Not very regular!

If my Nan took selfies, this
is what she would have 
looked like. But I can
see my mother and my
grandparents staring
back at me in this photo.

As I mentioned, I'm kind of busy but there's also less to write about. Well that was until this weekend when both Mari and Turbjørn were causing us some worries. Ian found Turbjørn on his side one morning early last week. He wasn't sure if he had been knocked over, fallen over, or just got stuck and couldn't get up due to his neck problems. Ian got him up and he seemed okay. He started feeding him more food and coated him up and he seemed to recover somewhat. Over the weekend though he started to struggle again. We couldn't work out what the issue was. We suspected colic, maybe from a small change in his food. We gave him some drops a neighbour had given us before and he seemed to perk up. 

Winter has its challenges but also its beauty

RIP Mr. Turbjørn. You were a unique alpaca
with all your quirks, but we loved you anyway.

Monday morning I got one of those dreaded phone calls. Turbjørn was on the floor, Ian had got him up as he had been doing most mornings recently but he didn't seem well. Ian went on to do his chores and then went back to check on him. He was back on the floor but on his side and unresponsive. Not sure of the exact sequence of events but Ian came back to get me and we both went to see him, we knew the look and realised that he was going, there was nothing we could do. He finally passed away just before lunch.The vet came out that evening and she did an autopsy. He seemed to have had a bleed and Ian has taken some samples to be tested. At least he didn't seem to have worms, liver issues, ulcers or anything that could be treatable, so in that respect a relief. It is always a worry if there is something we've missed that could have been dealt with.

You took your time to trust us, but you did towards
the end.

The route back from burying
Turbjørn. It was a lot of work
with the tractor to dig a path
to get him to his final resting
place under the elder tree. We
had rather a lot of snow over
the weekend.

It took Ian two days to dig the path to where
Turbjørn was buried. This was the start of the 
path. We had to slide him down on plastic to
the barn as there was no path up from the alpaca
house to the barn at the time.

A serious looking Mari. At least we think she 
might just have had a virus. 

Fortunately there was a happier ending to Mari's saga. She staggered one morning, not a good sign. Ian came back to the apartment to get some vitamin B1 as a lack can cause similar issues and so I went back out to the land with him. Ian had also arranged to pick up our neighbour who often helps us when an animal is sick. It turned out that Mari's temperature was high and so she was given some peppermint drops and paracetamol. We had to go back late at night to give her another tablet and then see what she was like in the morning. Fortunately by morning her temperature was back down, not quite normal but at least heading in the right direction. She is much perkier now and eating her food again, so we think and hope all is well now.

After the sad news a smiley alpaca picture is 
needed I think. Thanks George.

Spring is coming, you can see it in the longer
days and the intense colours of the trees

I was meant to drive up in my new car to Tartu the other week but it didn't happen. Several of my colleagues contracted Covid and many of the others decided that it wasn't appropriate to gather together, so staff training went online. I was actually quite relieved, as the roads were awful, so icy. Global warming! Yes! This winter has been warmer than in previous winters and weird. We had an unusual cold spell in early December and then it seems to have snowed on and off all winter since then. More often here in Latvia the snow comes, stops and the days become crisp and clear. This year the temperatures have hovered around zero and so the snow is generally wet and heavy and now everyone is running out of spaces to put it. Pathways are narrow and have snowbanks, which I guess stops the cars sliding into pedestrians at least. The big industrial scale tractor has been out several times this year to clear the roads right back so the usual snow ploughs can do their job. 

Mind you, there are days it is hard to imagine that
spring is just around the corner

I guess we need another smiley alpaca picture.
Thank you Vanessa. Someone else who looks
like their mother!

I'm planning on going to the UK soon to see the kids and grandkids but the situation today makes such plans so much more complicated, especially when I'm working nearly full-time. Gone are the days when you can just book time off and go. I was chatting to a colleague in the UK and she was worried she wasn't going to get to see family in another country due to Covid going round the school and sure enough her kids got it. It has meant I'm kind of nervous of going out, as I don't want to jeopardise getting to the UK to see my family. I'm not worried exactly about getting it, I just don't want it and I sure don't want it to mess with my plans, especially when I've heard of other colleagues having to change plans right before they were due to travel. It just makes life far too complicated to keep chopping and changing when I'm supposed to be teaching too. 

An interesting visitor to the 
boys paddock. Lynx tracks

Funnily enough though, her daughter doesn't
resembler her as much.

In preparation for going to the UK, I had booked in for a flu jab, along with Ian (who will be home-alone to look after the alpacas) but I didn't get one as the doctor and nurses are all in quarantine. The numbers of Covid are incredibly high here but they are hoping it peaks soon. It might not seem a lot to have 11,000 cases a day but the country only has around 1.8m population and they are not sure how many of them are actually in the country. Some say it is actually around 1.3m. Being a hermit can have its advantages sometimes but I know I shouldn't remain a hermit. 

So this winter has been mainly about clearing snow
for Ian. Also for our upstairs neighbour at our apartment, as he has usually cleared the road by the time I get a few spare minutes. He even helped me clear the snow around my car so I could get out, although Ian had to come and drag my car out in the end. The plan had been that he would clear the roadway onto our land and then I drive out to help him bury Turbjørn. Well that was the plan.

Anyway, as you can see from the picture above, 
Ian has been busy clearing the snow from the side
of the greenhouse. Good job as it was getting a bit 
high. Then it snowed again!

And again! Not quite back to square one, as
you can see the pile on the left... well there
isn't so much space to throw the new snow now.
We are just hoping there isn't any more.

Think we need another smiley alpaca. Thanks
Karla.

Thinking into the future, I wonder how safer communities can be encouraged or even created. It is something that occupies my mind a lot as I teach the students to think strategically and to incorporate people into their plans. What would communities look like that are small enough to be able to provide the level of care needed for all and yet still be open enough to not stifle people, the young folk in particular. How would these kinds of communities operate? There certainly will not be one solution but a myriad of solutions but then how do they fit together? Yes those are the types of questions that buzz around my brain.

Karla is a bit easier to photograph than Ilvija
against the snow. 

Freddie! Just not appropriate! 

Other news for this week - like buses they all come at once - I got elected to a board of an organisation. It wasn't hard, I just needed to volunteer and since I've been involved so much in their meetings over the last year, it seemed like I should put myself forward. I also found out that a consortium (a group of organisations, usually universities) that I had joined for a potential project has got the funding and so that's me sorted with some work for the next four years. It doesn't pay for a full-time post but it contributes to the overall mix of my employment, so that's good. 

I'll pass on the kisses!

It's warm up here

I guess I get too busy and at times I feel I'm getting too disorganised. Computer alerts are not enough and I needed something to simplify my life. The problem is that this takes time to sort that out. I've spent a few evenings looking at management software. I'm finding it a bit annoying as it is time I could be doing some Latvian, which I also need to progress on. Sigh! 

Paths, paths and more paths. Ian is ready for 
spring. Can't think why!

The path to the 
greenhouse where the 
chickens are

Have you got my milk or some food!

I found one programme that was recommended the most but it seems to have so many options that it is difficult to know where to start. I need to integrate it with the plethora (lots) of different programmes that we all seem to use these days and the programme suggests that possible, but how? What do I integrate and where? Gmail, outlook, calendars, slack, teams, zoom, you name it and I've probably used it, or so it feels like. I'm sure that's not true as there always seems to be yet another platform, format whatever to get to grips with. It kind of feels exhausting just trying to set it up but I do need to be able to get more organised there will always be a variety of projects, it's the nature of the job and I want to make them work well, so I will get there in the end. I will find a solution as I'm determined to do it.

Food delivered by sledge
these days. Rather a trek.

Our lively and uncooperative Jakobs

At least having the experience of all these different platforms means that I could show Ian how to use Zoom because he's using it for an alpaca course. I was able to work out how to get him on it, even if it didn't seem to work the way it normally should. I usually find a way. At least the courses he's been on seem to be paying off. We did the toe nail cutting recently and it seemed so much easier. Only little Jakobs was particularly awkward and Brencis tried to bite his ear in the process - we still think Brencis is trying to protect us but we really wish he'd stay out of it. Brencis was sent outside for bad behaviour - no not really, he was sent outside so we could carry on with the job safely. Good job it was only snowing lightly at the time and he has a nice thick winter coat.

Yum! Christmas tree

Tasty

The hay bales are under that mound. I guess
Ian will be digging it out tomorrow as the boys
will need more hay.

Remind me again where my
herb bed is!

The road to our land

A blanket of snow to keep the alpaca house warm

But how long will it last? 

How much more snow will our poor greenhouse take?

Part 2: The ups and the downs of farm life.

Karla is growing up fast. She started losing fleece on her
face due to the flies but now it's growing back well

When I said I would write part 2 later, I wasn't intending to take so long. A couple of rainy afternoons though has given me a bit of time to catch up, as do the earlier nights. So these are the highlights in brief or lowlights as the case maybe, but still probably long enough to grab a cup of coffee and put your feet up, or just look at the pictures. 

Karla feeding

You can see a faint blue tinge on her fleece from antiseptic
spray we had to put on after op.

I was applying insect repellent to Karla's head one day to keep the flies away from her nose and eyes with Ian holding her when he realised that she had a rather large lump under her belly. After a closer inspection he realised it was an umbilical hernia. Maybe if it had been caught earlier it could have been strapped up but this looked large. It doesn't help that Karla's fleece is growing remarkably quickly and hid the bump rather well. In the end it meant a trip to the vets for an operation. She was heavily sedated but not put under a general as alpacas do not do well with general anaesthesia. With the help of vet, two trainee vets and Ian, her hernia was repaired. Ian was holding Karla and also trying to find a vein for a drip. I even helped at one point in holding the fluid bottle. It got a bit crowded around the table. The good news is that she seems to have recovered well and is bounding around the fields now and even getting a bit bossy.

Chanel and Ilvija are rarely apart. A misty day after the heat
was a welcome change for the alpacas.

Cloudy sky

Unfortunately the next incident did not have such a happy ending. Silla finally went into labour but her baby was stillborn. It was almost as if she was waiting for some respite in the weather to give birth, as she delivered one evening in a the alpaca house with a thunderstorm rolling in overhead. Ian assisted as the baby seemed to be a bit stuck, an unhappy task indeed as it was already dead. Silla then seemed to be in shock and so I went to get our neighbour to check her over. The rain was pouring down and there were flashes of lightening as I drove onto our land. I drove as close as I could get but I nearly forgot about the electric fence being in the way, fortunately I spotted it in good time. It just meant that we had a bit longer to walk in the pouring rain than I had hoped. By the time I got back to the alpaca house with our neighbour, Silla seemed to have recovered a bit and was up and about. 

Spot the swallow on the door. They are raising
their second brood of the year

Military planes have been making regular flights over us. 
Can't be too secret as they are trackable on FlightRadar24

Silla didn't seem unduly concerned about the baby and we are not sure if that was because she knew it was dead or a trait in her family (more of that later). Hopefully we will find out next year as she has been mated to George. Yes! George! He finally realised what he was supposed to do. We put Tellus his dad on one side to mate with Valeria and George on the other side with Silla. Something clicked. We suspected that Silla might be helpful as she is extremely compliant and just sits down when male alpacas come in - that's also how we knew she was ready to be mated. Female alpacas can be mated two weeks after giving birth. We also tried George with Ilvija again and this time he knew what to do. Phew!

My waterlily is really growing. It's a pity it's in the pond
furtherest away from where we spend most of our hours

According to a scan in November, Mari was pregnant, but
she hasn't given birth and certainly does not look pregnant.
She also seems pretty grumpy these days, so Ian would like
another scan to see what is going on. We decided to try
mating her in April next year, along with any others that are
not pregnant and not retired.

So far we think that Silla might be pregnant now, she certainly seems far more resistant to George, Valeria may be pregnant to Tellus and we are almost certain that Amanda is pregnant as she is normally very compliant but turned on Brencis and spat in his face, despite their difference in size. Ilvija we don't think is pregnant yet. 

We've had a mixed year with the trees on
our land this year. Some have rocketed
away, like this Gingko that has been in 
years and grown little by little, but this year
has taken off. Some trees have died though,
like one of our cherry trees.

I'm pleased with my dahlias that were grown from seed

Aggie was also late and struggling with the heat. Ian was of course really concerned and our vet gave him some medication to induce her. Ian was in a real dilemma. He couldn't find much on alpaca induction and so was concerned that this wasn't regular practice. There are plenty of accounts of alpacas going way overdue but of course after Silla's stillborn he was very anxious. We did find out later that older alpacas with first time pregnancies do run an higher risk of stillborns. Hopefully that will not be the case with the second. Anyway, back to Aggie. Ian went back to his charts and it dawned on him that he'd got the dates wrong, she wasn't as far on as he thought she was. He decided not to induce her. 

These are quite dramatic Safflower. I have grown it
to make a dye. Not tried it yet though.

Aggie and Lolly

Aggie finally gave birth a week later. You can imagine how Ian was feeling, his favourite kept him waiting and waiting. The day of her giving birth did not go particularly smoothly though. She seemed to get so far but didn't seem to be pushing. I went to get our neighbour again and she helped deliver the baby. Her and her son hung around to watch the little one get on her feet. It was funny. We named her Lolly after Ian's mum. Our daughter pointed out that she was also born on what would have been Ian's Mum's birthday. I'd completely lost track of the dates just lately.

These two are always first in to see what's going on when it
comes to new births

Aggie interacting with Lolly, talking to her and nuzzling her

At first Aggie was attentive, just like she was with Josefs, but she didn't seem to encourage Lolly to feed. We waited until we couldn't wait any longer and instead milked Aggie and gave the little one a bottle of her Mum's colostrum. A little later we tried to get Lolly to latch on. Aggie meanwhile got more and more agitated. We remembered how aggressive she got with Josefs and so didn't persist with it. We thought that maybe like with Josefs she would get over it and bond. No! Despite several attempts to get the baby to suckle she wouldn't. She had got used to the bottle and Aggie was getting more and more difficult to milk. We tried to milk Aggie as often as we could and then topped up with cow's milk but after a week we stopped, as Aggie was drying up. Lessons learnt! Lesson one Aggie will not be having any more babies, although she delivers cute babies she is not a good Mum. Lesson two, really persist in getting the baby to latch on in the first 24 hours, even if the mother is aggressive. At least when hornmones calm down she may bond later and baby will know what to do.

Aggie would stand still but not long enough for Lolly to work
out what to do.

The rest of the herd coming to find out who the new one
is

Sometimes Lolly does sit with Aggie, which is unusual for Aggie as she is not usually very tolerant of little ones. So there is some sort of bond, but not a strong one. Lolly though is just as likely to be sat with one of the other alpacas or just in between them, not with anyone in particular. Her and Karla have formed a bond and we now have Amanda (Karla's Mum) up in the same alpaca house so they can be together. Although Aggie can be a bit of a grump with the other alpacas, especially with other baby alpacas, she is good with the visitors and will tolerate a lot of stroking as long as she gets food. The reason we are worried about Silla though is that Silla's grandmother is Aggie's mother, so we are worried that the lack of motherliness could run in the family. Aggie's mother was attentive enough, just a bit hyper and a bit spitty in her excitement. She wasn't able to feed Aggie very well as she didn't have enough milk and so we had to bottle feed Aggie too when she was younger. That might be part of Aggie's problems as she may have attachment issues. 

Early days

Karla meeting Lolly

The weekend that Lolly was born was also the weekend the chicks hatched. How on earth we still managed to hatch 14 chicks that weekend I will never know. Firstly we forgot to check the dates for the eggs in the incubator and suddenly realised they should be taken off the rocker and the humidity increased. As I said to Ian when I got back from doing that task, the little chick said, "Thanks for checking but could you have done that the day before?" Fortunately it was none the worse for rocking slowly backwards and forwards. Later that morning I went to do some washing and defrost a freezer at our apartment in the village and got a message from the electric company that our electric was off on the land and wouldn't be back on until 2pm. 

The chicks with their "guard". Actually
GT is just taking advantage of the soft
sleeping place with the added advantage
of warmth coming from the chick heater
that makes sure they don't get cold and 
is a stand in for mum. 

2pm came and went and I got back to our land and checked in on the eggs. Yikes it was heading towards 5pm and they were still in the barn and it was rather cool. No other chicks had hatched and that one was looking a bit cold. I took the whole unit up to our caravan that was now in the sun, opened the curtains because we usually keep them closed during the day to shade the interior from the heat. The poor little thing huddled up to the warm side of the incubator. I took it out of the incubator for a bit and warmed it in my hands. After putting it back in the incubator with the eggs, I covered the shaded side with a towel and let the sun do the rest. It was just before 9pm before the electric came back on. Over the next two days the chicks hatched and so far they seem a healthy bunch. Phew!

The weather did finally break and we are not seeing such high temperatures now. It is generally far more pleasant. We are also getting some rain now, although we still seem to be missing the majority of it, so the ground is still bone dry. As I continue to write there is an enormous thunderstorm to the East of us and we've been on the edge of it for well over an hour. The plants are soaking up what little rain we've had and are therefore still green, but it was close to having to either water or let some things die off. 

A bee on beebalm

Aggie and is it Chanel or Ilvija? They are so hard to tell apart

We could still do with a week of dry weather to get the rest of the hay in from an area where we claim subsidies. The date for that is August 15th so rather close. They might extend it, but I'm guessing it might be unlikely as there was plenty of time earlier on. The reason we didn't get the all the hay in was that our tractor was not working so well. The tractor guy finally came to repair the aircon, which was essential in the 30+ degree heat and we had enough time to get the ski hill hay in before the rain - just! There was a brief shower as we were stacking it but it was onto such dry hay we probably got away with it. At least the bales were that dry they were incredibly light and so it didn't feel such hard work as it normally does. Still hard though, all the collecting and stacking of over 250 small round bales around 25kg each.

Normally I don't have to try and catch Lolly to feed her. She 
comes running when I call her. Tonight though, Karla 
came running too. She's become very interested in what
Lolly is doing. In fact I've had to call Ian twice now to help
so that I can feed Lolly without Karla distracting her and
trying to play with her. 

My days now revolve around feeding Lolly. She is fed every two hours more or less during the day and every four hours through the night. Better than every two hours day and night when she was first born anyway. Also I'm feeding her and not Ian because she could become too attached to Ian as the main carer which could present problems later on. Sometimes we wonder if this is part of Aggie's issues after bottle feeding her. Maybe, maybe not! She comes from an odd line of alpacas as I mentioned earlier. I just feed Lolly and then go, which feels a bit heartless at times but it is for the best and she's mixing with the others, so not too bad. All the jobs I have been doing have to fit in around this routine. I never thought I would be so tied to feeding a baby again at my age. Oh well! 

Feeding Lolly like this means she stands still and
I can make sure her head is in the right position to
feed.

Head up and warm milk are essential for making sure the
milk goes into the third stomach

One of the issues this did cause us is that we still had not been able to shear alpacas in Estonia. Fortunately the owner with the most alpacas managed to get a sheep farmer into help. One of the other owners did some investigations but couldn't really find someone and so Ian went up on his own to shear two groups on separate days. They all managed fine, after all he's been shearing for them for a number of years now and so everyone knows the routine. There are still three here in Latvia that need shearing and so hopefully they will done this week.  

I keep trying to feed her with the bottle in front of me, but 
she is such a fidget. I won't want to be feeding her like this
in a few months time.

I think she's full. Look at that hair
though! I was so pleased to get to the
hairdresser today. Milk feed was a bit
late but she was fine. At least she can
eat grass already.

When I've not been busy with Lolly, I've been busy in the garden and greenhouse and still busy with some meetings for an expert group that are only taking a break now. I also had an academic paper that had a submission date of the 6th August. I thought I was going to get a nice long break but that didn't turn out to be the case. I'm having an extra week off though to make up for it. Everyone else seems to be off at the moment anyway.

Very pleased that Lolly still goes and spends her time with 
the other alpacas and seems to be well enough accepted.

Despite the work done on the garden, it is rather
untidy. The wind and rain haven't helped lately.

I finally tied up the tomatoes in the greenhouse and got lots done in the garden. I've pulled up the peas, before the maggots ate the lot, pulled up the chick peas as they had gone over and Ian and I picked blackcurrants and I've bottled them. I've also been replanting the empty beds where I harvested onions or peas earlier with some autumn veg and managed to get some seeds in before the rain. I sowed carrots, peas, broad beans, turnips and beetroot. There was no point in putting seeds in before unless I was committed to watering them since the soil is so dry. The courgettes have been hanging on in there even without the rain, probably the alpaca poo has helped. It holds the moisture well. At least they have started producing more and I'm now getting to the stage where I have to work out what else I can make with them. I will bottle some up for the winter in the same way I usually bottle cucumbers, since I don't have many of those planted up. Hopefully it will work. Otherwise I will have to take the courgettes back to the apartment and freeze them.

Mallow grown from seed. This always reminds me of our
friend in Cyprus as it was there we found out the leaves were
edible.

You're a bit close!!!

Talking of freezers, we had a disaster with our fridge-freezer. I'm not sure what happened exactly but it failed or I failed. I defrosted the freezer section and transferred all the meat into it. Yes! All the meat we had! Those lovely hams and pork joints along with other bits of meat we had in the larger ones in the basement. Away I went and about a week and a half later Ian went back to the apartment and the place reeked. The door wasn't closing properly and all the meat had gone off. It wasn't pleasant. Fortunately as we have a truck, the boot is separate to the main cabin of the car and Ian could bring all the meat out to be disposed of without gagging on the way. We thought the freezer itself might have packed up, but that at least wasn't the case, It still seems to be working - the plug was only half in. Maybe I unplugged it and forgot to plug it in, but that doesn't explain the issue with the door. Sigh! 

Karla now has someone to run around with.

And they sure do like to run

Along with all that, we've also been getting a steady trickle of visitors. Two groups came from a camp catering for those with special needs. The children and carers had a look around and fed the alpacas, then had a picnic on the bank overlooking the boys field. Occasionally the alpacas would come up to see what was happening and ran up when one young boy started to cry loudly, but generally they just ignored everyone and carried on eating grass peacefully. It was very soothing. The group were lucky with the weather too as it was often raining either just before or just after. 

So tiny! She's much bigger now and growing fast. The 
milk from our neighbour's cows is obviously suiting her - 
after I've skimmed the cream off first though. We found she
was starting to refuse it and then I realised the milk had a lot 
of cream in it, so now I take that off first and then give it
to her. There will still be plenty of fat in it as my neighbour's 
cows have very rich milk.

Karla does look like her dad at that age.

Ian did start to build a new haystore but didn't get very far before events or weather overtook that project. We also managed to get Mr. P's teeth cut and Mr.P's and Josefs' toe nails trimmed. Everyone else will also need their toe nails doing soon, so that will be an ongoing project for next week possibly. So as you can see, it's been a rather busy time and not much time to blog. I still keep going with the blog though as it is a good record for us of what we've done and something we can look back on. So I'm not going to promise to blog regularly for the time being, but at least I won't suddenly disappear from the blogosphere, I will be back.