Weirdness continues

It snowed

Well we follow a weird year with a.... another weird year. It has only just begun and we all watched with astonishment as people invaded the capitol building in Washington DC. I'm not quite sure what was the more shocking, that people actually desecrated what is considered a sacred space for American democracy or the fact that they didn't seem prepared for that to happen. For me it was the latter. I'm even more shocked when I hear of people who still believe Trump is actually good at heart and this was not his fault. I don't get the impression he cares one bit. All he seems to care about is that people think he's wonderful no matter how much he disregards their well-being. It was a relief to read an article by Ed Stetzer (dean and professor at Wheaton College and a leader at the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center) that suggests the leaders of the evangelical church need to take a long, hard look at the whole episode and consider what sort of repentance is needed to have followed Trump so gullibly. Character does matter!

Ginger Tom is obviously into ice-lollies. 

Snow outside the apartment. 

The weird year also continues with lockdowns and rising Covid numbers in much of Europe. We have had our weekend curfew nights extended here in Latvia until the end of the month and the hospitals are struggling to cope. My heart was torn by one medic friend of mine who posted a notice to show that staff were being called into a hospital in Northern Ireland to deal with an emergency situation and bluntly said, forget your conspiracy theories, wash your hands and stay home, your actions are killing people. What drives a kind and caring young medic to say such things so bluntly? Another friend of mine is a nurse in an ICU and she told me how sad it is to see so many just gasping for air. These friends of mine are not heroes they are just ordinary people but doing extraordinary things.

Brencis does like to sit in the doorway, rain or shine
or in this case snow.

After a day of fine snow with more to come
over the next few days.

Heroes are expected to do super-human things but these folks are not super-human. They would be the first to admit to being flawed human beings like the rest of us. Someone to look up to but not idolise. So I won't call them heroes because that does them a massive disservice. It puts them on a pedestal that is easy to fall off because they do get angry or irritable with people from time to time, like we all do. They don't need us to clap them, they just need us to do the extraordinary thing of staying home until this situation can be got under control, so that they can continue to do the extraordinary things of caring for whoever comes through the door, whether they believe that Covid19 is a real threat or not, whether they wore a mask or not, whether they agree to take the vaccine or not. 

We hear of many alpacas that would choose to 
stay outside no matter what the weather. Our lazy
lot choose to stay inside. Sensible, I agree, but
there isn't much to do except eat hay inside and 
put weight on.

Frosted patterns on the greenhouse plastic. 
Nature is quite an artist!

I've not been out to the land recently. I've been home still sorting through stuff. I finally got around to actually doing some sewing and that was chugging along nicely until my sewing machine snagged and then it kept on snagging. I was beginning to wish I had never bought the super-duper all singing, all dancing quilting machine - okay it's not that grand but it is still a bit grander than your cheap and cheerful machine. I've had issues of it snagging so easily, which has driven me mad. It doesn't like old thread because it's too fluffy apparently - but that would be such a waste and besides this is a quilting machine, it's supposed to be used for making quilts from old fabrics isn't it? So old thread shouldn't be an issue? I walked away from it and pottered around the house. I sorted out half a bag of potatoes for a friend since we have so many and then looked up the issue on the internet. 

We have a few options for clearing
snow

A good job really

There's been quite a bit of drifting and so the 
snow is building up in places

I found a video that described the steps to sorting out a jammed machine. Half of it seemed a bit over the top, but I followed the steps and the last part involved changing the sewing machine needle. It was at this point that I remembered that changing the needle should be the first thing you try. Doh! So now I've ordered a lot of needles so that I can make those lovely patchwork dresses for my grandkids that I mentioned last week and not jam my machine. After sorting out the machine, I finally managed to finish the seams on some t-shirts that were too big for me. I need some new t-shirts ready for next year and many of mine have now got holes in them. 

Pathways get difficult to see 

It's a good job that the ground was still soft so
that Ian can put the electric posts in. The wire
is not electrified but works on the principle
that deer have poor depth vision. They are
happy to jump high but not cross two wires. This
is to stop them chewing the bark on the fruit
trees.

This week has been a week of breaking things and it makes me so nervous with my new computer. Every time I close it I check and double check that nothing, absolutely nothing is in the way. At least the sewing machine wasn't really broken but I had a few hours of thinking it was. Unfortunately for Ian the camera that is supposed to work with his microscope really is broken. This was another of those bits of kit we wonder if we made a mistake in buying. He already had to have the camera replaced shortly after he got the microscope and he hasn't had much use out of it. He has a windows computer from our son-in-law specifically to work with the camera. Normally he doesn't need it because he can see that there are only a few parasite eggs in our alpaca poo samples, but just occasionally there is something on the slide that he can't identify. The idea is that he takes a photo of it and sends it to the lady who taught him the techniques for doing parasite testing on alpacas, only now he can't and we really need to know what it is that he has seen. This episode did at least lead to a solution and Ian found he could use the camera on his phone to take a photo down the eyepiece. Phew!

There is a roadway there somewhere, down to the
barn.

This was taken in mid-December but you can see
the problem with her legs to some extent. They
also bend inwards making it difficult to walk.
You can also see on our Facebook page in this
video (link here)

The test he was doing was on a sample from Veronica or Lady V. Just recently her health has been suffering. She is pretty hungry, losing weight and her legs are getting more and more bent. It could be parasites, it could be her teeth that are often a problem in old alpacas or it could be rickets despite the Vitamin D injections. Ian has set up a hoist to help him get her up every morning, because I'm not out there in winter time. Once she's up, she's fine and stays up for quite a long time. Unfortunately, this is not a good time of the year for an alpaca to be down. It snowed most of today and will continue on and off , but mainly on for another day, before the temperature takes quite a dip to around -18C. We were nervous of the repercussions for her over winter with her bad legs already before she started losing weight. Oh the joys of owning geriatric alpacas, she is 17 1/2 now, not the oldest alpaca we've had but still getting on a bit.

George is such a handsome chap

A little snow on George's ear

Eyre is such a grumpy looking cat. She's actually
quite grumpy by nature too. She's taken to 
following Ian around the farm and now even
she is not as afraid of the alpacas. 

To add to the frustrations, Ian has been struggling with adding his photos to my old computer. I just copied them across when I upgraded to that machine, but Ian has lots of additional information he wants to copy across too and it won't do it automatically. As you know his photos are precious and it is generally his photos that I use in this blog. He spends ages labelling them all so that he can easily find photos in the future. He finally found some software that would do the conversion from one version of Apple's photo storage software to another, which involved having to leave the computer plugged in for three days. It was tense. His frustrations were added to when he managed to drop a 2 litre glass jar of milk outside the door of the apartment. Not good on a freezing cold and snowy day. It's a bit hard to see shards of broken glass in the light of a head torch against the snow in a pool of milk. Sigh! I guess that's partly the problem of being ecological and reusing glass jars to buy milk from one of our neighbours instead of buying plastic bottles from the supermarket.

The boys' paddock is there somewhere

At least the snow will anchor the plastic down 
over the bales. 

Still, there is no crying over spilt milk as they say. There are more important issues in this world and our troubles are small compared to others'. It is weird though how it is the small and insignificant things that can take on massive proportions in a time of chaos and uncertainty. It is too easy to get angry and annoyed over the slightest thing when there are more important things to get angry about. At least I think we are beginning to find a bit of balance, may be it's the vitamin D, or the fish oil tablets making a difference. Funny how Ian usually begins to start whistling after taking fish oil tablets when he has had a period without them. Not quite sure what the effect is, but they seem to affect his mood in a good way.

We are starting to get eggs again. We have really
appreciated the eggs this year, much better than 
the eggs you can normally buy.

The chicks have adjusted well to their new ark

They are growing well

Who are you looking at?

We were worried about the cold for the chicks
and we still have the cold temperatures to come, 
but I think there is quite a bit of insulation now.
When we bought this greenhouse we bought
the one that would take the biggest snowloads. 
Looks like that might have been a wise choice.

Snow has been building around the shed
too.

The bacon's in the cat and other tales

Sofie earlier on this year in the greenhouse

Oh yes! Sneaky puss! It took me ages to work out why there was no bacon in the bag that I had brought for our lunch. I thought for a while that I must have been having a senior moment. If it had been our other cat Bella, the evidence would have been all over the floor, but not Sofie. Since Bella is still missing it could only have been Sofie. She is so sneaky that she gently takes the food out of bags and so the only evidence was an empty bag inside another larger plastic bag. Unfortunately it meant our guests over the weekend had to have an egg and veggie burger instead. At least for one of them that was fine, as she is vegetarian.

January 3rd and our snow has nearly all gone

So with that introduction you can tell that we have indeed had guests over this last week. It was my crazy young friend, who I meet up with from time to time and her boyfriend, who I haven't met before. We had a good few days, despite the rather miserable wet weather we had. The snow that fell last week left us under the rather relentless rain that heralded the New Year, but it did fair up just enough for our friends to pay a visit to the alpacas of course. Our new friend is a chef and so he commandeered the kitchen one early evening and made his own version of pumpkin pie and rather nice it was too. He can come again anytime.

January 4th and it is back again

I love the way that the frost has made a star pattern on our
barn door

Because the weather was rather dreich (I do love that Scottish word, so evocative of wet, miserable weather) that we were sat in the caravan for much of the visit to our land, but while we were sat there, two of our cockerels who had just started crowing, decided to start a fight. Normally when our cockerels fight, it is because a slow developing bird suddenly finds its voice and tries to challenge the top cockerel. The challenger then finds out that it is a stupid idea and rapidly backs down. These two though, appeared more evenly matched and after a couple of minutes we realised neither of the cockerels were giving in. It wasn't pleasant to watch at all. Ian had to step into the ark and grab one of the cockerels and isolate him. As the weather was still mild, he was eventually placed in the horse box and we dispatched the pair the next day, as neither were for breeding, although we had hoped they would put a little more weight on. Still tonights tea (I'm northern, so it is still breakfast, dinner or lunch and tea in our house in that order) was roast chicken, roast veggies, mashed potatoes and steamed beans, all home-grown and very tasty.

A frosty morning

Our hens seem to be responding to the longer days and the relatively mild weather we have been having, by upping the production of eggs. We even had four eggs one day from our four very productive hens that have been keeping us in eggs over the winter, normally we have been getting been one to two per day from that ark, occasionally three. Another chicken from one of the outside hen huts has also started laying and I'm not sure if it was shock or fear, but one of the young hens started laying for the first time that was in the ark where the cock fight happened. Maybe they took me seriously that they would end up as stock or soup if they didn't get a move on and start laying.

I made this felt waistcoat from Tellus' fleece. 

I have been enjoying some down time over Christmas and getting some presents made. I know, I'm a bit late - No I'm very late actually! At least I feel on a bit of a roll now and I feel like I have sort of got the cleaning under control in our apartment, which leaves me freer to create. I have been fine as long as it was handwork, such as knitting and hand embroidery, but eventually I managed to get organised to do some sewing on my sewing machine. Unfortunately that didn't last long as my machine started to mangle up the stitching. The bobbin case cannot handle the old cottons I have and the annoying thing is that even when I have bought supposedly new cotton from the local shop, that wasn't new enough either. I am not happy with my machine, a BabyLock Quilters Choice - so not a cheap machine and I am beginning to regret buying it. When it works, it is very good, but not much use to me if it is temperamental over the cottons I use. I did a little research on the internet and I think I can buy 10 bobbin cases for my machine from China for the same price of two in Europe or America and then I can use a silicon spray on the threads to stop them snagging on the bobbin cases. If that doesn't work, I will be very annoyed. Only thing stopping me, is that I have never used Alibaba before or bought anything directly from China before. Hmmm! At least today, four parcels were winging their way across the waters to the UK with some belated Christmas presents.

A close up of the alpacas that I cut out and sewed onto
the waistcoat front. I love the bobbly texture of the felt.
Not quite sure why it did that, but it works I think!

Some felt Christmas tree decorations. The wooden bead
heads were also turned by Ian on his pole lathe

I said last week that the snow had come and gone and come and gone again. We have had a little of the same weather again this last week, as you may have gathered, but there was at least enough snow to finally get my skis out. I don't think I got them out at all last winter. The wind was a bit keen and the snow not so perfect, so I didn't ski for long, but at least I did manage something. The snow blower has also had another couple of outings, as we try to keep the greenhouse clear. We are perhaps a little paranoid about it not falling down, but one 18m by 6m greenhouse falling down in the snow is quite enough, thank you! There was also enough snow to get our car stuck, or rather enough ice underneath the snow to get it stuck. Fortunately it was out on the land and so Ian just got the tractor out and dragged it out while I tried to steer. It was a little difficult to get it heading in the right direction, but we managed.

More snow blowing duties

Making a path up to the sheep

My exercise for the day, clearing the
snow from around the greenhouse
that had slid off the roof.

Today I feel like I have spent most of it, trying to organise a meeting. It had been due to happen tomorrow, but the longer distance travellers were reluctant to travel for a one and a half hour meeting when it takes them four hours to drive down and the lady we were meeting up with has to work, so couldn't meet for any longer. I was a tad annoyed that I had to cancel it at the last moment, but in the end it works out better for me, as it means I can get a lift back up to Tartu and so fits in better with my timetable. Some you win, some you lose!