Finished! Well not quite

This was taken at 9:23pm and it is still quite light for a while
after that.  

It has been one of those weeks when a lot of things got finished off, thank goodness. Firstly the potatoes have finally been strawed up out on the land, a job I have been going to do for over a week and more difficult now they are racing away. We put old hay around the potatoes to increase the potato yield without hoeing them up, which is even harder work when raising potatoes in beds rather than rows. At least the potato plants look healthy enough now and I suppose that has a lot to do with the amount of rain we've had just lately. Some good soaking rain, which is what we needed and so we have gone from just a few potatoes poking through to a well covered bed.

The clouds have been quite amazing this week. One day the
darkest of clouds rolled in and it was as dark as late evening here
even though it was in the middle of the day. It then poured down
so hard it squashed some of our barley. Heh ho!

Our friends collecting some of the hay off the field. This
section will be kept mowed to keep it looking neat and tidy
for our workshop days

We are pleased we got our hay cut last week too and the ski hill where we cut our hay is already greening up nicely so maybe we will get a second cut if we need to - providing the weather cooperates of course. We are also pleased we managed with help from our friends to get all the hay into the old alpaca house, it was tight and two of the bales that we were not so sure about, as they still felt too wet, went outside under the adjoining, very dilapidated shelter. No good putting them inside as they would be a fire risk or spread mould, both not what we want.

A pied wagtail enjoying the view from the top of the girls'
alpaca house

The swallows have also made progress on their new nest and
obviously used some of our leftover hay. Sometimes you
can only see the long grass bobbing through the air, a
very weird sight.

We were going to wait to put some of the hay away as the forecast was for fine weather the next day, but I wasn't so sure when I was looking at the clouds. I suggested we put them away while the weather held instead of getting on with other tasks and I am glad we did. We would have been racing to put away about another 20 bales on our own otherwise. Even better when we were starting the job, we had a phone call inviting us for an evening meal, so that saved us even having to think about preparing that after we had shifted the bales. It was rather nice too, fresh roasted goat with salad and roast potatoes, followed by a selection of goats cheese.

We hope the swallows will deal with these nasty beasts.
At least the girls fleece has grown back enough to make the
horseflies struggle to bite

Although we've had rain, we also have rainbows

It has rained a lot this week, which has meant that I finally also got to put all the squash plants in. Some have gone on our wood/soil/hay pile or to give it its posh name hugekultur, the ultimate raised bed. It is one way of using up rotting wood that has been lying around too long and also doing something about raising the soil level - not that the soil level is particularly shallow here in most places, but the more soil there is the more carbon is stored in the ground. It offsets the carbon we released by digging a pond I guess. The newest pond is filling up nicely with all the rain we have had, which is great. We just have to hope that it keeps its level even when it doesn't rain so much, then we can water the field area when necessary and not have to go down into mosquitoville to collect water from a field drain outlet.

We have also had sunshine and so we have been able to convert
this old greenhouse into a solar dryer using a black plastic cover.
It has now been anchored down with some stones as it blew off
in the storm we had the other day, but at least the dryer works in
the sun and the herbs are already pretty dry. It is so hot in there at
times we half wondered about using it to heat up water, but then
again the water in the pond has been warm enough for watering
can showers. I used an old tin bath for a bathe the other day, it
worked

Chanel enjoying the sunshine

We have had quite a few different groups of visitors again this week. Some have come back for a second visit but brought others along with them, whether that is grandchildren or friends. Some folks were just passing by when they saw the sign and decided to stop. Another one was a lady who was originally from the village where we live and regularly returns from Riga, but we only "met" for the first time on Facebook. We had quite a discussion on what our hopes were for the future and the possibilities, even in rural areas. Something we hope to explore more on her return visits. Its nice to feel we are on the tourist trail and people are quite prepared to give us a small donation for showing them around, some are even quite generous and it all helps towards keeping us here on this land raising our wonderful alpacas.

Mr. P has been up to see the girls. We decided to mate him with
the white alpacas to generate more colours, but Lady V had other
ideas and spit him off. We hope she gives in soon and doesn't
intimidate the poor guy entirely. At least he managed to mate
with Agnese, so that's a start

Ian giving him some grain as a consolation for being the
focus of Lady V's wrath

This week I have finished another course that I was doing this year on Social Entrepreneurship. Our working group nearly missed the deadline as none of us realised that files needed to be uploaded by 9am CET and I found out at 8:45am. I hurriedly sent messages to the other members of the group and I think most of us got it posted just in time. All of us should have read our email better of course, as we should have noticed the deadline time, but all of us have been busy with other things too, some were writing their thesis. It does help to get these kinds of things done and it means I can concentrate on preparing for our felting course we will be holding on the land soon and getting some tidying up and weeding done - in between showers by the look of it though.

Lady V, the old battle axe. We hope to get one more baby off
her before retiring her, so we are hoping for a better outcome
soon

Mr. B has been trying to move up the pecking order in the boys
alpaca house. He is really trying it on with the older ones

With all that we have been doing this week it has been hard to keep up with the political farce in the UK. I couldn't believe it when Farage announced his resignation stating "I want my life back." Well Mr. Farage, I would like my life back too. I would like to go to bed tonight and know that we are safe here in Latvia, that there won't be any moves to make us "go home," and that Mr. Putin is not going to take advantage of the chaos in Europe to send in little green men. Mr. Farage, you have made that dream a little harder to pursue these days due to your misleading campaign - and I'm being generous there.

Nibbling toes, alpaca style

Oh to have the flexibility of an alpaca. I think I would look
pretty stupid or do myself an injury trying to scratch behind my
ear using my feet.

We live in Latvia because the EU allows us to do so as EU nationals, that will be taken away from us. We may be allowed to stay because we have been here so long now, but nothing is certain in this world. I also study at an Estonian university and I don't have to sort out student visas or anything like that because I am an EU national, hopefully that should not change as I should finish next year, but then what? Part of my studies has looked at some of the issues that have arisen within the EU and how it operates, the intentions of the initiatives are good but it doesn't always get the result needed - I never felt this was reason enough to get rid of the EU but enough to need some changes, but what institution doesn't need to change or evolve over time?

I love clouds, especially with such interesting patterns

No it is not the shock of the UK political
scene at the moment but alpacas taking
a sunbathe

A lot of the work that goes on in universities is based on collaboration and that will be affected by the changes if the UK definitely leaves, so even if I had to go back to the UK, would there be funding to work in a university? And the list goes on. So thank you Mr. Farage, thank you very much for your lack of care and consideration for me and lots of people like me, who now spend the next few months or years wondering what the outcome of all this is and God help us if you ever get to be involved in the negotiations - will you bother to turn up?

Living on the Edge

Hatching eggs

I heard a song today and the phrase "Living on the Edge" came to mind, not sure which song it was and it wasn't the Aerosmith one, the words may not have even been in the lyrics, but it set me pondering. I feel like I'm living on the edge and in someways always have done, from living on the edge of towns to living on the edge of society. Not in terms of being homeless you understand, but in terms of living a life different from my peers. Ask our friends and they will tell you. We grew our own vegetables and bought organic before it was even fashionable, just whacky. I opened a fair trade shop in our church in the UK, because I believe passionately in justice for the poor. We moved abroad, not to be missionaries, like some of our contemporaries, but because we felt it was the right thing to do. We felt the leading of God for sure, but not in the traditional way. So we eventually ended up on the edge again, the edge of society as foreigners in a land where we don't speak the language well, to a country on the edge of Europe and to one that is feeling on the edge at the moment with Russia flexing it's muscle. It's not always a comfortable place to be, but then again I couldn't be comfortable for more than a few months, With a regular, normal job I would soon be looking for the next challenge. Not that I'm a driven person or anything, but I like to exercise my brain and tackle different projects. I'm curious about the world and people, I want to know how it works, how it fits together. And that in a paragraph I think sums up who I am.

Scrawny and helpless at first

So what is living on the edge like? As I said, it isn't always comfortable and at the moment we are both tired. It has been a hard winter, but today is my last trip up to Tartu for courses. I will have completed all my compulsory courses by tomorrow and I just have some work to do on an optional course to finish off. That doesn't mean I am completely finished for the academic year, there are still papers to write, lots of papers to read, then the  literature review to write for my thesis, so enough to keep me going in between planting seeds for food for us and the animals for the year ahead. At least today I had the use of a friend's car and it meant my journey was only four hours door to door and that was with a leisurely stop for lunch. There was one point when someone overtook me and gave me a fright, I fortunately saw him coming up quite fast and then heard him to my left. I also noted there was not much room between us and the lorry coming in the opposite direction and so I veered to the right to allow the individual space to pull in. At that point in time, I really did not want to spend the rest of the day extracting someone from under a lorry, even if it was their own fault, nor did I want to be explaining to the police what had happened. Had I had more presence of mind I might have used my horn to tell him what I thought of the manoeuvre, but I was so stunned that they had even tried to do what they did, that they had hurtled away by the time I had thought about it.

Perking up

Last week I took the train from Tartu to Valka and got off as normal to do the changeover from the Estonian trains to the Latvian trains, but there was a problem - no train! I wandered around the platform and the station, went to check on the monitor and it was still listed, but no train. Eventually a nice Estonian conductress pointed to a rather anonymous looking bus and said Riga. I deduced that they were probably doing the next set of train tracks and laid on a bus instead. It would have been nice to know and some signs would have been good. A young man got on the bus who offered to translate for the conductresses who seemed to be struggling with some passengers getting on who spoke English, they weren't English just using it as a common language like so many do. I asked the young man what the problem was and he confirmed it was track work. He told me a bit about himself and then gave me a bit of a guided tour of the area we were driving through and pointing out landmarks. He came from the area but now works in Norway, which I  feel is sad, as he was a really positive guy. He said he preferred other countries because they are more open and friendly and felt there was nothing for him in Latvia - even sadder. He was such a nice young fellow he even organised for the bus driver to drop me off nearer to where I wanted to be in Valmeira since the bus was going that way, rather than let me walk the distance back from the train station. It meant I had plenty of time for lunch before going to a meeting anyway. I also think I managed to convince him that Latvians have a lot of skills that have simply been lost in other countries and it is something to be proud of, so it's not all bad.

Cuteness overload

Ian had set some eggs in the incubator a few weeks ago and this week we had a good hatch rate with only one out of 14 failing to hatch. Unfortunately three of them ended up with gammy legs or spraddle legs if you want to look it up, one we noticed at the start, the other two may have been injured by the others in the rough and tumble of chick life. The three were all isolated and put back in the incubator for warmth and safety, but at the end of the day I had to dispatch one because it was too bad, it's joints were swollen and it couldn't even get its head up off the floor the poor thing. I had tried the bandage hobble but it wasn't working. It was ridiculously easy to dispatch unlike the adult birds, but not something I like to do of course. I know that coming this close to our source of food, means that from time to time drastic action is needed, another problem of living on the edge I guess.

Tap, tap here's your food

I said the other week we had a backlog of eggs and this week we had some interest in taking them, only they would like more than we can supply at the moment, but we will at least give them some. Our wandering chickens or happy hens as one of our friends describes free range hens are so happy wandering about they are not laying that much, otherwise we might be able to supply what they want. Well most of them were happy, one unfortunately died today. She hadn't been well for a little while and today Ian found her dead in the chicken house. The others are a little subdued after a visit from a large bird of prey earlier on in the week. We thought we had lost one of them when Ian saw feathers all around, but when he did a head count they were all there. After a bit of an inspection he noticed that one had flown into the wire of the fence in its haste to escape and severely stretched the wire - she must have been flying at some speed.

Look food!

Not only did we find a market for our eggs, they also wanted some blackcurrant bushes and we had a few of them heeled up over winter waiting to be planted this Spring, so that worked. Last but not least I was asked if we had some alpaca wool for sale and how much was it? Not being much of a business person I had not thought of that yet. We want some people to spin it and knit or weave it, so we can sell finished garments - not so we take all the profit but to give others an opportunity of employment and so I hadn't thought about selling just the fleece. The reason for the question is that I had taken some fleece to a lady who was giving a demonstration of traditional crafts and she wanted some different fleeces to show people the difference and just as I walked into the exhibition she was showing a group the alpaca wool - talk about perfect timing. One younger lady translated and I gave them a card so she could contact me later, as I said we had more that they could try.

I know some of you have seen these, but these
are the flowers I got for Mothers Day. They are
not doing bad after a week.

It kind of feels like we are on the edge there as well, we are getting there with having saleable items, but how much to charge is really, really hard. This is Latvia where things can be expensive for no reason and people do not earn much, so how much is reasonable? We want to provide opportunities, but also make a living ourselves. Being on the edge ourselves means we don't actually need much, not compared to many in Europe anyway, we have no interest in a consumerist lifestyle, not in terms of over consumption anyway. I would like to sell products that people want and really need, but will also last. Oh well! Need to do some thinking and meet the new challenges ahead.