Still dry!

All shut up for the night

It has been a busy old week again, but for now we have finished doing shearing for others. We are just waiting for one of our alpacas to give birth and then we will shear our girls and that will be it for the year - at least we think it will be. We have had other jobs too that needed doing anyway, such as topping the cow parsley so that it doesn't go to seed. The animals do not like it and they won't eat it so it is taking over, which means we need to get it under control. The girls have not even been bothering to go into the field with the cow parsley as it is taking too much effort to sort through in the heat. Now the flowering stems of the cow parsley have been removed they have been out in the field to eat the grass. It does mean hours of walking up and down with the flail mower for Ian though. I can't handle that machine as it is far too heavy and besides I was inside for much of the day assessing a Masters thesis on urban allotments - a very interesting read.

Such a pretty flower for an
invasive plant

I did get out and do little jobs during the day like planting beans that have been soaking for a couple of days. There is no point in planting any seed unless it has been soaked because we haven't had any rain for over two weeks, it might even be three weeks now - we lose track. It is also my job to feed the chickens since we have gone across to using flour to feed them. I add crushed egg shells, mineral powder and some dried herbs - depending on what I have, then mix it altogether with some water to make a mush. The flour is organic and a mix of different types of grain, buckwheat and I think it has a bean flour in it too. I have even used it with white flour to make bread, after sifting it for some of the hulls that are still in it. Cheaper than buying organic flour from the shops by a long way.

Enjoying the cooler evenings and the shadier spot. They look
huge and I keep teasing Ian that they have triplets. Most likely
they will have twins and by the end of the year we will only
keep four females altogether. 

Ian moved the sheep this week while I finished off planting tomatoes and a friend of ours weeded our strawberry bed - a mammoth task in itself. The sheep have been moved nearer as they are due to give birth too any day soon and we wanted them nearer to us, where we can see them and they will have less of an issue with foxes. I would hope the ram will be useful in protecting the mothers though. Normally we take down some mobile orange netting fencing to pen them in while removing their fencing and then setting up the next stage. This time we decided to buy extra wire and posts and set up the second fence first. Moving them is easy, Ian just rattles the feed trays and they follow him as good as gold. Wish they were that well behaved when we want to do anything with them though.

This was where the boys and the chickens were last year,
the grass is recovering well now

The shearing this last week was a lot less stressful than it has been because Ian has felt more at ease knowing it wasn't the way he was shearing that was the problem, but an issue with dirty fleeces. Some alpacas attract the dirt and it is a particular problem when the ground is gritty and alpacas love to roll. The large alpaca farm has clay and possibly denser fleece animals and so there were fewer problems shearing their animals. Ian has ordered the sharpener now, so hopefully we can avoid many of the problems in the future.

Oak leaves

Again we were fed well and could have spent longer at some places. One place we went to they had a friend around to translate and after one animal we had a break for coffee, well coffee, cakes, some pies made with a bread dough and open sandwiches then we sat and chatted for quite a while about alpacas. The gentleman who was translating was a beekeeper and he had to go and take care of his bees. We only had two more alpacas to shear so didn't take a huge amount of time and at the end we were offered coffee again. Only this time the coffee came with sausages, potato salad and a tomato and cucumber salad. We were stuffed. We got to the next place and set up and again offered coffee only we asked if we could have tea as we were coffee-d out. This also came with bread, cheese, salami and tomatoes. It is a good job I am now in the habit of having to watch what I eat otherwise I think we would have rolled home.

Sunset behind one of our many oak trees.
This was taken at 9:52 and it will stay
light until way after midnight

We had a bit of an adventure on the way to the next place. Twice we have had to brake sharply for wild boar on the road when travelling to places for shearing and several times had to avoid other animals or birds, such as a stork who sauntered across the road, ducks who refused to move and of course there were a few deer from time to time. Our luck ran out though this time and we hit a deer. We stopped of course and we tried to look for the animal but couldn't see it at all, our car didn't look too bad but then we realised that the grill was slightly bent and the fog light was not in good shape. The corner of the car also suffered some damage - not bad but enough to need a small repair. The fog light also needs replacing. Oh well! The hazards of country life.

Buttercups look so pretty but they are not very welcome on
our land too as they are definitely not edible for our animals.
Fortunately I think the clover is gradually driving it out

The last shearing job we did, we got on reasonably well but we didn't finish again. We had set aside two days but the people running the farm were getting busier and busier as more groups booked to tour the farm for the second day. We were already having to take breaks because groups were visiting on the first day and the owner wanted to see the condition of the animals being sheared, rather than just let us do all the work - which we totally understand. It is helpful to see the animal while it is restrained so that the overall condition can be assessed.

Rather light for so early in the morning

In the end it was decided that they would shear the remaining eight animals gradually over time on days off. It was also easier for them for us to set off that evening and so we started off home at 10:30pm. We stopped for a short while to snooze but it was a chillier night that night, in fact there was a touch of frost, so the snooze wasn't quite as long as we would like - or at least it felt that way. We rolled onto our land as the sky was getting light at 4am. We had a few hours sleep because we wanted to be up in the morning just in case our alpaca decided to give birth, which she didn't of course and we caught up with some sleep later on in the day instead.

The boys all shut up for the night too. Their paddock grass is
ever so short but they still like to eat the grass in there. When
it cools down they will be shut out of the paddock for a few
hours so the grass gets a chance to recover a bit, but when it
is so hot, they need the shelter.

We have had a school group in this week as well. We were a little surprised when the coach pulled onto our land - normally they stop at the bottom and people walk on. Fortunately the ground is solid at the moment due to the lack of rain and it was only a 3/4 size coach and not the full sized one. There were about 20 children and they were quite engaged with what Ian had to say and followed along quite well considering that they were Latvians listening to English. I am not so sure that I could have followed along in a different language at their age. The talk Ian gives on alpacas from shearing to product seems to work quite well now and we then take them to see the boys, who are more aloof. The girls, however, are much more willing to come for carrots and apples which the children brought with them and we sliced up so the animals do not choke.

Our pond is receding again due to the lack of rain

Agnese amazed us though. Ian called her over as she is the most friendly of the girls and he took hold of her so that they could feel her fleece. She never bothered at all. At one point Ian let go and she sat down with lots of children around her taking photos and stroking her. She just sat there. She stayed sitting down until the children left. Apparently some of them got some really nice photos where she looks like she is giving a big grin. Some of the children tried to feed the other alpacas and those who were quieter and more patient were rewarded with the animals eating from their hands. Many were just a little too impatient, but some learnt and with a bit of coaxing managed to feed at least one animal.

The joys of little ones

This is the spinning wheel I
purchased the other week. I
think it is an Ashford traveller,
although the pictures that I
could find on the net, show a
slightly different arrangement.

It has been the sort of eventful week that any mother of young children will recognise and all too familiar to me, if a little hazy due to being memories from the dim and distant past. My little two year old granddaughter was less shy with me than my little two year old grandson the other week, but that was because I have chatted a little more with her via Skype. However, early on in the week she came downstairs with her daddy crying her little heart out. Daddy was going to work and her mummy was busy, so I took her in my arms to give her a cuddle, but she was inconsolable. Mummy took over and gave her breakfast, but she was still not right, so she was given a dose of medicine and a cuddle with mummy. Next thing we knew my little granddaughter threw up all over the floor, narrowly missing her little brother. As I was due to go out to meet someone for coffee, we had a rapid re-think and I offered to take the baby with me, while my daughter cleaned up - generous offer heh!

The cards my granddaughter made

I haven't left my daughter to do all the cleaning up, honest! In fact I have spent quite a bit of the week babysitting and washing up while she gets on with some renovations, as it has taken them far longer than they hoped. As my granddaughter took a few days to recover and the baby is only a few months old, it has been a fairly easy job because they have spent much of the afternoon asleep and go to bed early. There has been just a little entertaining in the afternoons between my granddaughter getting up after her nap and mummy and daddy coming home. Today we made cards and did some glueing and sticking - something I haven't done with little ones in a long time and I was desperately trying to remember how to help a little one learn to use scissors. It was rather amusing though that she got far more absorbed in cutting up pieces of paper than actually sticking the paper onto a sheet of lining paper to make a picture.

Boots and wellies drying on the radiators

I had forgotten how many sets of clothes you can get through with little ones. My little grandson has puked up on me and peed into the turn ups of my jeans. My granddaughter has soaked me with jumping in puddles and it was so wet today on our walk that my boots started leaking and my trousers wet through again. In a walk to the shops the other day, my little granddaughter went through the biggest puddle imaginable and it went well over her little wellies, but oh she had fun! A couple walking past at the time laughed and the gentleman commented "Well what are wellies for!" Absolutely right of course. I have also been greatly amused by employing the tricks I learnt as a young mum. Little one walking and another in the pram plus a steep hill? No problem, ask the little one to help in pushing the pram. Little one giving up walking due to being tired? No problem, 1-2-3, whee and run a little way up. Hehehe! Little ones are so gullible - most of the time.

We eventually got some cut pieces of paper stuck on some
paper

Little ones are also funny with the things they come out with. It was hilarious the other day when she sat in the pushchair and going round the shop saying "Happy Christmas Everyone." My daughter is not really sure where she got that from, probably a tv programme as she has quite a remarkable memory recall. I read her a library book one day and then the next day, she was reading a book to her little brother and recalling some of what I had read to her. She definitely wasn't reading the words, she is too young for that.

Who are you looking at? Brencis and Estelle 

Back tracking a little, I mentioned I was going for coffee with a friend. It was a facebook friend I had probably never met before, which might sound an odd thing to say. My facebook friend and I have many mutual friends and I used to live only a few miles away from where my daughter lives now, so we may have bumped into each other before but not remembered. We met up because we seem to often agree on issues we talk about on facebook and both think quite a lot about various things and so we had quite a philosophical chat for easily a couple of hours. A little different from the level of conversation with a two year old, although not always - you can have quite deep and meaningful chats with a two year old, but they haven't a clue what you are talking about usually and so it is great fun. The baby was very good whilst we were chatting and slept most of the time, he also happily gurgled to  one of the waitresses at one point, as well as joining in with our deep conversation, as only a baby knows how.

Peedo

Ian has also been chatting for hours on end, mind you, it was all on one day when he took a trip up to Estonia to collect three alpacas and a friend had agreed to accompany him. We decided it was going to be too expensive to get alpacas from England and we hadn't heard anything from the farm that Ian had visited in England anyway, so he contacted the people we met back in August in Estonia to see if they would be willing to sell any. We wanted coloured alpacas to increase the range of natural fibres we could generate, because at the moment the choice is white or cream, in other words almost white. They agreed to sell us three alpacas, a dark chocolate brown, almost black, called Peedo (after a neighbour to the Estonian farm who turned 70 years old on the day he was born), a dark toffee coloured brown (Chanel) and a white with brown spots (Mari). By the time they are bred with our white alpacas we should get a fair range of colours along the spectrum. Exciting, but we will have to wait until next year to breed them and so it will only be 2017 when we get to know what colours we will get.

Although he looks sort of black, you can see he is not quite

Chanel on the left and Mari on the right

For the first day Ian put the new alpacas into our newly built alpaca house, to give them a little time to settle down from their trip and get used to him before introducing them to our herd. Ian then decided to introduce them in the evening on the basis that the alpacas often settle down for the night and they might be less likely to react to the new ones. First of all he took Peedo on a harness and tied him up behind the boys alpaca house. He put the boys away as usual and then waited for them to settle down before introducing Peedo. Tellus was not happy with the introduction and tried to mount Peedo, but Herkules our oldest alpaca got between them. He stamped his authority and wouldn't let Tellus do anything. So despite the fact that Tellus is our intact male, he is not the boss. Peedo is such a little fella though compared to our other ones. The girls were okay, but Veronica does not like Mari for some reason. I am sure they will settle down soon and nothing too bad beyond a bit of spitting has been going on.

I think this is quite a cute photo of Mari

Peedo and Turbjørn. You can see how much smaller Peedo
is compared to our other alpacas in this one. 

The next day the new alpacas had to get to grips with learning the ropes of being put away. Of course they did not get it at first. Peedo very nearly did but stopped in the door way then backed off. The two girls didn't even bother going in. Ian got the harness, a stick for guiding them and a long rope. He managed to corner Peedo and get the harness on him, then put him away. With the girls he locked the others on one side and opened the other door, Mari, bless her just walked straight in but Chanel just ran around the alpaca house making a noise. Ian tried to corner her with the rope but she charged through it and the end got caught on her leg which stopped her so he could get hold of her. She is a noisy thing though apparently. During the day I and the grandchildren had a lovely chat with Ian via Skype and we even got to see the new alpacas because Ian took the computer up with the mobile wifi. Neat!

Chanel and Snowdrop. Not quite sure who the other one
is, but probably Agnese

Ian also managed to shift the sheep, they escaped from the poultry fence again like the last time we moved them. The plastic its wrapped in was on the floor and the wind caught it and spooked them. However they ran right into where he was putting the fence and stayed there while he finished putting the wire on fortunately.

Veronica at the back and Estelle looking on with a good
deal of curiosity. We think Estelle might indeed be
pregnant as she is starting to fill out at the back now.

Besides settling in newcomers and moving sheep he has also had visitors. The visitors came the day after the newcomers arrived and were not allowed to actually go in and see them but were able to look over the door, at least they got to see that alpacas are not just white, but a variety of colours. There were 15 children and their parents and it sounded like they had a lot of fun trying to feed carrots to the alpacas. As expected the older boy alpacas were not terribly fussed with the visit but Agnese and Brencis were great with the children and allowed the children to pet them and feed them carrots. We know the children enjoy the visits as there was a lovely write up in the paper about the visit by one of the local schools. Three children had written their impressions of the day with one writing "Alpacas are beautiful, interesting, intelligent animals with a white fur coat." We are obviously giving them a good impression of what they are like then.

15 minutes of fame

Tommy tomato

We had our first signing session this week, we were all highly amused. Ian and I went to get some chicken food from the agricultural merchants and the ladies at the till pulled out the newspaper with the article about us. Ian jokingly pretended to sign it and they handed him a pen for him to do it for real and then I had to too. We were giggling about it for much of the day afterwards. We boringly only signed our names but we should have put some greeting on it I suppose. Didn't think about that until afterwards.

A red rainbow

One of our neighbours has been visiting regularly and this week when she came she mentioned it was her son's birthday that day. She explained he doesn't like big flashy presents or a big birthday party, even though he is only 8 years old. He likes time with his family and to make a birthday cake with his Mum. He was thrilled to get a walk with Agnese as a treat and a bunch of grapes. It is lovely when a youngster is so appreciative of the little things in life. Mind you, those grapes are good.

A moody view from the greenhouse during
coffee time

20m3 of wood, cut and stacked ready to start on the new
alpaca house. I am only there for height comparison and only shifted a few planks. Ian did the most of it, along with a little help from the guys cutting.

We had a bit of confusion over a school visit this week, and so on a day we were expecting a visit from the school that didn't materialise we took a visit to Depot - a diy place in Jekabpils and spent mucho money. We needed screws and metal brackets so Ian can get on with the alpaca houses. We also bought a leaf blower, not for blowing leaves you understand or even to vacuum them up, but to blow the alpaca fleece when it is in the tumbler that Ian made earlier on in the year. This will help clean the fleece of dirt and small fibres. We also bought some big bags for sawdust and a kneeling stool for gardening.

Agnese posing for the camera for the
smiling alpaca selfie

Eventually the mix up was sorted about the school visit and four very enthusiastic girls and their teacher turned up for an extra-curricular English lesson on alpacas. Ian talked about alpacas and their care and then we all went for a walk with Agnese. She did very well, as of course the girls wanted to keep close to her and stroke her. In fact she was so good she produced the most amazing smiling alpaca selfie. Funnily enough we got a booking today from another school for a school visit. I will be away and so Ian will have entertain them, but since he did  pretty much all the talking the last time, I don't think that will be a problem. It would be more of a problem if it was me, because I don't think Agnese would cooperate to go on a walk with so many children, in fact she might even be quite hesitant to come near as I am the big bad veterinary substitute - in other words they see me more often when one of them needs treating for something. Ian also knows much more about the alpacas' daily habits because he looks after them all the time.

A picture by a very talented friend of ours

We have had rain on and off this week, a definite indication that the seasons are changing. It is great we can sit in our greenhouse when we have visitors if it is a bit damp, as we did one morning, sitting under the grapevines eating grapes and drinking coffee - perfect! It was a very early visit by someone who has been going to visit for quite a while and not quite made it yet. We were beginning to wonder if the guy who was cutting the wood thought we just had a never ending stream of visitors as we have had so many while he was working. I suppose we have had this year. Quite a surprise for us really.

I forgot to take a picture of the potatoes, but I did manage
to remember to take a photo of the carrots I harvested.
Although there weren't many, due to using old seed and
the rather slow germination rate, there were still more than
in the picture, honest. You can see also see one of the three
or four wheelbarrows full of weeds I removed.

During one dry spell we got our potatoes harvested. We were a bit worried about how many potatoes we would get this year because we only planted a smaller area and it has been a cooler year, warm, dry and not always sunny days but cold nights. Despite all of that we got as much as last year and a far better size. Many of them are chipping size (not that we make regular chips any more and Ian has to make do with oven chips, but it gives you an indication of size) and quite a few were even baking size or even extra large baking size at that. Ian decided that since it had rained the area would be too wet and so difficult to use the two wheel tractor for lifting the potatoes, so it was decided to dig them by hand. We weren't looking forward to it, but when we got there and removed the soggy straw off the top, the ground was actually bone dry. If anything we would have had difficulty due to the ground being a little hard in places. On the whole though it was fairly easy work.

Many of the carrots were also a decent
size, despite having fought valiantly
amongst the weeds (maybe that's their
secret)

There is still a bed to harvest. Spot the
carrots

As we weren't looking forward to it and Ian seemed in a bad mood, I asked him if there was going to be any swearing. His answer was "there might be." He was very good though and he didn't swear once, I on the other hand did. Nothing that bad and for many it wouldn't even be considered swearing really, but if you know me you would realise that swearing isn't something I do. The first occasion was after picking up what I thought was a potato and thinking it felt a bit weird, as if it was hollow; it turned out to be the most enormous earth coloured toad. I am not sure who got the bigger fright. Fortunately I hadn't speared it with the fork or anything and so it made its escape, although I do confess it flew a little way. The next time wasn't so drastic and was because I was standing on something that I had been trying to avoid standing on (can't even remember what it was now). Not having kids around is obviously not good for me. I will have to behave from now on.

A weird sunset after the rain and before the day of showers
today

Waste wood! Well not quite waste, but all the odds and
ends that now need sorting into wood for burning, for
chipping for the road way and so on.

After potato harvesting we had just finished lunch at home when we got a call from our neighbour to ask where we were. She was out on our land with her husband's brother and they wanted to see the alpacas. It wasn't a problem and we were on our way shortly after the call. They had a teenager with them and unlike the four girls that came earlier in the week, she was not going to see the alpacas and stayed in the car. Funny how different people can be. The little girl of the family enjoyed seeing them though and fed Agnese and our neighbour did really well telling the family many of the details of their care. That could be because she does look after them for us from time to time.

Some of the sawdust we can now use for our composting
toilet. Should last us a while

Just in case we run out, here is some more. We also use it to
store carrots and beetroot and there are plenty of those

One of the regular parts of the day is we have porridge for breakfast every morning. I know many people will go yuck! but we make up a big batch and have it cold, it is just easier and cheaper for breakfasts that way. Ian likes to eat as soon as he gets up and therefore hot porridge in the morning will not work. We have also been eating our porridge with berries pretty much since July. First we had the strawberries and just as they finished we had blackcurrants, redcurrants and gooseberries, albeit with a little gap in between. Just after those the raspberries ripened followed by the grapes. Now we are eating blackberries along with the grapes that are still going strong. We have just a few more of the red grapes and then the green grapes seem to be ripening along with the autumn raspberries. Perfect!  Even better, our neighbour gave us some strawberries that ripen later on in the year and so hopefully in years to come we won't have so much of a gap between the strawberries and currants ripening. For winter we also have a few of the berries that I managed to bottle in syrup and some grapes dried to make raisins. After that it will have to be fruit from the freezer.

Our kitten says thank you for building her a very large
playground

One of the weirdest things to happen this week is I have a gorgeous bruise on my chin as if someone has socked me one. I can't even really remember hitting my chin hard on anything, I sort of vaguely remember catching myself one day, but for the life of me I can't really think of what exactly happened and certainly nothing to end up with the bruise I have. The only thing we can think of is that maybe I hit myself in the area where I had a filling earlier this week and perhaps it was something to do with the area where I had an injection, because the filling was nothing major (unlike my previous visits). I don't usually bruise easily either and so that is not the reason. I just have to be careful not to be seen around town with the bruise and end up giving Ian an undeserved bad name.

After all that playing around it is time to sleep. She looks
all cute and cuddly there, but I am not so sure that is a
good idea now. I found fleas on her today and one of the
fleas escaped. Hmmm!

I will have to do some changing plans this week. I was hoping to go to Sweden for at least a couple of weeks to work with a university there, but it is looking like this is not possible now due to a lack of funding. Estonia have had a good programme of funding for higher education that funds two trips a year. My Aberdeen trip was funded by it. The funding period ran out at the end of May or June and they were supposed to have a new funding period in place by the end of May, which didn't happen and it is still not in place for the beginning of the academic year that always starts 1st September (unless it falls on a Sunday, not sure about Saturdays these days). It is now really too late to apply for funding to have it in place for the beginning of October and so it looks like I will have to cancel the trip. There is no funding from the Swedish side either, there would be if I was Estonian or Latvian, but not for British citizens. I could find funding for a 3 month stay but that is not really something I would be happy to do and Ian certainly wouldn't be happy with that. Rather frustrating, as I only wanted to spend two or three weeks there.