Part 2

Here are the extra photos as promised. It has been one of those weeks where we have been on the go for much of the day

Latvian Alpaca Adventure

Choosing the fleece

The nice part about felting on the farm is getting to choose
who's fleece you use

This is George's fleece and it is great to be able to say, he felts
beautifully

Laying out the fleece

Wetting the fleece

The soap in this case is not for the felting process per se but
to help in making the rubbing in of the water and soap
underneath easier so as not to move the fibres around
too much at this stage

Carefully starting the felting process, making sure it is all
wet and soapy enough - not too much, not too little

Rolling the felt

This is where the real felting process begins

Fleece beginning to felt

 Eco-printing

Arty shot

Animals on the farm, big and small

A bug for identification

Sofie observing the felting process. She knows how to do it,
as she gets her own fur in a complete mess. We've only just
about managed to get out the last lot of felted clumps. Long
hair and farm cats don't mix terribly well

Lounging around. Making fleece is such hard work

Having a chew

Needing some shearing, but now we are haymaking

Swallows have taken up residence again. I hope they start
to eat some of those horse flies

Admin

Office view

This didn't help Heather's admin as it flew over whilst trying
to deal with a call 

Sorting out the electric for our old apartment

On the land

A stork investigating the hay for tasty morsels

Haymaking is a bit of a dusty affair this year

The dry year meant Ian could dig out the pond deeper. In
the spring the water is almost up level with the roadway
at the back. That is a lot of water that has disappeared

Grandma Oh Oh

Our granddaughter reading
the book

I mentioned last week that Ian's mother had an unusual name, but that is one given her at birth. I have acquired mine from my youngest granddaughter and it is Grandma Oh oh! For Christmas I put together a book called "My Grandad," it was a way of sharing what Ian does on the farm and there was also a little bit about me of course. There was a picture of me feeding the alpacas and one of me skiing. Every time my little granddaughter gets to that point in the book, she goes Oh Oh! And that is the story of how I acquired my name. My daughter finds it hilarious and so I think there is a degree of encouragement going on there. I am also known as Grandma Jo and GJ, short for Granny Jo to my other grandchildren.

The front cover of the book

Whilst on the subject of Grandma's and Ian's mother we are heading to the UK the first week of February, for the funeral. It would appear there has been a spike of deaths over Christmas and a refurbishment of a crematorium, creating a backlog of funerals, hence the long wait. I am sure that must be hard for the families, for us at the moment it all seems so distant. I know it will hit us more when we see the family.  At least we won't be paying over £500 just to fly Ryanair though, which would be horrendous, the flights were much cheaper in February, not much of a consolation really. There was one point this week when the reality of it hit Ian, it was when he switched off the alerts to remind him to ring his mother. He had the alerts, because it is too easy to get busy and suddenly time has passed. It did mean that although she was so far away, he was in regular contact. It is such a shame she was afraid of computers, I'm sure she would have enjoyed a Skype to Skype call with him, rather than just hearing his voice.

Herk up to his usual trick of hogging the alpaca house.
Not too bad when it is fine, but he does this even when
it is snowing hard, so Tellus stays in the outside shelter and
poor Turbjørn ends up out in the cold. Doesn't seem to
be doing him any harm though. He seems fit enough.

One of the reasons for not dashing over is the animals. We have managed to find someone to look after them for the time we are away, as I mentioned last week, but it is a difficult time of the year to leave them for long. The days are short and they need more than just hay in the colder days. We had to give Veronica some more injections as we suspected she was being bothered by mites again, but the course should be finished by next week. We know a few people who would be willing to help, but it is a hard time to ask. One neighbour, who is the closest, also sometimes has the most difficulty in getting out from her house if it snows, because she is up the hillside. Another neighbour to where we live works regular hours and it would be difficult to fit in letting the animals out and putting them away at the times they need to be dealt with. At least another neighbour is more flexible and should be able to work something out if it snows heavily, which we hope it won't. I must share one funny incident about our alpacas that happened recently though. It was one of those, "I wished we had a camera handy" moments. We went up to the alpaca house to feed them and there sat on the back of Estelle, was one of the chickens. Obviously the chicken had found a very nice cosy place to sit, I bet her toes were warm. We were surprised that Estelle didn't seem bothered at all.

This was actually taken on the 6th January, but it is
pretty and since I am not at home today, it is more difficult
to get photos that Ian has taken

It has been another of those weeks of "Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!" and in between melting away, but not quite. Ian is not a fan of snow any more, he used to enjoy it, but now it just makes more work that he has to do because of the animals. More work, more clearing and it stops him getting into the forest to cut down trees for next winter's fuel and progressing on the clearing work that needs doing. Chances are now the snow will be hanging around, once past mid-January the temperatures usually plummet and the ground is cold, so we shall see.

Ian kitted up for the winter. I keep
thinking he looks like one of those
Bayeux tapestry soldiers in that hat
and neck warmer

Sometimes I think I make it sound like alpacas are a lot of work. In many ways they are not, they need water, hay and additional feeding in winter. It is better to clean their paddocks daily, but since they have a communal poo pile that is not a huge problem. It is just that you have to be there at strategic times of the day at this time of year. In summer they are hardly any bother at all. Then it is just a matter of let them out, they eat grass all day, clean their communal poo pile to stop it spreading, fresh bedding in their living quarters every now and again, put them away at night and jobs done. There is of course the moving of fences for fresh grass from time to time and shearing. They are the main jobs. Of course as we get more, it gets more complicated and we have to think or rather Ian has to think, how we can manage them best. Like when do we want babies? Some folks have them all year round, we don't. I think the main issue is being tied, it is not like just caring for the land, where a day a way won't hurt.

A puppet I made for our grandson

On a completely different topic I have to admit to a degree of disorderliness over Christmas presents and I only got around to posting them after Christmas. Incredibly some of the parcels only took four days to arrive, normally it is more like 10 days. Unfortunately Ian's mother's present wasn't one of them and so that didn't arrive until after she died. At least that wasn't as bad as the Christmas card she sent to us that was posted on the 16th December to us and arrived a few days later here than her parcel did. Having said that, we actually got two Christmas cards from her, as one arrived before Christmas. Not quite sure if Ian's mother had got confused, or the two daughter-in-laws both sorted out a card on her behalf, knowing she wasn't feeling well. It is the sort of thing that Ian's family would laugh about. They have quite a black sense of humour at times, but it is one way of coping with the bad times and sometimes not a bad way at all.

Our egg layers

Since it has been quite a varied week this week, the next topic is about development. Development in our area has not been particularly fast. There are bright pockets where people are working hard, but there are also real institutional barriers - to put it diplomatically. There is money available, but trying to get people together to access this money is a bit of a challenge, especially with those barriers. It was interesting therefore to be involved in the first meeting to do with the Leader programme. This has been run by the EU for many years and run quite successfully in many places. It is a way of getting local people to decide where money should be spent, it is also a way of getting local people to think of ways that would benefit many people, not just themselves, but as I said, people have to cooperate.

The setting sun

We were fortunate that there was someone there who could translate, there were actually a few people, but one was coopted - poor guy. I have heard a lot about this programme, but I had never seen it being set up in an area before and so it was quite fascinating to watch and take notes. We got talking to the ladies after the meeting, as a friend of ours had helped to organise the venue for it and the lady was working on getting farmers together to talk about their experiences - we are down to talk on February 26th about alpacas and tomatoes in particular, as my friend insisted we do that. I had to ask my friend what was so fascinating about the way we grew our tomatoes and apparently it is because we mulch them and don't water them as often as Latvians do. We also take all the leaves off at the first sign of blight. Didn't realise that was so fascinating.

Christmas lights in Tartu are still up, but the Christmas tree
is not. Lights tend to stay up longer in Estonia and in
Latvia, as it brightens the dark nights.

And last but not least, I had my yearly evaluation today. The evaluators didn't seem to have any problems with where I am in my studies. They shouldn't do, I have more than enough credit points. I need 60 by year four and I have just finished my second year and I have 65. I also have papers in progress and I need three by year four. That might be more of a problem, but hopefully by the end of the year, I shall have full papers published and not just the short papers so far. I did explain my approach, because I am working in a social science field and they are all natural sciences, at least my science background helps there. I think they were still a little bemused by my presentation, because it was bright, colourful and had pictures of art work and diagrams with pictures. All my creative embroidery artwork board prep and children's work coming into play there.

Before

After! Courtesy of Google. They automatically created a panoramic shot

Tasty!

There be monsters in there. This wasn't quite
what I was expecting. The labelling system
didn't work this year and so I won't be using
marker pen on plastic cups cut into strips
again. Just now need to find out which type
of squash it was.

Hmmm! Tasty! We finally got around to dispatching our returned cockerel. He started getting crochety with the growing chicks, who would dive into the food before he even got a chance to bend down. At least the chicks now put themselves away, so he was superfluous to requirements and therefore he was put into solitary confinement in the other ark. The problem is that we really need that ark now that the younger chicks are getting bigger and we can't carry on feeding a bird that doesn't have a use, so he had to go. It took a few days before Ian was ready for the deed. Once it's dead he's fine, but it isn't easy to dispatch them in such a way that they are not distressed first. As he was an older bird I put him in the slow cooker for the day, as we didn't fancy rubber meat. What we didn't anticipate though was the dark meat on the legs, we always thought of chicken meat as white and turkey meat as white and dark, but no this bird definitely had dark leg meat and he definitely wasn't a turkey. It was very satisfying to sit down to a totally home-grown meal, even down to the meat. We had potatoes, carrots, beans, broccoli and our first sweetcorn of the year. The only thing not local on our plate was the salt and pepper.

Rally car test

Ian had a surprising Tuesday afternoon and a hark back to old times, well even better than old times really as he got to see some rally cars storming up and down the road passed our land, it was like his own personal rally. Ian used to follow the rally championships many moons ago and even occasionally got to see them race. This time a couple of guys came up onto the land to talk to Ian, fortunately one spoke English and he explained that they were closing the road to do some rally car tests and people were posted along the road at various points, wherever there was a chance of someone coming onto the road, to stop the traffic. They were all in contact with each other and so they knew when the car was going to go pass. Alongside our land there is a sharp corner and Ian stationed himself there and got chatting with the young lass in charge of the road that came on at that point, he didn't get any work done, but he thoroughly enjoyed himself. There was a slight hitch trying to get off the land after he had put the animals away, as the cars were still testing and the young chaps on duty on our access road had difficulty getting through to find out if Ian could go, they managed it in the end and he didn't have to wait until they were finished.

Ian busy building the next alpaca house

Our animals are being relatively well behaved this week, well if we discount the oh so free range chickens. Occasionally the chickens start straying into territory they are not allowed in and end up being fastened in their hutch again and again and again. They are suckers really, as all Ian has to do is wave their food pot around and they come running, no matter what time of the day it is. The sheep have now got used to him and know when feed time is so they start bleating for their share. It isn't really necessary to feed them at this time of the year, but we would rather they know who Ian is than be afraid of him and it is far easier to round up some sheep who come for food, than those who aren't used to humans. After all it is definitely not one man and his dog around here! For all my non-British friends, One man and his dog was (is?) a tv show that displays the amazing abilities of working sheep dogs to herd sheep across fields and into sheep pens and since we have no sheep dog and don't intend to get one we have to rely on the bribery method to get some cooperation.

A man must not be separated from his music

A bit later on and a little strategic help
from me and the framework is complete.
Now just needs the sides and a roof.
Easier said than done though

We of course don't just have the domesticated animals on our land, there is a lot of wildlife too and yes the darned pigs have been back again. Hopefully the hunter knows about it now and with any luck one of those little beasties will end up on our table. They did make rather a mess one night, but not as bad as last year so far, but it is still early days yet, in fact too early. Fortunately not all animals are quite so destructive, although they do have the potential to be. This week Ian has seen an osprey and a deer on the land and one day while having lunch an eagle flew out of our forest, fortunately he didn't decide on a little chicken dinner at the time, as I think they weren't in places they would have been easy to catch. It does make being out on the land a true joy though, to know there is such an abundance of wildlife. I often see lizards and many different kinds of frogs and toads when I'm weeding the garden. This week I finished lifting the onions, not too bad a year for them, some are big and some aren't. Definitely a bit more hit and miss this year in terms of the growing season. We have also had blackberries, a reasonable crop this year, not just one or two like the last two years and at least enough for two blackberry and apple pies/sponge and still another load to come. Next year I am sure there will be far more as that blackberry bush is now starting to make a bid for freedom. Another new vegetable for us in Aztec broccoli, it is more like spinach but doesn't go away to a mush. It is proving a little difficult to grow though as the first year I tried it, it succumbed to black fly, the second year was just a dire year anyway and so this year is the first year we have had something eatable and very pleasant it is too.

Time for coffee!

It has been nice to share our enjoyment this week of our land and lifestyle, as two of our friends have brought family and friends around to see our place and show them around. Normally we take our friends to see their places, so it is nice they want to do the same. One friend brought his son and grandson, who he hasn't seen for a long, long time and another friend brought her friend who wants to be a vet and she wanted to show her that it is possible to live out in the countryside. It was really interesting listening to what she felt was important about what we were doing and explained how we worked so hard, well Ian works hard, I do more of the thinking kind of stuff. She was also telling her friend how I was writing a project to help people live in the countryside - well that might not be the exact way I would explain it, but it is interesting that she thought it was a worthwhile thing to do.

Ian has been driving me mad recently with his fussing over a noise coming from the car. Well my hearing is that bad I couldn't really distinguish the particular noise that was irritating him. Eventually he jacked the car up and had a look and then announced we had to take the car into Jekabpils to get it seen to, as there was too much play in the rear universal joint in the prop shaft (any the wiser?, I wasn't either, but I always nod knowingly). The guys at the garage took a look and said that indeed the said joint was shot, kaput and they could fit it in that afternoon. Good job as Ian didn't really fancy driving it back home and then back again another day.

As we were in for a long wait we decided to go and try to get some official books we are supposed to fill in for the animals. We had much merriment with the phone being passed backwards and forwards as the lady in the office was finding out from our friend who was translating what it was we needed. I think we got the right ones anyway. We took the books back to the garage and hoped to pop the books into the car, only to find out that they were already working on it ahead of schedule. Well we decided that we still had time for lunch and as it was Jekabpils, we decided it had to be fish and chip again. It has become quite a tradition for us. The news came through as we were waiting that the car was finished, so all was well and good and the car is surprisingly quiet these days - so I'm told.

I never realised until lately that this is what
a Jerusalem artichoke plant looks like.
A friend of ours gave us some this year and
they can take over, so they are in the middle
of the plot, where they cannot come to much
harm and be mowed if they get too much.

On our way home we decided to go via the biogas plant to take a look at the fields around there. I wanted to know if they had planted maize again for the third year running. They have indeed. In fact there are many many hectares of the stuff, that we found as we took a round trip around the area. It was distinctly depressing. All we could think about was the ruined fields due to planting the same crop in the same ground year after year. The risks of diseases building up is high and also it is pig heaven. Wild boar absolutely love maize and they find it so easy to hide in. The fact that they are now cutting the maize is probably why we are seeing more pig damage on our land, as it will be driving them our way.

The bees seem to like them anyway

I had a revelation this week. You know how you think you know someone well and then suddenly you wonder if you do know them as well as you think you do, when they say something unexpected? I had one of those moments with Ian. He likes cheese! So what, I think you would probably say, but I was under the impression that he wasn't really that fond of cheese. He was fine with it added to food, but I've always been careful not to use it too often, well because he wasn't fond of it, or so I thought. Now where did I get that idea from? You can imagine my surprise one day when he commented he would really like some cheese to go with the tomato sandwiches he's been living off for the past couple of weeks (his choice by the way) and he was rather shocked when I said "but you don't like cheese." Oh well! I guess we'll get over the shock eventually.

We bought a hop plant at the DIY store.
I had been wanting a hop plant for ages
 and seeds didn't work.

I had a few more revelations this week. One was that I can reuse material that I have already written. Each presentation does not have to be completely different to the one before, I can copy slides for one thing, especially as the same people are not at every conference I go to. I might get bored with the content, but they might not, unless of course I also sound bored. Allowing myself to reuse material goes against the grain, as I had spent many years trying to get my children to write interesting pieces that do not repeat themselves for lessons, when I home educated them. Realising this important point took a bit of pressure off me as I worked on a poster presentation that I have to do for my next trip. The next revelation was that I might be low in iron again and maybe that is why I was so tired. I never got my blood levels checked, but around two years ago I was going through an intense tired phase and because of heavy periods (sorry chaps but telling it like it is) it was quite likely that I could be low in iron. Taking iron tablets certainly seemed to help at the time and I took a three month course and then topped up as necessary, i.e. monthly. Relying on diet to keep my levels up the rest of the time. Somehow the tablets stopped and it was only after wondering what on earth was wrong with me this time around and another heavy bout and the penny dropped. So back on the tablets again, and it seems to be working. I actually walked up our three flights of stairs and didn't feel exhausted by the effort.

A tidied garden in the sunset

I definitely feel much perkier, which is a good job, as there is a five hour hike in the mountains to look forward to on my next trip. I am also more alert mentally and don't feel so paralysed by the work I need to do. Stupid really as I know I can do it, but the physical exhaustion of doing the garden, possible low iron levels and the studying was really not doing me any good. It did make me realise as well that I was possibly running a bit too much on my own steam and not relying on God to help me. I'm feeling much more relaxed now, I still have some deadlines to meet, but knowing that God has my future in his hands means I don't feel like I have to strive so hard, just get on with the work I have to do and leave the rest up to him. I have my friend Steve, from Colorado, where I used to live in the US for two years, to thank for regaining a bit of perspective with his last blog post on weakness.

Hog roast

Damage right up to our alpaca fence this week

Eventually this last week we managed to get hold of a hunter to come and hunt on our land. The number we had, was for a hunter who had left the hunting organisation we have a contract with and it took a few texts to eventually get another number. It was sorted in the end and the hunter went out on three nights to our land, with increasing damage being done, but eventually he shot one. If we have the story straight, then it was one of a group of 20-30 individuals, so it was no wonder the place was a mess. It is possible that they had also decided that our land would make an ideal breeding ground. Not good for us, but at least the hunters have committed to continuing the hunt this week too, although of course there hasn't been any damage since one was shot. I remember one of our neighbours telling us that a hunt usually meant that the wild boar would not be back for a fortnight, so at least we get a bit of a reprieve. The snow has continued to fall and it is steadily building up and this restricts the wild boar with their little legs to the forests, so hopefully by the time the boar have forgotten about the killing the snow will be too deep for them.

Ian makes the best use of the barn by hoisting the
trailer up and leaving more floor space. One pulley
a couple of chains and the jobs a goodun'

Our share of the boar meat, bagged up and ready for the
freezer

The great thing is with having hunters out on the land, is that we get a share of the boar meat too and so we ended up with a bucketful of meat. I like the idea that I haven't had to butcher it too, so it seems a fair exchange. It was a fat pig though, with a layer of fat on it over an inch thick, if not thicker. That was one well fed pig! Normally I would be wary of meat with too much fat, but the fat will be good for our chickens, they could do with the extra calories now the temperatures are dropping quite sharply. I will let you know what it tastes like once I have got around to cooking it, I will tell you though that we will enjoy every morsel of it.

A frosty morning

Talking of chickens, we must have killed the wrong one. We have not had a single egg this week. I know it is cold but the light levels have gone up with the snow and so I would have thought we might have had one or two eggs, but no! The cold has been bad for the alpacas, well one in particular, Turbjörn. We are still not sure if the others are being mean to him or he just prefers to stay outside, but he is often shivering during the day. He is fine in the mornings as they have plenty of hay that has been built up quite a bit in the shed and we also have spent one day this week shifting rubbish bales of hay and stacking them against the shed to act as insulation and then put fleece around the outside on the other sides to reduce the draughts. It seems to have made it a better environment overnight despite the continued drop in temperatures. Two guys came around from the nearby sheep farm this week and helped Ian to cut the alpaca toe nails. They were quite excited about helping with the alpacas, being only three of them and not hundreds of sheep was something a little different. One had a bit of a bleed, but nothing serious and the lads had a spray to help, one also had a bit of a limp afterwards but that got better over the next two days. It might have just twisted it a bit as it was having the nails cut, or it might have just been a bit strange after having the nails cut. Anyway it is better now.

Hay bales stacked up against the side - a bit snow encrusted now

Double fleece layers around the sides too

We actually saw the sun one day this week. Not sure when
the last time we saw it. Ian and I just stood by the window
and gazed at the sun coming up, it was such a welcome sight

Sometimes in winter we have a problem with the electric, although we don't have as many power cuts as we used to now, it has gone off twice this week. The first time I was surprised that I didn't have a text from the power company to say that the electric was off. It seems a bit stupid getting a text to say "your power is off" but at least it means I know, they know about it and hopefully working on it. What was even more surprising was that it was off for an hour and a half and it wasn't even snowing at the time. All I can assume is that it might have been due to an ice build up that got worse as the temperatures dropped. The second time the electric went off we got a text, only I wasn't impressed as we had gone to bed early at our other apartment and had only just dropped off. We had also just topped up our fire to last all night and so we then spent an uneasy time wondering if our fire would cause the water to boil and possibly explode - we haven't got around to sorting out the battery for our UPS system (Uninterrupted power supply) which switches to battery power when the electric goes off. Our batteries have been used to charge the electric fence and probably need replacing now. Sigh!

Franken-shifter. A patented snow remover

Snow shifted off the greenhouse with franken-shifter

A frosty tree

Usually I don't mind the snow, but this year I just feel caught out by it. I guess it is partly because we have the animals now and we know that if the snow stays then this will be it until at least March and Ian has been having to spend all day out on the land, without electric, so that he can keep an eye on the animals. The chickens seem happy enough fortunately but due to our shivering alpaca, Ian has upped their feed of concentrate by feeding them midday and making sure that Turbjörn gets his full share. At least it means that Turbjörn, the most reluctant of the alpacas will eat out of a bowl Ian holds, not out of his hand but close. Looking out over the scene from our apartment window though I noticed once again how it hides so much, covering the footprints and on our land I knew it would be covering the hideous mess from the pigs in a white fluffy blanket, that was falling ever so gently from the sky. It made me think that sometimes we need our past covered over like that, hiding the marks we made, rather like grace really.

A golden sunrise

Crystal fairy lights, or ice lit by the sun!