Electroman

Electroman setting up another fence for the boys. This one
is not generally electrified though, although it can be if one
in particular keeps escaping. Generally if there is enough
grass they do not bother, so Ian should be safe from any
shocking events from this fence.

Imagine the scene! I am busy weeding the new vegetable garden and Ian is mowing around the raspberry bushes, when suddenly there is a yelp from Ian and he's last seen heading in a straight line to Riga, hanging on to the mower. Well seriously - no I can't be serious, in fact I laughed a lot - what actually happened is my dearly beloved, whilst manoeuvring the mower, backed into the electrified sheep fencing and his derriere (French just in case you are not sure) made good contact with the fencing that is currently pumping out 8000V due to the damp conditions we have had this week. The electric exited through his arms that were holding the metal handles of the mower and so to earth. What I saw was Ian dancing around alternately flapping his arms and tucking them under his armpits to try and reduce the pain. I assumed that he had just got too close the fence whilst mowing, what I hadn't realised that he had backed into it and when I found out I was in stitches laughing. Not very sympathetic at all.

We thought we were going to be in for quite a storm and
wondered if Ian was going to go one better than being in
contact with the electric fence and lawnmower as this time
he was out cutting grass with the two wheel tractor. Fortunately
the rain only slowly came and we had plenty of time to put things
away. It rained heavily, but not that bad. Not the gully washing
storm we were expecting anyway.

Sofie decided that I would make a nice place to rest while
I was doing the weeding.

The rest of the week was filled with jokes about Electroman and where he would have got to if the current had been any stronger - I hasten to add that I'm not the only one telling the jokes. The amount of merriment that filled the air after that incident lead me to conclude that maybe there was something in the rationale for ECT and every time Ian seemed remotely grumpy I would tell him, very sympathetically, to go and play with the electric fence. If anyone watched The Hulk when they were younger, you will probably have an inkling as to the way our minds were constructing stories around Electroman and the way he would change in an instant and the effect he would have. Well anything to lighten the mood around the never ending weeding we are doing at the moment. Crazy! Probably! But it helps.

We cannot say that Sofie and Eyre are best
friends yet, but they are beginning to tolerate
each other and even get quite close

The newest arrival

It was not the only shock of the week, the first one was the arrival of our newest Grandson at a whopping 8lb 15oz or 4.060kg. The largest baby I had was my middle child at 8lb 10oz (3.91kg) and I thought he was big enough. Our grandson arrived by c-section, since he was in no hurry to make his entry into the world, which also makes hims sound a lot like our son. Hope he is as chilled, so far he certainly seems to be. We had our first Skype conversation the day after he was born and he was suitably unimpressed with the whole thing and slept through it all. At least our daughter is fine, well after getting over the giggles about re-telling the tale of her father's escapade with the electric. It is not helpful to make anyone laugh after a c-section.

A close up from our flowery ski hill

A rainbow from this evenings shower

The warm spell broke this week and it has been a week of sunshine and showers and so plenty of opportunity for lots of sleepy time to make up for last week's activity. After a couple of days of feeling intensely tired, I think I'm pretty much over it now. There are still moments, but I think that is when I look at the amount of weeding still needing to be done. Fortunately at this time of year, the weed growth starts to slow down and I can actually clear a bed of weeds and it looks reasonable for longer than a day. The beetroot has germinated well, but the parsnips and carrots have not. We will have enough, but obviously the fresh carrot seed we are generating this year will be needed next year and we will have to buy in fresh supplies of parsnip seeds. They are notoriously bad for not germinating after a year. The packet of parsnip seed that I planted late on last year, worked really well. They are ahead of the other parsnips and were not bothered by weeds, as they outgrew them very quickly. We wonder how many other seeds we can do that with and certainly something we can experiment with when we generate our own seed. It is more of a risk when it is bought in seed as it can cost a lot if it doesn't work. We always thought it was far too cold to plant seed just before winter but it might actually be an advantage. Rather than rot the seed due to the damp and cool conditions, it might just sit there in hibernation.

The grapes are growing well

Our evening meal. Broad beans, peas, kale, Chenopodium
giganteum leaves, fat hen, garlic scapes in a cheese sauce
with pasta

The germination rate of the seed is not just due to the age of the seed but also the cool, dry spring we have had. The cabbages are loving it, but the carrots are always slow to germinate and worse if the weather is not good for them. We will still have enough to store over winter and this year we really could do with a root cellar. We were discussing this the other day and I suggested using an old shipping container and then piling up soil against it. We even decided on a spot to put it. It is an unsightly spot of soil from the barn building and weeds and so needs dealing with anyway, but there won't be enough soil. Instead we decided that we could put hay bales around it, they will rot away eventually, but gradually over time the soil level will build up, as we add more bales. So hopefully that is something we can organise soon, as Ian's mother's estate gets wrapped up. We are still waiting for the house sale to complete - it always takes ages in the UK, but at least some money will be coming through soon, as the pensions authority have said nothing is owed to them and all bills have now been paid.

I love the look of our green path with a
frothy pink edge of flowering grasses

The box of chocolates were were given and the
contents from a parcel Ian received today. These
came from our middle child and his family and
are a belated father's day present. Ian was quite
impressed with the detail of these ones.

We've had three groups of visitors this week. One is our neighbour who regularly visits but hadn't seen Brencis. She had organised for her brother to borrow our trailer so he could move house. The second group had emailed us a couple of weeks ago and organised to come. They brought carrots for the alpacas and a big box of chocolates for us. They were a group of about six adults and five children. The children, blessedly were pretty well behaved. We had kept the alpacas locked up that morning, since we knew they were coming and it was raining in the morning. Nothing worse than wet alpaca to touch. We have got a good system now, where we lock the chickens away, so the cockerels do not attack anyone. We always lock Snowdrop away separately with some food, whilst everyone looks at the other alpaca girls (and boy), that way she can't catch anyone with spit when they get caught in the crossfire. We always explain that she doesn't generally spit at people, unless they are trying to do something nasty to her, like me or the vet, but she does not like other alpacas coming near her and taking food. She is very possessive over food.

Brencis looking as cute as ever

Along with the toy alpacas were two cards that I pinned up
on his noticeboard. He is at home so little, it didn't seem
right to take them home and put them up there.

I think one of the reasons the children were good in this group, some were used to large animals as some of the group were beef cattle farmers. I was really interested to hear how the young man had always lived in Riga but used to visit his grandparents every summer in the countryside, as have many Latvians. He trained as a car mechanic at Riga technical university and then went to Switzerland to work for Saab. After doing that for a while he decided he had had enough and came back to Latvia and started farming in a small way, but gradually built up to the large farm he has today. My radar was up and working and I asked him if I could interview him sometime about his experience. I explained I was a researcher and looking at how people can be involved in development and his experience would be very valuable. So I have a phone number and will arrange to see him sometime soon.

Eyre asleep in a rather contorted fashion

8pm one evening and still very light

The third group of visitors came today. They are staying at our other apartment for a few days. We weren't expecting it to be free over summer, but our American friends who had been planning on coming decided that it wasn't right for them to come across at that time and so it was free after all. The young couple have a little boy about the same age as our oldest grandson, 2 1/2 years old. Poor little chap though has been through a lot and had chemo last year. Some of you on facebook may remember me asking for prayer for the little one. I haven't asked anything about it, they are on holiday after all, but he seems to be well enough at the moment. He loved our alpacas and they seemed to love him too. You should have seen the grin on his face when they let him touch them and when they kept nuzzling his hat. Apparently they will come back tomorrow and see them again - a big fan obviously. He also got to pick some of his own strawberries, looked at the chickens, the cats, the sheep and got to sit in the tractor. Again his little face lit up and he didn't want to get out of the tractor for ages, he just sat there with a big grin on his face.

To Timbuktu and back

"Okay what happened?"

 This week has been quite an adventure, only it is the sort of adventure I hope never, ever, ever to repeat again. The week started fine, apart from another early start and I caught the 6:40am bus from our village. I got into Riga at 9am and headed to a cafe for a supplementary breakfast, as I knew it would be a while before I ate. I then took the ordinary bus and not the airport shuttle to the airport. The Airbaltic bus from the bus station is €5 and takes 30 minutes, there is room enough to sit down and there is free Wifi, the ordinary number 22 bus from outside the bus station, however, wasn't quite so comfortable but I bought a ticket from the nearby Narvesen and it cost me a whopping 60c - bargain. I had to stand for part of the way, there was a two minute walk under the subway and no Wifi, but since there is free Wifi at the airport that wasn't a particular problem and the bus also takes 10 minutes longer. So far, so good!

"Oooerrr!"

I had ages to wait at the airport, as my plane didn't leave until 5pm, but at least I was able to get on with some work. Only downside was, I couldn't find a power outlet that worked, so I was fairly restricted in the time I could spend working. The plane was fine and I got into Berlin okay and then the adventure began. After a little bit of a hassle and after giving up waiting in a queue for a ticket machine that didn't seem to be going down, I managed to get a ticket for a bus into the city centre to take me to the venue for registration, from someone issuing tickets at the bus stop. The first problem I had was that I hadn't really understood the Google instructions and I got off at the terminus, instead of further back on the route. Google tells you how many stops, but not the name of the stop and I had forgotten to count them. I asked for directions at the station and got half the instructions from a person on the information desk and given a map of the transport system by another member of staff. I finally found the registration centre just before it closed at 8pm (Berlin is one hour behind Latvia). It was rather a rough introduction to Berlin's integrated transport service. Next I had to find the hotel, well that went okay, there were good instructions in the booklet I was give in the registration gumpf as it was quite close to the conference venue, which was not at the same place as the registration centre (are you still with me?). Unfortunately once I got there at nearly 10pm due to delays on the transport system, I discovered I had managed to book the hotel room for the wrong month, consequently I had no room and there were no vacancies.

Hmmm! That's exactly how I felt 

Bad night?

I am not sure if I knew something was likely to go wrong, but I had a couple of numbers for people in Berlin and I rang one person. There followed profuse apologies for ringing so late, but I was really stuck, did he have a room for the next four nights? He did! In fact he lived in an place that used to be a regular hotel and so there were 9 rooms, only it was at the other end of Berlin. Again the trains weren't running right and so my journey across Berlin, late at night, was slow. I didn't feel threatened though, it felt quite safe. At least I had the map someone gave me, to help me navigate around the train system. The good news was that the hotel was also right next door to the train station and the trains are fairly quiet. There had to be some good news didn't there. Well after that little escapade I rolled into bed at 12:15am, not a good start to my trip, as I had to be up at 6:45am and I was the first one to present in my session in the first batch of presentations. Not ideal on what probably amounted to about 5 hours sleep in the end. At least the transportation system around Berlin is fairly cheap, with zones A and B only €2.60 for any trip up to 2 hours. The system also reminded me of my three years in Copenhagen and that experience obviously proved to be good training for navigating the trains in Berlin, otherwise the evening would have been even more stressful.

Hens do like the poo piles. Anyone for eggs?

The oak tree once again stands tall after the silver birch
trees that were starting to overshadow it were cut down

I made a mess of the presentation and was not fluent at all. I managed to gabble my way through it and fortunately was coherent enough for people to be interested in what I had to say and I got some good feedback through the rest of the conference from people who had been in the sessions. I think the picture of a young wild boar and my joke about it being a particularly cute and cuddly looking specimen helped and it got a laugh. The rest of the conference went fine and I got to ask lots of questions, I was beginning to look like the class swot at times, but I wanted to know. I think part of the reason was that I am from a slightly different academic background to many of them, who mainly work with models of how things should be, whereas I like to get answers from real people by actually asking them questions - quite novel I know. I also have quite an interest in agriculture and I am not sure many of them understood some aspects of that either. For instance, some of the models predicting how much food will be available assume trees do not produce food, just fuel, timber and carbon sequestration - posh word for absorbing carbon, but in reality it is much more complex than that. For instance that tree could be producing bananas and underneath the shade of the banana tree, could be growing coffee, in other words food and a cash crop. Willow trees can also be used for fuel and animal fodder, our animals love it when Ian cuts a tree down with leaves on, he chucks them over the fence for them to nibble on, saves him trying to get all the leaves off when preparing the timber for cutting.

One of our new cockerels

I know! I know! You all wanted to see pictures
of Berlin. Well this is mainly what I saw

I told Ian of course about the escapade and in true fashion we started on a bizarre track of amusing comments centred around conferences and different countries. It started off with "Hope things settle down and enjoy the rest of the deep sea pipe welders conference in Oslo see you next Thursday," to which I replied "the deep sea welders conference is surprisingly interesting." There was more and, for anyone who knows us personally, that will not come as a surprise, so here is a list

Hope things are going well at the "Microbiome friend or foe" conference, I would have loved to go to that one. I also hear Budapest is quite pretty, you can show me the photos when you get back a week next Saturday" <------ note the changing days too

Brazil is great and the tropical forest lectures really helpful

The geese are back and heading north! Phew!

So how was the "soft furnishings and their role in global warming" conference  go today, don't forget to get as many freebies as possible, see you Saturday, I hear the shopping in Madrid airpot is quite good.

The cabinet making and its role in green energy was fascinating. Love and God bless from wintry Johannesburg

Oh no…… you must be in the wrong Johannesburg it should be end of summer

Thought there was something a bit odd, but turns out to be Johannesburg, Michigan

When I left Latvia there was 20cm of
snow on the ground and it was -10C.
As you can tell, it melted rather quickly

There was also mention of Bulgaria, London, Timbuktu, Larnaca, Turkey, Milan, Abu Dhabi, a floristry course and a visit to the pyramids. At least it made a rather stressful situation more bearable. It wasn't all stress though, the days were pleasant and we could have lunch sat outside - not sure that is possible yet in Latvia. I had a great evening with some folks at the dinner on the Thursday evening where again we sat outside, because there weren't enough seats inside for the buffet meal, one was from New York and now living in Australia and one from Berlin now living in Brazil. They had met a few times before on conferences related to academics interested in social justice, the environment and human health - right up my street really. After the conference finished I also managed to meet up with a an Indian lass I met in Peyresq, France in September. We had such fun in Peyresq and it was lovely to reminisce, she also treated me to a cup of tea at a Café Einstein and then she took me to an Italian restaurant, where they make the meal in front of you. A nice relaxing way to finish the week anyway.

And this is what happens when it melts
fast, it floods our barn. This meant Ian
was late home one night as he was pumping
water out of the hole he had dug for such
a time as this

Ian has had an interesting week, besides entertaining his wife with inventing improbable conferences in various countries. Ian had decided to take the car for its technical inspection on Thursday, but it snowed overnight and so thought he might not bother, but then actually felt he should. Part of the reason is that with snow on the car it reduces the amount of time that the inspectors want to spend under the car, hehe, especially when they start shaking it to test the suspension. Mind you, that is an advantage as on one inspection, we are sure they shook it so much that it actually caused the suspension to fail on the way home. With snow underneath they are less tempted to do that. As he was waiting for the window sticker to be printed, the guy behind started chatting to him, he had spent time in England and so his English was good. It turns out he would love to get into farming and was fascinated with what we are doing and so they exchanged phone numbers and emails. On Saturday the guy came to visit Ian and spent over four hours chatting. They also went to a neighbouring farm which has over 200 sheep, as he would like to get some sheep and it turns out that he already knew the shepherd as they had both done an Alpha course together. Life gets weird sometimes! It was also weird that he lives in an old water mill too, like the friend we visited just the other week and both of them have used the mills to generate electricity.

Yumm! Would rather be eating snow than stuck in Berlin

Well after a fairly stressful week and lots of travelling I shall sign off from Paris, or is it Minsk, maybe Vienna or Brasilia, noooo of course it's Tartu. At least I should finally get home tomorrow, it will be nice.

It's Christmas time

A place to sit and reminisce! This was from last week
when we met up with our long term friends

Well it's Boxing Day and our time in England is nearly up (for my worldwide friends Boxing Day is the day after Christmas day and there are various reasons for calling that, but I'll let you google it) . Our son has done a stirling job of keeping the parents amused and transported us hither and thither. It has been a good time with much reminiscing and many silly jokes. Put Ian and our children together and the jokes start to fly and you have to watch particularly for the low level jokes or you might get hit. The banter can be quite bewildering at times for those not used to it, for instance Happy Christmas became Apple Crumble - naturally! As it does! I think the reminiscing is so important though, in our family, as it binds the family together and reinforces the oral history of the family, bits get added as different members of the family remember different parts of the story until we have a whole story from many different angles. It was lovely to know that the time we spent putting up Christmas decorations on Christmas Eve after the kids went to bed many years ago was appreciated by at least one member of the family, as our son said it looked magical on Christmas morning. That tradition stopped though as the children got older and the bedtimes later and then they began to do the decorating themselves - well it kept them busy and amused on the day before Christmas.

Ian and his new friend

I mentioned last week that it was a bit of a cultural shock coming to a busy place after the quiet of our home in Latvia, but it has also made me realise how busy life is in the UK generally. Our life might seem busy at times and certainly some of our work has to be done at specific times - if the weather is good in July/August the hay has to be got in, there is no waiting around for a more convenient time, but that does not mean we have to rush about all the time. Life for us now is at a measured pace, we have time to take in the peace of the countryside, the sheer stillness of life in Latvia at times. We can gaze at the numerous stars on a clear cloudless night, because there is so little light pollution and if you are anything like us we find that awe inspiring. We have time to gaze at the pond life in our ponds, time to watch the neighbours children playing outside (so lovely to see children playing around getting fresh air and exercise without being cooped up on a playstation or something similar) and time to marvel at the infinite variety of creation as we sip our drinks. It is funny how modern life with all its labour saving equipment has often sapped the time to gaze and marvel, sapped our times to sit and reminisce and time to enjoy family and friends.

Ian prepared for the 3D film in his special
3D glasses

As I said we have had a lot of time with our son and his wife of just over a year, it has been lovely. We have been out for walks on the Downs  and in some nearby villages- sorry forgot to take photos of that, I have been to a Zumba session with my daughter-in-law and I am pleased to say there are definitely no photos of that. For those who have no idea what Zumba is, then it seems to be a bit of a cross between traditional keep fit with a bit of spanish dancing and belly dancing thrown in and so you should be eternally grateful there are no photos of me attempting that. It was good fun though and I was surprised to last a 3/4 hour session and not be too sore the next day. They also took us to see "Puss in Boots" in 3D at the cinema, definitely a film for cat lovers and amazing to watch with the 3D special effects. It was funny to see all those little quirks of cats included in the film and the thoroughly cheesy story line - just right for a bit of fun close to Christmas. The film reminded us of our kittens back home and so it was lovely the day after watching the film to have an email from our cat sitter telling us the kittens were fine and being well looked after.

Such a lovely range of natural colours

We also took the time to go and see an Alpaca farm and they were lovely. The alpacas are curious animals but we were especially privileged to have many of them coming up close and letting us scratch their necks under their chins. One particular alpaca took rather a fancy to Ian though and we joked for the rest of the week about his elevation to the heady heights of being an alpaca pin up. They certainly seem the right sort of animal for us, there were some llamas there too but they kind of towered above me (okay not hard I know), but I think it would take more time to get used to them. The alpacas are quiet, gentle moochy sort of animals and very quiet. It was quite extraordinary to see so many animals and not to hear much noise. We will definitely look at getting three next year and learn how to handle them and find out how to care for them before possibly embarking on breeding them.

Ian's fathers' day present. He enjoyed putting this together

Another thing I have noticed in England is the change in dress sense over the years. Once upon a time if you went to a shop like Marks and Spencers, Debenhams or British Home Stores you could be guaranteed to find some smart clothes for work, instead this time I had to go to quite a large Marks and Spencers store before finding some smart trousers so I can interview people for my project and look smart and professional. The range of clothes tended to be casual rather than smart. The problem is that I am definitely more apple shaped than Latvians and the cut of clothes found in the UK is more likely to suit my style than in Latvia, however, Latvians do know how to dress up. I found this in Denmark too, on the whole the Danes will dress casually but even then it could be very smart casual, not what I would call slouchy casual as in the UK. On special occasions the really smart clothes would come out in Denmark though and I am not sure if that is so much the case now in the UK. I am not sure if it is a good thing or a bad thing really. I think it is a bad thing if your dress sense is what defines you, or if people look down on others for their dress sense, but I think that is also sad that there is a a lack of a sense of occasion and so no reason to dress up. I'm still trying to find the happy medium between the point where special occasions are too fraught because of the necessity to dress correctly and yet special enough to warrant taking some special care to go.

Me prepared for the summer with my anti-mossie net

Watch out for those low flying jokes!! And an Apple Crumble for all my readers.