And then..

Brencis rocking his big teddy bear look.

Well it's been another of those eclectic and hectic weeks. Trying to juggle various jobs that need doing around the farm, work related tasks and jobs for others. We finally managed to get our own alpacas sheared anyway. Our friends from just north of Riga came and helped us again with Brencis, for which we are deeply grateful. Of course we also ate food afterwards and chatted the afternoon away. It's nice that we don't have to shear all of our alpacas on one day, so we can split them into more manageable numbers. The only problem is that Ian had to keep the alpacas in on a couple of days because of the rain as we can't shear wet alpacas.

Such a smart looking chap now.

Jakobs having a good scratch on the fence now
his fleece is off.

We had help for the other boys too on another day. The difference was that Ian was also teaching our helper about shearing alpacas at the same time. He explained what he was doing as he was going along. We were just grateful for the extra pair of hands but they thought they should pay him for the teaching. Ian had no idea how much to ask, so they offered us some pork as a gift. They came back a few days later with the gift. Note to self, when someone in the countryside offers a gift of meat, remember that it is unlikely to be in neat and tidy packages. We eat meat but not great quantities at once, so a small amount of meat goes a long way. One of the pieces would have done Fred Flintstone proud. Put it this way, I split the meat into about 8 largish chunks to put in brine, split some more into small pieces, enough for three meals worth, got a jar of fat and four jars of stock out of it and then there were two smaller pieces that were put directly in the freezer. 

Soaking up the sun

Freddie looking suave

Ilvija before shearing

The other problem that reared it's ugly head on that day, besides needing to deal with the meat and shear alpacas we were contacted by the agricultural subsidy people as there was a mistake with the application and it needed to be dealt with by the end of the day. That meant having to ring a friend to ring the office to find out the problem. Then Ian had to give instructions to be able to amend the application. Akkk! It was a complicated day. It was also the day when we sheared the most tricky of our alpacas, i.e. the spitty ones - although to be fair, Aggie was so relieved to get rid of her over warm coat she behaved impeccably. Even the really spitty one, Chanel, wasn't as bad as she could be. I wore a waterproof coat while we sheared her daughter, so that she didn't spit down my neck and I didn't really need it that much. We had to shear Chanel last because her skin is bad and we needed to put some diatomaceous earth on her to see if that will help. That stuff is a fine powder that kills the shears though.

She sure needed a haircut

A good scratch in the trees

Mother and daughter. From a distance the slight
grey from the powder is the only reason we
can tell them apart now. Chanel has been really
protective of Ilvija just lately, but we have
no idea what has gone off. Maybe a disagreement
with one of the other alpacas. Who knows!

The rain has cleared and warm days have suddenly arrived and we are finding there are still more alpacas to shear in Latvia. Gone are the days when we were only one of four places with alpacas in the whole country. I started writing this blog on the way home from shearing two alpacas for new owners just outside of Riga. It was so nice to talk to people who are concerned to provide the best for their alpacas though and were interested to learn. We helped move the alpacas from one field to another, as they weren't sure about how to handle them yet. They were very, very grateful. Ian the alpaca whisper struck again! Fortunately one of the alpacas was halter trained and with a bit of adjustment to a horse halter (not ideal but it worked) he led it to where it needed to go and patiently guided it through the various gates along the way. Ian's intuition was that the other would follow and he was proved right. We only struggled at one point when the follower was quite content to stay with the goats and the geese that were in the next field, but I and another lady managed to encourage it to follow. Ian also gave them some advice on grass maintenance for the alpacas and warned them of things to watch for.  

Poor Chanel. Her skin is awful. We have arranged
for the vet from the university to come out at the
end of the month. She should cope until then. We 
aim to get to the bottom of the issue with blood
samples and skin scrapes - whatever tests are needed.

Aggie with the fleece on that she was so happy
to have sheared off. She's been quite pleasant to
Ian just lately, even though she's pregnant.

We are starting to get a steady trickle of visitors to see the alpacas, with one lady even coming back after a visit three years ago. Another group spent ages asking questions of Ian while I was sat out of the way under the shade of a tree for an online staff meeting. Eventually we had a break in the meeting and I had to interrupt while I grabbed a coffee. It's been a busy few weeks with work. There has been the checking the theses for readability and correcting some English mistakes, reviewing some more theses in preparation for their defences and then sitting in and listening to them. So excuse me if my own English has gone to pot, so to speak. I'm having difficulty readjusting my brain between all these different things I've been reading. I also attended another conference online and Ginger Tom got in on the Zoom call while I was speaking, fortunately everyone just laughed. Why does he become so affectionate when I'm on the computer?

Ginger Tom taking a nap in the sun.

The swallow is nesting, even whilst we were shearing

He looks such a cutie but he can be a bit of a
menace for picking fights. We were wondering
today if we will have to separate him and
George his half-brother

Ian of course is also busy at this time of the year. There's the shearing and the preparation for shearing, like cleaning and sharpening the equipment and cleaning out the alpaca houses. Then there's mowing the grass that has suddenly burst into life and sorting out a water leak at the apartment that took 6 hours. He also had to take a trip back to the big town to get his ID card after forgetting to take his passport the last time but while he was there he also took the car for its annual technical inspection. It didn't pass and he has a month to sort out leaf springs, one of which has cracked, so we're pleased they found that out. Fortunately we have a good local garage that will sort that out, hopefully.

George eating through the fence again. Sigh!

Larry the Lada setting off on adventures new. 
The reason the young chap is steering with the
door open is there is also a bees' nest in the car.
Not a honey bees' nest though.

We said goodbye to Larry the Lada this week. A relative of our alpaca friends, who came to help us, was interested in our old Lada that hasn't run for years. I have may have mentioned a few times that it needs to be removed, it was becoming a bit of an eyesore, so when someone said they were willing to take it off our hands we were delighted. The two young men came and surprisingly got the car to start after a few attempts. They then arranged for it to be transported away, although that had to wait until we got back from shearing in Riga which was just after 10pm - still light though. Apparently Larry might end up as a run about on a piece of land, or be broken up for spare parts. Fine if you have the time for that sort of thing but Ian doesn't nowadays. 

Mr. P. looks a bit scruffy once he's sheared as he
goes and has a roll in the dust and it shows.

Tellus the stud male that all the ladies like. Here
not looking his best due to all the fat lumps he
has now. Not sure what makes an alpaca prone
to fat lumps.

The cold start to the year has meant that we are behind on somethings like getting the chickens out of the greenhouse - they are finally outside. I've taken a distinct dislike to our new chickens though. We got back one day after a trip out and wondered what had gone off as there was a bit of blood on a perch, but all the chickens went rushing in for food at putting away time as they normally do and so thought no more about it. Same again in the morning, all the chickens rushed out for their feed. However, by mid-morning I went to take a look and one was dead and I had to fight off the others to get to it. They had pecked it to death.  Not sure if it had a prolapse or not but a few days later they did that to another chicken. It was horrible. This week it looks like the chickens had been removing the eggs from the nesting box and started to eat the eggs. If they carry that on, they will be in the pot - all of them. Hopefully being outside will help to focus their mind on other things. 

You can see that Tellus has quite a few fat lumps
on his neck. 

Surprisingly Turbjørn responded quite well to 
shearing. We did take the precaution of giving
him some pain relief before we started the 
shearing process and was ultra careful with him.
I wonder if the mosquitoes are bothering him though
as he can't move his head so well to get rid of them.
I have found a fly spray that is pleasant enough and
yet works, but of course it has to be applied often
enough.

Those pesky flies get everywhere

Looking very summery now

Valeria cooling off in the shade of a tree.

Elegant Mari, elegant! We sheared her half-sister
yesterday. We were a bit surprised to find out that
one group of new owners had got their's from our
friends up in Estonia.

Vanessa enjoying the sunshine after shearing

Another elegant pose. Not sure who this is though. 
It has got so difficult to tell them apart since
they've all been sheared.

Sunbathing....

...and eating grass now they don't have a winter coat on

Not sure if this is a baby lizard or something else

RIP Lady V.

Lady V outside late last year. You can see her
bent front legs.

I was going to title this blog, "Pootling About," but circumstances changed that. Rather sadly our elderly alpaca, the matriarch of her herd, died this morning. We had been kind of expecting problems going into winter as her legs got more and more bent. We had been giving her higher doses of Vitamin D, but if it was doing anything it wasn't enough. She started losing weight and that could have been down to problems with her teeth - a common problem in older alpacas and maybe also related to a lack of Vitamin D or just getting old. We can't be 100% sure. She was nearly 18 years old, so not very old for an alpaca but certainly on the older side. The do live for around 20 years and some can get to 24 or more, but this winter turned out to be a bit tough for our old lady. 

Even though she wouldn't get up, she looked
perky and alert until close to the end

Turbjørn eating his food in peace with his 
neck warmer on. It came in useful for also
providing Veronica with a bit of extra heat
yesterday.

Veronica is her proper name but she always had a rather regal bearing and so was called Lady V. When she came she was a feisty animal. She was always one of those I dreaded trying to hang on to, as she was so long and quite powerful. Fortunately, she wasn't ever so tall. She calmed down a lot after Brencis but this could be due to the fact she wasn't pregnant again. She was definitely the boss. No one, but no one stole food from Lady V, right up till the end. When Ian gives extra feeds to Turbjørn, our alpaca with the slightly dislocated neck, he separates him from the rest of the boys to give him peace to eat, he never needed to do that with Lady V.

The boys looking on while Turbjørn eats.

Josefs today (note the skulking cat that he
just chased away)

One thing Lady V was really good at, was looking after the little ones. There is often an aunty in the herd and she let the little ones sit next to her. This was a godsend for Josefs as Aggie rejected him at first, Mari wouldn't tolerate him and Chanel wasn't really happy with him either. Lady V though would sit with him, giving the company he needed when he was little and learning to be an alpaca. Even when Aggie eventually accepted Josefs she wasn't a nurturing mother and so Lady V continued in her role as Aunty. 

A frosty Josefs. Don't worry he's
warm underneath.

The snow is deep enough to cover now to at
least 20-30cm. A good job as it meant that we
didn't have the same performance digging the
grave to put Veronica in that we did with her 
friend Snowdrop who also died in January
and I wrote about that exactly three years ago
to the day.

In her last few days she refused to stand. She ate well and Ian would use a hoist to get her up and massage her legs. At first she would remain standing once he got her up, but as the days wore on she refused to stay up or couldn't. At the very end she wouldn't even put her feet down on the floor when she was hoisted up. Gradually over the last three days she started to take less interest in food and water. Ian decided to be guided by her and didn't try anything invasive apart from some injections to keep her comfortable. We knew that even if she recovered this time around, she was going to struggle in the rest of the winter. Maybe the very cold nights hastened her end, but she was warm under the old sleeping bags and blankets Ian put on her. When Ian went to her this morning she had passed away. Still warm, but obviously gone. Mourning for Lady V is mixed with a lot of relief. She almost seemed to have decided that it was time to go and just accepted it. This made it a lot easier for Ian than when Herkules died and Herkules went through several rallies before Ian had to call the vet in. 

The snow got quite deep around the girls' alpaca
house.

From L-R: Vanessa, Veronica's daughter, Valeria
Vanessa's daughter and Silla (not related to
Veronica)

We still have a few of her progeny. There is Brencis who was bred on our farm. He takes after her in a few respects, he's a gentle giant with a sly kick. He's long in the body from his Mum and long in the leg from his Dad (Tellus). We also have Vanessa, her daughter and Valeria, daughter of Vanessa and therefore granddaughter to Lady V. We bought Vanessa and Valeria from the same breeder in Sweden that we got Lady V from. We would have loved to have got a baby from Valeria this year and then we could have had four generations on one farm, but it wasn't meant to be. Valeria is not pregnant again and Lady V passed on anyway. We should welcome another grandchild though from Lady V, as we bred Brencis to Amanda.

Brencis, Veronica's son is the white alpaca
eating the snow nearest the gate.

A peaceful sunrise out on the land. The days
are definitely getting longer at quite a pace now.
Ian used to be back by 4pm as it was dark by
then, now it is still light at 5pm. What a change
in less than a month.

As I mentioned, I was going to call the blog Pootling About. To pootle: Move or travel in a leisurely manner. Well there's not much point in rushing about these days as there aren't many places to go to at the moment. Instead I've been home like most folks and Ian has braved the rather brutal sudden drop in temperatures. We've seen temperatures that we haven't seen in about three years with the thermometer in the car reading -23C one morning. It was a beautiful day but so very cold as there was a gentle breeze. Ordinarily a gentle breeze wouldn't be much of an issue but at that kind of temperature it feels much colder. I went out to take the recycling, which is a couple of blocks down the road and it wasn't bad going one way but when I came back the draught was going down the back of my glasses making my eyes hurt.

There are skiers on the ski track and discgolfers
trying to play discgolf at the same time. Not 
heard of any clashes yet.

There is a dirt road and then a
tarmac road but I think you
will just have to trust me on that!

I had a lot of meetings this week. I find that sitting at the table I get cold as we don't put the heating on until around 4pm-ish, otherwise we are sweltering in the evening and it uses too much fuel. I can wrap blankets around my knees while sitting in an easy chair and that works well, but it's harder at the table. If I'm just listening to a webinair I can pootle about the kitchen to keep warm, but if I'm an active participant it is harder. Standing is warmer than sitting and better for us really, but my back begins to ache if I'm standing for too long. I finally found a solution and that is to put a plank of wood on the floor and prop my heels up on that, or stand on it and point my toes downwards. 

Down by the lake. I love the blues in
this photo. There is also one ice
fisherman in the very centre of the picture. 
Yes! Right in the middle of the lake. 
There are also ski tracks across the lake.

The hill where one of my son's proposed
to his girlfriend - quite a few years ago and
three children later.

The rest of the time has been filled with learning Latvian and sewing. The language lessons have been a healthy mix of frustration at not knowing so much stuff and knowing quite a bit. I discovered some bad habits that haven't helped. They are good habits in the right place but not for learning a language. I speed read. Great for reading large volumes of academic literature when sifting through them for relevant articles to read, not so great for learning a language. I don't notice the details, such as the Latvian letters used, just the keywords needed to understand a sentence. The teacher I'm learning with uses Flash cards on a site called Quizlet. I've found that very helpful for checking the words I do know and making me learn the spellings. What I did discover though is it isn't so helpful for me to learn verbs. I need to see those in a table so I can see the pattern. Anyway, I'm making progress.

The pond by the ski track

Bundled up for the cold weather.

I've been continuing with the sewing projects. I didn't have any sewing machine problems this week as I worked a bit more with the over large t-shirts and fixing underwear. Probably too much information but I was tired of the fabric disintegrating before the elastic. Some I've used the old but perfectly usable elastic and some fabric from old t-shirts and some I've fixed the fabric before they disintegrate more. I used to be a great M&S fan, not any more. The other more enjoyable project has been to cut out squares from old pieces of fabric to make patchwork dresses for my younger granddaughters. I'm not sure how much of an impact it is going to make on my stash of fabrics but it has been fun, since I got myself a new smaller cutting board and a rotary cutter. I have even ironed fabric - now me with an iron is a very, very rare sight and I think I only iron for crafting projects these days.

Believe it or not, these are my errant
seeds that have been sunning themselves
in Portugal. Every now and again I 
would check to see if they had moved
from Portugal and suddenly discovered
they were supposed to have been delivered
only they hadn't as I was in all the time.
My friend rang the post office and they
said the parcel was there. They have been
struggling with Covid19 there and so
maybe they had tried the wrong door. 
Sometimes happens with new folks.

After so much gloom, it's been nice to see the sun

Ian had the usual car problems for this time of the year. He was heading out to the land on the coldest day when it died. Not sure if ice had got stuck somewhere or wax had come out of the diesel - the more likely problem as they haven't put the additive in for low temperatures. They are never prompt enough and there is an additive but we have to find it. Ian has seen it once somewhere. Fortunately a friend of ours drove out to him and towed him to their farm. He had some of the additive needed and put it in the tank. Meanwhile Ian had managed to keep the engine running and that seemed to do the trick. Maybe it was just a very small amount of wax, enough to cause issues but not to clog up the whole thing. Seems to have sorted itself out anyway, thank goodness.

Apparently she has been following Ian everywhere.
Not so easy for a little cat jumping from one
boot print to another.

Just saying hello to Silla.

Initially Aggie chased Eyre like she always does

and Ian was worried that Aggie was going to stomp

on her like alpacas do sometimes if they feel threatened

but Eyre just stopped and Aggie just sniffed her.

Ian cleared the snow from the paddock of Aph2 as
we call it.

This is Aph1 at the bottom and Aph1b. Here the 
snow is quite deep.

Aggie enjoying the sunshine.

I think George has been eating the snow.

Ian hasn't had chance to clear the boys' paddock 
yet.

A pathway has been cut up to the girl's paddocks

Such a wonderful sight. I love winter but it is hard
on Ian and the animals.

Chanel has been enjoying the snow and the sunshine
too, can you tell with that smile?

Freddie thinks the snow is delicious

Ian draws the water from the well that is fortunately
still flowing this year.

Brain freeze, despite the water being above freezing

Looks like someone has been drawing pictures
in the snow. Not sure which artistic alpaca this is 
but I think it is a good likeness of an alpaca in a 
shed - well for the artistic abilities of an alpaca
it's a good likeness.