Another year over and a new one just begun

Yes the clouds did part and the sun did shine for a short while
out on the land

Well after consultation with the ancient texts we were able to confirm that the glowing ball in the sky today was actually the sun. This resulted in so much joy and jubilation in our household that I turned the light off. In other words, it has been pretty dreich here. A great Scottish word to encompass the damp, dismal, drizzly, dark days that also has an effect on mood, especially sun loving Ian, who was not in the happiest frame of mind anyway, with the worry over Aggie, the mud to contend with and the rain that stops just about all outdoor activities and saps his energy to do much else. The joy lasted all morning, until it started snowing that is ....and then all wood chopping had to cease.

The view from the apartment in our village, where the sun
also shone

Aggie now has a mucky mark on her face from the cream that
the vet gave him to rub in

The vet came out to see Aggie earlier this week and she tried to drain the lump on her face, but there didn't seem to be anything to drain. Instead it is a hard lump. It is quite possible it is something to do with a new set of teeth coming through. We won't know that for certain though until we have another vet come out with a portable x-ray machine. Something we will try and arrange once the vet opens again tomorrow. I remember a friend of ours a few years ago speaking about farming and animals and she said "It's easy, no animals, no problems". Well she was right there!

Alpaca hoof prints

There won't be much skiing at the moment on the ski hill.
The snow has come and gone and come again

I have spent most of this week on and off, finishing off the details for our first felting course of the year in June. We are limiting the places so that people can have a good experience with more personal tuition and it also means we get to see how it all works. Consequently we are nearly full already. This is a great start for us.  (If you would like to see Heather's perspective of her time with us in Latvia planning the felting workshops that I mentioned last week then you can see her blog here. It is highly recommended as some of her photos were superb and I think she captures this country beautifully)

Still eating Christmas trees

It was a tad breezy some days

If you know anyone who would like to join us then do send them over to our website Griezītes Alpakas, you will find a programme and details there. It has been hard work trying to sort out the specifics, but we now have a programme that we are happy with that has a good balance between excursions to see the local area, a tour of Riga and workshops too of course. If we get more interest we will run at least another one of these sort later on in the year. We are also nearly sorted for some shorter workshops too, but we need to just work on the details for that some more.

But the plants are a little confused with the cold spells followed
by the warmer weather

A bit brighter today and at least the rain stopped

It has been a bit of a slog trying to work everything out because I also came down with a cold. Trying to plan a new venture with brain fog is not advisable. It is a good job I am not often ill or for very long. There was only really one day when I truly felt awful and I felt that I could have traced the whole of my lymphatics system by tracking the aches and pains, after that it was just a matter of waiting for it to clear up. I began to feel a bit overwhelmed again though with the work I needed to do and trying to adjust to my new computer. I don't like my MacBook Air at all. It is the first time I have felt that I am taking a truly retrograde step in computing, as it does not seem as near intuitive as I expect from a Mac nor does it have some of the functionality of previous operating systems. There has been much huffing and puffing.

A chance for a stroll in the sun

A little sunbathing for some alarmingly fat sheep. We just
feel they are waiting until the worst weather to give birth

At least now I feel I am beginning to get down the list of things to do, although most of the things I have accomplished seem to have been fairly short and quick things to do, which still leaves some major work to get done over the next few weeks. Hopefully I can start to whittle away at those before my time whittles away.

More sunshine

A reflective Brencis

I decided this year to actually stay awake and welcome in the New Year. I didn't last year and Ian didn't again this year, so it was just me. That was fine. I just felt I needed to be awake for what lies ahead this year. This year has been quite a struggle for us in many ways. The loss of two of our adult animals, a cria and some lambs. The hot dry start to our growing season and then the ongoing wet summer that meant our hay was still being cut in September. and a lot less of it than normal Trying to get work done for my course and so on. These seem to drown out the good points at times, such as the fact we had over 300 visitors to the farm and we actually made enough money to cover the feed of the alpacas. The fact that despite the lack of income over the years, we are still managing to get by here in Latvia and love this place and call it our home. What will next year be like? I'm not sure, but I do know I want to be awake to see what it will look like.

Finally the light is just right to be able to capture the curls
in Mr. P's fleece and the fact he does like to wear his food

The boys taking advantage that the rain has stopped

Now I have to mention something that I have so far neglected, my youngest son. It has taken a week of messages backwards and forwards until we managed to find a time when we were both online and free to chat at the same time as Ian was home too. Apparently the mention of only talking with two of my children in the blog last week was taken as a subtle hint to my youngest that he had been remiss in so far not chatting to me- good I am glad there was a tad bit of guilt in there and yes I have left this until last so you have to read down the whole blog to find mention of the fact we Skyped today, son. Only joking. It was good to chat with hm and his family today. We were a bit silly at times, we watched the cat attacking them over the top of the computer, which was resting on her scratching post anyway and we generally chatted about this and that. As the old phone advert used to say "It's good to talk". Now I just have to catch up with my Mum.

The ice has receded for now, but it won't be for long. The
forecast is for some sharp drops in temperatures soon/ 

They're here!

APH2 (alpaca house 2 of course) complete with new
fence and gates

We had 203 sheep last week! "What! How did that happen?" is maybe racing through your brain at this point, especially if you have been following this blog. I had even hoped to have a picture of them, but that was not to be. You'll have to take my word for it. One of our neighbouring farms has lots of sheep and was running out of space to move them to and asked if they could put their sheep on our ski hill. We were delighted to accommodate them as it meant that we could finally get some mobile manure depositors up there, to put some added fertility into the ground to enhance the grass we grow next year. We have taken hay from the ski hill for the last four years and put nothing back into it and so it was more than ready for that. However, if you have been following this blog, you will know that we were expecting to get our next group of alpacas and sure enough they have arrived safely and I am assured they are tucked up nice and snug in their new accommodation, which Ian finished off this week.

Meet Estelle, Snowdrop, Veronika and Alicia.

The transfer in Riga! Helped along by some willing helpers
dragged out of the comfort of their beds on a Sunday morning

Come on girls this is your new home. You'll like it here.
Honest!

I had hoped to get to see the girls before I took off to Estonia again, but it wasn't meant to be. It was partly my fault that I didn't. I have done that much research on the internet to try and find transport that matches up that I got a bit confused. I had decided to go in with Ian in the morning, see the alpacas and then catch the train, but since the ferry came in at 11am and my train, so I thought, was setting off at 12pm, that didn't give a lot of time. I did catch up with the transport people to tell them where they should be as they had set off in the wrong direction and fortunately parked up not far away, but I didn't really feel like asking for a peep to see what they were like, because I didn't want to disturb them too much and it was at the edge of the old part of Riga .... and I had a train to catch. We had already been joking with people that if they heard of some escaped alpacas in the middle of Riga, they would know they were ours, so I didn't want to tempt fate too much. I got to the train station and realised my mistake, after thinking that maybe I had missed it for a brief moment. Arriving early at least meant I got a cup of tea, a bite to eat and a much needed loo stop. Some friends of ours also came with us into Riga to help make sure the girls were loaded properly since I wasn't certain about being available to help and it meant they were there to help at the other end in the unloading. I gather it went without a hitch and even better than our boys last year. At least I have pictures and they are so sweet looking.

Hmmm! Nice grass! What do you think of our new place?

Veronica! She is pregnant along with Snowdrop

Our animals have been a bit odd this last week, I understand it is something to do with the time of the year, heading into winter and all that. Anyway maybe you know the scene from Chicken Run when the farmer says "They're up to something" well they were, some of our little chicks made their escape, some flew at the door and some tunnelled out. Ian got them back into the ark quite easily with a little persuasion of some food, unfortunately not necessarily the right ones in the right ark, since we have two from which they had managed to escape. We were intending on keeping them separate for breeding purposes and this made it a little tricky. Fortunately there are differences, but we are not confident we know them all yet as Ian hasn't spent the winter in the greenhouse studying them in his spare time. We did manage to work out the majority though - those that were being picked on were in the wrong ark. It was also noticeable that there weren't so many brown chickens in one of the arks, as previously there had been more or less equal number of brown and white ones. The little chicks weren't the only ones misbehaving, James our male chicken went for Ian and was swiftly reprimanded for it, but then he took off and we couldn't get him in. After a few minutes chasing him around and since Ian wasn't feeling well at all we decided to leave him to it and if he became fox food then so be it. The following day, the majority of the chickens including James did not stray far from their hen house for a change but one of the big brown chickens went missing this time.

Snowdrop, step sister to Herkules, one of our boys. Can
you spot the resemblence?

Alicia, she is the oldest one of the group. She was going to
go into retirement and hasn't had a cria (baby) this year but
her condition has improved enough for our seller to say she
maybe able to get pregnant next year. We do hope so, as
it will be nice to have some different colours amongst our
herd.

The chickens weren't the only ones making their escape this week, on the same night that James was acting up one of our alpacas was sat outside the wire fence when we came back to put them away. Ian had spent the day at home because of not feeling well and I had been sorting out our home, trying to make some sense of the mess in it. Fortunately Herkulees didn't run off, just sat down on the wrong side of the fence and when Ian went up to sort him out by laying the fence down for him to walk over, he walked straight in, almost as if to say "I've been waiting for you to turn up, so I can get back in." Somehow the wire was snapped, but not sure that Herkules our alpaca would have done that, maybe it was already snapped and Herkules being Herkules would have eaten his way under the other wires and before he knew it would have been on the wrong side of the fence.

Estelle, the baby of the herd, she is 2 years old and her
wool is incredibly soft. She will be mated for the first time
next year. Notice the sturdy fencing, that is to keep the
male out as much as anything. Or to keep the girls in maybe

New glasses! Not the most flattering picture, but at least I'm
smiling

We both got new glasses this week. Mine are varifocals and so I had to wait a while between getting my eyes tested and them being ready, Ian just needs some reading glasses and they were ready in about 20 mins. While we were in town we also got the piece of paper sorted out that allows us to get buildings registered on our land and hopefully they will now send the tax bills to us, instead of another place where they often get delayed, before finding their way back to us to pay. At least this is progress, we can now both read small print again and we get a step in the right direction for house building, well kind of...

Our giant orange pepper. It is getting to the stage where
the peppers need harvesting, green or not!

Ian having a chat with the new arrivals

The next piece of news is a little difficult to explain, but we ended up buying another apartment. We didn't set out to do this, but someone asked us to help, as theirs was being repossessed by the bank and they would be homeless otherwise. We don't intend to own it for long, otherwise our own dream of building a house will draw even further away, but we didn't feel we could let this family down, we tried to think what would God want us to do in this situation. Hopefully their circumstances will change soon and we can sort something out, but until then we now own three apartments and before you think us very rich, they are not expensive being situated in very rural Latvia. We did feel a little bit down as we knew we were risking our own house build, because savings won't last forever anyway and it was already beginning to look like we might end up living in just the basement of the house with no hope of building further up, but at least it would be warm, dry and cheap

Ian dug out the dried up pond a little more
so that we hopefully have more water next
year,. It looks a bit of a mess at the
moment. Still it is starting to fill with the
damper atmosphere and the occasional
rain. Still more is needed to recharge the
wells of locals before the winter. 

The Stockholm-Riga ferry which our girls arrived on

It was at this down point a strange thing happened. Ian had been playing hunt the trays that he uses to feed our male alpacas with, this is a regular game as they bury their feeding trays under the hay ... I'm sure they don't do it deliberately, or maybe they do ...... anyway on this particular day, Ian was looking at the gap at the base of the shed to see if the alpacas had hidden it there and spotted a whole load of eggs. Our chickens have been laying intermittently, which is only to be expected at this time of the year and so weren't too surprised that we hadn't seen many. Ian occasionally has a look around to see if he can find any, but not spotted many in odd places for a while. The little dears though had managed to accumulate 22 eggs and as Ian carried them back up to the caravan, the word that came into his head was nest egg! So call us daft or whatever, we think we will find a nest egg sometime, maybe when we aren't looking. So that raised our hopes again anyway.

Meet the biomowers

The biomowers, enjoying the shad. The one in front is the
boss!

As you know, Ian has spent a lot of time mowing the grass to try and keep the ground elder at bay and the fly numbers down. It's been hard work for him, so when a friend of ours asked if we wanted any sheep we said "yes." We have been talking for a while about getting some, just to keep the grass down, particularly in the harder to reach areas that are more difficult to cut, like between trees and on steep banks. Sheep are easier to get hold of than alpacas and maybe only a stop gap until we have enough alpacas to keep the grass down anyway, although there is one advantage of sheep over alpacas. Alpacas are relatively tidy animals who have a poo pile, but that is not good for randomly distributing manure around the grassland to improve it, so it might work to have a mix of animals, maybe sheep with good fleeces that can be mixed with the alpaca fleece. A while ago I was talking with a weaver who wove with alpaca wool and said a mix of 25% sheep wool and 75% alpaca wool meant that the wool garment would hold its shape better. Something to bear in mind!

Inside the hutch. They've been seeing rather a lot of that
hutch just lately. Oh yes! They are still in bad books.

Our introduction to the sheep was not endearing to Ian. I got the look that said "And whose stupid idea was this and there had better be some improvement fast." We did quite well .... for the first five minutes. We picked them up from our friend's place, took them back to ours. Lined up the trailer with the gate, I stood on one side to stop them escaping and the gate was used on the other side to stop them going the other way. Ian got into the trailer and directed them out and off they charged, straight into the paddock. Result! They even went running off a bit and then stopped to start eating. It was at this point we made the fatal mistake, we went to see how they were doing. Even though we had quite a powerful electric fence on, the fear of us was enough to make one bolt through the fence and then quickly followed by the other two. For the next half hour, we vainly tried to get them back but all we succeeded in doing was herding them into a spot where they were content to graze and could keep them contained but not secure. I have to add at this point I was meant to be resting and so I need to back track a little before carrying on the saga.

Thee little fellas though are getting much better behaved.
They have really learnt when it is time to put themselves
away now.

Earlier on in the day I went to the dentist, if you follow my blog then you will be familiar with the description of a big Russian speaking guy with tattoos up his arms. I also found out, due to the type of white coat he had on this particular day, he was tattooed across his chest too. Not the kind of guy you would want to bump into on a dark night, only really he's a big softy at heart. I had gone to get my tooth sorted that had been temporarily filled before I went to Florence, but half way through he suddenly stopped and started chatting to the assistant. I could tell at this point something was not right and they told me to phone my friend. Out comes the trusty translator, my mobile phone and I phoned through. Apparently I had managed to crack the tooth vertically and the only option was to extract it, was that okay. Ooerrr! Yup! Not much choice really. It was at this point I was really glad that he was kind of this big scary looking guy and not some wee slip of a lass like the last time I had a tooth extracted. The last instruction though from my translator was that I needed to rest afterwards. Right! Well out came the tooth and the dentist patted me on the shoulder reassuringly, I think it was more to reassure himself than me though, so I patted him on his hand reassuringly back and laughed. He even showed me the tooth - good job I'm not squeamish.

Ooh! Ooh! What are those woolly scary things?

So back to the sheep. I didn't chase the sheep around the field, I just walked, honest! We phoned our friend and asked her to come over, as we thought they might respond to her better, and she was rather more clued in about them than we were. She might be but the youngsters were not and they were not going to cooperate with anybody. Eventually, however, we managed to get them into the alpaca paddock, as that was easier and shut them in. That was where they stopped overnight. The next day we let the alpacas out and they were not happy. Our three big brave lads, hared around the paddock a bit and when they ran, the sheep took the cue and ran with them - well that's what herd animals do isn't it! Eventually they settled down a bit, but the three brave fellas spent the day crowded together at the top of the field in the corner in the blazing heat of a very hot day and if the sheep - who by now couldn't care less and were more interested in just eating grass - came anywhere near, they started off haring around the field again, first of all followed by the sheep. After awhile the sheep gave up the game and either concentrated on eating or sat in the shade of the chicken hutch. We were beginning to wonder at this stage who had the most brains, the alpacas or the sheep, after all the sheep were only lambs really, born this year, in other words three very young females as opposed to our alpacas who are at least five years old and above.

Hmmm! Clover

The next day, they were left in the paddock and each night when Ian fastened up the other animals he fed the sheep too and they soon forgot their fear. Sheep concentrate is far more interesting after all. The day before I went out to the land, Ian fixed a long corridor to the sheep paddock and before we let the alpacas out, the idea was that he would entice the sheep up to the place where they should be and I follow quietly with the mobile gate that we had had to use to block a potential bolt hole in the alpaca paddock - one that the alpacas never bother to try and get through, but we felt sure the sheep would and they are smaller too. Well that was the idea! When we got there one of the sheep was out of the paddock, there was by this time too little grass to keep them interested and one had pushed through the fence. Eventually after a bit of a song and a dance we got her back in the paddock and managed to electrify one of the strands and that concentrated their minds somewhat. We let the alpacas out and let everyone settle down a bit. We hadn't bothered electrifying the fence, as that one is rusty and needs replacing and the alpacas never bother to try and get through it. Needless to say, it will be sorted before next year when we have young cria.

Phew! Glad they've gone now

After a while we decided that they had settled down enough to do something with them, so we fastened up the alpacas and the chickens - who will cooperate reasonably well with bribery and proceeded to entice the sheep towards their enclosure. It worked and this time we decided to let them settle down before going to see how they were doing. I'm glad to say that they seem to have quite taken to their new enclosure, although we still half expect to see at least one of them running around where they shouldn't be - at least we have warned the neighbours that we have some sheep now. We were a little worried though that the low shelter that Ian had made for them to protect them from the elements seemed to be an enticement for them to jump on, they are still lambs after all and boy can they jump high - I've never seen sheep of that size jump and I've been around sheep a lot. We were surrounded by fields of them back in Derbyshire where we used to live. Maybe their a special breed of woolly jumpers (okay I won't give up the day job!) They also like the trees to shelter under and spend quite a bit of time  under them. We did wonder if they would only eat the very green grass around the edge that had been cut, but they have started to make in roads into the long grass too, so it appears they are doing the job we wanted them too. Phew!

Some buckwheat hanging to dry, ready for threshing. The
rest was baled as an experiment, but once again we are not
sure if it was dry enough, like the oats we tried earlier.
Still the chickens will get some of it anyway and if the
experiment works it is a fast way of preparing buckwheat
for the winter and the chickens can thresh it for themselves.

As for the rest of the week, it has been a time of harvesting tomatoes, onions, tomatoes, beans, tomatoes, buckwheat and did I mention tomatoes. Oh yes! The tomato glut has begun. Apart from eating tomatoes till they come out of our ears I have been mainly just bunging them in the slow cooker and making sauce for the freezer. I will do other things with it later like make our own jars of baked beans, but for now it will do to just get them cooked down and frozen. Yesterday I had tomatoes in one large slow cooker, some yellow ones in a small slow cooker, a large metal tray and a large glass dish full of tomatoes in the oven. Our house as you can imagine smells of a very rich tomato sauce.

The buckwheat all harvested now

We also had a visit from friends, one of them a fellow academic, so it was time to unwind and retell the conference to someone who could relate to it around a barbecue fire. We baked, we did and not just the food, as it was another glorious summer's day. They were a little disappointed that we hadn't got the new alpacas yet, but our boys did put on a display of rolling around the field to compensate, as it was before they were perturbed by the sheep. I also had some feedback from one of the keynote speakers at the conference. I hadn't had time to talk to him as there were some others I really needed to speak to and he had a long queue of folks waiting to speak to him anyway, so I emailed him to tell him how much I appreciated the work he was doing and thought it would have some value for my own work too, as he was re-evaluating the value of allotment gardening as not just a reactionary move governed by poverty but a lifestyle choice of people who valued tasty, organic food, no matter how much they earned. When I am examining the lives of rural inhabitants it will be great to have such a positive piece of work to reference. Anyway, as I said I emailed him and today I had a reply, apparently he had sat in on my presentation and thought I had done some good research and presented the work well. This is brilliant, as it is the first proper piece of feedback I've had about my presentation and I wondered how I had come across. I was satisfied that I had done okay, I had my work done to time and didn't go over, despite the tight time frame and so I was happy enough, so to have confirmation that it went well was quite a relief.

Surprises

Never seen this before, a rainbow in the
morning fog

I haven't been doing so well with jars just lately, thankfully this time the jars I managed to smash weren't full, unlike the full jar of tomatoes that I smashed not so long ago. This time one was at home, but embarrassingly one was in a shop. I picked up a pack of 8 bottles and at the bottom was a hole that I didn't know about until I picked it up. Oh boy! I am feeling rather clumsy at the moment, especially as I have also managed to walk into the handle of the chicken ark and have a wonderful bruise on my leg now. Must be my age! Anyway all I could do was gesture at a lady that there was a bottle on the floor and leave her to it, felt more like running off and leaving it. Today I managed to redistribute rather a lot of grape puree, leftover from making grape juice and put through the vegetable strainer. I'm not sure what happened really, but bits flew in different directions and the bowl tipped onto the counter. Thank goodness not much went anywhere else. I decided to freeze the puree since I didn't trust myself to make jam out of it just yet. Good job we went today to go and get a large chest freezer because our upright freezer is full to overflowing, as is the section under our fridge and I have hardly even started freezing things like broccoli, which is just starting to get going and beans.

"How's your children, errr I mean alpacas" said my friend
last week! Haha

It has been a smashing time from other angles too, but this time in a nice way. I got to see the 20 week scan of our first grandchild which was really exciting. It is a little difficult at times to remember that our daughter-in-law is pregnant, as we are not in constant contact or get to see them often - just one of the downsides of living far from family (although that depends on the family I guess, I am sure sometimes it could be a blessing). Planning to see them will be a challenge, especially as we are aware that our animals need to be looked after too, but I'm sure we will manage it. The scan pictures though are fascinating, especially the one where we could see the spine curving around so beautifully of the little one all curled up in Mum's tummy.

We have a squash plant. Last year we had a whole load by
this time in the year as you can see here

This week hasn't been the sort of week where we get done what we planned. The forecasts have been completely useless for us this year. The weather has been just far to unpredictable and that makes planning jobs a nightmare and that includes this week. For instance today the weather said light showers, which was the case out on the land apparently but over the apartment it was a torrential downpour for at least half an hour and some showers on and off. At least we did get one side of our land cleared of hay bales earlier this week and now they are all stacked or dumped as the case maybe. The stacked ones might be useful for bedding but we won't know until we open them but they seem like they maybe okay. The rubbish ones are stacked in a line for growing pumpkins over next year or dumped in a pile while we decide what we are going to do with the one particular part of the land. We are now debating whether to put another pond in and see if that helps to drain a field, as well as use the spare soil to raise the level of the rest of the area. We were completely whacked after clearing the bales, even though they are small there is a lot of them and by the time we had cleared around a hundred of them we could barely lift them, so we finished the job off working together, at least that way we could lift them. Awww! Sweet heh?

Not the best photo in the world but as you
can see, autumn has arrived here with this
glorious maple

I mentioned last week that our friend said autumn is the time of year for escaping animals, well it appears she's right. Not only have our alpacas been stretching the limit a little, but our neighbours cows escaped. Ian was working in the barn and I was in the greenhouse when we both heard voices and we looked out to see the neighbours cows and two of our neighbours looking rather flustered and frustrated. All of their cows had found a hole in the fence that some wild boar had made and decided that we had better grass than they had and came for a visit, or maybe as Ian said they had heard about the alpacas and fancied a visit. Our alpacas weren't impressed and disappeared off to the workshop where they live (I know we still call it the workshop, even if now it is the stable really) and one or two of the cows decided to try a closer inspection, but fortunately Ian got to the gate first and shut it before they could get in. There is no telling what sort of a job it would have been if they had got in there as they trampled over the fencing that keeps the alpacas in their extended area. We then helped our neighbours to herd the cows back to their land and then they kindly took us back in the car as we had tramped over quite a few fields to get them back to where they belong. It gave us a chance to show the husband around as he had not seen our land, or the alpacas.

Some better behaved cows on our way back from getting the
freezer. If you look hard you can see the lady in the horse and
cart who is driving them

Arriving at their new destination (photo by Ieva)

The other change of plan was due to helping out some friends with transport. We found out that they are moving and there wasn't much notice, but they needed to do something with their sheep as they weren't taking them with them to their new place. Another of our friends decided they could take them and we ended up moving them from one friend to another at short notice, i.e. we only found out in the morning and we moved them that afternoon, but at least we got a nice meal out of it - the mushrooms picked from the forest were heavenly.

Ian trying his hand again at herding, this time sheep not cows
(photo by Ieva)

Enjoying the sunshine in their new home (photo by Ieva)

Our combination microwave is quite old
now but still works well, if you can get
the tiny microswitch to work that is. It
is frustrating that for the sake of a small
switch the microwave might have to be
thrown away. We've tried looking for
parts but it is so old it is not helpful.

It was back to school today for the children and it was fun seeing so many of them in their smart clothes and carrying flowers. One of our neighbours is a teacher and he came back carrying some flowers even though he is male, it is quite normal here to give flowers regardless of gender. It wasn't a full day back at school, just a sort of celebration of the beginning of the year, classes should start tomorrow. It did mean though that our neighbour turned up just as we were trying to manoeuvre the freezer down the stairs and he offered to help. Although I managed to help get it down the stairs the wrapping started to disintegrate badly and it was more difficult to hold and so I was really pleased when our neighbour reappeared having changed to help get it into the basement room itself.

Herkules

It is interesting on a day when children go back to school after the summer break that we had been talking recently of the difference between work and toil. Physically we both work harder than we have ever done, but some people wouldn't class it as work, because no one employs us and no one pays us. So many people though go to work and it is a burdensome thing to do - is that toil? Were we toiling when we were putting bales of hay away? It was work and it was hard work, but it was a warm day and we were out in the fields and not stuck in an office. We even had time for discussions to try and work out the best way to deal with the bales so they are useful for next year, even if that means only useful for compost. So what do you think? Is there a difference between toil and work? Or are we just nitpicking?

Updated photos to properly credit the photographer, our young friend Ieva