Transition time

I think this is a great shot that Ian took of a stork
visiting our land. I never cease to be amazed by
the storks. Not sure I would want too close, they
make quite a mess but they are still fabulous to
watch while they are around

It is that time of the year when we transition from being in the apartment to out in the caravan more, in fact Friday to Monday this last week. It has been relatively pleasant, a bit windy and sometimes cool, but it has been nice to be outside more. So lots of pictures and not so many words

They even visit the pond on a regular basis to catch frogs.
I hope they don't catch the fish though. We have seen the
fish in our top pond after the winter, but not this one but
they could be deep down hiding - hopefully

The storks eat the frogs but fortunately they don't eat the
frogspawn. It doesn't take long after the snow has gone for
the frogspawn to appear

A beautiful day today

Beds rotavated and some seedlings in under cover,
as well as other seeds such as cabbages and caulis.
The brassicas are always best under cover on our
land because they get attacked by flea beetles
otherwise, which puts lots of tiny holes in the
leaves

This week we have beds prepared for seeds and some planted up with cooler weather plants, we have areas smoothed out after wild boar activity (not recent fortunately, we seem to have escaped anything major for a while, so hopefully their numbers really have been reduced), weeding done, even the first washing on the line out on the land. It is early and we could get caught out by late frosts, but the sort of seeds I put in are more likely to suffer from dry weather, which could still come and so they are better getting off to a good start in the rain we will have over the next few days.

This is my first vegetable garden out on the land and
the soil is now quite dark for the most part as we have
added a lot of organic matter and wood chippings to
it. Some of it got a bit overgrown last year, but at
least it has had a good weeding to start the year.

Aggie was giving me a funny look because I was
laid on the grass to take this photo. She looks very
fuzzy but it was rather breezy

The biggest disadvantage with this time of year is the lengthening days, which is good on the one hand but does mean if I stay at the apartment and Ian goes out to the land he comes home very late to eat or we start eating separately - not something we are a fan of. Throughout our married life we have sat down to eat our evening meal at the table together and when our kids were at home we ate together with them too. That is one of the biggest reasons for making the transition to staying out in the caravan, the other is to save fuel of travelling backwards and forwards. When we are out there I only have to travel back twice a week, to get the washing done, take a shower, to pick up our milk delivery and do some shopping. Before anyone asks, daily showers are not only bad for the environment (think of all that hot water down the drain) but also bad for the skin's environment, a wash is quite good enough! Of course we do go into the village more often than that when we have forgotten something or need something from home, but our fuel consumption is a lot less even so.

Ian spent time re-modelling the scar around our well today.
He re-sculpted the bank to stop surface water flowing into
it, then rotavated the area around it 

He also scattered some grass seed on 

then raked it in

The inspector came to investigate. Which reminds me, the
inspector really did come to investigate today. A nice man
with a GPS came to assess our land for the EU payments,
he went away with a few photos of the alpacas too. 

The lambs are getting big as you can see, this one
is nearly as big as her mum now.

One thing I didn't mention last week was the trip back on the plane. I had the window seat and two blokes got on and sat next to me. They were f...ing this and f...ing that, which I absolutely hate, but then they ordered lemonade from the stewards and after the stewards had gone they started to top up their cups from a large bottle of vodka they had with them. Slowly over the course of the flight, they were getting louder and louder and at a few points in time even started singing. I wasn't really sure what to do and felt quite intimidated by their behaviour. I was saying a few prayers for sure. Just as we were starting the descent the one next to me had a nose bleed and asked his friend to get some tissues. I knew I had some in my bag so offered him some rather than let him bleed all over the place as it was quite a bad one. I also felt it might help to connect with him and help de-escalate what was happening. I think the nose bleed did that enough anyway, it seemed to calm them down a lot. It certainly isn't something I would like to have repeated again though.

A few signs of spring

Coltsfoot. This is usually the first flower of spring to appear
although there doesn't seem to be many of them this year

This fungus is so incredibly bright red and stands out
on the forest floor

The yearly carpet of wood anemones - I love them.
They appeared about the same time last year, but
earlier than years previous to that. In fact if you go
back a few years, sometimes our land was still under
snow and ice at this time.

Blackcurrants are budding too

Mint appearing from under the winter cover of spruce
branches - this helps to protect them from the harsh frosts

Hollyhocks

Welsh onions. I have all sorts of onions left to sprout in the
garden because they start to come push up leaves so early
in the year that we can be eating leaves almost as soon as
the stored onions are finished

The lovage is another early plant to push up after the winter

Oh yes! And ground elder, the scourge of the garden, but I'm not
so bothered these days since I found out it is perfectly edible at
this stage and gives a sort of parsley flavour to meals.

This is the Schisandra Chensis in the greenhouse. We
use this in salads, in teas and as a spice too. We
don't get that many of the supposedly amazing
berries that give so much energy, but we aren't worried
since we found out all the other uses for it.

So this was pretty much our week. There was a slight misunderstanding at one point. Ian asked for another replacement Stanley flask recently as the vacuum stopped working again, despite their 25 year guarantee - we think there was a problem with the lightweight ones that hopefully has been resolved with their new design, which is what they replaced it with. A nice lady came to give us the replacement since she is from the area, so she got her relative who speaks English to phone to arrange the drop off. No problem, it was someone we knew. The problem in Latvia though is that we know quite a few people who have names that are similar, so if we want to talk about someone we have to add a description too, unfortunately they don't add those descriptions to their phone calls, so while Ian was convinced it was the guy who had dug the well who was coming with his relative, it turned out to be another guy with the same name. Never mind, Ian got a new flask as the lady came to visit with her grandchildren the next day.

Here comes summer

You can see how much greener the grass is. This rainbow
is the lowest rainbow I have ever seen out on the land

 Summer’s here! The caravan is out of the greenhouse, the chickens in the arks are out too, the swallows are back and so are the cuckoos and the weather is forecast to rain! About right then!

Ian out working well into the evening. He is using the
spring tyne to break up the land for rotavating. These
areas are still too wet for the rotavator and so he needs them
to dry out a bit and this should help break it up and take
out any big stones or large chunks of grass.

The days are getting longer and today we were outside working until gone 7pm. I managed to get quite a few different seeds in and vegetable beds mulched up in preparation for the rain. I even lightly mulched the seed beds so they don’t all wash out again. There are still plenty of seeds to go in and some to start off next week, but it has been a good start. I have been potting up tomato plants too. They are only small and certainly not the size of the ones we saw in the Spring Market today that was taking place in our village. There are definitely some advantages to heated greenhouses or lots of windowsill space. Still the ones I have started will be ready in time to go in the greenhouse when the time is right for transplanting. There is not much use in getting them in too early, as a late spate of cold weather can kill the lot, even in the greenhouse.

A funny face from our grandson

Ian had a good time away. He was rather surprised to see our youngest at the airport, he hadn’t been expecting him. Ian picked up a car and found he had been given a very good upgrade. He had booked a small car and instead got a bigger car with bells and whistles, fortunately it was also a diesel and best of all it even had a sat nav. He was so pleased about that, as he doesn’t think he could have found the farm where he was doing the alpaca shearing course without it. Ian and our youngest both went down to our middle child’s place as Ian was staying there overnight, so he could see the newest addition to the family. Lucky person! He also got fish and chips in the evening and had sausage and bacon butties for brunch. A real britfest there.

The newest addition to our family

As promised, some pictures from the conference I was at
last week. This shows the tables set for the dinner - doesn't
it look posh?

Ian also went to see a lady who I got to know via her blog, she makes the most wonderful pieces of artwork, so full of vibrant colour and she spins. Not only does she spin she knows how to spin alpaca wool. It turns out she only lives around the corner from our son and his family and so was an ideal opportunity to meet up. Ian took her some of our alpaca wool and had a quick lesson in how to spin. Apparently he has the right technique and should be able to get the hang of it. Now all he needs is a spinning wheel.

The submarine that we sat near for dinner
at Seaplane Harbour Museum

This caught my friend and I by surprise.
Before we realised what we were doing, we
 found ourselves going up a very steep incline
and then we had to make our way down it.  I think
if we had realised how steep it was going to be
we would have found the alternative route around
the place.

This is the contraption we were climbing. Not quite sure what
it is, apart from a steep bridge that is quite slippy to climb

He then went onto stay with a friend of ours who we also got to know through this blog. She came out to stay with us a few years ago and we had a great time. She lived closer to the place where Ian was taking the course. At one point I asked her if she could pass a message onto Ian via facebook and found out that they had done a LOT of talking. Once you get Ian started, you can’t shut him up (hehe we’re as bad as each other).

Lunchtime for me. Squash, nettles, chilli and peppers

Ian was delighted to get the chance to shear about 5 alpacas. It certainly took him a lot less time than he has taken to do ours, 20 minutes as opposed to two hours. He also found out the best way to secure the animals and so he is now trying to source some pulleys that they normally use on yachts, so he can create a similar set up. He found out how to cut teeth using a special machine, only we can't now find the machine. Their's is about 10 years old and is an attachment that can be used on various machines. It seems that the only gadget is the one that Ian found on the internet and costs hundreds of dollars and yes is American, so would need to be run through a transformer.

The barley has finally sprouted

While Ian was away I asked him what I should do with the alpaca boys as Herkules was up to his usual trick of eating through the fence. Ian said not to worry, he will move the electric fence when he gets back. The next morning I sat down for a cup of coffee whilst watching the alpacas, when I noticed that dear old Herkules had got out. The problem is that he got out in a way that I didn't think he would find his way back in so easily. So I thought I had better encourage him back in. I made the mistake though of not first fastening the other two into the paddock and Herkules was not cooperating, he rather liked the very green grass he was eating. Before I had a chance to react, Turbjørn nipped through the spot which I had opened up to let Herkules back in. He is the most awkward of our alpacas to cooperate. He is very bright and very nervy too and not as easy to con into doing anything. To cap it all Tellus got out as well.

One of the gooseberries we purchased
today from the Spring Market

All three out now meant that herd mentality would kick in and they could just drift off, eating as they go. I tried to encourage them in but realised it wasn't working, they were too interested in the grass they weren't even interested in the grain. I left them to it for a while, no point in spooking them. I went and got some hay to part fill up their feeder and took some to the sheep who also needed moving and so needed the hay to eat. I didn't want them out, that would have been a disaster. Next I played the gently as we go game, making sure they didn't head off in the wrong direction and just gradually manoeuvring them back in. One by one I got them all into the paddock area. Next I decided to move the electric fence so that they wouldn't think of escaping again. By the time I had finished that it was lunchtime and my morning had disappeared.

Red currants. Might not look much now
but hopefully they will grow. We also
bought male and female sea buckthorn,
quince and potatoes for planting.

It wouldn't have been so bad, but I had two deadlines for papers to be submitted by the following day and I had hoped to get them done that day before I went to collect Ian from the airport at night. Amazingly I actually got them both finished and submitted, even though one needed checking over by a colleague and I needed permission from a couple of photographers to use their photographs for the other one. Sometimes things do come together after all. At least it meant that I only had to do some quick checking of one of my student's work the next day, which meant that Ian and I could actually spend time chatting and pottering about on the land. I have enjoyed a whole long holiday weekend doing the gardening, either at our other flat or out on the land. It was wonderful not to have to do too much in the way of thinking beyond digging up weeds and planting seeds.

The result of my work in the orchard plot vegetable garden.
At least half the plot now looks nice and neat. Still have the
bottom half to work on yet.

Ian did get the sheep moved finally. Far, far away - well over the hill really. The grass is definitely good on that side and he doesn't have to listen to their very loud baaing. I am sure they are the loudest sheep ever and very demanding at times. We think that they have helped to improve the grass a lot on that side through their manuring and eating down of some of the weeds. That means we have another area of good hay now. Ian went to check on them on the way home one night. He stopped the car by the side of the road and went towards them, they panicked and jumped the fence and ran up the hill. Ian is not sure if coming from that angle spooked them or if it was the reflective, light, green stripes on his new coat. Anyway he had to get back in the car, go back to the greenhouse where grain is stored and entice them back into their electric fenced areas. Fortunately these days they do follow him when he has food and they were quite content to go back, where they have since stayed.

Signs of Spring?

Pristine white snowy fields behind. Spring? Where are you?

No chance! Unless of course you consider the longer sunny days a sign of Spring. After all I actually arrived at my accommodation in Tartu in the light this week, a first. Unfortunately the temperatures are still so low that the nightmare ice is still in abundance and the sun is still glinting dazzlingly off the white stuff. Shows we live in a pristine environment that means we are not reduced to miserable mucky white stuff by now. Patches of winter weary grass are occasionally visible on sunny slopes, or where heating pipes lay underground, but apart from that - no, nay, never. I had hoped to lose some more weight with all the walking too and from the university up in Tartu, but I need a brisk walk not a slow shuffle, which is what I end up doing. 

This is the path that Ian chipped away
in the path so I could walk on
something other than solid ice. He hurt
himself with the metal rod he was
using too, so not having a good time
just lately

Poor Ian also went for a slide today out on our land and hurt his ankle, hip and neck. Not badly but he is waiting for the bruising to stiffen and see what happens then. So it is not just me, who needs to take care, although I am often in awe of those folks who just stroll on by as if they are on a dry path. I just don't get it! How do they do that? I have done fairly well on the ice and only minor slips all week (I hope you are taking note Liz, I did try not to do any ice skating), the most embarrassing one was thinking I was walking on water and it turned out to be black ice on a slope outside a supermarket and in full view of just about anyone in that busy area - in Valga. Still at least I glided fairly gently into an untidy heap and didn't come down with a wallop.

The snow melting does make some quite remarkable
snow sculptures though and just look at that blue sky

Apart from on ice I like to live dangerously. Teehee! I decided not to risk the ice to get my afternoon bus home, so after discussions with my host I decided to get the local bus down to the bus station. I was instructed to get the  no. 8 bus from close to the university, but instead  I got the no.6 which arrived earlier. I worked on two principles, the first is that it said Kesklinn on those flashy screens they have and since I had seen that followed by the word "centre" I reckoned that it was fairly safe to assume it was going in the direction I wanted. The second principle was that most buses head into town in such a small place anyway and couldn't be too far from where I wanted to be. Once down the hill the paths are a lot better and so I would be able to walk quite quickly to where I needed to go. Who said life was boring!

This is our rather stupid cockerel, we call him Charlie
because he's a proper Charlie (idiot). He would look really
grand but on the back of his comb, to the left, you can see
a bluish tinge, probably frostbite and all because he
won't go into the ark some nights. He would rather stop
out and it is still getting pretty cold at nights. Sometimes
he is caught and thrust into the box at night, but not always.
You'd think he would learn it was colder out than in, but no!

To keep up the excitement of travelling I tried to help an older lady on the train on the way home. She had asked me if the train fare was paid for in lats or euros and I said both (are you impressed, she asked me in Latvian and I understood), but of course there had to be a problem didn't there. She only had Euros and I'm not sure what the problem was, but she turned to me and asked me something to do with Euros; in the end I paid for her ticket in Lats and she gave me the Euros but I nearly short changed her. Whoops! The very patient conductor, who spoke more English than he was prepared to admit, managed to sort us both out so we were both happy and we both had tickets.

I threw some soot onto the snow to encourage it to melt
this week and it seems to be doing the trick. A few inches
gone, only another two foot to go.

The excitement continues as far as travelling is concerned. Our car went for its technical this last week and it failed due to a hole in the rubber boot on the driveshaft, so Ian took it straight around to the garage to book it in to be fixed. After the car was fixed the guys at the garage said the front wheel bearings and something in the suspension were in bad shape, something that should have failed in a technical inspection, which was odd. The garage though often tries to save us money, when we have a problem and so we have learnt to trust them, but just to be doubly sure Ian did take a look at the car over the weekend and sure enough it didn't look good. This left us with a dilemma for today as I was due to travel up to Tartu again; in the end we borrowed a car from a friend, rather than risk ours on a long drive on some rough roads for Ian to take me to the train station. It was an interesting trip driving a little two wheel drive polo after our big four wheel drive Mitsubishi L200, one L200 passed us and we realised how much bigger our car really is. One thing we are particularly grateful for is that fact the garage told us about it and it meant we didn't find out the hard way on some isolated country road or even worse on a patch of bad ice. A wheel bearing packed in on us before, possibly due to the way the technical was done, but they were gentler this time around, but still it should have been failed on that point (for the previous story see here and here).

These are our raspberry bushes that are half covered. They
are taller than me.

I was chuffed to bits this week that finally my tutors said an abstract was fine to be sent off for admission to a conference - not sure how all this stuff works, but I'm sure I will learn fast enough. I uploaded it to the site and with a great deal of relief it was accepted by the conference organisers. That now means I'm off to Italy at the end of July and meanwhile praying like mad the weather is okay over the summer so that we get the hay in before I go, otherwise I'm in big trouble. The next stage is to find out how to get the travel costs met and to see what else is funded or not as the case maybe. All very new to me applying for grants and reimbursements. 

There are two small pike in there and I
think the rest are small bream, but
since I'm not a fisherman, I can't be sure

I said earlier on this year (about two weeks ago) that I felt God say he would provide for us in some unexpected ways this year and he certainly has done this week. I already mentioned the electric which we had inadvertently prepaid and this week we have an abundance of fish. I looked in the freezer the other day and thought it is getting a bit on the low side in the meat department- it will certainly see us through until we go away, but a restock would be nice, a wild boar perhaps I thought? Instead we have the fish. A friend was opening up a big hole in his lake as the oxygen levels will be getting low - the long winter won't have helped and many of the fish he pulled out would have died eventually and so rather than waste them, he thought he would take some to a friend - us! I will always accept good sources of protein and you wouldn't get much fresher than these as it was so cold the fish were just about frozen when he brought them anyway.

Herkules, the alpaca (there spelt it right this time!). He
looks like he is in desperate need of a hair cut though

Last week it was Estonian mother tongue day, where they take great pride in the fact the Estonian language has survived despite the country being taken over by the Danes, the Swedes, the Germans and the Russians at various points in time. It is a similar language to Finnish, but is still distinct in many ways. I know I should take more care in my own mother tongue at times, especially since I used to home educate my children. My two boys were particularly bad at spelling, one would spell phonetically and one would spell creatively, in other words I had no idea what he was trying to spell at times. It turns out the youngest was dyslexic and so explains quite a bit of his problems, but he did improve at home. I'm sure though that in the process my spelling got worse (don't even go there with the grammar); well my host does a lot of proofreading and on reading my blog found a couple of mistakes. The first was the very basic mistake I used "their" instead of "there". I feel like I should write that out a 100 times, so I remember next time, I must have made the boys do that a few times in their education. The next mistake was to call Hercules (or rather Herkules, because he is Swedish) an alapca and not an alpaca. Mind you we sometimes call them our alapalacas anyway when we are in a silly mood.

Ian cleared a section of the field from snow. I know we have
small bales, but it is still way over the height of those. Not
as much as in previous years, but still quite a bit of snow
still to go

Language does have a habit of changing with time though and that can lead to problems. Take the song "The sun has got his hat on," such a jolly little tune that comes into my head quite readily, especially when the sun hasn't been shining for a while. I only know a few words but I recently found out that the rest of the lyrics are not the kinds of words I would choose to use today in a time when people are sensitive to issues of race. Not sure if they were meant offensively or not, but they are considered that way today by using the "n" word. So I challenged a friend of mine (Liz who comments from time to time), who pointed out the rather un-PC terms in the song, to come up with a new set of words to the tune, and here it is.

Joanna's got her hat on, hip, hip hip hooray,
Joanna's got her hat on and she's coming out to play. 

Now she's crunching numbers
Down Estonia way
Then she's coming back,
If she can find the way.

Joanna's got her hat on, hip, hip hip hooray,
Joanna's got her hat on and she's coming out to play. 

Next she's breeding chickens 
Lunch is under way,
But the chick they pick
Is the one that lays.

Joanna's got her hat on, hip, hip hip hooray,
Joanna's got her hat on and she's coming out to play. 

Better warn the wild boar
Our Jo's had her say
She is now a master
So please go away

Joanna's got her hat on, hip, hip hip hooray,
Joanna's got her hat on and she's coming out to play.

Taking a drink of the melted snow. This pussy cat, Bella has
been in a lot of bother just lately. The darling little animal
has decided that anything in a plastic bag must be tasty
and the bag chewed through to test the theory. Even
bags that are put up high are now no longer safe from
the dear animal

The sunshine won't be much consolation to our Cypriot friends this week. Ian especially has spent a bit of time there helping out in one of the laboratories and we made good friends with the technician. It was therefore with astonishment that I read of the 6.75% and 9.9% tax they are going to levy on savers. It is horrendous that those who have saved money are the ones expected to bail out the irresponsible banks. Okay there are issues with some savers who are possibly money launders, but why penalise everyone else? The banks return to profit and do the people really gain from it? They are supposed to get shares in the banks in return, but will they be worth it? Gavin Hewitt of the BBC asks "have the [EU] sent a dangerous message to savers?" I think so, basically you will be robbed if you save, so what's the point? Not very helpful really.

This hen is called Spuggy, because she looked like a little
sparrow when she was born and sparrows are called
spuggies where Ian comes from. You can see her here when
she was little. In this picture she is enjoying a dust bath
with her mates.

It was with sadness I heard of the passing of David Iliffe this week. Some who follow my blog will know who he is, but many won't. David was the team leader when we first came to Latvia to the children's camps. Even though he was in his 70s when we knew him, he still had a zest for life and a desire to see children come to know Jesus as well as having fun in camps. So in some ways he is one of those responsible for us being in Latvia all these years later. Gratefully it was a peaceful end with some of his family around him and I'm sure that he will now be having a whale of a time with Jesus and enjoying watching children having loads of fun.