Storms in the heavenlies

The Heavenlies are churning

It has been a bit weird today. A thunderstorm started around two in the morning and it didn’t really shift until about two in the afternoon. I’ve never known a thunderstorm roll on for so long. It makes me wonder if this is part of an answer to prayer. On Saturday I was walking between our two apartments and a strong breeze was blowing and I started praying for the winds of change to blow through our village, for the hidden things to be revealed and justice to flow. All through last night I could sense the flashes of lights, but there wasn’t a great deal of thunder that I could hear - I can sleep through thunderstorms though - but each time there was a flash I kept thinking it was angels zipping through the room. I remember thinking I know how the disciples felt on the day that Jesus was betrayed, as I couldn’t keep my eyes open I felt so sleepy. It was as if I was sensing something changing but was too tired to work out what. Well maybe that is the meanderings of sleep befuddled mind, but if things start changing here in our village and justice happens for the oppressed then I shall be very happy.

A Bumble bee gathering pollen from one of  our
numerous, nay billions of dandelions

Of course it might not just be our village where justice starts to roll out. Only this week the facade that Latvia is doing very well after the financial crisis swung open. A report finally mentioned that people are not doing well in Latvia, no matter what the GDP statistics say. A UN expert raised concerns about the problems of the poorest and raised concerns that the economically active are leaving the country, he also stated that the improving economic situation had to address the issues urgently. It makes sense really as these issues do not aid the sustainability of a nation’s economy.

The tadpoles are getting big

I am writing this blog in our caravan out on the land, not that we have the internet here but I can still use my laptop to type this up. The rain has been that heavy from the thunderstorm that it was even been bouncing off the ponds and the overflow pipes between the ponds are gushing, even the middle pond that loses water easily is full to overflowing and so there wasn’t a lot of chance of getting on with much but I did manage some greenhouse work. Ian has been out in the rain checking on all the structures;


Horse box - needs a new top
Workshop that will become the alpaca home- the roof is no longer leaking, so that’s okay
Greenhouse - a leak on the apex but no big issues
Barn - fine

What was nice though was being able to sit in the greenhouse and the caravan and watch the rain, only a few years ago we couldn’t do that as there was nothing built. We also spent a bit of time divot stomping. I only found out yesterday what divot stomping was, I had no idea. If you are as clueless as me, a divot is the raised bits of turf from a polo match and at half time spectators get out on the field and stomp them down. Now we don’t have polo matches on our land but we do have pigs that nose up divots and so it was those that we were stomping down since the ground is quite mushy.

The overflow from the top pond, to
the middle pond. That is a lot of
water!

The rain reminds me, we think we may have worked out what the issue is with the orchard. Some of the trees look like they could have canker usually a sign of stressed tree but some of them look fine apart from the fact they are not coming into leaf. Our Swedish friend suggested that the high water table may have killed them off and that makes a lot of sense. We do have issues with water coming up in random places all over our land, even on the tops of the hill and so the water table must be high under normal conditions. In addition last autumn it was quite wet and this Spring it took a long time to dry out from the snow melt, not helpful for our trees. I should say though that our Gingko tree survived (or Gecko tree as it gets nicknamed in our house- well it sounds like Gingko doesn't it?) but that’s about it.  This means we have to either abandon the site of our orchard or do a rethink. Drainage is one option and it is on a sloping site so that helps but it will take a lot of drainage pipes as ditches are not an option, another option is to grow the trees in raised areas so that their roots are not sat in water, or some combination of the two. 

Enjoying being outside, although safely confined in the ark

On the animal front we candled the second batch of eggs, but we haven’t the experience to know for sure if they were viable or not. We did get two out of the fridge to compare them and that gave us a lot of hope that we have quite a few viable ones as there was a significant difference. We will try again next week as I think it will be quite a bit clearer then. The chicks that hatched out two weeks ago are now out permanently on the land as they just got too big to keep inside. They have grown so rapidly that they were bumping their heads on the mesh that keeps them safely penned in their box. They are not big enough to go outside all the time though and they are going to spend their nights in the greenhouse with some fleece over the top of their box to keep them warm and shade them from the early morning sun as the weather has been forecast to be warm (mind you, they hadn’t really forecast this thunderstorm, so I hope we made the right decision). On fine days they can go outside in the ark that Ian made, which they thoroughly enjoyed yesterday, but of course it was much too wet today to put in the little chicks which haven’t got their proper feathers yet.

Ian has been stripping the bark off logs
ready to make fence posts for the alpacas

We also have good news on the alpaca front, it seems like the Latvian veterinarian department are passing the responsibility to the Swedish vets and as long as it is fine with them, it is fine with the Latvians - that sounds like it is good to go then! Well nearly! We still have the issue with the transportation and might just need to spend a little time sorting that out this week.

I actually did some babysitting this week and was due to start at 6:30am. I woke early though as our darling, blessed cats managed to knock over a clothes airer and were making a right racket at 5:30am, at least it meant I didn’t sleep in! The children were supposed to sleep till 8am but as is usual in these cases one woke up before the parents left for work. Still I got to watch Rio, a film about a blue Macaw, not sure of the exact details as it was on very low and in Latvian anyway. It was funny though watching the places I have seen in Rio but cartoon caricatures of them. All kind of familiar but not familiar at the same time. Despite the language problems the babysitting worked out quite well, the oldest of the two chatters away in Latvian and I chatter away in English and we both nod and humm in all the right places as if we understand each other perfectly. It works!

Yes that's me in Rio. I had long hair then and it wasn't so grey
It is taken from the look out area where the Statue of Christ
stands.

Not the best video quality in the world as I was just using my camera phone but this is Ian ploughing with the two wheeled tractor again this last week. As he says, "Once the plough is set up right it goes really well!" Usually takes him about five rows to remember (I'm just as bad by the way, always forget the best way to set things up until I'm up and into it). I think he should add his findings on the blog, one for future reference to remind himself how to set it up and if anyone else ever wanted to know. Mind you a better video camera would be needed to do that.

Re-imagining a new world, does prison start with this?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18121914

Naff week

Our Christiania bike finally made it out of the
basement to our land. I was using it the other
day to cart water and compost to the orchard
allotment.

If I had written this blog yesterday then it would have been a different tale, one of woe and misery because that is how we felt. I was so ticked off yesterday that I said to God that I really needed some encouragement to keep going and sure enough he sent blessings our way. Nothing has changed and yet everything has changed. The weather was perfect for working outside, not too hot and not too cool, on the way out to the land the clouds were so unusual; to me they looked like the tops of mountains and I just imagined it was like having the mountains that surround Jerusalem surrounding our piece of land. I also received two emails that were encouraging, which helped to buoy up my mood. The problems of the previous week are still there but I have more courage to keep going at them. I was clearing turf today to clear the way for a path that will keep the weeds down better and as I was chopping away at the turf bit by bit I felt God say that is what we were doing, clearing the way but it is tough at times and it is slow work but if we keep going we'll get there. That's good enough for me!

You can see the wing feathers are appearing. This is their
favourite pose - all huddled around the feed pot. I never
realised they could grow so fast, no wonder these could be
ready for the pot in as little as 8 weeks. 

Our final tally with the chicks was four, which is not exactly brilliant. One died at the pipping stage, which is a real shame as we heard it cheep and we saw it pecking it's way through but it just didn't make it. A little bit of me wonders if we could have saved it. Part of the problem was probably how we handled the incubation stage, so I have learnt from the internet. I don't like learning things the hard way when it comes to animals, but it would be worse if we didn't learn. I learnt that when it says that chicks can remain in the incubator for 48 hours without a problem, then it really means that do not, unless in extreme circumstances open the incubator until all the eggs have hatched, so they can bond together and possibly even help each other out. It also means that the environment doesn't fluctuate so much. Having said that it looks disconcerting to have a little chick floundering around in the incubator, bashing into all the other eggs and possibly banging into the section that keeps the incubator humid for hatching, it looked like it would hurt itself or the others in the process.

Our asparagus has survived the winter.
Unfortunately we have to wait until next year
before we try a spear or two and it won't be until
the following year when we get a proper harvest.

I also learnt that our broiler chickens are probably Cornish crosses, a hybrid that grows very rapidly and apt to keel over from a heart attack due to obesity. Judging by the ways these little ones grow and eat their food I can see that is no exaggeration, they are monsters already and to think they are only a week old. And eat! They are guzzling machines. I had hoped to breed from them, but I'm not sure if we will manage. I know they won't breed true but maybe we can cross them with something that will grow slower, but nearly as big and be less likely to have the flaws of the monster breed. They are still cute though. We have our incubator up and running with another 24 eggs but this time they are layers and we will see how much of a success we have with these. We will candle them (shine a bright light through the eggs) on Thursday to see how many are viable, hopefully in some ways not all of them as 24 chicks in the incubator would seem rather a lot.

Ian has been doing some more ploughing, this time with
the two wheeled tractor. Takes longer but doesn't use so
much fuel and gentler on the land.

I also found out this week that doing a PhD is expensive £3828 a year for the next three years, a big step up from my £1300 (or thereabouts) for the Masters year. I feel God set me on this path and so there has to be a way, but at the moment I can't see it. Spending that much money would dip massively into savings which is what we live off. If we use the savings for me to pursue the PhD then savings aren't going to last long enough. Hmmm! Back to the drawing board I think.

We may have possibly lost our orchard, but
this was the view on my coffee break one
cool day working in the greenhouse. Life
is still good!

We have also possibly lost our orchard, or the majority of trees from apples to pears to plums. One apple tree and one plum tree are the only ones that show any life on them at present, all the rest are dormant or dead. Ian jokingly said that he was cutting the grass in the graveyard today and we ought to have some tombstones cut for it. All around is showing signs of life and so it seems strange that we are seeing nothing on our apple trees, although I think that it does look like some trees may have canker which can kill young trees. I know it has been a tough couple of years for them since we put them in as the first year was very hot and humid, with rain every week and a half and last year we had a full month without rain and had to resort to watering them. We've also had some tough winters with record lows this year and so maybe they were just too stressed to survive. We don't know but if there are no signs of life after two weeks we will have to take them up and burn them.

The first of what might be a series of stone
pictures for a fellow blogger Diane, from
Digging in the Driftless. We were talking
about stone walls and how they are made.
So here is a Latvian example.

We made it onto Latvian TV again this week, well our car did as we drove past the cameraman who was taking a shot of our apartment buildings. We did wonder at the time what he was doing. The reason for the cameraman was to get a report on the fact that our local water company, who also happens to be our local heating company, have allowed a pipe to leak raw sewage into the pond next to the apartment block for the last two years, despite being alerted to the fact. They did fix the leak - the morning of the report though! How convenient! I must admit though, I wish we had known that whilst watering our veg, good job we water sparingly and only when we have a drought and to water seeds in.

I love patterns and this is the reflection of a
net curtain we have hanging over the
doorway of our caravan to keep out insects.
I can't show you the swirling effect as it blew
about in the wind but it is quite mesmerising

Talking of our heating company, that also contributed to the naff week. We have been letting the processes work their slow way through before settling up our bill for the first four months of the year, as we object to paying for heat that was inadequate, but the company have sent us a letter to say they are going to call in a debt company if we do not pay by the end of the month. They also wrote another letter that said, because people have complained about the quality of the heat they are not going to turn the heat on in autumn. The phrase that springs to mind is "if you don't play by my rules, you can't play with my ball." They have stated that according to the contract they can do this, but according to the contract they should supply us with heat that gives us 18C +/- 2C, which shouldn't be too difficult as we have double glazed windows and new radiators, but they didn't all the time. Well we have to work on a letter in reply to that! Hmmph! Not a happy bunny was I!

Still a lot of seedlings to pot on or out. Growing season is
definitely under way.

And last but not least naffness of the week. The alpaca saga, and saga it is indeed. It's sorted, it's not sorted, it's sorted, it's not sorted - it is driving us batty. Now someone has decided that we need to vaccinate the animals before they can come into the country, but we think this is different if we were getting them from Germany or Denmark, so we now have to argue the case and this is just making delay after delay. The problem with a vaccination is that they have to wait 42 days to see if it has taken, but that then leads to transport issues. The other issue we thought was sorted is the transport, due to the fact the seller is away when the transporter was available for all but one day. We also found out that the van to transport the animals doesn't actually belong to the guy we thought it did, but to a friend and it may or may not be available. Sorry if all that sounds complicated but it is! It doesn't have to be, this is the EU with common rules for all and there is not the need for all this complication, it would also be nice if we knew all facts up front, rather than bit by bit, but that's how it goes!

Ian has been doing a lot of sorting out of
wood piles this week. This piece would look
great polished up but I think it will just end
up on the fire. We also need heat in winter.

Like I said at the beginning, the problems remain but at least we have the courage to face them again. We just felt really tired yesterday and sick of the issues. So thanks to those who took the time to encourage us, it was greatly appreciated.