And next!

I promised more alpaca photos this week and so here's the
first one. Can you believe, this tribe moaned at me for not
being fast enough to open the doors of their alpaca house
when it started spitting and yet here they are out in the
pouring rain. Typical!

Gosh another week over! Is it only a week? Not two or three? Not having Ian around and having to do his chores on top of my work, trying to get the garden sorted for the year and showing visitors around the farm, has been a tad trying to say the least. There have been nights I haven't got to bed before midnight as deadlines for work loomed. It's not as if work has taken too much time, it is everything else on top of it. It is not my employer's fault that I can't really get started on my paid employment until the animals are sorted after all. It's a good job I have the flexibility to be able to do all that though.

Well they certainly had a good shower

Precious rain water

My brain of course has been buzzing after working far too late but I have found that putting the heater on for the last half hour and putting my pyjamas and pillow on the top to heat up, sorted out any problems of an over stimulated brain. The warmth helped me to drift off very quickly on the cool evenings. Mind you, the next morning it has been hard to drag myself out of bed sometimes. I'm surprised that the alpaca hooves drumming on the walls hasn't woken me up some mornings. Fortunately I don't need a huge amount of sleep, but of course it can catch up from time to time.

A misty evening after the rain

Mist in the lower field

Alpacas sunbathing

There have been some irritating things happen this week, which just add to thebtime taken to do something. For instance there was one morning I was just going to have a quick cup of coffee before running some errands, but there was no electric. I just wanted one coffeeeeeeee.  I was going back to our apartment to do some washing, so no worries, I took the milk with me. Hmmph! The kettle wasn't working. I did eventually get my cup of coffee by boiling the water in pan on gas hob, only the milk was just starting to go off, so it was a bitter cup of coffee. Pah! At least when I got back to the land later on in the day the electric was back on and I could make a cup of tea. I don't have milk in tea. I text my neighbour to order some more as well.

These ones spend a lot of time sunbating but not all the time,
there is also some serious eating to do too.

I think they've been missing Ian, particularly Aggie in the
middle. She's been tutting away at me for the last two weeks

Since Ian was away, I had to get the technical sorted on the car. It was due before he got back and he hadn't had the time before he went away. This is the first time I have had to do it myself. The young chap spoke good English, although I could have done with him being a little louder and there were times I had no idea what he was actually asking for. I'm not sure if it was because I had misheard him or he was using a word I didn't know. He was very patient and when it came to getting the emissions tested he drove the car to the point and reversed it in, on the basis it was quicker for him to do it than to try and explain what I was supposed to do. I'm pleased as I hate reversing our car, the visibility is not great, especially when you are only 5'0". I can do it, but..... At least it passed with only one minor fault. Phew!

This madam gave me a right start one evening at
putting away time. She jumped so high, I thought
for a moment she was going to clear the fence. The
rest of putting away time for these girls was a bit
fraught as they all seemed hyper after that.

Veronica at 16 years old, still plodding on

I also went to the opticians to sort out some glasses. I got the prescription done in March in Estonia through work, so the actual prescription was in Estonian. The lady didn't speak much English and definitely not Estonian. However, we managed and the optician came back just in time and verified all was correct. I figured that it was a standardised prescription, because it looked the same format that he had done previously. I begin to wonder if anything is simple in my life.

The dandelions have nearly all turned now

But there are still some to keep the
bees and butterflies happy

The door tied up now

There have been various moments when the animals have given me issues. One afternoon I opened the door to the greenhouse to see several of our chicks running around. I'm not sure if one of our cats was weighing them up for a tasty snack or not, but if she was, she wasn't serious about it. The other one just sat and looked on, until one went a bit closer. I am guessing they had only just escaped, otherwise more mayhem would have ensued, I'm sure. Anyway I spent the next quarter of an hour rounding up the little darlings. I worked out that the side door clip is getting a bit slack, so I tied it up and that seems to have sorted it.

I've seen a few of these from time to time and wondered what
they were. Although it kind of looks like a bee, I thought it
probably wasn't. After googling it turns out to be a fly that
is a bit like the cuckoo of the bee world. It flips its eggs into
the nest of other pollinators and then the larvae eats the
pollen store. It's a good pollinator, but not much good for
the other ones. It is a Bee-fly (Bombylius)

Chanel sitting out in the sunshine with Aggie 

Now picture this, one evening, I am feeding the chickens in their arks when out of the corner of my eye I see something flying through the air. I look up to see two paws disappearing. Our cat had tried a flying leap from one ark to the other and didn't quite make it. I giggled for the next ten minutes. She is fine, if a little embarrassed about the episode. One day our pregnant alpaca was moaning away and I was concerned that she was moaning because she was going to give birth. She had also been a bit sensitive and more spitty than usual. She is a spitty sort, but sometimes more than others if she is a bit stressed. Fortunately she didn't. I told her this evening, she had better hang on until the end of the week when we are both around. I hope she was taking note.

My pathway back after putting
the girls away for the night

Last trip to the loo for the evening.
Don't worry, there is a loo in the
caravan too.

Evening sunshine

It was a blessing this week that the rain continued for another two days. Not solidly but on and off. It meant there have been two full water troughs of water and so I siphoned it off into a container to save it for later. Since then we've had some pleasant dry days and now the grass, which was struggling to grow is waist height, especially in the garden. It's tall enough to cut for hay. I hope then I can get my paths back. It makes gardening challenging, trying to find the beds. Fortunately there are not many weeds in those because they are covered with old hay and only the most robust weeds grow though that and they are easier to pull.

A friend of mine made me a shawl to remind me to look up.
In Coloardo the ground was often brown, not a verdant
green like you see in the pictures above. I missed the seasons
but she encouraged me to look up at the clouds. Too often I'm
either watching where I'm walking or lost in my head and
then I really should look up.

More gorgeous cloudy skies

Ian hasn't been in touch much the last two weeks. It has been busy for him too. I've just heard though that he has finished shearing the last alpaca in Hungary

I've been locking the boys out of
their alpaca house most of the day
recently to encourage them to stop
sitting in.the dark and get outside.
So in protest they sit in the shade of
the alpaca house. There is shade
down in the field too, in the shade of
huge oak trees, but oh no! Not
good enough apparently.

More hiding around the back

A beautiful early summer's day.

One point I didn't mention last week because it is a bit more involved is that I didn't get to vote in the EU elections. I wouldn't mind but I had been on the radio, and on the webpage after a journalist interviewed us about our thoughts on the EU. They got a few points wrong in the article but the journalist was ever so apologetic and got the website writers to put it right. Apparently lost in translation, but these things happen. Anyway, I fully intended to vote and since voting is automatic according to registered address I went along to the voting station. My name, however, was not on the register. Apparently it is automatic for Latvian citizens but not for other EU nationals. We were supposed to register again each time because they work on the principle that we could vote in our "home" country. The reality is though that we can't vote there either because we've been out of the country more than 15 years. Oh well! At least I tried.

Snowy days

Not quite the view on the way home from the airport but a
similar pinkish hue in the sunrise on the farm

The view on the way home from the airport after dropping Ian off was breathtaking. Just before I arrived in our village the landscape was suffused with the most delicate of pinks as the sun set behind me. I longed to stop and take a picture but had to suffice with drinking in the view whilst hurrying to the farm to put the animals away before the sun dipped below the horizon. Fortunately the animals have been good to me for the most part this week, apart from hiding their feeding trays from time to time. Having said that, sometimes they have been finding trays for me too. One was propped up on the side in the alpaca house one morning and then one was laid neatly outside the door one afternoon.

I have no idea how they manage
to place a tray on the side of the
alpaca house. It take some skill

It has been pretty cold and ice crystals have been building

On the first evening I was washing up when the electric went off. Charming I thought. The problem is that we have only been living in that apartment for about three weeks now and so I had to think hard where the nearest candles and matches were. Fortunately they weren't far. I then checked to see if it was just our apartment but then got a text from the electric company to say they were working on the problem, so obviously not just us. The other issue was that I had only just loaded up the wood fire so hurriedly had to clamp that off before it boiled the water in the heating system. Funny how Ian and I were only talking about the fact we should really have the back up sorted for the pump to run off a battery in an emergency. Shame we didn't get it sorted out earlier. Anyway no harm done.

We are not going out there!

Okay maybe for a bit.
I have been taking water in every morning. It isn't absolutely
 necessary as they all eat the snow in fact some of them will
only eat the snow and won't touch the water. I know though
that if I do not do it every day then I will forget and there is
still not much in the well yet.

The rest of the week has been fairly mundane as I took on the jobs that Ian normally does. I am out on the land about 8:30 am, which at this time of the year is early enough. Sometimes the animals don't even get up when I go in, as if to say "Oh it's you! What are you doing here at this time?" even though Ian is usually out on the land earlier than I am. The first job is to go around and open doors and collect feed trays. As I mentioned earlier, sometimes that is easier said than done. I then feed the chickens. Depending on the weather and how cold it is, or if snow was expected, I would either have a cup of coffee or go and clear the poo in the alpaca houses. Sometimes it was too cold for coffee straightaway and sometimes the forecast meant it was better to get chores done first.

As you might be able to see the pond doesn't even cover the
area where the rushes are yet because the water table is
still so low. The other pond still has no water in it yet.

I love the way the rosehips stand out so
much against the monochrome background

It has certainly been cold this week. It has been down to -13C that I know of. I keep forgetting to check the various thermometers around the place but usually see what it reads in he car in the morning on the way out and in the evening on the way back. It has made wrapping up to keep warm a challenge but I think I have the layers right now. It wouldn't have been so bad but there was a breeze most of the time and that made it feel even colder. Plus I haven't got acclimatised to it yet. By the end of winter -13C can feel quite warm and almost spring-like.

The log pile and the green bin also stand out

Afternoon treats

As it is winter I have also been giving extra feed in the middle of the afternoon to our female alpacas who have little ones to feed or are pregnant. They always have hay but they appreciate the extra too. They have either been getting fodder beets, carrots or squash, all of which they enjoy. I noticed though the young ones getting more interested in the feed. Normally they are older before they get interested in it and Josefs is still more interested in the hay whilst everyone else is tucking into grain. I noticed last night though that Jakobs was trying to pinch food from his mother's tray, rather than eating the hay like the night before, so tonight Jakobs had a tray of grain to himself and he wolfed it down. Mind you there was pandemonium generally as no one knew which tray to eat from.

It was very eerie this morning in the pink mist

All was so quite too

Some days the sun did shine and the clouds parted

At the moment I am still in the caravan, even though it is pitch black outside because I am waiting for someone to come and help me with culling the sheep. This afternoon a friend turned up and he brought some sheep panels. It was a fairly easy job to entice the sheep into the enclosure (while there was still some daylight) - a lot easier than either of us anticipated. Having fencing still up that hasn't been taken in yet and the panels made it a lot easier than any of the other options we had. Once this is done we will no longer have any sheep and Ian can then concentrate on looking after the alpacas. Since we now have 18 of them, I think it will keep him occupied.

I made it out for a walk twice this week to take a
look around the land. Sometimes I didn't have time
with hay to move or it was too windy or even snowing

Who are you?

I love the frosted shapes made by this
oak tree

George blocking the door way 

It looks like these two are sharing a joke

More frosted shapes, this is the lovage plant

Don't panic! Don't panic!

Herkules or Herk as he is more often
known, is our oldest male. He is
castrated. He is looking a bit grotty here
due to the oil treatment he is having on
his skin. He is quite a good natured
animal though and stands quite well
and puts up with all the messing around,
not happily but he does do it. He will
quite happily eat grain from your hand
though. 

 I tried to organise quite a few meetings this week and failed. One will now be via Skype, so at least that works. One will be conducted during travel time to a seaside village for some more interviews and the other one postponed until April. Some you win and some you lose. I also tried and failed to get a couple of other people organised to send me information that was promised. I do despair at times of trying to get my life organised, when others seem to think that two or three weeks before an event is soon enough to let me know what's happening. It wouldn't be so bad if that was all I had to do, but I have got some dreaded deadlines looming again.

We have had snow showers over the weekend and today.
The return to cold weather was not very welcome, but the
trees did look pretty. It didn't show up so well on the
photos though and so I did a bit of playing around in iPhoto

This last week has been a time of reading, reading and yet more reading in preparation for a paper that needs to be finished by May 1st. So all the interviews need finishing and analysing plus the literature review done before the end of this month.That is for an 8000 word paper and on top of that I have two small papers to finish of around 1500 words and a presentation. I had forgotten about one of the short papers, but fortunately I set a reminder on my computer. Will there be more? Who knows! Depends on when I get answers to those questions I have been trying to find out about. What I do know though is my reading speed has picked up, but I do miss the chance for some deep reflective reading.

So as you can see, rather a dreary sight and not quite like
Thursday when we sat outside drinking coffee sat on
the hillside on our land

I have been trying to be good though and take a couple of day off to do something completely different sometime in the week. I usually aim to do that when Aggie and Herk need some treatment to their skin problems and I also aim to do that on a nice dry day. There is nothing worse than trying to apply ointment to soggy alpacas and is a waste of time anyway. Up until the last few days we have been enjoying some really nice weather, so it was the perfect opportunity to spend some time out on the land. On one of the days, Ian and I both went for a walk with Estelle and Aggie. They were very good but we were a little perturbed to see a dog roaming around that looked a lot like a German Shepherd. Not the ideal dog to have roaming around with livestock about. On another day I went out with Ian to get the milk and we took Aggie with us, so she got to walk up the road. I'm sure it would be good to help keep her toe nails short if she did that more often, but isn't really feasible all the time. I also helped Ian clear some trees that he had cut down and sifted compost to plant up some cabbage seedlings. It felt good to be out in the sunshine and fresh air.

We might not have seen the Northern Lights, but we did
get to see the solar eclipse. Ian took this picture with a
polarising filter and pair of sunglasses over the lens.
The morning was nice and clear and of course it started
to cloud over just as the eclipse was beginning,
but I think it makes for a great atmospheric shot

I noticed on the internet and via a friend's facebook post that there was good chance of seeing the Aurora Borealis. I hadn't realised that there were posts with details of imminent magnetic storms that give rise to the phenomena of the Northern Lights until recently and so it was quite exciting to know when they would arrive within a few minutes. I kept looking out, but couldn't really see anything, but we have street lights now and so of course it is not going to be so obvious. I decided to go out for a walk to see if I could see them, as we don't have far to go before street lights peter out. I still didn't see much, but the sky did look a little weird and lighter than would be expected for a night without the moon. As I was walking Ian drove up in the car and we headed out to the land instead to see if we could see it there. We had quite a romantic night out as we walked hand in hand up the hill - that's because Ian had the torch though. We still didn't get to see the Northern lights, well maybe we did but it was faint and looked like a glow in the horizon where there were no villages. Where we live is not very heavily populated. The sky was amazing there were so many stars that it was hard to pick out the constellations that are so familiar. It makes me wonder how the sailors in olden times managed to navigate by the stars when there are so many, especially since there would have been even less light pollution then, they must have seen even more than we could. I also got to see two shooting stars.

A bit grim really

We are still trying to sort out our heating issues as far as the bills are concerned. I have taken to emailing them and actually getting some pretty fast responses, which is quite remarkable. They are still not answering the questions, but at least it is faster. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that we had changed our electric providers at the beginning of the year. I eventually found out we really did have an account with the company, even though we still don't have any paperwork for it and I dutifully entered the readings for the 1st March. I kept checking, almost daily to find out how much we owe. I even got a  friend of mine to look at it to see if I was missing anything. It wasn't me who was missing something it was definitely the electric provider. Finally on the internet a sum came up to pay and after a bit of hunting around I found out who to pay, so I paid the money for each property separately, only to find about three days later that I could have paid it all in one go and they actually sent me an email invoice. At least I now know how it all works and know they will send me an email. I feel happier knowing that. I am also happier knowing I can enter the reading on the internet.

A wee bit chillier than earlier on in the week

Lance Corporal
Jack Jones from
Dad's Army 

One of the news items this week, surprisingly more in evidence on Russian sites than anywhere else, was the Dragoon ride. It was a procession of American tanks mainly through the Baltic States meant to reassure everyone in Europe that the American army is around and also do some logistics and manoeuvres along the way. What I would like to know though, is it just posturing? It sure doesn't reassure me, it just reminds me of the unstable situation that people feel and perhaps the media is feeding. How unstable it is in reality I have no idea. It also potentially inflames the situation and I wonder if it might also bring back painful memories for people? I don't know! Maybe others feel reassured, I don't. I just have that scene going through my head in Dad's Army of Lance Corporal Jack Jones shouting "Don't Panic! Don't Panic" and then

Just an ordinary week

An eerie misty morning

I have been home now for over a week now, which is rather nice. It has been one of those weeks though when I have been really busy, but not really got much to write about because I have been mainly writing up transcripts from interviews and finishing off the paper using the recommendations from my American friend and supervisor after the Skype conversation last week. So lots to do but not the most stimulating of topics.

A very Christmasy look

Even though I had got the writing up to do I still had to go out to the land and help Ian. We needed to get the alpaca toe nails cut. Monday of last week was nice, but of course the day I could go out it rained. Instead of letting the alpacas out to get wet and then try cutting their toe nails we kept them in to work on, but they didn't like that. In the morning they just want to get out and about a bit and so they are a little more antsy. We mostly managed but had to give Turbjørn time to calm down before finishing his toe nails off, in fact we ended up putting the halter on him and tying him up to get the job done. He is a bit of wimp really. Aggie also kicked me in the leg, but fortunately she is not that strong and their feet are padded. She is a little monkey at times.

A rather damp looking alpaca

Herk still needs oil on his skin and so he had a double dose of messing around with. It is a good job he isn't like Turbjørn and although he would rather not, he will stand still to have work done on him. I have also made an alcohol rubbing medication for Aggie's feet to clean them up and that appears to be working. I daren't put oil on Aggie's feet, I think it would be a breeding ground for bacteria. It is funny trying to work out what natural remedies might be effective for our animals, it sort of combines my desire to be a vet when I was a kid, my degree in Pharmacology and my love of herbs. It makes me laugh to remember that my Nan asked why I hadn't done anything with my degree during my years as a stay-at-home mum.

She shouldn't be up there. What is it about our sheep and
climbing?

Ian and I also did a presentation for a group of people who were mainly from a small village close by to where we live. Our topics were alpaca breeders, wild boar researcher and experimenters. For people who like to hear other people's stories, we seem to spend an inordinate amount of time talking about ourselves and what we are doing. The people were interested in the alpacas and we took along the shawl that I had made for Ian's mother and a couple of pieces of felting I have done recently. The lady who had organised the talk had brought along some spinning wheels. I am not sure where she had got them from, but they were a bit old and had loose joints. Some ladies had a go with them and even managed to spin a little of the alpaca wool I had taken.

Our rather damp looking barn, but no floods so far. I hope
that doesn't tempt fate.

It was with some trepidation that I talked about the wild boar research I had done. Most knew nothing about it, but there was one gentleman in the audience who I had interviewed and he was keen to know what my findings were. I explained what my research had shown and he disagreed with one point that I made and that was according to the literature hunters should not shoot wild boar mothers or rather the matriarchal head of the herds. The reason is because it affects the herd dynamics and can result in dispersal of the piglets to cause more widespread damage and they can even breed earlier when not in a stable family unit (sounds familiar). He was right to disagree with me on that point because his land is so damaged that he says there is no meaning to have animals there at all now. He even has deer problems too now and I wonder where they came from (said with heavy sarcasm as in all probability they came from the same place that encouraged the high wild boar population in the first place)? In that particular area so many wild boar need culling for the sake of the farmers and the ecosystem that there needs to be a 2/3rd reduction and so mothers would have to be included in that sort of cull. Before any animal activists get uptight about the subject, consideration needs to be taken of the other animals in the area and the impact that the wild boar is having on them, not to mention all the vegetation they are digging up and giving rare plants a hard time.

Puddle walk

We got to talk with some more friends across the pond in America. Skype is certainly a plus for us.  Our friends are planning on joining us again this year and it is good to be able to talk through about their plans and where they could possibly help us. Although we didn't have many ideas, at least we know how it would fit into their overall plans and that is helpful. We also got chance to Skype with our little granddaughter again during bath time this time.

Disappearing snow. Normally when this happens we are
glad to see the back of it, because it has been down so long.
In some ways we still are, especially Ian, but it is only just
heading into March. I would be happier about these scenes
if it was the end of March. It still feels a little early to be
heading into Spring here.

Our snow has been melting away this week, but there are still some places that are quite deep, as we found out when we went for a walk. Sometimes it was up to my knees and so I sank in the slush. Ian weighs about the same as me (embarrassing to admit that, but let's be honest), the difference is though that he wears much bigger boots than I do and that spreads his weight. So I would be walking along behind him in his footsteps and then suddenly the snow would give way. It wasn't as if this happened all the time either. One minute I would be walking behind him fine and the next I would be floundering around trying to keep my balance. Shall we say it was a good work out. The reason we took the route we did was to examine the wild boar damage at the top of our land. It is not bad and within a few metres of the forest and so we are not too bothered about it. There is more damage on a neighbours land that we can see but it is amongst the trees and so the wild boar must be more cautious this year. Good that suits us fine, wish we could say the same for the guy with the huge wild boar problem to the north of us.

Water flowing out of the overflow from our large pond

Slowly, slowly going - well apart from today when it was
melting much faster

The rather soggy girls paddock. You wouldn't think that
it would be so wet at the top of the hill

Earlier this year the electric market opened up in Latvia and presented us with a conundrum. I thought I would be brave and change our electricity provider to one providing green electric, since there was only one - not that I think growing endless hectares of maize is particularly green but it is greener than gas power and  green power is also generated by hydroelectric dams (a legacy of the Soviet era when they gave no thought for the environmental effects of dams in the drive to generate power). I wanted to send the right kinds of signals to the energy market, for what it's worth. It was brave from the point of view that I could do it in either Latvian or Russian, but not English unlike for our previous provider. Anyway I waited for the contract and heard nothing. I sent an email via the contact page of their website, still nothing until Saturday when I received a text to say their website was down and please send the readings via a different method. I replied via SMS as directed and it said - get lost! Well actually it didn't but said something like, "Not a valid response, contact the operator." I tried that and of course it was busy, or at least I think that was said. Next I had a flash of inspiration, try the website, after all it couldn't be down for that long. Bingo! I have an account and I can see what is happening. Well sort of two out of three were fine, the other not so. Still I managed to fill in the readings and all is well, as long as I actually get an email now with the bill details. It would have been nice to know something about the details on the website beforehand or see a contract.

The freeze thaw at the side of our greenhouse

A mini river from the area around our
horse box. Ian had to cut a channel to
let it drain away

More soggy paddocks but not as bad as the girl's one, despite
it being further down the hill. The slope at least allows it to
drain away