Dignity

Some soggy looking alpacas. Notice Veronica our older and
more sensible alpaca in the background - she isn't venturing
far in the yucky weather

I had a Latvian lesson this week in return for letting someone make felt. My teacher is nine years old. One of her parents is English and the other American but she goes to a Latvian school and therefore is able to use both languages competently. I told her that I would have to ask her a word lots of times before it sticks but we had fun making felt anyway and have plans to make some presents. Trying to find a teacher has been a nightmare and so we will see how this works. Mostly she told me about her school and what she does, she told me first in English and then in Latvian so I could hear both. I think that worked quite well.

Soggy messes and the winter isn't supposed to be over yet

As the weather warms up the cut surfaces of the felled alder
trees start to oxidise

My young Latvian teacher's Mum is doing a Masters in Music Therapy and we often chat about studying and various aspects of our work together. She had a brilliant idea the other week of us having a writing day together. We would each work on our own pieces in the same room. It helped to concentrate my mind for sure and we occasionally shared what we had written and commented on that. I actually got two pieces of work completed in the morning, which was great. We both have a lot of writing that needs doing in the next few months and so hopefully we can work together some more and encourage each other in the process.

My attempt at painting an alpaca. I'm happy
with the way it is going but not happy enough
to say it is finished. At least it looks like an
alpaca

A little cherub

Ian and I finally managed to work together to get something spun and knitted with the wool from the alpacas. Ian carded and spun the wool and I knitted this cardigan. This little cherub is my youngest granddaughter, so it seems fitting that the cardigan also has buttons from my grandmother's stash that I inherited. My grandmother was one of my teachers and an inspiration for knitting. Many of the jumpers (sweaters) we used to wear were knitted by her. I have to admit though my granddaughter didn't smile all the time whilst wearing the cardigan, she did find the collar itched a bit, which is a shame. Her Mum will try some fabric softner on it first and if that doesn't work will sew in a piece around the neck. At least there is plenty of growing room in it.

Remembering cold, sunny snowy days

On bus number two of four to get to Estonia. This is an old
army town in Latvia and would have been off-limits to
even most Latvians in Soviet times

I am up in Estonia again today. It is a long time since I have made it up here and on the way I stopped off in a small Estonian village for an interview with a lovely lady who has an open heart and an open house. An American couple helped me with the interview since they know the language and have known the lady for many years. I love hearing stories from people who have such a generous heart and although she has three of her own children, there are many more who claim her as a Mum in their own lives. She had invited two of her grandchildren to be there too and they were testament to her generous nature, as they were infused with it too.

The boys were locked in one day because the paddock was so
icy they were in danger of hurting themselves

The snow starting to go Wednesday

At least the welcome at this dear lady's home was warmer than when I set off this morning. Last week it had warmed up a lot and just about all the snow disappeared into a wet sludgy mess. However it snowed overnight and so there was about 10cm of snow again this morning and more than up here in the North ironically, but that is because it is at a lower altitude. I have come to expect warmer weather here in Tartu than back home in Latvia.

By the afternoon of Thursday it had largely disappeared
until today

A veritable river of water running where water does not often
run, except like now when the snow melts

We have just got the results back from the histological examination on Snowdrop's liver (our alpaca who died just over a week ago now). We need to talk to the vet to check that Google translate has given us a reasonably accurate translation - as far as it manages with Latvian anyhow - but it appears to say that the cancer was in her bile duct epithelium and had spread to her liver; it was also a fairly aggressive type of cancer. That possibly explains why she wasn't jaundiced and why she deteriorated so quickly. At least we can be fairly confident that there was nothing we could have done for her except to make her last days as comfortable as possible. It is always a worry in case we had inadvertently caused her suffering, but I think that we can be reassured that it wasn't the case here.

And this is the result, our temporary lake

Posted by Kripu Kasumarthy on facebook of ''You Blew Me Away''
Garden Sculpture by Penny Hardy.

As usual I have been pondering on life the universe and everything this week and one of the things I have been pondering on is dignity. The picture on the left set me off. It was posted by a friend on facebook and it first of all spoke to me of my cares being blown away by the whisper of God. It then it also spoke to me of those who have travelled so far in the face of such atrocities and losing little by little parts of themselves in the trauma. The Danish law that requires refugees to be searched and have their valuables removed to me is encapsulated in this picture too, where humanity is gradually being stripped away in the face of hatred.

Oh the joys!

The lady in Estonia reached out to her neighbours when they were in need. Even if they took her for granted at times, she still showed them much dignity. Some of those neighbours would often drink, losing themselves little by little in an alcoholic haze and yet she still reached out to them. All who came for help would be helped.

Cold times

Weird snow sculptures or one large snowdrift - that was a
road past our orchard once

Sundays don't seem to be a day of rest at the moment. Last week it was a burst water pipe and it meant Ian was busy even on a down day. The burst pipe was not due to ice though, but a pipe that punctured some how. I went to read the meter and as the meter is kind of propped up on some other pipes and so it has to be moved to read it, as I moved it a pipe ruptured and I had to put a finger over the now spurting pipe. I had to shout for Ian to come and do something, so that was him busy for the next few hours while he fixed it. Would have been an easier job if all his tools for the job had been in the house and not out on the land. This week it was drifting snow and having to do the kinds of jobs that just have to be done when you have animals and need to keep on top of the snow to keep them fed and watered. After shifting snow and changing bedding we decided to go and see if it was possible to get two large bales of 2 year old hay from the field to use as bedding in the greenhouse for if the weather gets worse. Can't be too much worse than it was this weekend with drifting snow, but you never know. Well first of all we managed to get the car stuck in a snow drift, then it took Ian a bit of time to sort the tractor out, and just as he arrived the grader clearing the roads pulled up. I think he waited to see if the tractor would get the car out, which fortunately it did and at least it meant we didn't have to try and hold a conversation in Latvian. We then spent the next half hour in the increasing gloom and horizontal snow, shifting the bales one at a time, it is a good job we don't have many more of that size left. We are keeping this years hay back for feed as we don't know yet how far it will go.

Outside our other apartment

Ian on snow clearing duties

It sure has been bitterly cold here, we have had colder temperatures before and that we can cope with, but it's the wind that is making it worse. On one day all of our alpacas were shivering in the morning but we think that is because the wind just happened to be blowing at an angle that was able to blow snow through the smallest of crevices. Fortunately after a good feed they warmed up and looked fine, even Turbjörn, this time though they were all head for the shed in between feeds to get out of the wind. We were also pleased to note that their fleece is definitely thickening up. I wonder if the sudden drop in temperatures has been one of the problems and it just means they haven't had time to grow their fleece thick enough, quickly enough. Our chickens have been fine though and those are the ones that everyone asks about. They are in the greenhouse and their arks are on deep beds, which basically means putting a deep layer of straw down and leaving it in there and then just adding layers on top. The composting manure then serves to increase the heat in the area, apparently it is quite healthy for them. They also go into their wooden boxes at night and they are packed in their with plenty of straw and so keep each other warm.

The windy day tore the protective blue tarpaulin off the side
of the accommodation block for the local school which is
undergoing renovation. I think they were trying to protect
it from the severe cold. 

Disappearing objects, well they would
be if the snow hadn't whorled around them

We are still having problems with the electric and it has been off again this last week. I really feel sorry for the electric guys, especially as we have got to know one of them quite well. The poor guy hasn't had a weekend at home for three weeks and being working many a night too. Part of the problem has been the amount of ice built up and now snow on top of that and many trees have been gradually getting lower and lower which is not so good on top of the ice encrusted wires. It looks very pretty, but just not what we want. The good news is that the papers for our electric has finally come through and means we can get connected up out on the land though. That will be a relief for Ian as it is not much fun at lunchtime as the caravan is just too cold but he needs the energy to keep going and so stopping for lunch is a must. He could come home but that is a lot of fuel in the car and means he can't keep an eye on the alpacas to make sure they are doing okay. It will be so much better when we have a house out there.

I cleared down there!

And there! Not so clear but it was a lot of work you know!

I have been having fun again this week helping to set up international trade links again. It is much easier ringing up on behalf of someone to set up the links than it is to do it for myself. It is also much easier for me to phone an English company than it would be for our neighbour to be talking on the phone in English. Our conversations are full of pauses and arm waving and periods of trying to work out what is meant or what the word is that we are trying to translate and that doesn't quite work by phone. It all sounds grand but really it is just nothing more than chatting to someone on the phone that has previously emailed and just trying to work out what is needed to happen. It's looking a positive link up anyway.

A lot of snow! Could be worse. Heard in Sweden it was
5m high in places.

People keep talking about Christmas and getting ready for it, I can't quite get in the mood somehow. It was nice to hear some choral singing from some church in England on the Latvian classical station as we drove home on that snowy day over the weekend, that felt a bit Christmassy. There are some lights and things out for Christmas but nothing like in England - thank goodness, where Christmas seems to start in September. We did get a Christmas card from our son and his family - that's a first, it was a cute card taken from a painting done by our adopted grandchild, our son's girlfriend's little one of a snowman on a red background. Very sweet. I have also been trying to finish off an embroidery for my parents for their Christmas present, but the nearer I get to the finish, the further away the finish seems. I have more work to do on it to make it look complete. I somehow think it is going to be late. The other preparation for Christmas is to decide what to eat on the day, we are actually spoilt for choice now. I told you that we have some wild boar meat, so we could have that, we could have one of our chickens we culled recently or now we even have the choice of a free range turkey too, which one of our friends blessed us with. Hmmm decisions, decisions!

I think the seeds sprouted inside the squash! Whoops
they were meant for next years plants and it is a bit early
to pot them up.

I also think I ought to get cracking on the knitting front, especially after the little scare this weekend. Our son text us to say he was with his wife in hospital and the baby might be on its way. I must say that if it had been it did not take after his father, who had to be threatened with eviction to get his act together to enter the world. It is still a bit early though as the baby is only due 9th January and fortunately the contractions all died down and she was able to go home, much to our son's relief too as he doesn't do well in hospitals.

Arrrhh! Some sunshine

Will Self had an interesting perspective this week, we have had the slow food movement, the slow travel movement, is now the right time for the slow news movement?

How perverse, therefore, that the contemporary news media keeps to an entirely different beat, an ever-accelerating tempo. The news cycle has been 24-hour since the early 1980s, but the number of updates within each of those hours has steadily grown. Now the letters of the threads that run continuously beneath the live reporting look to me like the cogs of a virtual flywheel, one that spins ever faster as it tries to provide our inertial present with motive force. More events, more comments on those events, still more events provoked by those comments, and in turn, comments on those comment-induced events. The actual is sliced, diced and winched forward, only to tumble off time's assembly-line into the great slag-heap of now.

Ian once had a picture where he saw a giant flywheel where God just put his finger on a switch to stop the frantic turning round. It didn't stop immediately but like a fly wheel when you flip the switch it gradually started to slow down, perhaps God will do that soon for life itself. Wonder what that would look like? All life in the slow lane, time to breathe again.

Disappearing under a blanket of white

Of course it is not really possible to finish off an item like the above without mentioning the horrible events last week where a young gunman entered a school and killed many little children in the US. Certainly an item, sliced, diced and winched forward. I did consider doing what some other bloggers did and not post out of respect, after all what is news about our weather compared to the avalanche of grief the parents, friends and families of those murdered children must be feeling. I can't even start to comprehend what it must be like for them. I decided not to in the end, not out of a lack of respect for them, but out of respect for many other children that are murdered in our violent societies around the world, many of whom will never be mentioned in news bulletins, some of whom will never even be mourned by people in this world. It is a horrible, horrible thing to happen and the grief and the shock is very real and the reason behind it will have to be addressed, but they are not the only ones and so I decided to go ahead and post anyway, my heart still goes out to the parents and families of those little ones and to all those who have lost their children. May we all work towards a better future for our children.

An ordinary life

I think by next week this will look very different with the
start of the thaw. The tracks in the middle are a lynx

It's hard to write about ordinary life just after reading of such devastation in Japan, but ordinary life does go on and I am grateful for the ordinariness of life carrying on around me. I am grateful for the smiles and enthusiastic waves from neighbours (not really quite sure why the greetings were so enthusiastic, but still grateful nonetheless), I am also grateful for a warm house and food on the table. All perfectly ordinary, nothing remarkable until you realise how precious they are, how precarious it could be, how in an instant it could all be swept away by some quirk of nature, or by some revolution. In most earthquakes we read about, there is a concentration on the rescue stories, on the triumphs and the tragedies of ordinary people, but no not this time the media appear to have moved on to the threat of the nuclear reactor meltdown, or is that just the BBC? Or they are concentrating on the effects on the economy I to be honest I do not really care what speculators think of the economy of Japan, they should not be distracting the Japanese's Government from the mammoth task of clearing up and putting things to right, I think they have enough on their plate. I want to hear the stories, I want to hear how the Japanese people are? How are they doing, not the flippin' economy.

Ian dug out the drainage ditch for the
barn so the water can flow. He needed
me to give it a little perspective

So what has our ordinary life been like this week? Actually it hasn't felt that ordinary at all, things are changing - the sounds of Spring have rushed in upon us. For the first time in ages we hear the steady drip drip of the snow melting off our roofs,  we find out once again which roads are the dirt roads and which ones are actually tarmac and which ones are in desperate need of repair after the winter, it all seems so long ago since we saw them. We also discover there really is still grass under the snow and it still amazes us that it has managed to survive under its winter blanket and only needs a few rays of light to change from a dark murky green to the vibrant hue of spring. It was so warm the other day ie about 6C that we sat outside our workshop on the land on our patio chairs, Ian had to sink his chair into the snow, up to the seat, as there was not enough room outside our workshop for us both to put our chairs, but it was so good just to be soaking up the rays. I would have taken a photo but it was a long walk to get the camera along a path that was only half solid enough to walk on, part of it was still soft and meant sinking in up to my knees. After two days of warm temperatures there is still a lot of snow to melt and lots of puddles everywhere.

Not quite as deep as by the barn but a
pretty good indication of how deep the
snow has been

Post winter slush and dripping roofs seems a small price to pay for the return of the warmth of Spring. It is the promise of warmer days ahead that means I don't notice the pain of having to walk in the wet slippy slush, or the fact our car is not nice and clean now but the usual two tone colour it normally is. It is part of the process of transition, not entirely pleasant maybe in some ways, but the promise of the future is enough and the rays of sunshine help to make the slush bearable. As I said there is still a lot of snow to go, as there are mountains of it piled up all over the place; the snowploughs this year ran out of room to push the snow and had to have additional vehicles just to scoop up the snow to get it off the road. Of course a lot of buildings suffered damage with the weight of snow, not just our polytunnel and we see many collapsed buildings around. Ironically though buildings are still coming down as the snow melts off them, it is almost as if the only thing left holding them together was the ice and as that melts it all comes crashing down. We were round at our friends farm to see the new baby goats and we had a look at one of their buildings that had slowly been coming down over the winter, and Ian stepped in with our friend to have a look at the bent beams, only to find out that later that afternoon it finally gave up the ghost and fell down. Scary!

Cute heh! One of friends' new baby goat

Talking of our polytunnel we have finally made a decision on what to do. We have pulled the guys off building the barn to build the polytunel instead, as right now that is far more important to us. They can't really get going on the barn yet anyway as there is far more snow down there as you can see from the pictures, than on top of the hill where the polytunnel is. They are going to start off with beams left over from the barn and try to re-use what they can from the polytunnel and then we shall see what is still needed. They said it was going to be far quicker to take down the old framework still standing and start from scratch and so will build it using a different shape. They are also going to use sturdier beams in the corners and in the middle than use the same sized timber, so hopefully it will be far more robust. Well here's hoping anyway.

Here is the other baby, obviously otherwise engaged. Mum
is not much older as she is the one that escaped to go to the
boy goat when she wasn't supposed to.

It seems like its been a week of preparation for the coming year, from finally making a decision on the polytunnel to planting seeds. It seems the promise of Spring is all that is needed to spur us into action. One of the things that crossed my mind is that if we are going to have alpacas then I really need to get up to speed on the knitting as the hope is to have some gorgeous alpaca wool from them. I have never really been a great knitter, as Ian's mother was a prolific knitter, but I do have a go from time to time and made a couple of jumpers (sweaters) for Ian and myself and knitted a few baby clothes. I decided that since I have wool stored I would start off with knitting baby clothes (no pressure kids!) and so I pulled out a pattern I have kept from years ago and got started. Well I thought I understood the pattern but as I knitted I realised I had forgotten a few techniques like how to increase stitches in a pattern, I had also never come across the instructions K1B before, I have come across KB1 and thought it was the same. KB1 means knit into the back of the stitch but it didn't give me the nice chunky fisherman's rib as the picture showed me in the pattern. I pulled that piece out four times, checked on the internet three times before I got the hang of what I am supposed to be doing ie knitting into the row below but the good news is that it is flowing nicely now.

Trying it out for size! Ian decided to move the tractor to
higher ground and it is a good job he did as this will be
very muddy by now. When it has its roof on and a concrete
floor it obviously won't be so bad.

Ian also has done a few finishing off jobs on our other apartment, like put up a coat rack. We are quite pleased with it as we used a piece of wood which was heading for firewood but we liked the design of it so put it to one side, added some hooks, and voila! Easy and very cheap. A lot cheaper than the nice coat racks in the DIY shop. He also used panelling from the apartment we live in for a bath panel. We ripped it off the walls  because someone in their infinite wisdom had cut into them to put a radiator in and there was no chance of matching it up again. The bath looks pretty smart now and so we decided to christen it. Well actually we thought we had best test it out, to make sure it didn't leak, as it hasn't been tested since it was put in and we may have a visitor sometime in the next week. So we had our first bath in ages! Bliss! A bath that is long enough to lie down in and one which is deep enough to be submerged in - our American baths were so shallow they were almost pointless.

Makes our ponds look like they have sunk but we think
that it is the sides that are so deep with snow. Not sure
if they have reappeared from under their blankets yet.

It hasn't all been sweetness and light this week for me as this last week I was quite poorly for about 24 hours. I started to feel a bit achy one afternoon but by the evening I was really bad, so bad I went to bed before Ian which is errrrr very bad! I was so cold and I just couldn't get warm, so I was tucked up with the old hot water bottle trying to get some heat into myself.  I was very achy the next morning too and felt really unwell when I woke about 7am, so one cup of tea and a couple of paracetamols and I went back to sleep. I slept till 12pm and that is not like me either. I don't do sleeping in! I think I could count on my hand how many times I have slept in past 9am and that is even as a teenager. Just can't do it. No idea what it was but after my sleep I felt much better and apart from the odd bout of tiredness I am fine now.

Lynx tracks. Two large paws at the front and two smaller
paws at the back. Lack of claws means it is not a dog or fox

I posted a picture of a possible lynx track the other week but we weren't sure if it really was a lynx or not. Now we are pretty certain it is a lynx and it is a regular visitor to our land. Its also probably male as our polytunnel ruins has a slight whiff of "Essence de Tomcat!". Down by our lowest pond are lots of very characteristic cat tracks and, as someone commented, the only other cat besides lynx with a similar gait and foot pattern is a leopard, and there are not many of those in Latvia, so we go with lynx. Funnily enough since the lynx tracks appeared we don't seem to have as many deer tracks, can't think why. Some of the tracks are quite incredible as there is a huge distance between each set of tracks. The lynx must have been on the run but what a colossal stride it has, certainly would not like to meet one on the run.