Winter arrived

Winter is here, but these are from a few days
ago. You will have to wait for daylight for
snowy pictures

As I write the snow is coming down quite thickly now. We've had snow before already this autumn/winter but it didn't last long and something we expect at this time of the year. This snowfall may last a while though as the temperatures are set to plummet. I managed to dig up the carrots, leeks and parsnips at the weekend. Hopefully I found them all under the light blanket of snow. This morning I harvested the kale and savoy cabbage as there is no guarantee I will find them once we have a thick blanket down on the ground. 

A frost covered savoy cabbage

Frosted mallow plants

I haven't had the chance of getting my flower and herb beds protected with spruce coverings but maybe I can do that at the weekend. The plants won't need the protection from the cold at this time of the year as the snow will do that but they may need it in the spring as the snow melts and they may need protection from being eaten by deer.  

The deer nearly ate my water lily one year, but this
year they would have difficulty getting to it.
I love the abstract effect of the autumnal colours
frozen under the water.

How can one little cat cause such a fuss?

At least the fences have all been taken in, as it is difficult to taken in an electric fence once it snows and it could be broken by the weight of the snow, as well as a tripping hazard once the snow gets really deep and we forget where it is. The boys was taken in after their little escapades and they haven't been allowed out of the paddock since. They moan from time to time but I think they mainly realised that it's that time of the year anyway and if not, they will now. They don't like to go far in the snow. The girls' fence was taken in yesterday due to the forecast of up to 20cm of snow. 

An alpaca eye, Jakobs

Lolly is quite tall and getting very fluffy. She
will need all that fleece next week to keep warm.

Despite the on and off bits of snow we've had, the weather has been quite warm in between at least most of the time and so we've not had the urgency of moving out of the caravan yet. We will this week as it is getting too difficult to prepare an evening meal with the cold and dark. Some warm water on tap sounds wonderful right now. I don't ask for much do I? One of the reasons for not being in a hurry is that Lolly also still needs feeding and she is still getting a late night feed. However, this evening she challenged Chanel for a tray of food and so this will help to fill her over the night, along with the hay of course. She is one of the earliest to start eating the granular feed and will just about manage that from Ian's hand now. 

Josefs is Lolly's half brother and he's quite tall too

Ilvija can be quite timid, but definitely seems to
have learnt how to avoid being handled from her
mother

This morning Ian managed to get Chanel and Ilvija separated. Chanel is still very protective of Ilvija and that makes it very difficult to trim Ilvija's toe nails and do anything else that needs doing. This morning Ian wanted to check her front teeth and there certainly seems to be a problem with them. It is as if they are rotting away and yet just a month ago they were perfectly fine. We now have to try and work out what the problem is or whether she has been kicked and we hadn't noticed. At least in a white alpaca if there is any injury it is easy to see, but not so easy with a dark alpaca. We also did take the advantage of trimming her toe nails but she was a very squirmy one - probably because she doesn't get used to being handled due to her protective mum. 

Her mother can be sweet too, but we are oh so
wary in case she gets upset and starts spitting.

Raspberry leaves

Antonia sunbathing! In the frosty morning!

I saw a house sparrow here on our land for the first time recently. Ian has seen them before but not often. So what! It does mean that the bird diversity is increasing here, which is good. Sparrows are not that common on our land and I've seen more eagles and buzzards than sparrows in the rural areas. At the moment the most common bird is the coal tit but there was a surprise one morning when I looked out of the caravan window and saw a crested tit land on the grapevine. It was more of a shock because the caravan is in our greenhouse and the doors were shut. Not sure how it got in. We had to leave the doors open for it to escape before our cats found it. 

Frosted pine needles

There's a scary cat over there says George.
George is a bit of a wimp when it comes to the 
mud. Before they were locked in their paddock,
for bad behaviour, they would have to go through
a gate with a muddy puddle in the middle. He 
would delicately pick his way around the 
puddle. 

Our internet is back up and working properly now that the lockdown has finished. I guess a lot of folks went home, or maybe it doesn't take a lot of people to slow down our internet. I don't know. What I do know is that we now regularly get 4 or 5 Mbps but we get even more in the morning, around 10-20Mbps. I went back to our apartment for a meeting the other day as it wasn't appropriate to do that in the caravan and I got a whopping 54Mbps - bearing in mind this is a mobile internet we are using and not a fixed line one. Shame it couldn't be like that all the time, it would make some of the work I do a lot faster. 

I think this is the horehound.

Mr. P contrasts nicely with the 

frosty grass

.

This will be put in the barn for some tender 
loving care over the winter, but first we need it
to get plywood to fix it and to take stuff back
to the apartment - providing there isn't too much
snow.

Ian's been busy too. He's been fixing broken feeders, putting a rubber skirt on the barn door -made from the divider that was in the horse box- to stop snow and wind from blowing underneath, helping other alpaca owners with their alpacas, recovering the haystack with a breathable synthetic felt cover to replace the brittle plastic (I also helped with that) and last but not least trying to order a summer house, which will be a step up from the caravan and mean we can work on constructing a kitchen that I don't have to worry about the cats getting into. The only problem is that we haven't heard back as we decided to try and go for the self-build option as the built option was just outside of our price range. I would need to do quite a bit more proofreading to pay for that. 

A close up of George

Our caravan is in there!

Having the caravan spare though means we can have people to stay, particularly those who will help us with the alpacas. Now that will be good - not sure if it will work or not but at least the option is there. Ian did get a surprise message from two French students studying some veterinary related course but he's not heard back from them. Probably put them off with the rather basic accommodation, even if there will be a caravan.

Frosted marigold

A very cold day

Karla and her mum

A close up of Lolly's fleece.

Mari doing her warm up exercises.

Grass ice-cream

The grass will have disappeared under a blanket
of snow by tomorrow morning

A warm spot on top of the caravan

Cattails

Ian taking a photo and Lolly checking him out, 
or rather their shadows!

Karla

At least someone is using the outside loo. 
Good for you Valeria

Vanessa warming up in the sun

Hello Lolly!

Freddie with Josefs in the background

Turbjørn soaking up some sun

Ugggh!

One of our summer visitors.

Shall we say the weather today was not the best. I heard the wind and the rain start about 2am in the morning. It has just about stopped now and it is after 8pm. Most of the time it was heavy sleety snow. I even had to move some snow to get into the greenhouse to feed the chickens tonight. Not because we had a large accumulation of the horrible wet stuff, but because I use the north-facing door to get in and that has been the direction it has blown from most of the day. 

Two tone alpacas!


Now he is supposed to be two tone, but the damp
weather made it more obvious.

Yes that is snow on the bank there 
and it isn't even our village where
the grass was mostly covered in
the white stuff.

We went for a trip out to see some alpacas and llamas to cut their fighting teeth this morning. Many fields on the way were substantially flooded and the rivers were running high with water as a brown as a Yorkshire cup of tea - in other words they look well stewed. The alpacas and llamas were a tad wet but not too bad considering the weather. It's always a worry when we go to somewhere the first time, what will be the conditions and will they be able to catch the animals. Fortunately in this case there were enough helpers on hand and the jobs themselves were relatively easy - at least with three reasonably hefty guys to help keep the llamas still. 

A strange abstract piece of work?

Nope! Just the cat hiding on my heated box of 
seeds. Hmmph!

Silla with a rather damp and mucky hair do. 

They will be aiming to shear their own alpacas and so we suggested they come and see how we do ours. We have enough to do with the current customers we have and the tight window we have to shear, so we are more than happy for people to learn how to do it for themselves. They seemed quite happy about that, so with any luck that means a few willing extra pair of hands on shearing day. We already have one couple who will be coming to help us. It's not the case of the more the merrier, in fact that could be the more the more stressful, but when they know how to handle animals it usually works out okay. 

Has Vanessa been having a disagreement with
someone? The droopy lip suggests she has been
spitting. 

Sometimes, you just have to have a good scratch.

Lawnmowers in action. I like these self-
propelled lawnmowers, much easier. Well,
I would say that. I don't have to move the 
fences.

It was nice to be able to call in at the bakery on the way back to our caravan and pick up some hot food to eat too, so we didn't have much to prepare to eat. We must have got a bit cold this morning and maybe disturbed by the noise of the wind and rain in the night, because as  soon as we had eaten and warmed up, we both fell asleep. Not something we do in the middle of the day on a regular basis. I spent the rest of the day on the computer, even though I'm on holiday from work, but it has meant that I've managed to do some sorting out that I've just not had chance to do. I've had a desk-tidy up folder for ages when the clutter on my desktop got too much and so I just shunted it into a file to sort out later. Well it's gone now and that makes me feel like I've done a good spring clean. Not bad when there was no chance of getting in the garden due to the weather.

Amanda looking quite rotund and very tired. Not
long now to go.

The three amigos 

Another bad hair day

Even though I've been on the computer for half the day, I haven't really been on the internet much. Our internet generally suffers when it is a holiday in Latvia and bad weather doesn't help at all. Facebook in particular is far too slow when the internet gets lousy, so I haven't been on all day. Pretty unusual for me, I do like to keep up with everyone's news and so tend to spend too long on it. It just shows though what an utter drain on energy Facebook is when it takes so long to load. 

Love the angle, makes Ilvija and Mari look like their having a kiss.

A layer of mucky fleece but then nice and clean.
Phew! Not long to go now before shearing time.

Lecturing 2021 style. My 
backdrop was a field of alpacas
though.

I gave a lecture to a German university this week. I was given permission to be controversial, so I threw a few comments in to get students thinking. I also outlined some of the problems that farmers face at certain times of the year, when the job can be so draining. I gave an example of us at haymaking time when the clouds are rolling in and we have to load up the hay. A time when we might be barely talking to each other because we are both irritable, tired, dusty and hungry. Those times when there is no clocking off at 5pm because you work till you're finished. It wasn't to make us look good, because our days are not all like that, but I wanted them to understand how advising farmers to diversify makes a mockery of what they do in those busy periods. If their income is not enough, then it is because they are not receiving the benefits they should for the hours they work and the system is broken. 

A little daffodil. They are still hanging on in there.
I thought we might have a mass of them by now,
but the wild boar thought they were tasty a while ago.

And what else does the modern lecturer do? Feeds
the chickens of course. They are still in the greenhouse.
I was tempted to get the arks outside but the cold 
forecast put me off and I'm pleased we didn't.

We've had some lovely days too, just a bit cold.

One student asked how they could support farmers to be more efficient and I challenged the student on whether that was a good thing to do because efficiency is a rather difficult term for someone facing the challenges of climate change. To be sustainable and resilient might not mean becoming more efficient. What is efficient in a factory or a laboratory is not necessarily efficient in the field. It is not necessarily efficient to plant four crops, but if one fails then there is always the other three to fall back on. It is efficient to plant up one large field with one crop because it doesn't require a multitude of machinery, but then that might not be sustainable or resilient, particularly in a bad summer weather-wise. I certainly enjoyed the challenge of the presentation and I look forward to hearing the feedback from the students.

Chanel looks very proud of her grass balancing trick

Turbjørn is at least eating well. He is still struggling
a bit though and some days are better than others.

It is amazing how similar these two are in 
colour. They have the same father, Tellus, but 
George on the left has a white and brown mother,
Mari and Freddie has a dark brown mother,
Chanel.

I also finished my own seminars this week. My students still have an essay to hand in, but there are no more whole class meetings. It was a good job it wasn't today, as I think I would have had to cancel it. I think I will miss them. It was only a short course, but I've enjoyed hearing the progress they've made in their ideas and it was great to hear how they are thinking about including people, even children, in future planning. If that is the route they take then that is something to be optimistic about. 

Josefs is a lazy one, can't even be bothered to stand
to eat. Don't worry, there's nothing wrong with him.
He can run around and leap about when he wants to.

Not as clever as his brother George, but still quite
a bright spark is Jakobs.

You can see the alpacas share our
challenges! Don't worry, they are
just sunbathing.

On the farm itself we've had a few challenges of our own. One day I went to our fridge that we keep in the barn to find that a mouse had obviously been in it and left a few calling cards. Ian had even put wire over the back to stop them getting in, but it wasn't sufficient. We think it might have hurt itself on the wire as there were also a few spots of blood. Well the fridge has been fixed now and Ian has managed to work out a way of attaching a piece of metal over the only possible place it could have got in. It was a bit tricky and it is into the foam insulation, so we hope it holds enough to deter a mouse.

Poor Aggie. Her nose is sore. I will be giving her
another course of cream to ease it. We do it for 
three days then stop because she gets so fed up
with it and gets awkward. More stress won't help.

Mr. P tucking into the grass too. He's much 
better. He was staring longingly at the girls today.

Mr. P has been having antibiotics and steroid injections most mornings but at least his breathing seems to have improved. We think it might be an environmental allergy of some kind as Ian realised he asked our vet out to listen to him this time last year. We knew it was a regular thing but hadn't realised it was tied to a particular time of the year. It's a good job that Ian is very methodical in his approach to note taking - unlike me!

Some glorious days indeed.

Aggie is looking huge. 

It hasn't been a bad week, weather-wise up until today as Ian's managed to get quite a bit done around the place. He got the back hoe on the tractor and dug out the old remains of electric poles that are always an issue at haymaking time; he's filled in pig damage on our neighbour's land where we also cut hay. he's also expanded the pond on the other side of our oak hill and dug out the drainage ditches to help drain the field better - not that it worked this time but it was an exceptionally large amount of water in a very short period of time and all our other ponds are overflowing.

Josefs is an inquisitive chap.

Silla was the bravest and went into the field first.
Mari and Aggie were having a sniff to see who
she was before Silla decided to make a rapid exit.

The grass is still growing slowly as the days have still been a bit cool and so the animals have needed to be moved fairly regularly. They started to eat through the fences rather too quickly - even though they have plenty of hay they could eat instead. Ian ended up having to sort out the charger units as they seemed to be not working well enough. So they are cleaned up and working now. Ian also took the opportunity of letting the two groups of girls mingle together. This will help us later on in the year when the youngsters need to be separated from their mums. It means we can create a new herd with less stress. We'll see how that works obviously later on. 

The rest of Vanessa's group starting to investigate
the field where Aggie's group were.

Aggie's group investigating Vanessa's paddock

They have better trees to scratch through.

All together now. They are still not quite acting 
as one group, so still easy to separate. 

So on this rather blustery wet day, when it still cannot quite make up it's mind whether it's spring or winter that is about it for life in our little rural place.