The excitement continues

This is an example of the widespread damage that wild boar
can do to pasture land. That was probably one night's work

Oh yes the excitement continues here in Latvia, yes I am still counting pig holes. Well it is a great excuse to be out in the open, instead of stuck indoors reading more academic papers - that will come of course, as I will need to read more on the subject of wild boar and wildlife conflicts. I've even lost a few more pounds of weight in the process of tramping hither and thither across farmland. I did have a bit of a fright though this week, as I thought I had managed to delete one lot of photos representing over 2 hours of recording. I'm not the emotional sort but I came pretty close that day. Fortunately I did manage to find them, as iPhoto had decided to store them in a different order to the one I thought they would be in. I also found I got some other photos mixed up, because after a while one pig hole can begin to look pretty much like all other pig holes, but I have learnt that I need to take reference pictures to help keep me on track in my counting. There are probably easier ways of doing it but that would probably require expensive equipment.

Yes more damage, but what a glorious day!

Yesterday I came up over the hill to inspect more pig holes on one particular piece of land and was met with a sight of utter chaos, my first thought was "oh my goodness what have the pigs done now?" but something wasn't quite right. The chaos did not consist of tossed around mounds of grass turfs like the pigs often do, in fact it almost looked like huge mole hills but so many of them. Eventually my nose and eyesight clicked into gear and I realised it was manure, the farmer was muck spreading, so for the next three hours I was blessed with some gorgeous autumn weather, clear, bright and dry, sweetly perfumed with the odour of manure - not exactly my idea of a fresh air.

I think this courgette (zucchini) escaped our attention for
a while. Marrow Rum anyone!

Here in rural Latvia it gets very dark at nights, there is not a huge amount of light pollution, that has its advantages, as a clear night sky is a sight to behold with so many stars, but it also has its disadvantages, namely it's dark, very dark! It is law to wear something that reflects for walking at night, which makes perfect sense on the unlit roads, of which there are many. It also necessitates the need for making sure that we have a torch on us in winter and until recently was a necessity just to get from the car to the light switch for the hallway of our stairs leading to our apartment on the third floor (second floor UK). The problem was that to get to the first working light switch, we had to navigate about 6 steps, but now we have lights with sensors and we are no longer left fumbling around in the dark looking for the switch, when we have forgotten our torch yet again. It's only a little thing but it is still bliss (we're easy pleased!) Light sensors also means that we don't have to rush down the stairs at night, just to make sure we get down before they switch off and get plunged into the dark midway. Not easy if you are having a slow day, or carrying something.

Can you believe that these two kittens (Sofie on the left
and Bella on the right) can fit into such a small box
and not long before this were rolling around the floor fighting?

Our kittens have been a delight and great entertainment. It is a bit scary watching them beat seven skittles out of each other when they play chase, but they don't seem to do much damage and often curl up together to go to sleep, so can't be all bad. Of course we have had the various accidents, first while we were teaching Sofie about using a litter tray (fortunately Bella was already toilet trained), but also we have had the protest moves when the tray has not been as clean as they like. Without going into too much detail, we did have one little kitten moving around on the floor like she had worms and there was rather a mess in her wake - let's just say it is not a good idea to eat string!!!! Also thank goodness we walked in the door at just the right moment to deal with the developing situation. Aren't kittens wonderful!!!!! We have now dealt with the fleas and the lice that came with them, and no fleas do not just bite cats, they do like humans too. We have still not got them vaccinated as the vet does not like to do everything at once, and quite right too, so they are back tomorrow for those. At least they have now been wormed and using a tasty paste that you squirt into their mouth rather than those dreadful tablets. You know the ones that you have to shove down their throats, meanwhile stroking the throat and quickly shutting the mouth tightly to prevent them spitting it back out. I did get quite good at that with our cats, but there was one who was ace at pretending to swallow the tablet and spitting it out minutes afterwards.

Our lower pond has lapped over the bank now. Difficult to
believe that earlier on this year we were watching it rapidly
disappear.

The fleas and the lice have not been the only wee beasties to contend with this week. Fortunately just about all the biting things have hit the deck with the colder weather, although sometimes cellars are inundated with mosquitoes as they look for winter quarters. The other wee beasties I had to contend with this week was in a full box of cornmeal. Sometime in the process it had got an infestation of maggots, which does not fill me with a great deal of confidence. I was not terribly happy at finding the little wiggly things in the box when I had plans on making some cakey treats to take with us when we are out and about. Good job I had other options and a good job I spotted it early on before mixing in the ingredients. It is amazing though how such small creatures can cause such misery and changes of plans.

The Stanley family

We have now added to our Stanley family. It has been great to find products that really do last and do what it says, ie in this case flasks that keep tea hot. They are not the light weight carry around everywhere type flasks, but sturdy metal products that bounce. The food flask finally arrived from England and been put to use already, great for these cooler days, also a good way of using up some of the produce we have processed into soups or sauces. Ian though has got into the habit of naming things, maybe he has been spending too much time on his own out on the land and so we now have (from right to left) Stan (1.9 litre flask), Mrs Stan (1 litre flask), son of Stan (insulated cup),  and the food flask is Uncle Stan - the strange one in the family and not quite the same!!! Should I be worried do you think?

Even our middle pond now has water, wonder how long this
will last.

The dipping temperatures are certainly a reminder that winter is not far away and we have been making plans for winter storage, not just of the produce but also the farming equipment. The barn still needs a concrete floor and there is no time to lay it, because the ground is too wet now to have deliveries of the sand and the gravel we would need, so that means Ian just has to level the floor as best he can and concrete it next year. He will also lay a drain in the floor to hopefully prevent a quagmire in the barn itself when the snow melts (assuming we get snow of course) and then he can start to put the equipment inside, to get it under cover for the first time since we bought them. We have had them under tarpaulins the last few years. We have also moved kale and swiss chard into the greenhouse so that we have some plants early in the year and maybe even over winter - who knows! We are planning to put the caravan (trailer) in the greenhouse to protect it from the weather, as it will just about fit between the internal posts. We are a bit nervous of doing this as our last greenhouse fell down in the snow of last winter, but we think this one is much more sturdy and maybe we can put planks across the top of the caravan to save it if anything disastrous does happen. It might also mean the caravan will be a little warmer than when it is stood outside, which will be good for sheltering during dinner breaks. We also have two roofing jobs to do as our workshop developed a leak and our wood store at our other apartment is not in a good state either. All jobs clamouring for attention before winter really does set in. Speaking of which we had our first frosts this week.

We are not meant to have a pond here

Fortunately Ian is on the case, digging
ditches. We now have a drain away
that goes all the way into the forest.

Oh yes and for those who missed my weekly blog yesterday, we had a lovely time meeting new friends. Did you know that Rottweiler puppies can be really cute? All seven of them! Don't worry, we won't be succumbing to these cute ones, a Rottweiler in not on our wish list, even though when well trained they do make great family pets and would probably be great at chasing off wild boar.

Things most welcome

Cornflower

We have had a scorcher of a week with the temperatures in the 30s and high humidity levels. Adopting the Mediterranean pattern of working does not come easily though and we were both left drained despite drinking plenty of fluids. Mind you Ian assures me that his need to take time off in the middle of the day is nothing to do with the fact that he has just taken out a months subscription to Eurosport  to watch the Tour de France on his computer even though he usually revels in the heat. He does assure me the humidity has really got to him this time.

The plants in our polytunel haven't suffered from the heat though and you can see the progress over the last two months in our polytunnel from the photos but taming the rampant melons, the mega sideshooting tomatoes and the prolific cucumbers has been very challenging as working in the polytunnel has been like working in a sauna.

19th April they were still working on the polytunnel

29th May The plants are in there believe me. We had hoped
to have had plants started much earlier this year though.

9th June and the plants are just
beginning to take off but they have been
well watered by water leaking in to the
polytunnel or over watered as the case
maybe

13th June and the plants are now well established and the
over watering during storms sorted.

18th July The tomatoes under the fleece at the front are now
over 5ft tall the ones at the back are over 6ft tall. Even the
aubergines are beginning to take over at the front and the
bush tomatoes well! The fleece is for shading - I am not
climbing up the outside to paint on some shading paint.

18th July Our 6ft tall sweetcorn or maybe
they're taller but since I am
only 5ft tall what would I know!

A beautiful, misty, rainy day

The fresher temperatures of yesterday and today with the rain has been most welcome. It has certainly paid off to put straw around many of our plants to retain moisture in the soil in this dry-ish summer but water has still been a constant worry as we have needed to frequently water the plants in the polytunnel and sometimes outside too as the temperatures soared and the rain held off. The guys working on our barn have also been using the water for mixing concrete, so it was alarming to see the water levels drop in our pond as we extracted the water. The rain has  filled up the ponds nicely again fortunately and so we are safe for another couple of weeks of watering and the concrete is nearly all mixed which will help. It does mean though that we are not going to get the second pond lined just yet as once again it is too wet to deal with for at least another week but then again there is a possibility that we won't have to. A friend of ours related that he and his father had dug a pond and initially the water level kept dropping away but eventually it stopped draining and started retaining the water as the silt worked its way into the gaps and plugged it. That might explain why our first pond suddenly started holding water much better despite our recent high temperatures as the silt load from the last lot of rain was really high. Now we just need the silt to block up the second pond and we will be very happy.

A very delicate looking snail, and this was okay it wasn't
on my cabbages

We don't often get people to send things from the UK as we manage quite well with what is available here in Latvia but one thing we have desperately needed is insect repellent. Normally it is readily available but just lately they have been running out due to the epidemics of first mosquitoes and now horse flies. I am also not really sure what is in the repellents as I think most of them contain DEET which I hate using and is not really supposed to be that good for you, so I asked my Mum to send some Avon SoSoft and some citronella based insect repellents. Avon SoSoft is used by the forestry guys up in Scotland to deter midges and is supposed to be highly effective so thought I would give it a go here. I have used it while gardening and it seems to confuse the horse flies but I am not sure if it puts them off completely if they are determined and I am not sure if the number of horse flies has now gone down or not so not too convinced yet if it is really working but I shall continue trialling it and see what happens. My Mum also sent me a Dutch hoe which I have not seen outside the UK. There are all sorts of other hoes but not this sort, the Latvians use a stirrup hoe that you can push and pull (didn't know there were so many types of hoe until I was looking them up, you can see how many here) but I wanted a hoe that I was familiar with and knew how to use, funny the things we get used to! Other essential items included some more mossie proof tops for Ian, a very early birthday present but he's not complaining.

The new door in the Soviet style hallway.
Functional!

Progress this week means we now have a nice new door to our other apartment, I forgot to take a before picture, sorry! But you can see the new door. At least we shouldn't have a howling gale of cold air coming in through it in the winter, nice at this time of the year but not when it is - 29C outside. It is also a proper outside door and not really an interior door with a lock on like the last one. Shame there has not been any more progress inside unless you count the fact that I washed the floors to get rid of the plaster dust, our friend is too busy on his farm at the moment. Doh! (To quote a famous cartoon character)

A close up of a male broad-bodied  chaser dragonfly

There has been progress on the barn, but the poor guys are up with the lark to work, go home for lunch and don't come back until later on in the early evening due to the heat. It would not be my idea of fun but at least they are sticking with it and working which is helpful. They have certainly not had the weather that has been kind to them, from the rain as soon as they started sinking holes turning the area into a swimming pool and the rain storms we have had in between - great for our gardens but not for the builders, the ground just gets dry enough for them to work and then it pours - and now the heat which has been too hot for the concrete. The next week should be good though as they are forecasting temperatures in the mid 20s and not much in the way of rain or thunderstorms.

Viper's Bugloss - what a glorious name

As you may well know Latvia is in the middle of an economic crisis, in a crisis there are things that should be cut in order to balance budgets and there are some things which should never be touched as it will be detrimental to the future too. Libraries are one of those things which are often under pressure when money is tight and yet the future generations need the knowledge they contain to help themselves build for the future and so I applaud the efforts of the Latvians to continue building their library and with it build a vast storehouse of knowledge. Of course there needs to be some realism in the construction and it most certainly needs to have the finances checked and rechecked to ensure every penny, sorry santim, spent is spent on the library and not lining someone's pocket but a storehouse for the future is a good thing to build when times are hard. This library is also becoming a beacon of hope that the white knight of legend who battled the black knight and plunged into the Daugava will one day rise again bringing with him the Castle of light, the library has become known as the Castle of light, as light is synonymous with knowledge, energy and awareness. If building of the library in the face of adversity brings hope to the nation then it will be money well spent.

A view from outside our other flat towards the allotments

Really felt a change of season this week as if the year had turned. I know in the UK the summer has barely started as the schools are only just finishing but for many of the European countries the schools have been on holiday (vacation) for a while now. There was something about the noise in the trees and the quality of the air that whispers that the summer is turning and it is now late summer and yet it doesn't seem that long ago since we were planting everything up. Something in my spirit feels the turn too and I feel it is time to be ready for harvest time. I am not talking about the great harvest that some people are waiting for but the reaping of things we have sown, sparse though that has been as we are still in the preparing the ground stage. Our land is showing us that there is much to prepare to be ready for an increase in production but to be honest there is not much point in sowing huge amounts now until our water situation is sorted, the preparation means that we will be able to cope with what grows up. Poor preparation now would mean we could lose everything. As it is in the physical so I think it will be in the spiritual. In many ways this year is a year for collecting seeds from the small amount we have sown, they will then be re-sown next year to produce a bigger harvest. Some of the decisions and choices we make this year will shape what grows in years to come, obvious really but it is not a time to do this flippantly but needs to be done with a certain amount of care and consideration, not that we can't experiment too.

Next week we are hoping to be able to make an exciting announcement, so do check back! (Nothing like leaving a blog on a cliff hanger heh!)

Surprising finds

Our three ponds full!

We are amazed by the amount of life in our ponds even though they are new and can spend quite a while gazing at the busy water boatmen, backswimmers, pond skaters, frogs and now a newt. Where do they all come from? Frogs I can understand because they are all over the place and right now the whole of the countryside seems to be alive with tiny tiny frogs, but where did the newt come from? It must have travelled quite away. Water boatmen and backswimmers can fly as I discovered on the internet, so that explains their presence (what would I do without the internet?). Unfortunately we also had some very unwelcome pond life this week in the heat, algae! I made up some mini bales of straw and chucked them in the pools and it seems to be helping, no idea why that idea works but it seems to, and I can't even remember where we first heard that gem of advice but I know it was a long time ago maybe even pre-internet days. At the start of the week we had some blessed rain  which filled the ponds, all three of them, that is a lot of water over a day and it emphasises that we don't just need a soakaway around the polytunnel we will need storm drainage. Pond number 2 though, we found out, does not hold the water and drained away quite quickly, so it looks like we might need to line that one, we were hoping the clay filled soil would retain the water but obviously not. So our ponds remain works in progress as we reshape and dig more out until we have something along the lines of what we need that will keep the water in. Eventually they will get landscaped and seeded which will also help with water retention, the ground cover helping to keep the ground moist and therefore less likely to steal the water from the pond in the dry spells.

Member of the pea family

After the rain the temperatures rose and it has been very hot up to 31C (88F) in the shade that has meant a switch to Mediterranean type work practices - up early to work in the garden, home for lunch in the heat of the day and even a siesta one day then work in the cool of the evening. We are not eating like the Mediterranean's though with very late meals, instead we continue to have an early evening meal and then Ian eats his way through the evening. Trying to keep his weight on is a challenge at the moment but at least we don't have the normal problem that in trying to keep Ian's intake up high enough to keep his weight on mine goes up to compensate, mine is dropping too thank goodness. How much of it is sweated off, I have no idea. I do try and keep the fluid intake up as I just drip most of the time. Okay enough information there!

Not sure you can really see the detail in the hat, but it
pretty. Honest!

Had quite a successful week of purchasing items that normally I cannot get easily, first it was steel capped work boots for me, and considering I am a size 4 (37 European, 6.5 American) they are not the sort of thing that are readily available. At least I can now stop digging in my good walking boots, and I don't have to wear wellies (rubber boots) all the time. The next successful purchase was a hat, again I have problems as I have a small head (shame my girth is not as dainty as my feet and head - whoops sorry too much information again) and so when I was living in Colorado and managed to find an Australian hat that fitted I bought it. It was great for keeping off the sun and fitted in nicely with the culture but somehow it doesn't quite fit in here when walking to the shops or at the agricultural show we attended, fine for on the land but not around town. So now I have a pretty hat, that I can wear out and about that doesn't come half way down my face. Also the perfect travel hat too as it folds up without crushing!

These blackcurrants are huge, they are the size of a small
grape. The teaspoon gives an idea of scale. They are from
the garden at the other flat and a surprise find last week.

I mentioned that we went to an agricultural show this week, it is so long since I have been to one of those and it brought back memories of some pretty hot days working on my parents jewellery stall that they used to run at agricultural shows in England. Sometimes we were in the shade of a hot sticky craft marquee and sometimes in our own caravan. There were some good times but mostly it was actually quite boring, once you had seen one agricultural show you had seen them all, well that is what it felt like as a teenager; the upside of it was the wonderful settings for some of them and the earnings were good. My favourite memory was getting up early for the Rose show at Cartmel in the Lake district and seeing the mist clearing away as the sun rose, and the deer making their way across the parkland, it was magical in a magical setting. I think they moved site since so don't know what it is like now. This Latvian agricultural show was just a local one with the usual big tractors and huge implements, makes us wonder what many Latvian farmers with their small plots of land make of it all. Some of the tractors are so huge they would barely turn around on our land and we have 33 acres, admittedly it is a long narrow strip with forest down one side but still a standard size for a Latvian farm. It just appears that the tractor companies are not really interested in the small farmer, probably because they do not make much money and they cannot get credit for the type of farming implements they could really do with.

A tasty way of using up a radish glut courtesy of Sophie  Grigson
only I used a red grapefruit instead of an orange as they didn't
have any oranges at the local supermarket and I added some peas

Thanks to a kind comment by Denise Thornton on last week's blog I found out all I needed to know about the wild parsnip  and that confirmed to me that we don't want it around. It is hard to believe that seeds are for sale - don't buy them whatever you do! A friend of ours was strimming by the lake when he felt his arm burning and rushed up to the house to clean off whatever it was that was burning. When we were talking about the wild parsnip he showed us his arm with little burn marks all the way up it, he didn't know what had caused it at the time but he does now. Denise's blog seems to be a mine of information and it is interesting to see someone trying to manage land from a conservation point of view but in a different country and yet some of the issues we face are the same like the wild parsnip. Another piece of infomation I found out on her blog was that you don't have to preserve wood. At first I found that hard to believe, especially in such a wet country like Latvia but when I think about it, there are lots of grey wood buildings around and they have been around a long time. Often the barns and houses are unpreserved wood but they might be raised up off the floor on stone foundations - makes sense when it can be under snow for a long time during the winter. Mind you does the wood rot in the cold? I guess it might not and it might only be at risk of rot setting in during the cool wet spring and autumn days rather than over winter as you might think. A challenging thought to our throw chemicals at it way of life of the 21st century.

Sunset

Another surprising find this week is that clay pot irrigation is 10 times more efficient than surface irrigation. We are struggling at times to keep the polytunnel watered properly and it set me thinking about some drip feed irrigation when I came across the article above, it would be interesting to find out how efficient this system really is and whether we can make some easy low tech plant watering systems. We have commissioned some pots from a local potter to try some ideas out, so watch this space!

Ouch!

Time for a cup of tea!

Not too good a week for me. My tooth or rather, where my tooth once was, started to heal nicely and the first few days were great but then it started to hurt. It was like having a mouthful of ulcers (canker for my American friends), it wasn't pleasant and kind of wearing. If I could get out and about it took my mind off it but if I sat at home feeling sorry for myself with the various noises that comes with living in our apartment then I didn't feel well at all. One activity I used to take my mind off it was to go and take photographs of the orchids on our land and catalogue where they were. A friend of ours is an avid orchid enthusiast and so I sent the photos off to him to see what kinds we have, as I wasn't sure whether we had a few different species or different variants of the same species. Our friend reckons we may have at least three species of orchids with some hybrids too, which to me is rather exciting as it confirms what a varied piece of land we have, one that is worth preserving and taking care of.

Scabious! I spent ages trying to grow these flowers in the UK
when we lived there and now they are growing wild on the land

My potting table removed to outside where it is a little
cooler and the view rather pleasant.

I was a bit down on Saturday as the time came around to the time when our youngest would have been due to land in Riga, if he hadn't got a job and decided he couldn't really come. I was sad that he wouldn't be around to see what we were doing and have some chats around the meal table about what he was doing. Ian and I had been looking forward to it as we haven't had much chance to see him since we have moved to Latvia. It wasn't meant to be obviously but at least being out on the land was restoring, it is so pretty there. A throw away comment by a friend about our overflowing pond from the heavy rain we had earlier on in the week set us thinking, I also loved the waterfall effect but it seemed such a waste just flowing away making everything below it very boggy and not useful and so we started on planning another two ponds in series below our first one.  This will vastly increase our water storage capacity and maybe we could also have some fish in there too. Well it took my mind off toothaches and mother aches.

These look like purple and yellow
flowers but the purple are bracts not
flowers. 

Our orchard surrounded by the electric fence. Hard to see
but there is a yellow warning sign on it - only its in Polish!
Hope the deer can read Polish.

Saturday Ian connected up our new electric fence to keep our orchard safe from a wandering deer that seemed to think our orchard was a new delicacy to be enjoyed. It totally changes the look of the place from an open orchard area to enclosed space - amazing what a few wires and fence posts can do. This will be a temporary option until we have a hedge that is high enough and thick enough to keep out the deer but that will be a while yet as we still have to take the cuttings for it. We half expected to arrive on Sunday with a frightened deer stuck in the middle and were quite relieved when we didn't but we were amazed to see a hare make its way delicately through the fence and so we wonder if it is working properly or not and I am not testing it, as I don't think it will cure my aches.

A stunning group of thistle like flowers. They are not thistles
wrong type of leaves - will look up the name soon!

It started so well!

Sunday we had to empty the water out from the boreholes that had filled them up after the heavy rain we had had so that the guys can get on and build our barn. We had a brilliant idea, why not start on the pond that we were going to build and empty the water from the boreholes into it, it will only take a couple of hours!!!! Hmmph! Well that was the idea and it was going quite well for a couple of hours and then Ian managed to get the tractor stuck in a really boggy area that had got churned up as he was working. We spent the rest of our Sunday digging it out. Took us about 6 hours! It was not fun, it took rocks, twigs, branches, straw and finally digging with our bare hands and a winch attached to our car to get it out. The mud was so sticky that it was like a very effective glue keeping our tractor in or rather digging itself deeper and deeper in. It is a good job the nights are light till very late here as we finished still in the light just after 10pm at night but we were pretty tired - we even slept in the next morning. Our last pond will now have a feature island in the middle, because there is no way we are going anywhere near it to move the soil as we are as likely to get bogged down in it as the tractor was. Even as we were digging the pond it was filling up with water from a spring that we uncovered and that was also one of the reasons we didn't dare leave the tractor until the morning as we had visions of it being in the middle of the pond by then. Heh ho! We know how to spend our Sundays, a day of relaxation!!!

Okay another orchid but they are
rather stunning plants

Free at last at just after 10pm

At least it all ended happily and instead of using the borehole water to fill a pond it was used to clean the off the mud that had caked the tractor. Waste not! Want not! Ian is happy with his nice shiny tractor now, as he had wanted to clean it for awhile, something our middle son and his fiancée obviously understand as Ian got a father's day present from them that arrived later in the day, a book called "That's not my tractor" and it finishes with "That's my tractor. Its headlights are so shiny." Impeccable timing especially as it is amazing he got a father's day present at all, even if it was late.

Those ruts were up to my mid-thighs,
okay I may be short but not that short,
those ruts were still deep!

Blue butterfly

Orange butterfly. If anyone knows what they are then please
let me know, saves me a job!