Been and gone

Someone has enjoyed rolling in the snow. Chanel is still
struggling with some skin issues though and it has flared up
again this week.

Winter has been back to visit again, but it can't quite make up its mind whether the season has finished for the year or not. The swans, the cranes and the geese seem to think that winter should have gone,, as they have been arriving back, but winter keeps checking back in. So some days it is white and sometimes it is that after winter brown, complete with mud. So in the spirit of the coming spring season we've been checking the websites for a new greenhouse.

I'm turning into my grandads, yes both of them! One used to
have an allotment and the other used to grow succulents and
cacti. These cups were too cute not to use and I thought they
made great places to grow something small, like these cacti.
I finally got them potted up this week

The view from the oak tree hill

Our large greenhouse needs some serious repairs, so we are looking to get a smaller one that we can work with this summer. I still have a backlog of tomatoes in jars and such like to see us through into next year, so shouldn't be too bad. It also means we can re-think the greenhouse space as a workshop cum events space. We will still have growing spaces, for that greenhouse ambiance, but the main part will be for ......... well whatever we decide to do.

I love the colours of spring starting to show through its
wintry dusting

The new smaller greenhouse will be put in the space where
the chickens were last year and extend past it. It will be
3x8m, so still a good size but not as big as the one we use now
which is 6x18m

The range of options for greenhouses though is mind-boggling. We decided on going for the maximum we can have without planning permission, which coincidentally fits well in a space we have. It means losing a couple of outside growing beds but they were only short beds anyway. It will also be well manured as it is where the chickens were last year. In addition to extra growing space while the greenhouse undergoes repairs we would need somewhere to store the feed for the alpacas but we have enough wood to build something, so that is a good start. That is as far as we got this week, as I'm still ploughing through the websites looking for the best option for us.

To keep the alpaca houses dry, Ian has put in a drain that he
empties. Unfortunately the water used to run into it, so Ian
made this elegant covering for it, l I jest, but it's functional at
least. The only problem is that now the water comes up from
underneath to fill the hole. The water table is so high.

Vanessa always looks toothy

On Thursday it will be the 12 anniversary of our arrival in Latvia. We won't be able to celebrate at the hotel where we first stayed for a week while our stuff was in transit from America, as it has suddenly closed. It has been struggling for a while and this lack of winter hasn't helped. Our area used to be a popular skiing destination, but it isn't possible to ski without snow and definitely not in this horrible wet stuff we have been getting this week. We had one week where it looked promising with a reasonable depth of the right kind of snow, but that was very early in the season and nothing much since then. As I mentioned before the lack of snow also meant the Schools Winter Olympics was cancelled and so that was another nail in the coffin for the hotel. Our problem of nowhere to celebrate is a minor inconvenience compared to the loss of another 32 jobs, in an area that has struggled with providing decent jobs anyway.

Meanwhile Silly Silla is sat outside in the rain and the snow.
Just why?

Oh is it snowing again?

The loss of the hotel has knock on effects for our village as it also means there are less and less opportunities for people to stay and something we have to consider for our felting course. Of course I now need to get on with the advertising for that, so people have a chance to book accommodation. It was something I was working on, but now it is a more urgent task. I don't think it will be possible to organise cabins before then, as that requires more cash than we have at the moment. Still it might figure in our reckoning on what we need in the future. We certainly cannot rely on there being a hotel for guests now.

When I saw the snow covered ice on the pond, it reminded me
of the painting, The Scream!

When Ian looks at it, he sees Australia.

Vanessa and Antonia are sensibly inside

Ian had some help at the weekend. One of our young neighbours wanted something to do, so Ian agreed to let him help on our land as long as he was up by 7:30am, as that is when Ian sets off. I was impressed, as he was up and ready. He helped Ian by shifting logs and branches so they are ready to pick up when the weather improves enough to drive a tractor on the land (which looks like it might be a while yet). He won't be helping with the animals though, at least not yet. He wasn't sure about the alpacas at all, in fact he was so unsure he was a few metres away from the fence, not even up close to the fence. It looks like he might need a bit of time to gain confidence around them. Oh well! At least he got done what needed to be done.

The sun is rising further round and the days lengthen. It will
soon be time to move out to the caravan again.

Mr. P. was the first to alarm us.

It isn't just the weather that has been on and off this week, my plans too have been on and off too. There is a seminar that I wanted to attend up in Tartu tomorrow morning, but it is only 90 minutes long and takes me a day to travel up and I could just would have just about been able get back after the seminar by bus and train. I was humming and hahhing over it, when two of our alpacas were sick on consecutive days. First Mr. P was ill. Ian rang me to ask if I was doing anything and if not would I come out and take a look at Mr. P. Typically of course, by the time I had got out there, he was improved, but still a concern.

Josefs is such a cutie, even if he does carry around a light
snack to keep him going

Herkules at his usual spot by the feeder. It is hard to believe
that he has lost so much weight over winter and yet he eats
well and normally is quite healthy looking these days, at
least for a nearly 16 year old alpaca.

On Saturday, Ian walked through the door and asked if tea was ready. Well it was, so we sat down to eat, but he explained that Herk was now sick and wouldn't get up to eat that evening. So as soon as we ate, we trekked back out to the land. This time there was no improvement. Herk was still sat on the floor and wouldn't get up when we tried to move him. Brencis then decided that something was wrong and maybe we needed protecting- oh that alpaca! I'm sure his heart is in the right place, but being so big he creates us real problems. Brencis tried to sit on Herk, which as you can imagine is not what we really wanted. We managed to get Brencis off and shunted him through to the other side of the alpaca house and shut the gate.

Josefs is very submissive to Brencis, but Brencis is not so
keen on the adulation

Turbjørn kept Herkules company in the night when he was
sick. Not that Turbjørn had any choice in the matter, but
at least we could trust him not to sit on Herkules

Now as you are probably aware, animals and children are never ill at convenient times, and that day was such a case. We tried to get hold of our vet, but she wasn't responding. We tried other options, but didn't get anywhere. Our vet eventually text us back, but she was in a theatre in Riga, so wasn't much help. Our neighbour also eventually got our messages and phoned back, they had been watching tv at the back of the house and so didn't hear me knocking. I went to pick our neighbour up and her son, she used to be a vet and works with cows and her son could translate. By the time we arrived, Herk was at least up and about and Ian had managed to swap Brencis and Herk around so that Herk was in a safer place, but still with Turbjørn for company.

Ilvija has been rolling in the snow like her mum

Mari looking happy with herself

After examining Herk, our neighbour decided he seemed cold compared to the others and his stomach seemed to be slow. He also seemed a bit gassy, so maybe that was part of the pain. We wondered if he and Mr. P. had found something in the hay that had given them some mild poisoning. It seemed to fit with the symptoms we could find in the alpaca book. She gave us some peppermint, wormwood and valerian drops, that is good for the stomach. Valerian is also a calming herb. Herk wasn't so sure about the drops on his food at first, but he ate it. We had to give him some more later and he seemed a bit more keen. The next morning he was very keen on the food. Phew! Emergency over. It is a good job we ate when Ian came back home as it was after 10pm before we got to our apartment that night.

Our winter wonderland.

The signs of spring are still there though

The following day I went out with Ian and we had a slow day pottering about and discussing greenhouses, as I mentioned earlier. We even opened the greenhouse door to enjoy the view outside, as the sun was out. It was still too cold to sit outside with a hot cup of coffee as there was a chill wind blowing, but Ian has managed a few times just lately - he's made of sterner stuff these days. It used to be him that felt the cold, now it is me.

A walk in the forest. Our forest will look
a bit different this next year as one of
our neighbours will be doing some more
cutting. Sigh!

A moody sky

Someone's sunbathing in the snow.

Almost there

Our young helper in the tractor

We have passed several milestones in this last week both on the land and some personal ones too. We managed to get the baling almost finished at our neighbour's place. There is still some hay left to cut but they are in awkward places and so were not cut with the majority of it. Our young helper came and she helped Ian by rolling the bales together for collection while I prepared our greenhouse for the felting course that happened this weekend. She was tired when we took her back home, but she did work hard. She even got to ride in the tractor and bale some hay. All good training.

Practising baling, slowly of course.

An oven in a greenhouse! Doesn't everyone have one?

Collecting leaves ready for the following days dyeing

We had to rush to get the hay under cover though. It meant unstacking the bales that were in the trailers and re-stacking those ones under plastic. We then had to get the bales from the field and stack them before getting a second load. We finished off in the rain but at least the bales weren't soaked. Our young helper thought I was very strong, but this is the third round of collecting bales and my muscles have grown in the process. If it had been the first round, maybe not so much. I still love the fact I can clamber around on our tractor trailer when putting on the tarpaulin, I hope I can still do that in years to come. I maybe have to take up some form of exercise over the winter to keep up my strength. Hahaha! We have around 350 bales of hay or more, so about 50 more than we need, which at least means we should have some left over to see us into next year if hay season is late or for any other reason we need more.

Chilled out alpacas.

Sofie, ace mouse catcher.

The roadworks around us are still continuing. They have made some improvements to a bad corner and put in culverts where the road often floods, so at least that is progress. The road also dries out quicker, which is another improvement. We are still hoping they improve the camber of the road though, so we don't go sliding off into the ditches in the winter. Not sure how much further they have to go; they certainly have still got to repair the collapsed section of the road that fell into the river a while back. Apparently after a chat with the foreman today, the collapsed road is another project but we might get some better access to the land and our fields, just maybe not yet. We have a phone number anyway. We also found out why they hadn't contacted us beforehand. Apparently this is just road maintenance and not full roadworks. To them, it's just a little job, to us a major work. A matter of perspective really.

We had to move the spades and forks
further down the greenhouse to put
the oven in

Mr. P. now often spends time longingly gazing in the direction
of the females.

Ian is still continuing to take the male alpacas for mating with the females, although these are more checks to see if they are pregnant. As I have mentioned before, it is generally accepted that females will spit off the males if they are. We suspect that Vanessa is pregnant, or at least we hope so. It is difficult to tell with her, as she is so feisty and doesn't seem to like Mr. P. anyway. She seems more adamant though that he's not coming anywhere near and so that is an encouraging sign, not for poor Mr. P. though who gets covered in green spit. The others may also be pregnant, but some are more compliant and so we have the other problem of there not being a definite sign of a "spit off". We will be more certain when we have a scan done by a vet around November time. Once that is finished that will be it for the year and that could be as early as next week.

A very cheeky George.

Galina explaining to the participants.

We had our only felting course this year at the weekend. There were a multitude of reasons for not running two this year and my recent employment for an EU project is one of them. It was good to welcome our tutor Galina back for her fourth year and she brought her friend along as well again. Galina always feels like it is a holiday for her. Her friend made me some fabulous slippers using some of Herkules' and Freddies' fleece. She used the template I used to make some slippers earlier on in the year, but made some slip ones this time. Great for the morning when clambering out of bed. 

Preparing the fleece for felting my slippers

The slippers I made are on the right and my new slip on
ones on the left.

Galina giving me a telling off and telling me on the first day,
no experiments. Do what I'm supposed to do. She was only
joking, we had a good laugh afterwards.

Preparing a t-shirt for the dyeing process.

The weather was surprisingly good this year. Last year we baked in the greenhouse, this year, it was warm enough to work in and not as much rain as forecast. In fact, we had just about enough rain water to do all the dyeing and felting without having to bring it in from our apartment. We just needed to bring in drinking water. It is good to use the rain water for dyeing as there is too much iron in our apartment water and it affects the results of the dyeing process.

Preparing a pre-felt for adding to the dyed silk shawls. A
pre-felt is a piece of felt that is not fully felted but enough
to cut up into shapes to add to a felting project.

A salad made by Ian from the flowers and leaves I had
collected from our garden.

I organised the food again this year and everyone was welcome to join us. I do not provide food for the participants exactly, it is up to them if they bring their own or contribute something to the meal. In previous years we have used the hotel to provide food but it was more stressful and far too expensive. This way we use food from our own garden and freezer with the addition of some local cheese from our friend, cakes from the local bakery and some sausages from the local butcher. Of course with potatoes, eggs and my own home-made bread the food goes a long way and there is plenty to share. 

Bread fresh from the oven.

Ready for lunch.

Giving instructions on baking bread and scones.

Preparing food was even easier this year as the daughter of our friend who makes the cheese came to help, so brought the cheeses with her (she is the same one who helped us bale the hay earlier in the week). I love the fact that as soon as she had put her bags into the caravan, she went into the greenhouse and started washing up. I didn't even have to tell her, she just knew it would need doing. In fact she was so good we asked if she would help again next year. I do hope she can. It did mean I got to do some felting myself this year

Boiling potatoes.

Local goats cheese.

Lunchtime. A lovely view!

Looking the other way at lunchtime and you can see the
grapes ripening

The wind was from the south this year, which meant we
could leave the doors open and not risk our fleece flying
everywhere. It was also a little overcast most of the time
which meant it was cooler. 

The other milestone was hearing that the final academic article that I needed to go towards my PhD was accepted. I found out on Friday lunchtime and my ecstatic reaction surprised everyone. I am not usually one for enthusiastic outbursts but I was surprised there was no further work to be done on it, apart from a very few editing issues or clarifications before publication. We clinked tea and coffee cups in celebration together. I also heard that the costs for this open access publication will be met too, Yay! I was half expecting to have to pay for it, so rather pleased I'm not, as it amounts to nearly a month's wages and this was one of the cheaper ones. I've seen some astronomical costs for open access papers. It does mean you read it though - if you want to that is (link here).

Wetting the fleece and starting the felting process.

Nooo! Don't go. The storks gathered to leave as we were
eating lunch.

Once the fleece is wet, tables were moved outside to work on.

A shawl with pre-felt leaves being added

Monday meant dealing with the aftermath of washing. Five washing loads were done, albeit in a 4.5kg washing machine and not a big one. Some of it may seem bizarre, such as bubble wrap. My neighbours at the apartment must have wondered why I was washing plastic when they saw it hanging on the line, but it means it is ready for use again. Some of it was catching up with clothes washing. One load a week is our usual, two at the most but I hadn't had the chance to get that done for over a week, so that had mounted up too. There was also bedding from two lots of guests. Still it is nearly all done and the rain held off to get most of it dried. The rest of the wet washing is hanging up in our greenhouse. Sitting around waiting for the washing machine to do the washing meant that I had time to get the final amendments to the paper ready for publication. So a productive end to the week.

Rolling, rolling rolling.

The finished shawl and bubble wrap drying.

Dyed t-shirts and pillow case.

Galina with her sample scarf, a piece of cotton fabric she
dyed for me while I was busy and a participant's t-shirt
dress that was dyed with the leaves from our land.

Carefully felting

Felted bookcover in the process

Galina and participant working together.

My finished shawl, or is it? I haven't decided yet. I think I
might work some more on it.

Two rather well fed pussy cats.

Another shawl made by one of the participants.

Feeding Brencis.

A little chat with Brencis.

Wearing our garments.

Always the way, too many things to hold
onto and finding it difficult to sort it out.

Showing off our garments to the boys, not sure if they were that
impressed but they did like the dandelion leaves.

I was given the shawl a long while ago
but didn't like the colour. Will have to work
out what to do with the dyed material that
goes quite nicely with it.

The boys.

I look so small 😂

End of the course!