Reboot Spring please!

The scene this afternoon

Will whoever turned off Spring and re-inserted Winter please stop it! I mean, we have had some lovely Spring like weather and now we are all white again! Heh ho! The joys of living in a northerly latitude. At least I don't feel too bad being stuck inside doing my writing, and yes I finally did get started on the actual writing phase. It was a good job that nobody visited me today, I had bits of paper all over the floor trying to organise my thoughts. It was only after I had printed out all the quotes to help guide my thoughts that I thought of a way that would be less paper intensive. I am sure I will get to test out my theory soon. I have plenty more writing projects to do yet.

Pieces of paper all over the floor
#oldschool

The beach at Tūja

It hasn't all been reading and writing though, I actually got to do some more interviews this last week. I headed off at the crack of dawn to rendezvous with my Masters student and we headed up the coast to a little village called Tūja. It is very popular in summer but rather deserted this time of the year and rather miserable in the rain, but we still managed to find some wonderful folks who agreed to be interviewed and tell us about themselves and the place where they live, even if we did nearly freeze to death in the process. The cup of coffee and biezpiena cake offered by one lady was most welcome. The place certainly has a few different issues to the ones I have come across elsewhere, but that is more due to its location on the coast compared to more inland rural places that I have studied before. At least that proves one of my points that each village will have its own particular issues and so there are no one-size-fits-all solutions beloved by the developers and policy makers.

A beach famous for its large rocks. 

A happy big brother with his lovely little
sister

It wasn't the only excitement this week, we became grandparents for the fourth time to a lovely little girl. She has been given the middle name of Lolly after her recently departed Great-grandmother, which I think is rather lovely and one that she would have appreciated. Our granddaughter's big brother is paying her lots of loving attention and reminds me of when we brought home our second child, his big sister enjoyed her role immensely and loved having a cuddle. We were alerted to our granddaughter's imminent arrival by text at 11:22pm and were awoken by repeated texts at around 5am to say she had arrived- oh the wonders of modern technology. It would have been even better if I had a smart phone, as my son tried to send a photo, but that phone packed up in the summer and I am back to a phone that Ian had in the States; so rather ancient by today's standards and certainly not capable of receiving picture texts.

Love the atmosphere in this shot. Ian can certainly take a
good photo

I am trying to be good and rest my brain properly for a couple of days a week. One of the days off  is on a sunny day of the week and so it varies. This week we took off to the nearest big town, as the car needed to go for its technical. We were hoping that it would fail so that we could bump the test to the following month. It is difficult if anything goes wrong for Ian to work on the car in the cold weather. Instead the car passed, but even better, for some reason we don't quite understand we got an extra few weeks anyway and it won't be due for the next test until April 22nd 2016 (yes we did double check that it wasn't for 2015). It was quite a productive day, as we managed to find a replacement printer at a reasonable price, bought food for the alpacas, got Ian's passport photo done and found some more Sodium Hydroxide for soap making, all that and even managed to stop for some pizza at our favourite Italian pizzeria - the real thing, made by an Italian.

Ian drawing pretty pictures with his plough. We are trying
out another experiment to reduce the water flow down the
hill, which causes flooding in the bottom half and washes
away nutrients and ungerminated seeds if planted at the
wrong time. Ian has roughly followed the contours of the
slopes with plough lines to give the water somewhere to
run into and then seep into the soil. 

The other day off is usually a Sunday when we head up to the other apartment for bath night and to watch a DVD. It also keeps the place heated, so pipes don't freeze. Before I went I made two scarves using a darker base material to felt onto (nuno felting if you want to look it up). It seems to work, sorry no photos yet. I also attempted to decant some liquid soap that I had made into a bottle. I wanted a soap base that I could use for hand soap and ended up with something the consistency of thick snot. I only intended to make about three litres, but by the time I have added enough water to it to make it liquid enough to pour, it is more like 6 litres. Those manufacturers sure know what they are doing when they sell hand soap for such a huge sum of money compared to a bar of soap, when so much of it is water. Only approximately 1 litre is oil with about 125g of Sodium hydroxide to turn it into soap. It should keep us in hand soap for a while anyway. I just need to play around with scent combinations now.

Frog spawn

There has been a short film by a 12 year old American girl of Latvian descent doing the rounds just lately on facebook. I watched the film, which is about the Baltic Way and wept. There are evocative scenes of so many people standing hand in hand against Soviet oppression, with nothing but a sense of determination on their faces and dreams in their hearts. I didn't weep for the image I saw of those people, I wept for the broken dreams. I wept because some on the video who spoke about that time with such emotion, used their freedom to leave. I don't blame them, I really don't, it is just that freedom has been so hard. I see those who stayed here who work and work and work to do the best they can to keep this country alive, buried under a layer of exhaustion. I see those who found the adjustment hard and are slowly drinking themselves to death. I see those who are trying to work out their painful past and not quite figuring out how they fit in today. I see those who had dreams in their hearts which turned to sawdust in the reality of a cold market place and wondering what they have to do to earn a living? I see neighbours not trusting each other and seeing a building fall apart because no one wants to take on the responsibility of doing something when all they get is aggravation for their troubles.

A sign of Spring, can you see it? Okay I know, I
have to learn to zoom in with my iPad, but I was
in a rush and it was cold when we opened the
window to take this shot. The stork arrived back
this morning, just in time for the snow. 

But I also see a beautiful country with signs of spring after a long winter, even despite today's snow. I see a people who long to see a better world and trying to figure out how that happens. I see the potential for those dreams to reawaken and grow like a pruned bush in warmth of the early spring sun. I have hope in a group of people that can appreciate a herb tea, picked by their own hands at the height of summer because they know which herbs are good to pick and which are good for health. I have hope in a group of people who know how to raise a garden of vegetables and think it is the most natural thing in the world to do. I have hope in those who struggle on despite the setbacks to reach for that dream of something better that cannot be bought with money. Putin maybe causing us worries from time to time and the American army might be over here to "reassure us" whatever that might mean, but I still have hope for the future.

Chilled out in Oz

Yay! Oh little granddaughter, already growing up fast

Our little granddaughter is gorgeous, but then you would expect me to say that wouldn't you? In just the nearly two weeks we have been here, there are many changes going on, she is starting to take notice and you would almost think she really is smiling at you and it isn't just wind. We haven't got up to much whilst here, having a baby around with frequent feeds, does tend to curtail outdoor activities. My health hasn't helped either. I was back to the dentists for a second prescription of antibiotics after the first lot didn't agree with my system. Fortunately with the second prescription and the recommended probiotics I actually felt human for the first time in weeks and I am finally off the painkillers.

We did manage a short walk and were rewarded with the
sight of some wallabies

So much of our time here in Perth has been hanging around at home, taking trips out to the shops, taking the baby out for a walk to let Mum sleep and in the process testing out the waterproofness of the new pram - fortunately it passed, and a barbecue. We have been looking at the photo updates from back home in Latvia and the snow has now almost gone, with quite a rapid thaw in the last few days and so barbecue weather may have arrived or be about to arrive in Latvia, whereas here it was just about the last of the season with temperatures finally cooling, much to the relief of our daughter and son-in-law. It has been an unpleasantly humid summer for them here.

Not the most glamourous of photos, but showed I did get a
look in, in the cuddles stakes. Grandad is still the best at
getting little ones off to sleep

My daughter surprised me at the barbecue by putting candles into the cupcakes she had made and getting everyone to sing happy birthday to me. I hadn't realised that was what she intended to do with the cupcakes and nearly spoilt the surprise by tucking into one, as she was busy feeding the baby during the barbecue. Fortunately no one else decided to follow my lead. My birthday is not actually until today and so the celebrations have continued on this our last day of our visit to Oz. I have been thoroughly spoilt, first by my son-in-law going out first thing to get us croissants for breakfast, then out for a quick trip to the shops to find some elusive sandals (haven't been able to find many - well it's autumn here isn't it), next for lunch out. We let my daughter and son-in-law out and about for a few hours on there own too, while we babysat - a treat in itself, as it has meant lots of cuddles with baby

Australian scerey

The problem with not feeling quite so human is that I haven't been able to get on with my studies which was kind of worrying with assignment deadlines looming. I managed one assignment on the plane on the way here and checked it when I arrived, while I still felt reasonably human, but the statistics defeated me. Many of my notes weren't written up after the lectures due to not feeling well and when I look back at the work I did it isn't making a great deal of sense, partly because not all the information is translated from Estonian, which slows me down a lot. Fortunately my lecturer has proved very understanding and given me extra time to get the work done and a book recommendation. It would have been nice to get this finished off, but such is life!

Snow has nearly gone back home

I bet these guys are pleased to see the back of the snow too!

Plodge, plodge

The wraps are finally coming off the accommodation block
for the school

There has been some excitement in our household this week, we got to see baby pictures of grandchild number two. This little mite is not as chilled as the first one, as it wouldn't lie quietly to have its picture taken, so not so clear, but still it is there and appears healthy and that's the main thing. It is lovely being able to see the pictures and see them despite our family being scattered across the globe.  It all feels a little surreal at times knowing the events are really happening, but not being there in person, but it is comforting to know that we are only a Skype call away and can still be involved in the process, albeit in a more limited way than if any of them lived down the street from us. 

Bit of a difference to when they started. No balconies now,
no crumbling brick work and all clad with an outer skin
of eco-friendly products - well that is theory. Hope it is
well done and it lasts. 

There was more excitement when I read the front page of the magazine that had an interview of me in. The front page headline read "Mežacūka. Draugs vai iednaidnieks?" which means Wild boar: Friend or Foe? My masters thesis title! I wasn't quite sure whether to be upset or not, but the reason for picking the title for my thesis was to capture people's attention and it looks like it worked from that point of view. I was credited with the title in the main body of the interview so that's okay. The article came complete with silly photo, although I did look very earnest, as if I had something very important to say. It was a good job though that I had changed for the interview just in case and didn't see the journalist in my usual scruffy clothes. From what I could tell the article looked fairly well written and a neighbour agreed with that assessment, but I still need to get a more accurate translation of it. Hopefully I shall let you know if I fully approve next week.

Before the dig

In Denmark we had a tv for three months when we lived in a rented flat there and one of the programmes we used to watch was "Time Team," but we used to nickname it "Dig a trench." As many of you know whenever they wanted to find something out about the history of a place they would dig a trench as an exploratory first step to see what was there. Well Ian has been doing his own "Dig a trench" for our electric cable and it is proving to be a fascinating cross section of our land as far as the make up of the soil is concerned. We have everything from sand to clay to rich loam, all within a 500m transect. He started off in good but cold weather while the snow was still on the ground and everything went well, but then it melted and the rain started again. Now it is no longer squelch, squelch in the mud, it is more like plodge, plodge in the water (Verb plodge (Geordie) To wade or splash around in puddles, mud, clarts or mire.). Our lake has reappeared as it seems to do every time it rains now and we have rivers of water running across the fields. It is not making life easy at the moment. The lake is right where Ian wants to dig for the electric cable and he can't really skirt around it as it is onto neighbouring land. It is so frustrating. The trench has also collapsed in places as the rain washes some of the soil back in, and some of the soil is just being washed back into field. The trench is 70cm deep and in places it is filled to the brim with water. So what should have been a fairly tidy neat scar across the land, may turn out to be a much wider scar with a depression in it. Not what we wanted to do.

After the dig. It kind of looks like we have a
rather large mole problem

I finally got all the fodder beet in to feed the chickens, the remaining few beetroot, hamburg parsley and some parsnips. I had commented this week on one blog that we don't seem to be troubled with voles nibbling our vegetables, unfortunately I discovered that we do have a problem in one of our allotment plots after all. It could be because I was the last to dig up a root crop and so the only one with anything worth eating in the area, but there was a whole row where the leaves looked fresh and green but when I pulled them there was nothing but a hole left in the soil where a root once was with a tunnel onto the next one. Not a good sign. At least it was our allotment plot and not out on the land, there they would have been dug up by the wild boar if it hadn't been for the electric fencing around the plot. Shame electric fences are a bit useless against voles. On the land the parsnips were of varying sizes, some a decent size and some small but they were all good and long, which is a good sign as it means the soil is deep at that spot anyway. It was also the first time we had actually managed to grow parsnips reasonably well out here in Latvia and maybe warming the soil first before putting the seed in paid off

Looking back up the hill

One of the frustrations with trying to do something a bit different is trying to get appropriate equipment. So much money is spent on big agricultural machinery that there is not much available for the small diverse farmer, there might be in India or China but not here in Europe, or if there is we haven't found it. Sometimes we find something if there is a market elsewhere like in landscaping or vineyards which require the smaller equipment but where would you find a small scale thresher? Or a small scale seed separator? I feel there is a real need for engineers to work on small scale machinery that mimics some of the jobs that were done in the days of yore and yet reflect the engineering possible in this day and age, a real fusion of old and new thinking. This hopefully would make entry level farming cheaper, instead of relying on equipment with a huge outlay, which severely restricts the opportunities for young farmers unless they take over a family business. Another idea would be for engineers who were capable of restoring old equipment which are lying around in many barns, no longer used but still capable of doing a valuable job if only people could get them to work again. Oh well! If you know of anyone who fits the bill, then do let me know, won't you?

Bella in the chicken box. Neither Bella nor
the chickens seemed bothered by the company.
I think she was after the parsnip flavoured with
some fat poured off some sausages I had done
in the oven - either that or she has developed
a liking for parsnips!!!!

Small farms are efficient, believe it or not! They can produce more per acre with smaller outside inputs but it does require a lot of manpower. It is not efficient as economists might measure efficiency, but it is kinder to the environment to have more people producing food with fewer fossil fuel inputs. One of the reasons for introducing animals to the mix is to improve the efficiency of the vegetable garden by producing onsite fertiliser, instead of shipping it in. We are still experimenting with working out what we need to raise to support the livestock we have (sounds grand for three alpacas and 15 chickens, but it's a start), so that when we scale up we will have some idea of how much we need to grow to keep them in food year round. So hopefully as we grow the vegetables to feed ourselves and the animals, the cycling of nutrients will be good enough to keep everything healthy. Well that's the general idea anyway

The chickens with their new cobbled together roof aka
Frankenroof. The low roof was fine outside for the
chickens with the good throughput of air but inside
the greenhouse it meant that the ground was always damp
so we thought it would be best to have a net cover instead

After a flurry of anonymous comments which are only spam, I have taken the decision to remove the permission to post anonymously. It certainly won't affect my regular posters, but I am sorry if you had intended to comment but don't want to post with a profile, only it was getting too time consuming dealing with the anonymous comments that had nothing to say apart from that which already been said all over the internet, word for word. 

I said it had been wet. This is Ian's new walk in wardrobe
or where he hangs his wet stuff and just lately there
has been a lot of that.

Surprises

Never seen this before, a rainbow in the
morning fog

I haven't been doing so well with jars just lately, thankfully this time the jars I managed to smash weren't full, unlike the full jar of tomatoes that I smashed not so long ago. This time one was at home, but embarrassingly one was in a shop. I picked up a pack of 8 bottles and at the bottom was a hole that I didn't know about until I picked it up. Oh boy! I am feeling rather clumsy at the moment, especially as I have also managed to walk into the handle of the chicken ark and have a wonderful bruise on my leg now. Must be my age! Anyway all I could do was gesture at a lady that there was a bottle on the floor and leave her to it, felt more like running off and leaving it. Today I managed to redistribute rather a lot of grape puree, leftover from making grape juice and put through the vegetable strainer. I'm not sure what happened really, but bits flew in different directions and the bowl tipped onto the counter. Thank goodness not much went anywhere else. I decided to freeze the puree since I didn't trust myself to make jam out of it just yet. Good job we went today to go and get a large chest freezer because our upright freezer is full to overflowing, as is the section under our fridge and I have hardly even started freezing things like broccoli, which is just starting to get going and beans.

"How's your children, errr I mean alpacas" said my friend
last week! Haha

It has been a smashing time from other angles too, but this time in a nice way. I got to see the 20 week scan of our first grandchild which was really exciting. It is a little difficult at times to remember that our daughter-in-law is pregnant, as we are not in constant contact or get to see them often - just one of the downsides of living far from family (although that depends on the family I guess, I am sure sometimes it could be a blessing). Planning to see them will be a challenge, especially as we are aware that our animals need to be looked after too, but I'm sure we will manage it. The scan pictures though are fascinating, especially the one where we could see the spine curving around so beautifully of the little one all curled up in Mum's tummy.

We have a squash plant. Last year we had a whole load by
this time in the year as you can see here

This week hasn't been the sort of week where we get done what we planned. The forecasts have been completely useless for us this year. The weather has been just far to unpredictable and that makes planning jobs a nightmare and that includes this week. For instance today the weather said light showers, which was the case out on the land apparently but over the apartment it was a torrential downpour for at least half an hour and some showers on and off. At least we did get one side of our land cleared of hay bales earlier this week and now they are all stacked or dumped as the case maybe. The stacked ones might be useful for bedding but we won't know until we open them but they seem like they maybe okay. The rubbish ones are stacked in a line for growing pumpkins over next year or dumped in a pile while we decide what we are going to do with the one particular part of the land. We are now debating whether to put another pond in and see if that helps to drain a field, as well as use the spare soil to raise the level of the rest of the area. We were completely whacked after clearing the bales, even though they are small there is a lot of them and by the time we had cleared around a hundred of them we could barely lift them, so we finished the job off working together, at least that way we could lift them. Awww! Sweet heh?

Not the best photo in the world but as you
can see, autumn has arrived here with this
glorious maple

I mentioned last week that our friend said autumn is the time of year for escaping animals, well it appears she's right. Not only have our alpacas been stretching the limit a little, but our neighbours cows escaped. Ian was working in the barn and I was in the greenhouse when we both heard voices and we looked out to see the neighbours cows and two of our neighbours looking rather flustered and frustrated. All of their cows had found a hole in the fence that some wild boar had made and decided that we had better grass than they had and came for a visit, or maybe as Ian said they had heard about the alpacas and fancied a visit. Our alpacas weren't impressed and disappeared off to the workshop where they live (I know we still call it the workshop, even if now it is the stable really) and one or two of the cows decided to try a closer inspection, but fortunately Ian got to the gate first and shut it before they could get in. There is no telling what sort of a job it would have been if they had got in there as they trampled over the fencing that keeps the alpacas in their extended area. We then helped our neighbours to herd the cows back to their land and then they kindly took us back in the car as we had tramped over quite a few fields to get them back to where they belong. It gave us a chance to show the husband around as he had not seen our land, or the alpacas.

Some better behaved cows on our way back from getting the
freezer. If you look hard you can see the lady in the horse and
cart who is driving them

Arriving at their new destination (photo by Ieva)

The other change of plan was due to helping out some friends with transport. We found out that they are moving and there wasn't much notice, but they needed to do something with their sheep as they weren't taking them with them to their new place. Another of our friends decided they could take them and we ended up moving them from one friend to another at short notice, i.e. we only found out in the morning and we moved them that afternoon, but at least we got a nice meal out of it - the mushrooms picked from the forest were heavenly.

Ian trying his hand again at herding, this time sheep not cows
(photo by Ieva)

Enjoying the sunshine in their new home (photo by Ieva)

Our combination microwave is quite old
now but still works well, if you can get
the tiny microswitch to work that is. It
is frustrating that for the sake of a small
switch the microwave might have to be
thrown away. We've tried looking for
parts but it is so old it is not helpful.

It was back to school today for the children and it was fun seeing so many of them in their smart clothes and carrying flowers. One of our neighbours is a teacher and he came back carrying some flowers even though he is male, it is quite normal here to give flowers regardless of gender. It wasn't a full day back at school, just a sort of celebration of the beginning of the year, classes should start tomorrow. It did mean though that our neighbour turned up just as we were trying to manoeuvre the freezer down the stairs and he offered to help. Although I managed to help get it down the stairs the wrapping started to disintegrate badly and it was more difficult to hold and so I was really pleased when our neighbour reappeared having changed to help get it into the basement room itself.

Herkules

It is interesting on a day when children go back to school after the summer break that we had been talking recently of the difference between work and toil. Physically we both work harder than we have ever done, but some people wouldn't class it as work, because no one employs us and no one pays us. So many people though go to work and it is a burdensome thing to do - is that toil? Were we toiling when we were putting bales of hay away? It was work and it was hard work, but it was a warm day and we were out in the fields and not stuck in an office. We even had time for discussions to try and work out the best way to deal with the bales so they are useful for next year, even if that means only useful for compost. So what do you think? Is there a difference between toil and work? Or are we just nitpicking?

Updated photos to properly credit the photographer, our young friend Ieva