a more normal English sentence structure, rather challenged my brain and made me realise how long it is since we left the UK. Sometimes I can't find the right words at all and sometimes my own sentence structure lets me down. So anyway, here is the website and if you spot any mistakes or want to make any suggestions to improve the English then you are more than welcome to send me an email.

The swallows are growing up fast. It probably won't be
long before they are flying and then migrating.
Seems hard to believe when they are so tiny.

Other little snippets of news this week includes the ongoing saga of the oat crop. Well it is no more. Ian and I went to see if we could salvage anything and there wasn't even any seed left on the battered stalks, in fact the whole of the field was flattened by the time the wild boar had finished. I guess that is why I am not too upset that African Swine Fever seems to be creeping nearer and nearer to our land. I realise I shouldn't, but the numbers had been allowed to get unnaturally high, by feeding the little darlings through the winter and this is only to be expected. Hopefully nature will right the balance and we we can all live happily ever after again with just some damage every now and again. We are not sure if the wild boar ate the seed or it is just trampled into the ground. We know that at least some of it will have been and so we are going to leave it as it is and wait for the seed to germinate and cover the area, then we can put the sheep on it to manure the patch and hopefully trample the stalks into the ground. At least that way there will be some use from it.

Not to be left out, Estelle and yes, this really is Estelle.
Her ear tag matches the notes 

Ark 4 with the little chicks. This ark may make its way up
to the girls paddock. Ian has noticed that there are a lot
less flies in the boys alpaca house than the girls and he
thinks it may indeed be due to the presence of the chickens.
We often joke that the cleaning team are going in, as the
first thing the chickens do when let out is go straight into
the alpaca house to have a scratch around. The chickens
have been a bit of a nuisance, but if they make our alpacas
lives a bit easier by reducing the flies, then they have their
place.

Ian played bird saviour again this week, this time from the jaws of our cat. After a spell in a shoe box to recover, he let it loose in the woods where it flew off into a tree, hopefully a much wiser little bird. We keep telling Sofie, our cat, "furry things, good, feathered things, bad," but she isn't getting it. She still is getting furry things and demonstrated it today by bringing me a live mouse for me to catch. I wasn't playing and so I don't think she was impressed with my hunting skills either. One day this last week, we could see Sofie was on the alert and watching something. She set off slowly as if on the hunt. I got up to check on what it was that she was hunting, only to find it was one of our new chicks. They are proving to be great escape artists, which is not helpful with cats, ospreys and storks around. I know the ospreys are going to be off soon, as we have seen them gathering and many of the storks have already left, there are just a few who will also leave soon if they are not too sick to do so, but the cat will still be there and so those little fellas had better watch out.

One of the many ospreys we have seen this week. Looking
for a chicken dinner? Good job the new cockerel, seems
to be doing his job.

Close up of ark 4. Definitely a franken ark, made up of lots
of scraps, mainly from the girls alpaca house.

One of my supervisors was at his holiday home in Latvia and so we took a trip up to see them. We had a great time chatting and a lovely lunch with Yorkshire puds - a rare treat for us northerners far from our native land (said in a heavy northern accent, just in case you are having a grammar fit). A colleague of my supervisor works for a Latvian university, but also has a holiday home in the area and so my supervisor tried to connect us up. He rang and rang and in true British style we started to make jokes about this colleague that I had never seen. I had heard him talked about many a time, by both supervisors, I had even had an email from him, but did he really exist? Eventually a little later than planned, someone did indeed turn up, still we didn't see the ID, so the question remains, does the mysterious colleague really exist? Joking apart, at least he is going to try and encourage some of his new students to do a project with me, so I can get the kind of data I require for my own studies. I shall find out whether he was successful by mid-September.