Winter? Spring? Whatever!

7am on Saturday morning. Looking rather
monochrome again.

We are still not sure from one moment to the next which season we are in. We woke up on Saturday morning to quite reasonable covering of snow on the ground that lasted until early afternoon. We've had sunshine and showers of various kinds all week: rain, snow, hail, sleet and sometimes all within 5 minutes. I guess it's spring then!

The trees wearing their winter lace again! It looks
really pretty at the end of the year at the start of
winter, not so much now.

Everywhere we looked a coating of wet snow.

By 1:30 it had disappeared.

I didn't really plan to do much other than get work done this week, but then our week took a slightly different turn to one that was planned. Firstly a friend of ours phoned and said one of her alpacas had a gash on their leg from fighting with another one. Alpaca male fighting teeth can grow quite suddenly and we either find out the good way at shearing time, or the sometimes the hard way when an accident happens. Young boys often play fight and so accidents can happen and in spring hormones can get the better of some youngsters. So we made a trip up to see her so that Ian could deal with the fighting teeth. At least there shouldn't be any more of those kinds of problems from that alpaca again. 

Only the line down the side of the greenhouse
reminded us that it really had been a very
white morning.

Our two little boy kittens are no longer little
boys. We have no desire to add to the kitten
population. There are enough born every year
as it is. We also want them to stay around and
work for their living

I worked in the car during the journey - thank goodness for laptops and mobile internet, so I still got some work done. We carried onto another of our friends' house to check on that, since they can't get to sort it out themselves due to Covid and their nearest neighbours are also away at the moment. All was okay except for lots of dead and dying flies and dust that must have been disturbed in the strong winds we'd had the week before. So after a quick brush up and putting down some more rat poison for the little critters that had been nibbling the previous ones I had put out, headed on back to our caravan. 

Rocket Ron earning his living.... or is he? He was
spotted today tucking into an old, manky Brussel
sprout leaf. Sigh!

My lilac is budding!

On Thursday it was my birthday. I started the day off with a Latvian lesson and my Latvian teacher played two Latvian versions of happy birthday. We also looked at different words connected to celebrations. A bit of fun anyway and even better I got some very good scores on some of the listening practice. I also got some very bad scores on some too. Oh well! Progress of some sort anyway. It is getting easier but I still do not get enough practice. I have a lot of work to do and just get too tired to focus on practising. I do binge watch some short Latvian programmes, from kids programmes to historical or environmental types. It helps. 

I think this captures this week beautifully! Sunshine
and showers.

Brencis enjoying the sunshine or maybe getting
a bit hot - he doesn't usually sit like this. 

I also got happy birthday greetings from so many friends that I was pleasantly surprised - I know Facebook reminds people, but it is nice when people do take the time. It is appreciated. I have to admit though the greetings from my grandchildren were the best; even though one of them got stuck with singing happy birthday because he couldn't remember the words for the nice version. I also got to see my granddaughters in the dresses I made and see a video of them twirling around in the dresses, in fact they spent most of the day twirling around apparently- so that worked well. 

Glad someone thinks it's funny.

Mr. P's breathing got even noisier this last week, 
so he was put on a course of steroids. The change
was quite amazing. The vet came out to see him 
today but she's still not quite so happy with his
breathing, so he's going on some antibiotics too. 

As my birthday was a work day I would have just carried on working but with horrible weather forecast for over the weekend and the day of my birthday promising sunshine, I took the afternoon off. Not to relax and chill or anything but get seeds in that needed moisture to germinate. I managed to get all the cabbage type seeds in - Ian will be thrilled at the thought of more Brussel sprouts (not!). I was going to put carrots and parsnips in but couldn't find the seeds. I eventually realised they'd been left in the apartment, so Ian collected them on Friday when he went to collect our bakery order. The seeds went in on Saturday afternoon after the snow had cleared. 

"Come on Mum! Come and Play!", says Ilvija
"Nope!", says Chanel

Chanel would rather sunbathe.

On Sunday it was more seed planting, but this time in the greenhouse- broad beans, peas, more cabbage-type things, alpine strawberries, a new type of rhubarb and all sorts of other plants and flowers. I would plant the beans outside but not after last year, when I lost just about all of them, probably due to mice. We'll have to see what works. It was certainly a nice activity to do when it was raining on and off all day. The greenhouse is a much more pleasant environment to work in, unlike Ian's work environment who was trying to put out fencing in between the showers so the alpacas could eat the grass without poking their head through the fence and leaning heavily on it. Sigh! 

Don't be fooled by that sweet look. Mari is our 
main culprit for putting her head through the fence.

The day before the snow. 

Ian wasn't working outside the whole time, he also did some work in the greenhouse and in the shed. We now have more shelves in the shed and things in the greenhouse are a little tidier - not much but again, it's progress. We have also been sorting out getting our barn and greenhouse properly registered. It stalled a few years ago when we weren't sure what all the additional costs were that kept being added on. Now we know what the steps are and the greenhouse is just about sorted, but we need a topographical survey done for the barn, so now we are just in the process of getting that arranged - next job!

They are all enjoying the grass. Hopefully the 
moisture will encourage it to grow faster.

GT (aka Ginger Tom) looks 
huge here, but actually he's 
pretty small.

Our routine is changing, almost imperceptibly. The nights are gradually getting shorter and shorter, so we put the animals away later and later each day. We also wake that bit earlier each morning too. No longer do we have to rush to get the evening meal prepared after the animals go away and before it gets too dark and cold, nor as the days get longer do we have to rush to eat before the animals go away. Now we have plenty of time after eating. It is funny how accustomed we are to the light levels determining what we do and when. Watches aren't always necessary to know when it is time to do something. It's a different rhythm when we are out on the land. 

Don't do it! You'll get wet!
Fortunately, he didn't. He's not so daft. Not so sure
about the other one though.

Speaking of which! Here he comes!

I'm in the garden!

A promise of rain

At least that is where I have spent most of today. The rains finally came yesterday but what else would you expect on a holiday weekend. Jani is the biggest festival of the year and means beer, cheese, wreaths of oak leaves for the men and flowers for the women. It also means bonfires with shashlicks (basically marinated cubed meat). It did worry me, as much of Latvia was tinder dry and the Latvians love to head out to the countryside for their bonfires on Jani. So maybe it is a bit mean to be grateful for the rain. At least the rains came after sunrise, which is the important event to stay up for. I have to confess to being in bed during the whole thing. I need sleep!

Frederiks and George play fighting, although it looks more
like a game of Twister

Looks like they are about to break out into song now

Jani decorations at our apartment

The day before Jani we got a lovely present from our neighbour and a visit from her daughter to deliver it. They had baked pirags, which are like a bread dough around a ham and onion filling, there are other sorts but this is the most common. Our neighbour bakes very good pirags so we were delighted to get them. They were brought on a dish and beautifully wrapped in a cloth with flowers tucked into it. It only occurred to me afterwards to take a photo of it.

Eyre asleep in the greenhouse. At least it isn't
on my seeds

After the rain

As usual we did a lot of weather forecast watching and since the rain that was forecast was not diminishing the nearer we got to it this time, we took a chance to get seeds in (also Jani is often wet so that helped to sway our decision). Ian planted up another area of buckwheat to help us combat the dock problem and I planted beans, beetroot, carrots, a variety of salad leaves and radishes. Hopefully we should still have enough time for them to grow well. I planted the seeds into little troughs in the soil so that the water would hopefully soak the seed without washing them away. I also left a shelter belt of weeds to protect them from winds, since that has been an issue too just lately. Not helpful when it has been so dry and what little rain we have had didn't get much chance to soak the soil before being evaporated off by the wind.

Brencis

Frederiks coming to say hello during the photoshoot with the
shawl I made from George's fleece

Yesterday's rain was just the right kind of rain that we so badly needed. It was long and slow. It started mid-morning and didn't fair up until the evening. It meant we didn't get soaked sorting out the animals and we were out for lunch with friends anyway, so no sitting in the caravan or greenhouse twiddling thumbs. Actually I did get a bit of sorting out in the greenhouse while it rained and before we set off to go for lunch. This is the last bit of sorting out after the flat move earlier on this year - sorting out the stuff that got dumped at the far end of our very large greenhouse.

I picked our first tomatoes of the season.

I love the clouds in this shot. I had to leap out of the caravan
to take the photo. Usually it is Ian who takes most of the
photos, but I can take credit every now and again.

I mentioned last week that our cat caught a mole and brought it for tea time. We thought that would be the end of the problems of molehills appearing at the front of our greenhouse. No such luck. The cats caught another mole and still there are molehills appearing. Moles are supposed to be solitary animals, but occasionally use a mole highway. So it would seem that the front of our greenhouse is in fact one such highway. Not helpful! They already play havoc with the alpaca houses as they tunnel under the stones that keep the houses above ground causing the houses to sink. The soil they push up to the bases of the houses will also cause the bases to rot if we don't clear it from time to time. We have enough clearing to do without their contribution.

The clouds this week have certainly been interesting

Felted collar using Mari and Agnese's fleece with a touch
of alpaca fibres from one of the alpacas we sheared elsewhere

Heather the felting tutor returned home this week. As I mentioned last week she spent most of the time getting to grips with the alpaca and what we can do with it when used on its own or just with silk. She now has a small collection of items that she will be exhibiting, so it will be interesting to see what the reaction is to that.

Felted shawls and blankets

We managed to get a quick photoshoot in
between the overcast skies. It was close though

Mari's fleece felts beautifully

Heather working on darning in some detail

The day before we were going to the airport I found out a friend of ours was visiting Latvia with her husband. I first met her when she was very small in my Sunday School class, which kind of ages me. We also brought her on her first trip to Latvia when we were doing kids camps. At first we felt we couldn't really meet up as her plane was getting in about the same time as Heather's was leaving and therefore we would be dropping Heather off two hours before. We didn't really feel able to hang around that long with all the chores that needed doing. Of course though we had stopped with Heather for one last chat and a wee bite to eat and so time had run on and as we left Ian and I talked about stopping for lunch as it was later than we thought it would be. It then occurred to us that our friend and her husband would only be about another 3/4 of an hour and it would be rude not to stay and say hello while the opportunity arose. We kind of feel a bit miffed when others do not take the time to see us due to their schedules and so it would be wrong for us not to. We were glad we did turn around and due to the wonders of FB managed to let them know we were there at the airport. We drove them to a nearby mall and had lunch there and it was great to be able to do a bit of catching up. I made sure they had the right kind of bus tickets and explained how to use the buses and so off we went on our separate ways.

The rose that Heather gave me last year has burst into bloom

We actually have a decent number of apples on our apple tree
this year. It's been a long time coming

We went to a meeting this week. We were introduced to a chap and I thought his name sounded familiar, it turned out I had met him a couple of years ago on the way back from Estonia in Valmiera where he lectures. The meeting was to do with setting up a marketing strategy for the area for which the group have won a substantial sum to get it up and running. It should be interesting how that progresses.

I finally got the last of the squashes and cucumbers out. It was
easier to have them in the greenhouse to water them, but
hopefully we will get more regular rains now - but hopefully
not as much as last year

Chicken apartment living. This is a faster
solution to get the chicks out of their small cage.
They are getting too big and needed more space
another ark would take too much time at the
moment and so we decided to add another section
underneath the other chicken hutch. There should
be enough room for them all. I just have to remember
to chuck my weeds in there to keep them occupied.

As usual a weedy garden, but tidier than it was

The buckwheat is growing well 

Cranberries flowering

The buckwheat has germinated in the second plot too. It
doesn't take long as Ian only seeded this on Thursday

The grass looks much better now it has rained. You can see
the other chicken arks under the oak trees. We had to do a cull
of cockerels this week. There were three cockerels in one of the
arks and they were fighting each other and harassing the hens.
The hens were loosing feathers on the backs of their heads and
egg count was down. We were rewarded today with five eggs
from this ark today. 

Our blackcurrant crop is ripening

Our pond is much fuller now. This picture makes it look like
it is nearly full, but the grassy edges should be under water.

I should be doing....

What a difference a week makes at this time of the year. The
grass is growing fast, the trees are leafing up and the sun is
getting quite hot at times. We are already suntanned due to
working outside so much.

I know what I should be doing and that is doing some more writing on my paper. I have a jobs list as long as your arm at the moment. Typical May really and something always unexpected turns up, so another job to apply for, another conference to go to and a myriad of other things that take longer than I feel they should do. All need prep work, or finishing off. Life is busy, but I know it is a season and there should be some downtime later on.

The Schisandra Chenesis is flowering this year, last year the
flowers got caught in the frost.

Anxiously awaiting the inevitable

The good news is that we have completed one of the jobs that has to be done every year about now the shearing of our alpacas. We did the boys yesterday. It wasn't too bad at all and Ian has got faster, however it is always the setting up, the clearing up in between and sorting out the fleece when there is only two of us that takes so much time. At least this year, it did not feel particularly stressful, the animals were on the whole cooperative enough when down, apart from Brencis who is proving to be a bit of a handful when it comes to trying to work with him. He's a big lad and so when it comes to manoeuvring if he doesn't want to go it takes a lot to move him and yet when he wants to cooperate like going on walks, he is no trouble at all.

A few outside too. George is the great escape artist and had to
be returned to this enclosure several times

All set up and ready to go

Suave!

When we had finished shearing we had a lady and her son turn up unexpectedly. We hadn't even had much chance to eat. We are open to visitors coming on, but so often they have a knack of turning up, just at our most busy time. Oh well! Can't complain too much. We also had another visit later, but at least this one was planned and we were able to talk farming over a cup of herb tea straight from the garden. Today we sheared the girls. No animal likes being taken for shearing, but Aggie especially seemed to appreciate the coolness of less fleece; she ran up to Ian later on this afternoon and gave him a gentle nuzzle - we like to think it is her way of saying thanks, but maybe we are just anthropomorphising her actions. Still it is nice to feel appreciated.

A rather traumatised Freddie, after his first shearing. He did
recover though and came up and ate out of my hand

The yearly, "who are you again?" They don't recognise the
other alpacas once sheared and so go around smelling each
other to remind themselves who is who.

The three musketeers

Talking of feeling appreciated, we've had a few visitors this week who have lifted our spirits somewhat. There are times we wonder what on earth we are doing, but then there are those moments when people say something and it makes sense again. One group, included a grandmother, mother and son. The son was fortunately very good at English and translated well and he himself was very curious about alpacas and what we were doing here in Latvia. His mother thought it was good that we were here and working on the land, she liked what we were doing. It lifts us when people appreciate us being here and loving the land on which we work. It makes me sad to think that so many folks from foreign lands are not appreciated, even if they work really hard producing from the land, especially those folks who are harvesting the foods for the UK. Not a job that many Brits want to do and yet they are often considered unwanted, economic migrants etc.

Enjoying the sunshine and making up for being cooped up
for most of the day

Mr. P with his trimmed teeth. Oh yes! Ian is also an alpaca
dentist and I am his able assistant

Sorry George, that haircut does not look good on you. It looked
fine when we did it and then it all flopped again and hides his
eyes. He will be getting another trim soon

Sunrise

Another group of visitors were some returnees from the week before. They had asked if they could take photos of the alpacas as a surprise for a couple getting married. The problem was that we are having some quite hot weather at the moment and the alpacas needed shearing and would not look quite so fluffy for a mid-June wedding photo shoot. We explained we would be shearing this week for that reason, so they came with the couple this last Saturday before we sheared for some pre-wedding shoots. The sun fortunately shone for them, as of course it had been a little overcast in the afternoon. The wind was cool, but even so, it looks like they got plenty of good photos and we got some good photos of them taking photos. Brencis was an absolute star, poking his nose in quite often. He's only after food of course, but he's gentle enough not to be too pushy - most of the time anyway. We can't share our photos though until mid-June, so I shall have to leave you in suspense on that.

An elder tree coming into flower

Hmm! I intend making holes in these bales and putting in some
squash plants. I think I may have to deal with some snails first

The ploughed dock field

We haven't spent much time with moving furniture this week, we have been trying to organise the final removals though. The problem is that we are not the only ones busy at this time of the year and so we are still waiting. We can hear tractors going constantly at the moment as people plough their fields or prepare the land. Ian has been doing a bit of ploughing on our land too. We hadn't planned on doing much ploughing but we have an area that has become a dock field. One of the best ways of dealing with it, according to a recent publication by the Organic Research Centre in the UK, is to plough, let the roots dry -which is helpful on sunny and windy days like they are at the moment - then take out as much as possible before planting with buckwheat that will compete with the docks. It's an ongoing process.

Asparagus is growing well. I hope this bed does better than
the last one. We got two harvests out of it and then they all died
on us

It is looking like it could be a good fruit year. Our plums
are actually flowering properly this year. We put them in
about 7 years now, so about time we got something.

Besides the alpacas we also have three sheep. Last year one of the sheep was so loud and persistent that she went for a rendezvous with the freezer. Unfortunately her daughter seems to have inherited some of those traits. She is not quite so loud or persistent, just nearly, but she also has an added quirk. She ranks as one of the most stupid of sheep. Sheep are not renowned for their intelligence and we have had some issues over the years with their ability to panic first and think later. However, this quirk beats that. Last year both lambs were eating through the fence when the grass started greening up, fair enough! This year, the most stupid one has not realised she is now too big to do this. She can get her head through, but not back again. She has not just done this once or even twice but about five times now on nearly consecutive nights. Usually she waits until we are just going to bed and ends up standing their bleating away, until we manage to get her head back through.

Oh yes! The caravan is out of the greenhouse and we can
sleep in in the mornings, as the cockerels are now much
further away.

The grapes are flowering

As I mentioned last week another of those seasonal jobs is getting the seeds in, unfortunately we seem to be going through the dry, windy phase of the year that makes planting most seeds a bit of a waste of time unless we are prepared to water them in by hand or hose. We don't know how long the dry spell will last, often a month, once it was two months and so we are cautious about overdoing it. I have planted trays in the greenhouse and they are doing well and I have planted up some of the tomato and pepper plants I started off a while ago. So at least that is progress.

Two groups of chicken arks outside and tomatoes planted

We have about 20 chicks too. Rather more than we normally
get. The last one to be born has proved to be more resilient
than anticipated for a late one. It was helped out of its shell
which usually means it won't survive. It was kicking and
flailing around, which is not a good sign, but recovered
after all the shell bits were soaked off it. It was put in with the
rest, which usually means it get battered about but it was still
up and running about. I did traumatise it by soaking off some
more stuff off its bottom today and it knocked it off balance.
I found it quivering in the corner. I gave it some fluid, put
it in a box for a few hours and it recovered again. 

A new peony to add to my rose bed

I have to confess to going a bit wild at the spring market this year though. I want to make the area around where we spend our summer months prettier with flowers and not just herbs. Mind you, all the plants I bought also yield something edible, so that's a win. I have been creating more raised beds with rotten wood to put them in and I am pleased with how they are turning out. I just hope I manage to keep the weeds at bay now.

Top right is my new jasmine and I have also moved a
southernwood from a bed getting taken over by autumn
raspberries

Still more to plant in the green box

Pansies from the market and a rosmary under the jar

Our new little portable washing machine for out on the land.
We will mainly be washing fleeces in it

Mari's cut doesn't look so bad at all. At least we didn't
have to scalp her this year. Just a light trim on the head

Lady V moaned all the while she was waiting, but wasn't so
bad once she was down. She knows the routine.