Outdoor showers

This has been my office in the heat of the day
just lately. Finally the trees in the orchard
are big enough to sit in their shade.

I should really be editing a paper, but I cannot focus at the level required for an academic paper. I'm half asleep and another early night is needed. It isn't just the two hour and 20 minute zoom call, interesting though that was, or the fact I had a pause in the middle to help Ian stack hay as it was about to rain, but also due to the fact I was up early this morning. 

I found out the name of a flower that I had seen frequently recently and it was called lesser 
stitchwort. I looked on my computer at a guide for
Latvian plants in the different habitats and found out
there was also a greater stitchwort. I thought I had found
it this week, but no, it was wood stitchwort instead. 
Well now I know.

Ian found this bug. I think it had only 
just hatched out. I guessed it was a 
longhorned beetle, because of it's long
antennae but never seen anything
like it before. I got excited that it was
perhaps a migrant a spotted longhorn
beetle as that was the closest on 
iNaturalist. Someone corrected me and
said it was a ladder longhorn beetle.
Close but not close enough. These are
more widespread than the spotted
ones though

Let me back track a bit. Yesterday was one of those days. The day started off in the sultry heat of summer. The sort you get before a thunderstorm. We knew there was a possibility of rain on the way, but it was not certain. Ian was baling in the tractor - a hot and humid job since the aircon is not working and he can't open the door for ventilation - that would be a big pane of glass to replace if it breaks. The other problem is that flies would get in through an open door and make his work impossible anyway. So while he was sweltering in the tractor, I was sweltering outside as I ensured the twine on the bales were properly secured and then started the process of rolling them to the old alpaca house that is now used as a hay store. I rolled some down the hill, which is kind of fun, but not so much in the humid heat of the day. I had to get them inside and that was my focus, even when Ian was showing visitors around. 

A video of the stork dance that happens every 

time that Ian cuts hay.

Apparently these are green tortoise
beetles because of the shape of the
shell casings. 

There was one point I realised I had to get water and cool down, I was overheating badly. Fortunately we have water stored in our root cellar, so that was cool and I dropped my shirt into a rainwater trough at the back of the barn - also a cool spot. That got my temperature down and I could carry on. I managed to get all the bales stacked that could be easily rolled. Another group of bales were covered with a tarpaulin, five bales were hastily thrown into the horse box because they were nearby and another group stacked near one of the barns ready for Ian to put in. All the time I was watching the dark clouds gathering and then after the briefest of showers - if you could even call it that - it passed over. I felt I could relax. Ian finished the baling and we even allowed ourselves a cup of coffee and a sit down. Then back to work. 

After 11pm at night

A robber fly at the bottom.

Whilst Ian stacked bales into one of our other store houses, I went and sorted the bales he had just done by gathering them together. Before you think I'm superhuman, these bales weigh about 25kg not 800kg like you see in many fields today, so not too horrendous to move around by rolling but it does mean they do not do well in the rain, so something we try to avoid. I got two lots of bales grouped together and once again I watched as the rain clouds gathered. I got the third group gathered and then it started to rain, I decided to stack them so at least some were off the floor. It rained harder. I saw some of our neighbours walking down, I wondered if they were visiting, but no, I realised as I walked past they were waiting for the bus. It started to rain even harder. By the time I got up to our greenhouse, I was absolutely saturated. I shut the doors on the new greenhouse, because I couldn't get any wetter. Rain was pouring off my cowboy style hat in sheets. Ian was a little more sheltered but just managed to get the bales in, but by the time he'd sorted out the doors on the animal houses so they weren't wide open, he too was drenched.

Just a member of the mustard family
but such sweet little flowers

Alkanet a dye plant

All we could do was strip off in the caravan and leave the heap of sodden clothes on the floor while we dried off. I was sat in a towel when there was a knock on the door. The bus hadn't come, could we take our neighbour into Riga. Oh! Errr! Yes sure! I decided to go with Ian, and hastily got ready. At least we could find something to eat on the way back, as I was too tired to cook something and it would be late when Ian returned anyway. We got as far as our village when our neighbour decided he was too wet to carry on - apparently he was beginning to feel chilly in our car. We dropped him off in the village as requested and headed for the bakery for some cold summer soup and a cake and then do some shopping. On the way back, our neighbour caught up with us and asked if we could take him home and then take him for the bus in the morning. Hence the early morning this morning. The joys of public transport in remote areas.

I thought this was an early marsh orchid,
again close but not close enough. It's a
Baltic marsh orchid. Fortunately Ian 
just about managed to avoid running it
over.

Our first box of strawberries. I hope
the rain hasn't ruined many of them.

At least that was the most exciting point of the week. I can't do with too much excitement like that. Although is losing my phone in the alpaca house one of those moments? I realised I had dropped my phone somewhere between our greenhouse and the alpaca house, but that is still a large area to lose a phone. Ian phoned, it wasn't in the caravan, he phoned again, it wasn't in the greenhouse, so we tried again and sure enough it was buried in the hay in the alpaca house. Whoops! Goodness only knows what the alpacas thought of my phone going off. 

A green cucumber spider

Hay cut and cleared from this area. Except one 
area because we are enjoying seeing all the 
flowers in that patch, plus the grass is never
really high in this particular place.

We have finished round one of the hay cutting season, there are still two other areas about the same size to cut, although these are a little less fiddly to do. It was dry most of the day today and so the bales at least had a chance to dry off so Ian could stack them, only he had more visitors to show around and so needed some help this afternoon to finish off. Our stores are nearly full already so we can be a little more relaxed about it. I should also be finished with the majority of my work soon too, so I can concentrate on getting the garden into shape, as well as helping more with the haymaking or at least stacking hay bales.

This area gets left for the flowers too

Poor Mr. P. gets all the difficult cases. Vanessa
is not what we would call a compliant alpaca
and she shows her displease at our choice of mate
for her by putting up quite a fight. Normally that
would mean she is pregnant, but not in her case.

We sheared the last of the alpacas at a mini-zoo this week and a small llama. Normally llamas fleece grows more slowly and they only need shearing every two years. This one year old llama already had quite a long fleece and she was still tiny for a llama. The fleece was also pretty good too. Hopefully next year we won't have the problems of lockdown - well maybe. It would be much more awkward next year as we have continued on with the mating season and one or two of the alpacas are showing promising signs of being pregnant. That will mean shearing will need to be finished by mid-May.

An oak spider. I thought at first that
was because there are lots of oaks on 
our land and then I realised it has an
oak leaf pattern on its back.

Coming and going

The sunsets have been awesome though, but wintry

Right now our village is looking pretty with its dusting of white, only I’m not really appreciating this beautiful sight right now. We had a lovely spring week last week but this week we have had cold winds and snow showers. Oh well! This is spring in Latvia, so I can’t complain too much. Last week I managed to put some seeds in the ground, I think they will be fine as they will just sit there until the weather warms up and then probably come away quite quickly, since they are brassica type seeds. The seedlings, however, I have no idea. I decided not to peek under the fleece that is covering them as every time I remember it is covered in snow. At least the tomatoes that have germinated are tucked up at home on the windowsills

The wagtails came back recently but I bet they are not
impressed with the frozen pond

Turbjørn in thoughtful mood

This week has been more mundane than most. Ian has finally managed to finish off the chipping of all the branches from the trees he cut down the previous winter and he has started logging that up. We had to take a trip up to our neighbour to get the last of the hay out of her barn. We still have the big bales of hay but almost out of the small ones now. We just need the weather to warm up so that the animals can eat more grass. We have the alpacas out on the grass, but Ian has to move the fences often to stop them over eating it and the sheep we won’t let out as they would decimate the grass in a very short space of time - they are protesting muchly about that too.

One of the many dustings this week.

Ian has been feeling the cold just lately. Sometimes
one of his fingers goes white, once the circulation
shut off to two of his fingers. Such a shame as he
has been doing quite well on Gingko Biloba for
quite a while now.

We have stopped out in the caravan a few times and one night it was down to -10C in the greenhouse so a tad chilly for carvanning really. It isn’t impossible with enough layers of clothing, a quilt and a couple of blankets. The heater is also right next to Ian and so he can switch it on in the morning without having to get out of bed. That warms his clothes through too. At least in a small space the temperature soon warms up, well sort of. It’s all relative really. In summer we would be thinking those temperatures are too cold, in winter we have a slightly different perspective on what is warm and what is cold, unless the wind picks up and then any temperature feels cold. The northerly wind this last week did make it more unpleasant as well as the snow showers.

A rather good capture of Mr. P. It is hard to
photograph him usually

Have you heard the news?

We decided to try a new venture and set up an “Adopt an alpaca” package on our website. It’s a bit of fun but also every little helps with trying to earn a living out here on our land. We tried to think what we could provide but also what people might like when adopting an alpaca. So “a week’s visit from your adopted animal with a complimentary bale of hay?” as Ian put on Facebook. Well perhaps not, But there will be and adoption certificate, a Christmas card, a birthday card (as long as we are given the date), email updates and a fluffy keyring with a piece of fleece from the adopted animal. It is amazing how many people would like to take away a little piece and so we thought we would include that in the package. If you are interested take a look at our Facebook page here where you can see all the pictures and our website with more details is here

A fluffy Brencis keyring

Tellus and Mr. P looking for grass

We have had a trickle of visitors over the past week too, some to see the alpacas and errrr some to see the alpacas. Let’s be honest that is why most folks visit us. Ian at least managed a couple of sentences in Latvian when a lady with we think her grandchildren stopped for a look and couldn’t speak any English, which is exciting. Even more exciting though we got to hear that one of Ian’s brothers and his wife are coming out to see us next month. It is the first time anyone has been out from that side of the family and we are looking forward to showing them around our home.

Somebody is standing on their food! They also
broke the feeder this week

Ready or not! Here I come! 

Ian and I have been chatting quite a bit about home just lately. Yes we still talk about the calamity of Brexit and still wonder what it will mean for us, but also my supervisor came to visit and I needed to talk about the paper that I have to re-write. I was a bit stuck with how to present the complexity of home or sense of place. I read an article about identity and how living abroad changes your sense of identity, it loosens it somehow in so far as we are not totally British any more (whatever that means) but neither are we totally Latvian (lack of language doesn’t help) we are somewhere in between with a bit of something leftover from Denmark and the US thrown in there too. Each place has had an impact on how we think, where we feel at home and how we feel at home. England is no longer home to us, it’s okay to visit and see the grandkids, but it is not home.

We are not sure if our champion mouser is also
reducing the bird population again

Not sure who else will get the schematic I came up
with, but it sure helps me

I managed to come up with a diagram of little ships with anchors that travel through time and put out anchors into the different layers that make up our places that we call home or those we identify with. The more anchors the more like home it will feel, the more tied to a place. It could be family or friends who live there, the culture, or the physical landscape which is special to you. All have different values to different people. I’m not sure if I will use the schematic in the paper or not but at least it has helped me to organise my thoughts for the write up and that is a big help.

Eyre aka Floss in playful mood

There's actually grass there, before it got covered
again later on in the day

Not seeing the grandkids so much is a huge issue of course. At first we thought that they maybe able to come across more but that hasn’t worked out. Being across in the UK and helping my daughter out as well as seeing the others, was actually quite hard, because I thoroughly enjoyed that aspect of just being with them. I was sat in church with my daughter and her family on mothering Sunday with these conflicting emotions and needing a word from God to quell the disquiet. There was no powerful preaching on the day and to be honest I am not sure I can hear much through crafted words, it is usually the off-the-cuff comments that catch my attention. This time it was the reading from Psalm 139. I helped one of the kids groups I helped out at to learn this one and I read it out at my one of son’s wedding. The part that resonated inside of me and quietened my anxious thoughts were the verses 7-10

Brencis out for a stroll

Where can I go from your Spirit?
    Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
    if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
    if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
    your right hand will hold me fast.

Another gorgeous sunset, just before a short snow
storm

At least it felt like encouragement to me to keep going and somehow things will work out.

In clover

Veronica. Unusually nosy for her!

It has been an intense week this week. Although we often do lots of different activities, the pace we go at is usually fairly relaxed, but not this week. First of all Ian moved the sheep from where they have been all spring to somewhere nearer to what they would consider civilisation (being herd animals and only three of them, I think they miss the company). The poor things were so hot, but we did make sure their feeding ground include trees for shelter, but did they use it – no of course not! They had to sit in the hottest spot next to the gate.

The sheep were over this hill behind Ian taking the photo.
He then moved them all the way over to a spot to the
left of the greenhouse. They were very good and didn't
scamper off at all. I think it was just too hot

If you don't examine them too carefully, they look much
better today. Still, if they could, they would change their
hairdresser

The reason for moving them nearer to civilisation was to bring them closer to an electric point so we could shear them using the mains electric and not a generator. It went so well at first, we managed to stop any of them escaping first of all and we then tied their legs together to stop them running off while we sheared. Before you think we were being cruel, you have to remember these are animals that cleared a four foot wooden fence by scrabbling over it. If these sheep did not get sheared that day, they weren't going to get sheared for quite a while and in the heat we had this week, it was the less cruel option. Unfortunately Ian has not been on a sheep shearing course and the finish was not very professional, in fact they looked a proper dog’s breakfast - if you get what I mean. Still they fairly skipped around in the rain yesterday. Better than the big wool coat they were wearing.

Brencis looking gorgeous

Brencis' fleece. You can see it is definitely not pure white

The instrument of torture ..errr I mean
the hoist. We need to find a wider belt
for it, but at least the principle worked.
It was funny holding Snowdrop
because she would audibly sigh as she
was being milked. I think it was a relief

Although Snowdrop lost her baby last week, she was quite full of milk. Rather than waste it and because we know that she is likely to have problems feeding a baby in the future, it is always good to have spare so we milked her. That is now in the freezer – not much but at least it is something - a feed's worth. It may contain colostrum, but I'm not sure if colostrum is always the first lot of milk or whether it is only within 24 hours. We did try to milk her while she was pinned down for shearing but it didn't work. We then tried it while she was standing up, but she kept cushing (the alpaca term for sitting down with their legs underneath them, which of course means it is impossible to milk her like that. In the end Ian made a hoist to stop her cushing. I'm glad to say it worked well.

Wheat and Poppies - not red ones though

Amaranth. These have been competing
well with the weeds and Ian has been
able to keep just ahead with these.

We have also got quite a bit of weeding done, but there is not much to show for it, although I did find some carrots and dill, not many, but they are at least there. Of course at this time of year, if you don't keep on top of the weeding, the weeds tend to take over. We had some old seed and a bad year for germination and that hasn't helped. I have some carrots going to seed in the greenhouse, so that should give us plenty of carrot seed for next year and I shall buy some fresh seed from a seed company, so that we have a good genetic mix of carrots. I let enough carrots go to seed for our own use, but not enough to make sure they provide us with healthy plants genetically in the future.

Lots of wonderful flowers at this time of the year and until
Monday was blissfully relatively free of biting insects.
Monday the really large horse flies suddenly appeared.
They look like something out of a horror movie, but
fortunately they are so loud, you can hear them coming
and be prepared. It is the pesky small ones that are harder
to get.

Because we haven't got any chick pictures
this week, here is one of Eyre looking
sleepy. She has been ever so good at going
to sleep in the toilet area of the caravan when
we have been sleeping in it. She is quiet until
we wake up.

Talking of genetics, we are have bred some lovely looking chickens, with gorgeous black or grey feathers, unfortunately we seem to have bred out any sign of intelligence at the same time. All our other chickens have only taken about three days maximum to get the idea that when food is put in the back of the ark, that means it is time to go away for the night. The food is an incentive to go into the box to be fastened up. However, this lot have been chased around the ark lots of times to catch them. It would be the most awkward ark too. It was designed as a small ark for chicks to go on the floor, but then we extended it upwards to give them more room and there isn't as much access for humans. At least they are finally getting the idea, apart from one and even that one is finally getting it. It tends to look around as if to say, "where has everyone gone?" before the penny drops and into the box it goes, a good minute after the others. I do hope the folks that got their siblings are not having the same bother.

Sour dough bread buns freshly baked for
lunch

The sweetcorn is doing well in the greenhouse

Apart from all that it was an intense hay cutting, baling and shifting week. We reckon we may have shifted about 4 ½ tonnes and I have certainly walked miles behind tractor. The good news is that it would seem the UK got our heatwave and we only had to put up with temperatures around 28C (82) and not over 30C (86F) like we normally do. I certainly felt the benefit. I don't even feel particularly sore, just like I have done a lot of work.

Some of the cuttings from one of the grapevines in the
greenhouse seems to have taken. We aim to plant these
ones outside and see how they will do there.

The rain on Monday battered some of our oats. Not sure if
we will get anything out of this bit. It maybe okay. It is
not as if we need to harvest it with a combine harvester.
We might just use the scythe 

One of the first things we had to do was shift some of last years hay that we still had in our neighbours barn down to our place to make room for the new hay. While we were doing that our neighbour came into the barn carrying two freshly baked goodies, straight out of the oven. She was supplying the camp nearby with things like cinamon rolls, biezpiena rolls (kind of like a cross between cottage cheese and curd cheese in a sweet roll) and pizzas. They were absolutely gorgeous and much appreciated. She does look after us.

Tomatoes are starting to form on our plants now

Looking down from the top of the ski hill at the area
we cut, baled and cleared

This is to the left of the picture above

A remnant from the Soviet era. The signage
on this electric pole is in Russian

It was close but we managed to get all of this year's hay into the barn and stacked in the space we were allowed. I think we could have only got one or two more bales in. We had around 70 bales leftover from last year, and over 180 new ones. That will be more than enough and means we do not have to worry about trying to bale and stack any more from the land. We needed more in past years because we didn't have any where to stack it to keep it dry and ended up throwing a lot of it away. It feels very nice to know that won't be as much of a problem this time around.

Not the strawberries I picked after the hay stacking but ones
I cut up to dry. The strawberries are huge and tasty this year
and we have been having them on our breakfast all week.
Such a hard life!

I feel like a true farmer this year. We knew some rain was coming, so got all the hay collected and stacked and since the rain was imminent Ian went and baled hay we had cut around the side of our greenhouse that had been re-seeded a year or so ago and was lush and tall not like most of the hay this year. I also went and collected all the ripe strawberries because the expected rain was due to be heavy and I didn’t want to waste them. We just finished those jobs as the first few spots of rain began to fall, at that point we finally went and ate and then slept for an hour or so. I don't even feel that bad today. I thought I would have been quite stiff, but I just feel like I have over done it yesterday and need to take it easy today. So not bad, must be getting stronger each year, or not as drained in the lower temperatures maybe.

These four bales of hay came from the side and rear of the
greenhouse

Three bales from this section and one from behind

The uncut patch is to keep everyone guessing what we are
up to :) or the other explanation is to allow the clover (the
purple splodge in the middle that you can see) to go to
seed and spread around that area. The grass in that area is
rather thin and so hopefully the clover will add some
fertility

We have found that the hay every year is very different due to the growing conditions.  Often the grass is tall, but the cool, dry spring meant this year's hay was on the short side and not so dense. What we have noticed though is a huge increase in clover. I have identified at least three sorts, possibly four. There was also vetches and lady’s bedstaw in abundance. So the hay will be very scented and possibly rather fattening with all the leguminous plants– so not much grain supplement will be needed for our boys this next year, they are fat enough as it is.