Writing and raining

Just awwww!

Writing is going well for me at the moment. I've recently had two more articles published in Dispatches Europe, this time encouraging people to travel slowly through Latvia and visit places outside of Riga. I also encouraged people to visit our own farm of course, nothing like doing a bit of self-promotion while I'm at it. Having said that, it is not something that comes easily to me, but I recognise that if we want people to visit, then we have to take what opportunities come our way.

Herkules gets fed up of the heat and the flies. He's probably
enjoyed the rain just lately.

It was a relief to hear that a paper for an academic journal that I have co-authored was accepted the week before. I am not the main author on that one, I just added a section and polished the English before the second review. I haven't actually taken a look at the last revision as I haven't had time really. Although I now have three full published papers which kind of qualifies me to get my PhD, they are not the main bulk of my work.  I am still waiting to hear the results from that particular paper, but since I only submitted it on the 17th June it is not surprising. I hope to hear soon though. Apparently the turn around is very quick. Then I can get my thesis sorted. Now that will be good.

The baby swallows, still hanging around

There have also been three papers submitted for the EU project I'm involved in. I am only named as first author on one of them and co-author on another. Being first author makes a difference, it basically means I have put the most work in to it, after that it just means I contributed. Anyway all three got rejected. The editor though requested we have a Skype call with someone to help us with the content so they could be resubmitted, as they like the idea of the project. That at least is promising. During the Skype call we found out that the one I had mainly written was basically okay but the others needed re-wording to get accepted.

This bug was rather reluctant to
give up it's hold on the
meadowsweet flowers but I had
plans for these in a dessert, so he
had to go. There have been some
amazing bugs just lately.

We found out today what the minor the changes that were needed were but they are so minor that we should be able to sort it out by tomorrow. It takes a little bit of time to coordinate with my colleagues since we are not in the same office and in this case relying on emails but we get things done. Still it is progress. Published papers can be very important for academics and some places demand many publications to keep your job. Fortunately that is not the case for me and the job I'm doing, but having publications is still helpful for the future.

Our view for our evening meal

Of course, being summer, my time is not taken up just with writing it is also usually tied up with working on our land collecting hay, doing something with the alpacas or chickens or the gardening. So we are quite relieved that the drought is mainly over. We've had a reasonable amount of rain, but still not as much as elsewhere. It seems Riga is flooded in places, so we are grateful that it wasn't that bad for us. We have had enough to give the plants a good soak, but not enough to create a mudbath. Still it has rained most days this week, so I haven't done that much in the way of outside activities. I did get the chance to do some weeding and finally stake up some peas because I can get the sticks in the ground. I also started some seeds off in the greenhouse so that I can get some of the quick growing plants in for salads and some perennial plants for next year. It is much easier when I can get water without a great palaver.

After the rain 

We've actually been able to harvest rainwater to water plants and stock up on our own water supply. The ponds are still too low to water the greenhouse though. I have been taking the water first from a reserve we pumped from the only reasonably full pond earlier in the season and then I have been getting the water from the collapsed greenhouse. It was covered in black plastic and just happens to make a good rainwater catcher. Now there's an idea.

Still a very pregnant alpaca

We are still waiting for Chanel to have her baby. There have been odd days when she's looked uncomfortable but most of the time she looks rather too relaxed. We had hoped that she would have given birth before we start on the process of getting the other girls pregnant for next year's babies. Instead we just had to get on and hope she doesn't go into labour while Ian was supervising the mating process. We have never mated five girls in the same period before and it takes some planning. Not all of them can be mated to the same stud. Ian made a gate to separate the alpaca house into two so we can use two studs at a time and keep the girls separated to some extent.

Just how though can she bend round that far whilst pregnant?

Mr. P with a faraway look in his eyes.

One of our concerns is Mr. P maybe passing on some genes for rapid teeth growth and a possible asthmatic tendency with dusty hay. Not ideal for an alpaca. They are cute babies that he produces but not much good if they are then going to be a health liability. We are giving him a try again to see what happens next year. Meanwhile we decided to give Tellus another go. He's starting to get old, but then he gave us one very good baby in terms of fleece, George, a very, very sweet natured but not good fleece, Freddie and a reasonable fleece but rather large alpaca, Brencis. All of them are lovely natured, so we'll see what happens there.

The sweetest natured alpaca of them all I think. Only his
fleece is not very fine at all. He does produce a lot, so it is
a shame that his isn't fine too.

Brencis having a good scratch.

We've also tried Brencis now he's old enough with one of the girls, which has been interesting. Poor guy, it is his first time and he doesn't quite know what to do. He has needed some coaching by Ian to at least get on the right way around. He was fine the first time but must have got over excited the second time around. We have had to stagger the mating, as there is not enough room or appropriate accommodation to have three stud males. We also need to know who is mated when so that we know when to expect the babies next year, hence Ian has to supervise. Some of the girls have been rather resistant and we even considered trying Tellus instead of Mr. P with Vanessa, as she is a feisty lady like her Mum, Veronica. The reason we didn't is that we realised they both had the same father and so too close a relation.

Veronica might be old and a bit unsteady on her legs at time
but she is still feisty

Don't let this sweet, innocent face fool you.
She wasn't so innocent looking as she was
spitting at Mr. P.

Is it safe to come out?

Female alpacas will sit down if they are receptive and being around others that are mating helps them to ovulate and therefore be more receptive. This is the reason for having so many of them in the alpaca house at the same time. It's all a bit mind boggling really. We are hoping that Vanessa will respond to the mating going on behind the gate before bringing down Mr. P because otherwise he is just getting absolutely covered in spit. We are not sure she likes him really. Vanessa is on the older side and because we can't mate her with Tellus or Brencis because they are too close a relation, and George is too young, we are kind of stuck with persevering with Mr. P.

Amanda is such a cutie

Our boys can be very relaxed and calm

Normally our boys are fairly chilled. About dusk there maybe a bit of a fracas but rarely anything serious. However, the other day there was quite a to-do. I can't remember who was chasing who but they all seemed to be at it and this was before any of them had been to see the girls. Eventually Ian had to separate Mr. P. off to cool down as he was the one that seemed to be the main instigator. He seems to be picking on George at the moment and it seems to either set the others off trying to stop him or off on their own disagreement with another alpaca. There are probably hierarchy issues as the young ones grow up. Still, most of the time they are calm, so we just wait and see.

I love how Herkules, our deaf old man is still the boss and
will sort out the youngsters

Even Turbjørn tries to keep order, despite being the grumpiest
alpaca we have. No one, but no one invades Mr, Turbjørn's space

Jakobs is too young for faraway looks in his eyes. 

It was our time for a flat tyre or at least a soft tyre this week. One of our friends has had to repair three tyres on two cars due to the state of the roads and our visitor last week had a flat tyre. The washboard dirt roads are not good on cars. It's a good job our village has a tyre repair place, so not too big a job to deal with. It just meant it was one of those weeks when we were backwards and forwards to the village. I went back one day and realised I'd forgotten the key to the apartment and so had to drive all the way back to get it. There are traffic lights in our village because they are doing some major renovations on the main road and since the traffic lights take a long time to change and were on red when I got to the junction, I turned in the opposite direction and did the shopping first before heading back for the key.

Jakobs  does take after his Mum, Mari though. She's the one in
the foreground with Aggie behind.

Munching away on the hill

There are not many Brits in Latvia, around 400 I think, not too sure of the exact number, so it is almost inevitable that we will know a fair proportion of them or at least know about them. One guy we had met a while ago after I found out via a blog he had written that he lived in a town that wasn't very far from where I grew up. I even worked on the edge of the town where he used to live when I was a teenager working for my parents before going to uni. His son and grandkids were visiting and so he decided to come and visit us again. Funnily enough one of our previous visitors recommended our place when our friend posted a message in a Latvian expat site to ask for ideas for places for his grandchildren to visit. It is nice that someone recommended us. The weather could have been better but at least the rain held off and wasn't nearly as bad as forecast, well not over us it wasn't. It was amazing to find out his son and grandchildren live quite near to one of the places where we had the best holiday ever. One that nearly ended in disaster but made good by the open hearts and generosity of strangers, but maybe that's a tale for another time.

I know Aggie isn't pregnant but it is still unreal to be able to
scratch your nose with your toes.

We got the results back on the alpaca fleeces. We are a bit puzzled with some of them. Not sure if it is a problem with the testing or our sampling. It turns out that Turbjørn's fleece has got a whole lot finer, but we didn't think it was by that much. Also a sample we took from a young alpaca to be tested because we wondered how fine her's was, didn't turn out to be as fine as I thought it was. We shall have to compare them with next year and see what they show then.

And next!

I promised more alpaca photos this week and so here's the
first one. Can you believe, this tribe moaned at me for not
being fast enough to open the doors of their alpaca house
when it started spitting and yet here they are out in the
pouring rain. Typical!

Gosh another week over! Is it only a week? Not two or three? Not having Ian around and having to do his chores on top of my work, trying to get the garden sorted for the year and showing visitors around the farm, has been a tad trying to say the least. There have been nights I haven't got to bed before midnight as deadlines for work loomed. It's not as if work has taken too much time, it is everything else on top of it. It is not my employer's fault that I can't really get started on my paid employment until the animals are sorted after all. It's a good job I have the flexibility to be able to do all that though.

Well they certainly had a good shower

Precious rain water

My brain of course has been buzzing after working far too late but I have found that putting the heater on for the last half hour and putting my pyjamas and pillow on the top to heat up, sorted out any problems of an over stimulated brain. The warmth helped me to drift off very quickly on the cool evenings. Mind you, the next morning it has been hard to drag myself out of bed sometimes. I'm surprised that the alpaca hooves drumming on the walls hasn't woken me up some mornings. Fortunately I don't need a huge amount of sleep, but of course it can catch up from time to time.

A misty evening after the rain

Mist in the lower field

Alpacas sunbathing

There have been some irritating things happen this week, which just add to thebtime taken to do something. For instance there was one morning I was just going to have a quick cup of coffee before running some errands, but there was no electric. I just wanted one coffeeeeeeee.  I was going back to our apartment to do some washing, so no worries, I took the milk with me. Hmmph! The kettle wasn't working. I did eventually get my cup of coffee by boiling the water in pan on gas hob, only the milk was just starting to go off, so it was a bitter cup of coffee. Pah! At least when I got back to the land later on in the day the electric was back on and I could make a cup of tea. I don't have milk in tea. I text my neighbour to order some more as well.

These ones spend a lot of time sunbating but not all the time,
there is also some serious eating to do too.

I think they've been missing Ian, particularly Aggie in the
middle. She's been tutting away at me for the last two weeks

Since Ian was away, I had to get the technical sorted on the car. It was due before he got back and he hadn't had the time before he went away. This is the first time I have had to do it myself. The young chap spoke good English, although I could have done with him being a little louder and there were times I had no idea what he was actually asking for. I'm not sure if it was because I had misheard him or he was using a word I didn't know. He was very patient and when it came to getting the emissions tested he drove the car to the point and reversed it in, on the basis it was quicker for him to do it than to try and explain what I was supposed to do. I'm pleased as I hate reversing our car, the visibility is not great, especially when you are only 5'0". I can do it, but..... At least it passed with only one minor fault. Phew!

This madam gave me a right start one evening at
putting away time. She jumped so high, I thought
for a moment she was going to clear the fence. The
rest of putting away time for these girls was a bit
fraught as they all seemed hyper after that.

Veronica at 16 years old, still plodding on

I also went to the opticians to sort out some glasses. I got the prescription done in March in Estonia through work, so the actual prescription was in Estonian. The lady didn't speak much English and definitely not Estonian. However, we managed and the optician came back just in time and verified all was correct. I figured that it was a standardised prescription, because it looked the same format that he had done previously. I begin to wonder if anything is simple in my life.

The dandelions have nearly all turned now

But there are still some to keep the
bees and butterflies happy

The door tied up now

There have been various moments when the animals have given me issues. One afternoon I opened the door to the greenhouse to see several of our chicks running around. I'm not sure if one of our cats was weighing them up for a tasty snack or not, but if she was, she wasn't serious about it. The other one just sat and looked on, until one went a bit closer. I am guessing they had only just escaped, otherwise more mayhem would have ensued, I'm sure. Anyway I spent the next quarter of an hour rounding up the little darlings. I worked out that the side door clip is getting a bit slack, so I tied it up and that seems to have sorted it.

I've seen a few of these from time to time and wondered what
they were. Although it kind of looks like a bee, I thought it
probably wasn't. After googling it turns out to be a fly that
is a bit like the cuckoo of the bee world. It flips its eggs into
the nest of other pollinators and then the larvae eats the
pollen store. It's a good pollinator, but not much good for
the other ones. It is a Bee-fly (Bombylius)

Chanel sitting out in the sunshine with Aggie 

Now picture this, one evening, I am feeding the chickens in their arks when out of the corner of my eye I see something flying through the air. I look up to see two paws disappearing. Our cat had tried a flying leap from one ark to the other and didn't quite make it. I giggled for the next ten minutes. She is fine, if a little embarrassed about the episode. One day our pregnant alpaca was moaning away and I was concerned that she was moaning because she was going to give birth. She had also been a bit sensitive and more spitty than usual. She is a spitty sort, but sometimes more than others if she is a bit stressed. Fortunately she didn't. I told her this evening, she had better hang on until the end of the week when we are both around. I hope she was taking note.

My pathway back after putting
the girls away for the night

Last trip to the loo for the evening.
Don't worry, there is a loo in the
caravan too.

Evening sunshine

It was a blessing this week that the rain continued for another two days. Not solidly but on and off. It meant there have been two full water troughs of water and so I siphoned it off into a container to save it for later. Since then we've had some pleasant dry days and now the grass, which was struggling to grow is waist height, especially in the garden. It's tall enough to cut for hay. I hope then I can get my paths back. It makes gardening challenging, trying to find the beds. Fortunately there are not many weeds in those because they are covered with old hay and only the most robust weeds grow though that and they are easier to pull.

A friend of mine made me a shawl to remind me to look up.
In Coloardo the ground was often brown, not a verdant
green like you see in the pictures above. I missed the seasons
but she encouraged me to look up at the clouds. Too often I'm
either watching where I'm walking or lost in my head and
then I really should look up.

More gorgeous cloudy skies

Ian hasn't been in touch much the last two weeks. It has been busy for him too. I've just heard though that he has finished shearing the last alpaca in Hungary

I've been locking the boys out of
their alpaca house most of the day
recently to encourage them to stop
sitting in.the dark and get outside.
So in protest they sit in the shade of
the alpaca house. There is shade
down in the field too, in the shade of
huge oak trees, but oh no! Not
good enough apparently.

More hiding around the back

A beautiful early summer's day.

One point I didn't mention last week because it is a bit more involved is that I didn't get to vote in the EU elections. I wouldn't mind but I had been on the radio, and on the webpage after a journalist interviewed us about our thoughts on the EU. They got a few points wrong in the article but the journalist was ever so apologetic and got the website writers to put it right. Apparently lost in translation, but these things happen. Anyway, I fully intended to vote and since voting is automatic according to registered address I went along to the voting station. My name, however, was not on the register. Apparently it is automatic for Latvian citizens but not for other EU nationals. We were supposed to register again each time because they work on the principle that we could vote in our "home" country. The reality is though that we can't vote there either because we've been out of the country more than 15 years. Oh well! At least I tried.

And finally!

This week there are lots of pictures of clouds. Partly because
I forgot to look for my camera charger, I keep forgetting to
put my phone in my pocket or use it when I'm cleaning out
the alpaca houses if I do have it with me. These clouds
looked promising, but there was no rain from these on our
land.

Well what a time! We've travelled a lot, been tired and exhausted, and looked after in heaps. Well that sums up three weeks. There is no way I am going to cover each week in the way I normally do. I still have so much to do, but just wanted to let you know a little about what has happened over the time I've been absent from the blog.

Geese heading north. A bit late, but
I guess better late than never.

Yes there are some alpacas in the distance. My morning
coffee break view

The last time I blogged properly was just after shearing our boys. Our girls still needed shearing and we were running around trying to get jobs done on the farm. It was a bit of a performance. We started off attempting to shear one group of girls and sheared one before deciding that there may be a problem with the shears - they are getting old. The problem was, did we carry on or not? After a phone call to a company an hour and a half away we hurriedly packed up and went to buy a new pair of shears. We were off to shear at a mini-zoo the next day, so couldn't risk the shears not working.

Now that looks promising for a rainy day ahead. Nope!
Wishful thinking, although there was rain, but not over us.

Looking in the direction of the other girls. 

After our first commercial shear of the season, Ian spent the day sorting out on the farm and preparing for the week ahead. I took the early bus into Riga for a conference. I had intended on getting some work done in the morning but instead spent the time looking for new shoes. I didn't think trainers - no matter how smart - looked particularly professional. I did find some rather comfy ones eventually. I drove back from Riga in a friend's car, as he was heading off from the airport. Worked well for us both, only I rolled into bed rather late.

Rain to the north!

Alright for some!

Another early morning and this time we headed up to Estonia, the new shears were working well. They had a bit more power than one set of shears Ian has, but none of the downsides that the relatively big, heavy professional ones have. The main problems are a switch that is not easy to switch off if the animal starts fussing and the vent that blows hair fibres up into my, and the animal's, face when working on the head and neck. We were hosted well as usual, something we really enjoy about visiting people again and again. A friend of ours dropped by to take pictures and take notes, so watch this space to see what happens with those.

I just wanted to go to the loo in
peace, but no! Eyre wanted to
accompany me, and loudly at that.

It's amazing that anything can grow with the lack of rain
we've had but the grass gets the moisture when its long
due to the cool nights. Mind you, these are supposed to be
grass pathways with raised beds. I haven't time to mow
them. Might be good enough for hay by the time Ian
gets back.

I was back to the conference on the Saturday on yet another early bus, but fortunately just a half day this time. I did get to practice a bit of my Danish again as there were quite a good proportion of the delegates from Denmark. I hope to go to the next conference in April next year as it will be Copenhagen. So maybe I can get to visit my friends there.

The dandelions are nearly
finished now.

Still no rain, believe it or not!

The rest of the weekend was sorting out and catching up kind of days before heading off early again to Estonia. We even managed to fit in finishing off the one group of girls we started the last time. The food in Estonia was excellent. We did tell them off though after a rather good lunch - and I mean a GOOD lunch, that it is not the best way to get shearing done in the afternoon. We were all stuffed and so bending over to do the shearing was not so easy. We joked that next time we were on bread and cheese. We were saddened to hear they are thinking of winding down as they are beginning to feel their age. We would love to take their alpacas, but we just simply haven't got the space. We are beginning to wonder if there is a real need for a sanctuary - not necessarily to rescue alpacas but to take in beloved alpacas from those who have no one to pass their farms onto. Let's hope by the time we get to that stage there is someone who has ambitions of raising our gorgeous creatures.

This caterpillar is a monster in
size.

Rain to the south

On the way back from Estonia we had a new group to shear. They were inexperienced at handling alpacas and so it took a bit longer. They also had one of the most spitty, squealing, weeing alpacas that we have come across and that's saying something. They are not all like that, but a pain when they are. I think it put off the young sheep shearer who had come to watch and help with the translation. I think the family had intentions of getting him to do their alpacas next year.

Yes more rain clouds, but not over us

Rain to the east

We finally got to shear the last of our own girls but that was not without mishap. The new shears that had been working so well and Ian was so happy with, suddenly went pop. The motor blew!  We had sheared three of four alpacas in that group.  It was not a good moment! I sent Ian off to phone the company and explain what had happened. We managed with the old ones and just accepted that the combs and cutters had to be changed more than we liked. It was getting expensive. The following day after shearing at friends who live close by, relatively speaking, we went to take the shears back. The company were very apologetic, but these were brand new shears, only just released by the company a few months ago, so they weren't sure what they could do with them. It is now in the hands of the companies.

This rose was a present a couple of years ago. We were
worried that it hadn't survived the winter, but here it
is starting to grow again.

Shearing at Nemuno Alpakos. It looks drastic, but an
animal that is properly restrained is unlikely to get hurt. They
will also feel much better in the warmer days of summer,
without their thick and very warm fleece.

Another early morning and this time off to Lithuania to shear for a larger breeder and then doing a demonstration shear the following afternoon. We sort of missed lunch and so when they offered to feed us before going off to our final shear of the day, we accepted. It was one of those lovely moments, since everyone else was engaged in a meeting of the Lithuanian alpaca association, they set a table just for the two of us under the apple trees. It felt so civilised. We had elk sausages and mash potatoes.

The joy of pansies, self-seeded ones
at that.

It was substantial enough to set us off on our way anyway. It was a good job as the already difficult shearing conditions, i.e. lots of grit and sand in the fleeces, was about to get worse. After we finished the guy was very perceptive and said, "Do you want a shower, coffee or to eat first." Difficult choice, only tea was more in order at that time of night. Anyway we opted for a shower as we were pretty grubby due to the dusty fleeces. We slept well.

Rain at last

The next day we headed for our final Lithuanian destination. It took a bit of finding but we got there in the end. The problem is that they didn't want to go ahead with the shearing as another group that were meant to be bringing more alpacas didn't show up. They were very apologetic and offered to pay for fuel costs and asked if we needed feeding before going. We accepted and really we were quite relieved. We were tired. We then spent a pleasant time, under more apple trees having lunch and talking about alpacas before heading back.

We did manage to get the chickens out of the greenhouse
before Ian went away. It was helpful when it was hot, but
I guess now they might be feeling the chill more.

There was only a day and a half for Ian to get ready before he headed off to Hungary to shear alpacas there. Which is where he is at the moment. So I'm left in charge of the alpacas and the gardens on our farm and at the camp nearby. The weather has been incredibly dry. We have had bits of rain, enough to keep alpacas in to keep fleeces dry for shearing, but not really enough to water the ground and really get the grass growing. Our ponds were continuing to disappear and the rain we rely on to water the alpacas was not forthcoming. The forecasts promised rain, but they never made it to us.

It might look dreary, but when we need rain as much as
we do, it is a wonderful sight

With Ian away and the thought of having to go backwards and forwards for water, I asked the nearby camp if they would be willing to bring some. My knight in a dusty tractor turned up later on in the day with a container to half fill our 1m3 container. Now why had I not thought of it before? Of course after one more day of no rain, it started raining. We've had two days now with rain for a good part of the day. It's a bit dark and depressing, but it's rain and that is more important. I am so relieved as it is painful to watch the garden die and the fields dry up. I just hope I'm not praying for it to stop for haymaking. Such is the life of a farmer.