No! No! No!

Our oat field wasn't very big. This damage just about
obliterated it. The barley is still okay and so is the
buckwheat

It looks like the wild boar thought that since we had cut down their sleeping place in the hay, then they would go and sleep in the oats instead. Not just once but twice at least. Now much of our oat crop is on the floor. Our hunter assured us he had been a few times to take a look but they are animals that migrate and so it is hard to find them. We do wonder though if he is looking in the right place, but since he doesn’t speak any English, just German as a second language, it is a bit of a problem communicating effectively with him.

There always has to be time for tea though. Here is Ian's
solution to my insulated cup always falling over. It didn't
last though, as a tea cup holder that is, as it was stacked
away with the other bales later

So hot that the little swallow chicks were all flopped over
the side of the nest

It has been one of those weeks when it is hard to know what has actually been accomplished. I seem to have spent an inordinately long time on little jobs that add up and steal time. A few minutes here and a few minutes there. Everything taking longer than I think it will and before I know it another week has gone by. I don’t think the weather is helping, it is very hot in the 30s during the day and mid-20s at night. We have been sleeping out in the caravan sometimes because at least it cools down quicker than our apartment building.

Some commenters on my blog wonder
how I manage to get everything done.
I guess you might imagine my allotment
plots looking like this

The reality is more like this. It isn't quite
a before and after picture. The first
picture is one I did manage to clear and
the second one is one I haven't got around
to yet

Improved storm drain

It hasn’t helped that we can’t leave windows open at night to let the cool night air in. In our caravan it would just fill with mosquitoes and we haven’t worked out a way of being able to put up a flyscreen and yet still be able to open the windows. In our apartment we now get mosquitoes in there too, we didn’t use to, but I think we do now because the trees have got bigger and closer to the building. Even if we put screens on the windows there, it won’t stop the local dog from barking though. It is no wonder then that one afternoon I had a nap that lasted 2 1/2 hours. I don’t often have naps, but I think I needed that one. It didn’t help the productivity output for that day though.

Finally the squashes are starting to take off, well some of
them are anyway

Some of the jobs I managed this week was to complete another lesson plan, some more gardening, tackling the tomato forest in our greenhouse and travelling backwards and forwards to get milk for Agnese. I suppose that is unusual in itself, I’ve actually been driving quite a bit this week.

The buckwheat is ripening

Ian has completed another ark for the baby chicks to go in (picture for that next week). They are growing fast and getting a bit big for the big upturned basket I put them in during the day. I do move the basket around and so they get plenty of fresh greens to eat. Talking of chickens, we swapped cockerels around again. The small cockerel was absolutely and utterly useless at keeping the girls together and so we swapped him for the one we think might be a bit aggressive - he is being given his last chance. So far he has surprised us, he has kept the girls in-line and hasn’t gone for me at all, even when I accidently got between him and the girls. He hopped out of the chicken house when I was feeding them and checking for eggs, but I stepped out and out of the way and he hopped right in again. James would have gone for me in that circumstance. So he has now been named Major Fowler in honour of the “Chicken Run” cockerel, as he reminds us of him.

The barley is ripening too

The storks are gathering, they'll be off soon. Doesn't seem
long since we were expecting their arrival

Ian has also been cutting more grass on our neighbours field. Much of it will just be left as it is no good for collecting, but we hope will improve the grass by doing so. While he was cutting he saw about 10 corncrakes, some of them quite young. One was unfortunately eaten by a stork and so Ian leapt out of the tractor and frightened the stork off, to give the others chance to escape. He also walked through the last swathe to make sure there were none in there, only to have a couple of them fly out when he did make the final cut. The corncrakes got away anyway and into the long grass at the end of the field, where they will be much safer.

The swallow chicks are so funny to see

Ian the Saviour of Corncrakes, has also had other jobs to do that were unexpected. The first one was a puncture on the car that our neighbour kindly told us about. That meant a trip out to the land to let the animals out and then a trip back into our village to get the wheel repaired. Extra fuel, extra time and a job he could have done without.

Feeding the girls

The next unexpected job was due to our errant sheep. We came onto the land one morning to see our sheep asleep in the middle of the field between the caravan and the alpaca enclosure, in other words they were not where they were supposed to be. We were grateful at least that they hadn’t wandered far. Ian went to take a look at how they had got out and found a place with a lot of wool wrapped against the wire, so we are not sure if they got spooked or had just had enough of being where they were. He thought they needed moving anyway and so set up a place in a nice shady spot for them. Where they have been set to work cropping the grass in an area that is difficult to cut due to the pig damage.

Posing with Agnese and no he doesn't cuddle her all the
time. Too much handling is not good for alpacas, but
Agnese knows she is an alpaca and that's good.

Herk (short for Herkules) is giving us some worry again. His skin still hasn’t quite recovered from the mite infestation and putting on oil in this heat, won’t be pleasant and he is already suffering with the heat. To cap it all his eye is watering again, just after we thought we had sorted it out the last time. It could be that with the heat they guys have been arguing again and he has either got something in his eye or bumped it. At least it doesn’t look infected though.

Laughing over the posing for the camera

Our neighbour’s daughter writes for the school magazine and so asked us a little while ago if she could interview us. We said yes and this week we had the interview. We got asked all sorts of questions on alpacas and also our view of farming in Latvia, as well as our views on Latvia itself. It was great to be able to say some positive things about living in Latvia, especially as she said, so many are leaving. Now she has to write all of that into a 600 word article - should be interesting. She set off on her way home and then a few minutes later returned, she had found a four leaf clover on her travels and so gave it to us. I don’t believe in luck exactly, but I’m willing to think of it as a sign of some good things coming along.

Of course this is what I do every day! Not! Only for spectators

Estelle is usually so cooperative 

It ain't 'alf 'ot Mum

A purple marsh orchid I think. The orchids in the fields
are getting a bit swamped this year as the grass is a lot
taller than last year at this time. The heat must have made it
grow rather tall, very quickly.

Boy has it been hot this week, we have had temperatures up to 30C most days and so all my planting that I had scheduled went out of the window, as there was no point when it was so hot and dry too. In fact we haven't had rain for weeks until Sunday and then it was a half an hour of good soaking rain but only in our village and not out on our land. The soil is that dry though that even the good soaking it got still means the soil is pretty dry and needed a good soak to plant some more seeds of broad beans, lettuces and beetroot. At least the temperatures have now dropped making it easier to do some work outside and worth trying to plant out some of the unfortunately stunted plants we have got that have been sitting on our windowsills waiting for the right time to plant them. I am actually a bit weary of the garden at the moment as it all seems a bit pointless when half the stuff I have planted withered and died with the heat, and it isn't as if I didn't water it. I guess I could have braved the mosquitoes and watered everything at night, that might have made a difference but I couldn't really face the mossies and I have felt quite drained. Probably end of term feeling combined with the heat and being disappointed at not getting stuff done, so I guess the cooler temperatures this week will mean I will get a chance to perk up. At least the caravan has served us well during the day when we needed a quick nap or just a sit down in the shade.

Our seriously depleted pond, re-landscaped

The mysterious still flowing spring with
sandbags

One of the worrying parts of this drought is we are almost down to just one pond now, as even the bottom pond is drying out rapidly. This was the pond we were hoping would be useful for topping up the pond nearest the greenhouse in a dry season, fortunately that one is still quite full, although dropping slowly. The bottom pond drying out does mean that Ian got a chance to do some more tidying up and digging out, so that when the rain does come we will have a deeper pond and it meant removing the grass that was growing on the high clumps in the middle. So with the drought, water has been quite an issue for us and we were therefore delighted to find that a spring we knew about is actually still flowing quite well and with a long hose we can pump water out of it to an old bath we have put in our vegetable patch. Ian has dug out the spring a bit more and also put sandbags around it to raise the water level higher and it still continues to fill, which is such a relief. We decided on sand bags for ease of banking it up and also it means that if it rains too much we can remove the bags and let the water level drop. It does kind of feel like a constant adjustment to the circumstances, instead of doing the same thing in the same way every year, each year has brought with it new challenges. I guess it means we don't get bored anyway. Looking back through our photos and blogs shows that last June was quite wet and relatively cold.

The piece of land awaiting the Griķi seeds

As Ian has finally finished ploughing the piece of land that was a huge nettle and ground elder patch we wanted to plant it up with some buckwheat or griķi in Latvian. We thought it would be easy to find in an agricultural suppliers but we were obviously wrong. We chose buckwheat because it is a crop that is grown in Latvia and it is also a short season crop which means we can plant it now and still harvest it this year. It also makes a good mulch crop that combats the weeds easily and so should help to prevent the regrowth of the ground elder, but first we have to find it. If the worse comes to the worse we can plant it with clover for a green manure crop or oats and peas for a hay crop but we wanted to try the buckwheat first. We have now got our scouts out seeking to find the elusive seeds.

Bath anyone? Our newly installed bath for water for the
new vegetable plot. Needs a cover before it becomes
mossieville

Trying to find something like buckwheat seeds illustrates one of the big problems here in Latvia and that is the lack of information. In the UK I can google buckwheat as a green manure or as an agricultural product, but here in Latvia there seems to be some uncertainty as to where to look, even by those we think may possibly know like local farmers. This lack of information is a big problem in development as it makes a task so much more difficult and so people are more likely to give up. I am a pretty determined individual and so willing to keep trying but I can see why others wouldn't be bothered. So our search continues but at least I have now found someone who knows someone who has actually planted the stuff - at least thats a start.

Red and black striped stink bug - what a glorious name heh?
otherwise known as Graphosoma lineatum. It is definitely
not a Colorado beetle though

Some wildlife is making an appearance again this year that we don't often see, or hear as the case maybe, some of it not always what we would want to see, such as the Colorado beetle. It is endemic here and not a notifiable pest as it is in the UK, but we have only seen some in the first year we planted up potatoes and none more since, until this year that is. We will have to keep an eye on the plants and see what happens as they can decimate potato plots. Other wildlife includes a crane that flew over our land and we don't often see those, storks yes and lots of them, but not cranes. In fact Ian was telling me that a couple of storks flew down to see what he was doing by the pond and were very disappointed that he wasn't cutting grass or ploughing and did not like the fact he kept getting out of the tractor to use the back hoe. The corncrakes are definitely back on our land, but unfortunately trying to take up residence in a whole load of ground elder that Ian was just about to cut. It is always a dilemma as to whether we cut the ground elder as we need to get that weed under control or let the corncrakes nest there, but we have decided that they are only just beginning to nest and they have plenty of other places nearby to take up residence and so we are going to go ahead with the cutting. At least Ian is just going to use the slow two-wheeled tractor which means they have plenty of time to get out of the way.

Greater butterfly orchid. Glad to see these
back again but I think we will have to
cut back the young woodland where
these flowers are growing or they will
get swamped and we wouldn't want
that

I have been using Blogger for these posts for over three years now, in fact I have just passed my 200th post without noticing, but the other day without warning I signed on and the whole thing had changed. It all looks okay, but it did take a bit of finding my way around and I could do without sudden unannounced changes. I do like to be told first before big changes are made - grumble grumble. The 200th post was not the only milestone that has happened recently, we have finally sold our house in England (if I had had more energy this week I would have done a little dance). It took 18 months to get it sold but at least it is finally gone, which is a great relief as now we can start to make some plans as to the directions we want to be heading in.

I got a smoking and curing book recently from my Mum for my birthday and got around to trying it out. I managed to make a rather good pork and egg pie, real summer comfort food and even tastier because it is not filled with nitrites which makes my mouth sore anyway. I was also in Ian's very good books for making the pie as he enjoys a good pie. So in the picture you can see some of my other efforts. In the back picture is a bacon with a dry cure of just salt and honey, front left is old fashioned corned beef which is nothing like the tinned stuff and takes two weeks to make, the last picture is a ham in a wiltshire type cure, that will be ready to cook Wednesday.

Can't get this stupid thing to work

Offending jamming part!

Ian fettling!

Can't get this stupid thing to work go the lyrics to a song by MIC and it was a bit of a theme tune in our home when the kids were still around and was sung when anything didn't work, especially if someone was losing it over the non-working item. The song has been going round my head a bit just lately, firstly when Ian's computer died, not sure if there is a possibility of a resurrection or it is permanent but we will have to go into Riga to find that out and we have to wait for a rainy day and secondly when the two-wheeled tractors grass cutting unit kept jamming. The little tractor had probably done around 30-40 hours work and we are not sure if the barbed wire hiding in the grass caused the cutter bar to jam or just the fact it got stuck in so many pig holes but the end of the cutter bar became unpinned causing it to spin round. Fortunately Ian did get that working again but we are perplexed with the presence of barbed wire as it is not that common in Latvia, the only barbed wire we have found on the land is embedded in a tree and quite possibly been there since World War II, not so sure this has been around that long though.

A days work shifting damp grass into neat piles and it
rained on me!

I was using two-wheeled tractor one day to cut a steep part of our ski hill (yes we have a ski hill, well it was a ski hill in Soviet times and if you live in the alps you would barely consider it a ski hill at all except maybe for toddlers but here in Latvia it is a ski hill) and there was a point when the whole tractor unit sank into a rather deep hole made by the wild boar now overgrown with grass so I didn't see it. The problem was that this was the second time it happened and it occurred after several hours of hard physical work and I was shattered. I could have cried at this point as I wasn't sure whether to leave the unit running or not but figured this would lead to a grass fire so thought it was best to switch it. It did mean though I wouldn't be able to use the unit to drive itself out. Ian was oblivious in his tractor but finally he stopped and I waved wildly at him, he appeared to notice but then got back in his tractor. My flabber was gasted  and I would have slumped on the floor at this point but the presence of so many ant hills sliced through by the cutter kept me on my feet. I then realised that Ian was coming and hadn't abandoned me, he was just taking his tractor up the hill in my direction. It would seem we are making a habit of getting tractors stuck, fortunately this one didn't take 6 hours to dig out, just 10 mins of huffing and puffing.

A hand rolled bale! Okay so this is not perfect but it was
quicker than trying to pile it up with a hay fork

Corncrake from Wikipedia

We had hung on and on to start cutting as we knew there were corncrakes in the field last year but we weren't sure if they were there this year as they had been rather quiet; I have only heard them twice all summer. August 15th is supposed to be the date when you can cut if you have corncrakes but we started in areas we had never heard them on the 11th taking advantage of the prolonged good weather. We did take the precaution of stopping before cutting the last swathe just to check to see if any animals or birds were still hiding but we never saw anything. Saturday (August 14th) Ian was cutting the largest section still left to cut when he spotted some rapid movement in the grass and so eased off the throttle a bit, suddenly a little bird popped its head out of the undergrowth with a look of panic on its face, Ian slammed on the brakes of the tractor and the little bird, which tuned out to be a corncrake, darted out startling a stork into the bargain, both birds took fright the stork flying backwards slightly and the little bird ducking back into the undergrowth before flying off. After a short discussion we decided to leave that section just in case there were any young ones still left in the undergrowth and cut elsewhere but aiming to leave large square patches of hay in case there were any other groups of ground nesting birds. Ian was going well and was just cutting another section when either the same little bird or another of the same kind darted out of the undergrowth and was swiftly followed by a stork, the wise little bird ducked back into the undergrowth and Ian abandoned any cutting in that area with the larger tractor for two weeks until we are absolutely certain they have all flown off to warmer climes and if they haven't gone by then we will pack their bags for them. If the weather turns bad we can use the two-wheeled tractor since Ian had fettled it (mended it) to cut the rest or if this good weather holds we can use the big tractor. The big tractor tends to churn the ground up pretty badly in wet weather, even if it is only a dinky little tractor compared to many of them.

Don't mess with me! Okay! 

Corncrake summer residence! These three patches have been
left until we are certain they are gone. They are a protected
species after all.

Having cut the grass on the hay ski hill the other day and the weather still being hot means that the hay is tinder dry and we have just spent all day raking it up with the chain harrow and making big piles of it. I have a great deal of respect for those guys who make the nice neat hay ricks we see dotted about the place, they work so hard and they have to do it, we have the option of not collecting it as we are only going to compost it this year. In future we might consider baling it now that we know that it consists of what seems like good grass unlike the majority of our land which is riddled with raspberry canes and ground elder - not exactly very palatable for winter fodder or useful for bedding. Nearly forgot to mention in my befuddled state - I blame the hot weather - that I actually got to drive the tractor today for part of the time anyway. Ian was feeling very sorry for me as I was piling up the hay in the heat while he was sat in his nice air-conditioned tractor raking it up. I have been reluctant to drive it as it has so many gears and sticks and things plus you have to watch out for all the pig holes that I was frightened of tipping it; Ian managed to convince me though that harrowing was the easiest job to start with, on the flat that is. Well I was going well but Ian was hanging around waiting for me and eventually stopped me and asked me if I was using the throttle? Throttle? Whoops! I had been using the tractor on tick over which as you can imagine is slow, nice for getting used to it but not very practical while raking a field. Oh well! Only another hectare (2 1/2 acres) to go.

Our pond is beginning to look very pretty now with all
the vegetation growing around it. Pity about the piles of
soil still waiting for a new home.

The neighbours we got to know last week invited us back for a barbeque and we spent hours chatting around the table until it was so dark we couldn't see. We have learnt such a lot from them and their farm, we found that cows on chains can get fed up of staying outside and make their way home. I always wondered how they tethered the cows to stop them wandering off around here and now I know that it is really just symbolic, the cows know that is where they should be and stay put, unless they get forgotten about in which case they take off anyway, chain and all. We also found out that it is possible to hand roll bales of hay. I wondered why there was a change from square bales to round bales. Square bales always seem much more practical as they are not so huge and are easier to stack. I also wondered who thought to roll grass into bales anyway and what I have discovered this week is that it is actually quite easy to roll grass into some sort of bale and if you have a barn set up for it then it is easier still. I found that it was far quicker to roll the grass that had been lying around a bit and was damp than to try lugging it about when it had been rolled into long tight sausage shapes by the harrow. Dry hay though is easier to shift with a fork. I bet you always wanted to know these kinds of little factoids, just the handy piece of information next time you are in a field full of grass that needs collecting.

Cool of the day

"Do you like my garden so green?"

I know last week's comment on talking to God about the mosquitoes was a bit flippant but it does have a serious side to it. One of the questions I keep coming back to is "if God commanded man to fill the earth and to tend it then what does that look like?" I know the thought of filling the earth would worry environmentalists, but if God set that as an agenda then there is a way of filling the earth and looking after it that does not harm the good that God has made. I also wonder what would a redeemed creation look like? What would happen to all those parasitic insects and fungi or how would they operate in a redeemed world? I cannot personally redeem creation but I can be part of the process and what is my role in all of that? 

Sticky catchfly I think! Not a particularly fetching name
for a very pretty flower

Romans 8" ¹⁹ The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. ²⁰For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God." 


I think that we get so wrapped up sometimes in what our faith means to us personally that we forget that our faith and our relationship to God through Jesus has a resonance on the earth and in creation and so we should see some of the fruits of that relationship working itself out in the earth. Amazing what ponderings can happen on a rainy day, unfortunately the last rainy day for a week.

A pink haze of the flowers above

Still on the subject of creation we have been listening to Folkwaves as we love listening to folk music and this is mixed with the local derbyshire accents (which surprisingly we don't hear so much of these days), and they play a great song called the "Cool of the Day" by Coope, Boyes and Simpson , unfortunately it is not on the net but a version by Kathy Mattea is (you can listen to a short preview of the Cooper, Boyes and Simpson one though on Amazon). I found the lyrics to it below

A butterfly orchid in bud

COOL OF THE DAY
(Jean Ritchie)

Now is the cool of the day
Now is the cool of the day
This earth is a garden, the garden of my Lord
And he walks in his garden
In the cool of the day



My Lord, he said unto me
Do you like my garden so fair
You may live in this garden if you'll keep the grasses green
And I'll return in the cool of the day

Then my Lord, he said unto me
Do you like my pastures so green
You may live in this garden if you will feed my sheep
And I'll return in the cool of the day

Then my Lord, he said unto me
Do you like my garden so free
You may live in this garden if you'll keep the people free
And I'll return in the cool of the day

Not a mossie but if you look carefully you will see a
grasshopper

All I can think of is that if I walk in the garden in the cool of the day I am going to be bitten to death by mossies (mosquitoes to give them a proper name). I do wonder though how we would treat the earth if we thought that the Lord was going to be walking in it in the evening, wouldn't we scurry around doing a bit of a clean up getting it ready? Or in the case of many areas we would be making monumental steps to clean up.


Our walk in the cool of the day one evening with a blessed breeze to keep the mossies at bay resulted in us hearing the corncrake again, back from its long winter travels. The sound of the corncrake is not exactly a melodious tune like some of the birds around, more like the old-fashioned wooden football rattles, a kind of rachet sound but it is nonetheless a welcome sound as it marks the presence of a bird threatened with the modern farming practices. Our walks on the land are a delight and we do indeed feel very blessed to be given the charge of this place; one evening we were returning to close up the greenhouse and arrived to see the stork in our pond, after a little tadpole snack from all those tadpoles we put in last week. On seeing us the stork decided to remove itself from our pond and saunter off, it obviously wasn't really that worried about us and what we might do. Fortunately for the tadpoles there are some deeper areas of the pond that the stork cannot get to.

A wasp had started a nest in our shed and apparently
abandoned it but we discovered it hadn't abandoned our
shed, instead it had found a better hiding hole in our stove.
The wasp eggs unfortunately though were smoked when
we cooked some more bacon and egg for our butties
(sandwiches for those not from the North of England).

Last year we bought a red and a white vine that we were going to plant out on the land somewhere but hadn't had the time to do deal with it before the onset of very cold weather, so I buried the pots in the garden and covered them with leaves and fleece for over the winter, hoping they would survive. One vine survived very well and as soon as it was warm enough the leaves started unfurling but the other vine was a very sad sight and the thin stick crumbled in our hands. The forlorn pot stood at the bottom of the garden for weeks while the other vine was racing away in the pot in the polytunnel, I was fully intending to put the sad specimen on the compost heap when I got around to it. The other day I walked past and noticed three tiny leaves coming up from a new shoot at the base, it was alive after all! So instead of heading for the compost heap it is now sat in the polytunnel next to the other one while we decide where exactly we are going to grow them.

Ian ploughed this land to get rid of a large area of ground
elder and nettles but just this week it burst into life and is
now covered with wild garlic mustard as well as some ground
elder. It will now need re-ploughing and then a spring tine
used and then re-seeded with meadow grass, lucerne, clover
and some timothy grass (all good for animals and the ground) 

We had some sad news this week, our youngest son is not coming this month to help us as he has got a job for the summer. In one way we are pleased as he needs the money but we were looking forward to seeing him. It was also sad that the conversation did not end on a very good note as he seemed so angry for some reason. Our relationship has always been a bit up and down but this time I was quite concerned as it crossed my mind that it was a possibility that we might never hear from him again and that hurt. I carried this fear for a couple of days but last night just before I went to sleep I felt God speak to me "he will come in from the roof." Okay I haven't lost it from grief, honest! It was God reminding me of an incident a long time ago when our youngest for some reason at the age of 9 decided to climb out of his attic bedroom window and stand on the roof. I was not best chuffed! In fact I was furious! Too furious to actually deal with it and I had a house full of guests to get ready for a prayer meeting that evening. Maybe that was a good job for him! I sat him next to one of our guests, a lovely older lady, and told him "don't you dare move," and he didn't. Not surprising really!  Well as I prepared our food I was busy chuntering away to God about my youngest and the scrapes he got into and I was still chuntering later that evening at the meeting.  During the meeting though I felt God say that our youngest would go out on the roof, but he would come back. I understood that to mean that no matter what danger he would put himself in or how far he tried to remove himself, he would come back! Eleven years later I need that promise to hold onto.