We've been taking it in turns to ache. Ian of course from the operation, but that is clearing up nicely and me from having to do battle with a snowblower, because finally we are getting snow in some quantity. Unfortunately the snow is not the sort we would normally associate with February, the light fluffy stuff that occurs at very cold temperatures, it is the heavy, wet stuff and that is harder to shift.
It has tended to drift over the last few days
Good job the chickens aren't in there this winter.
Ian did get to come home on Wednesday, although it was rather late. I heard he had got the all clear about 4:30pm and fortunately I had already put the animals away and was just outside our home when he called me. It still took me a little while to get sorted before I set off and arrived at the hospital at 7pm. We then had to go and pay for the operation before leaving, which added to the delay. The journey home was a protracted affair, with toilet stops and having to take the longer route home to avoid the atrocious Latvian dirt roads. They were not the sort of roads you want to take shortly after an operation and I was worried that further damage would result if we went along those.
They are in the greenhouse instead. Note the covering on the top. That is there after the brown chickens escaped three days in a row. This wasn't enough and now they are completely covered with a fleece, which rests on a large cardboard box to give us the height to get underneath for feeding and egg collection
Mari eating and Agnese having down time. It is hard to tell Estelle and Aggie apart now, as they both had the same father
Of course Ian wanted to see his babies, the alpacas, as soon as possible. Not sure that was a thoroughly good idea, but he is recovering well generally, so not too bad. Aggie, his favourite, wasn't talking to him, the traitor! Obviously her allegiances are with the one who feeds her and since that is me at the moment, we are friends. That makes a change, normally she runs a mile if she sees me, as she thinks I will be treating her or party to toe-nail cutting time.
Snow clearing duties around the greenhouse. That will have to stop now, there is too much
Contented sheep, despite the weather
Taking over the jobs that Ian normally does has meant getting lessons on using the tractor as well as the snowblower. I used the tractor to take hay to the animals and managed fine, apart from one minor detail. Ian forgot to tell me how to tip the front loader. I could raise it up and lower it, but couldn't work out the mechanism for tipping it at all. In the end I lowered two hay bales for the sheep, over the fence as low down as it would go, then walked all the way around to the gate, which of course was on the opposite side and then just pushed the bales out. It worked. The next lot of hay, there was too much snow to get the tractor out safely and I hadn't had snowblower lessons, so just managed with a sledge.
Ice rain overnight meant that one morning I had to fetch a hammer and screwdriver before I could get into the boys alpaca house and through the girls' gate. The ice had effectively glued them up and it was difficult to get prise them apart.
Brencis is still feeding from his Mum, but she will only feed him outside. It was quite a dilemma for her the other day as it was snowing quite hard. He will have to be separated from her quite soon
Today getting hay for the sheep was even harder because the snow has got quite deep for my little legs and was over the top of my winter boots - the problem of kid size boots. So once the snow had stopped falling, I got on with the snowblower and spent about two hours trying to sort out the paths to the sheep and the boys alpaca house. It was tough work and doesn't help they are such a distance and not exactly a flat route to the boys. Even though Ian had shown me how to use the machine yesterday, the snow overnight was sufficient to need the paths doing again. It's a good job the alpacas don't eat as much as the sheep and also there is sufficient storage for them in the houses that I don't have to top up as regularly.
Some serious icicles forming
Wet alpacas! I fastened them in today because the boys were messing about. First Herk was sitting in the doorway and he won't shift meaning two of them were outside. Later on they went in, much to my relief. Looked again later on and this time it was Herk being kept out by the others. He was saturated, which is not good when temperatures may drop next week.
It is with some trepidation at the moment that we are watching the news about the EU referendum. I sincerely hope that Britain does not exit the EU, otherwise that makes it very complicated for us here in Latvia. Our permanent residency is dependent on Britain being part of the EU and therefore there would be a chance it could be revoked. There are also different rules for EU members than for those who come from other countries regarding land ownership, so no idea how that is affected. As we left the UK within the 15 year period - just! - I am seriously considering registering to vote in this referendum. At least my vote will count and it affects me personally. Normally I stay out of British politics, because I have no intention of going back there.
We have had a little problem with snow drifting into the boys house, but the new one seems to be orientated better to avoid the weather. Still could have been worse. Hay stuffed into the over hangs stops the worst of it.
One rung was moved off the top of the hay storage and the bales unstrung to allow the girls access to more hay, without having to go and fetch it from the barn.
It was one of those weeks of "Is it, isn't it going to be a white Christmas?" the snow came and went, came and went again. Some mornings we would wake up to a snowy white world and the next it would be green again. Eventually though we had snow on the 23rd and it has been white ever since. Mind you, we haven't got as much snow as some of our friends in Sheffield in the UK, which is rather unusual. Still it does mean that skiing season has begun here as I spotted some folks walking around with skis in hand today. It also means that the snow clearing season has begun and the snow blower actually made it out of the barn for the first time this season, which is about as many times as it made it out of the barn all of last winter.
Ian is there somewhere
We didn't plan much for Christmas itself, apart from what we were going to eat. We decided to go for free-range pork for the dinner, aka wild boar! You can't get more free range than that! It was rather tasty done in plum juice, sage and lovage, all from the garden, with just a little balsamic vinegar, mustard and worcestershire sauce. I also roasted other vegetables from the garden, like carrots, turnips, onions, beetroot and potatoes. It was rather satisfying to sit down to our Christmas Dinner knowing that so much of it had come from either our own garden or from the local area. I followed it up with a type of tiramasu, made from home-made chocolate cake soaked in squash and raisin rum, (which we have just decanted off from last year's brewing) and coffee, layered with home-made custard and blackcurrants. We ate Christmas Dinner on Christmas Eve as we were visiting neighbours on Christmas Day itself.
Beautifully labelled! Not! Quite a few bottles of squash or
squash and raisin rum and it all tastes rather nice.
When I go out to the land, I usually feed the chickens and
as Ian went out the door, he called "Don't forget to check
for eggs." I do forget sometimes! As I checked I found a
package with five twix bars in the egg laying compartment.
The clever chickens had double wrapped them and written
a lovely little note for me. Isn't that sweet!
The croissants were made once again for Christmas Day breakfast. This is an annual ritual for many years. I'm not quite sure how it all started, but it makes a change from porridge anyway. I have baked them in the morning of Christmas Day for the past two years and then we've taken them out to the land to eat. As I've already mentioned we were visiting neighbours this year. We usually collect milk on a Thursday and weren't sure if we should go up, but since most Latvians have their main celebration on Christmas Eve it wasn't a big deal to be going to pay a visit on Christmas Day itself. Our neighbours daughter was home from university too and so it was an ideal time to catch up on some news of how it had all gone. What we weren't sure about before we went though, is whether we would end up eating there, as it has been known for us to turn up and a meal prepared when we weren't expecting to be fed. As it turned out snacks were provided and we had pīrāgs (which is a kind of bread roll filled with ham and onion usually) and apple cake, just right after a large meal the previous day. We also came away with a bag of apples and more apple cake, so that will keep Ian in cake for a few days. As for the young lady at university, it was nice to find out that she is doing very well and really enjoying the work, as well as adapting well to the city.
I said he was there somewhere
Still in captivity! At least they haven't escaped just lately
We have more exciting news to announce this week, grandchild number five is on the way next year, this time around the beginning of July. It doesn't seem that long ago since we were announcing the arrival of our first two grandchildren or telling you about our adoption as grandparents by our son's fiancée's little girl. It has seemed such a rapid transition to life as a grandparent, albeit from rather a long distance. Thank goodness for Skype. It not only keeps us in touch with our grandchildren, it has helped Ian keep in touch with his elderly mother, who has not been very well just lately. It is a pity that she is afraid of computers, otherwise he could talk face to face, but she is happy enough hearing his voice. Just in case you are wondering, Ian still has brothers nearby to his mother and so we know she is well looked after by them. It is still a worry though, not quite knowing how she is. She ended up with a trip into hospital this week and we are not quite sure if she is out yet or not at the moment.
The snow might be a nuisance for Ian and adds to his chores,
but it sure looks pretty.
Looking for seeds in the sheep's hay bedding
There is no denying that I am at a certain stage of life where hot flushes are a periodic reminder of how old I am. They have been both a curse and a blessing this last week as they seem to have returned with great regularity. In some ways they are quite nice for warming up freezing toes, but as I have discovered they can be quite dangerous too at below freezing temperatures. I was out on the land with Ian and although we have the caravan, it has a lot of warming up to do before it reaches a good temperature of about 6C. When a hot flush ensues I have to start whipping off hat, gloves, scarf and opening my coat up before I start to sweat as the last thing I need when it is -8C outside is sweat freezing. I then have to wait for the flush to subside and try and judge the best time to fasten up my coat and put all the other things back on to keep me warm and toasty. So far I seem to have judged it right and I've not frozen afterwards.
This little chap seems to be spending a lot of time around
And seems rather bold
Playing with my camera again. The alpacas in the snow
using the sketch setting
In the UK a rather well know supermarket used the Christmas truce of 1914 in their advertising. It is quite remarkable that in the middle of a war, men stopped firing at each other and played football, or sang Christmas hymns to one another. It makes you wonder whose war it was? For a brief period of time, men stopped seeing each other as enemies and made connections with each other. One of the soldiers of time, Louis Barthas, said this
"Shared suffering brings hearts together, dissolves hatred and prompts sympathy among indifferent people and even enemies. Those who deny this understand nothing of human psychology. French and German soldiers looked at one another and saw that they were all equal as men."
You can read a fuller version of the story on the BBC here. It makes me wonder what could have happened if the soldiers had then decided to call a complete halt to the war. Was it possible? It is sad that not long afterwards they were shooting at each other again, after orders from above and the moment was lost. Something wondrous happens when we stop seeing people as enemies or the other. It means we can see them as people, with hopes and dreams. It is hard to see some people in that way, especially when they have carried out heinous acts. But what happens when we do see them as young men and women with distorted dreams? Dreams of a pure life with a certainty, but bought in blood? What happens when we see them as people who have grown to hate our world with its inequalities and all consuming greed? Will it help us to sit down and try our hardest to try and work out why our society spawns such hatred and try to do something about it? I hope so.
Turbjørn looking handsome in the snow
Tellus in sketch mode
Aggie and Estelle looking inquisitive.
Looking upwards into a snow covered canopy of aspens
Well New Year is nearly upon us. What will this New Year bring? People are certainly filled with uncertainty and are worried what it will bring. It is hard to hold onto hope at times, but I cannot and will not let go of it. I still have my dreams, I still have my faith. I still believe that God is into renewing this planet that he made and I will work to the best of my ability alongside him. I cannot take any certainties into the New Year, but I can take hope and that is enough. Many years ago, as I looked forward into what appeared to be an unknown future, I took encouragement from a song called "Beyond these shores" by Iona. It gave me the courage to take risks and to step out of my comfort zone. I'm not in my comfort zone at the moment, but I can still keep going based on the hope this song inspires.
I've been busy dyeing today. This pink
fleece is sat in a shallow layer of blue
This will be Ian's mother's Christmas
present. I still have time, Christmas is not
over yet!
Because it's Christmas here are a couple of videos, first our alpacas in the snow. Herkules loves to sit in the snow or even roll around in it. Unfortunately Aggie likes to roll in the hay, just look at her fleece and all the bits in it when you see our youngest alpaca. She is meant to be white and I am finding out how hard it is to clean the fleece once it is spun. Can you imagine how hard this will be.
Weird snow sculptures or one large snowdrift - that was a
road past our orchard once
Sundays don't seem to be a day of rest at the moment. Last week it was a burst water pipe and it meant Ian was busy even on a down day. The burst pipe was not due to ice though, but a pipe that punctured some how. I went to read the meter and as the meter is kind of propped up on some other pipes and so it has to be moved to read it, as I moved it a pipe ruptured and I had to put a finger over the now spurting pipe. I had to shout for Ian to come and do something, so that was him busy for the next few hours while he fixed it. Would have been an easier job if all his tools for the job had been in the house and not out on the land. This week it was drifting snow and having to do the kinds of jobs that just have to be done when you have animals and need to keep on top of the snow to keep them fed and watered. After shifting snow and changing bedding we decided to go and see if it was possible to get two large bales of 2 year old hay from the field to use as bedding in the greenhouse for if the weather gets worse. Can't be too much worse than it was this weekend with drifting snow, but you never know. Well first of all we managed to get the car stuck in a snow drift, then it took Ian a bit of time to sort the tractor out, and just as he arrived the grader clearing the roads pulled up. I think he waited to see if the tractor would get the car out, which fortunately it did and at least it meant we didn't have to try and hold a conversation in Latvian. We then spent the next half hour in the increasing gloom and horizontal snow, shifting the bales one at a time, it is a good job we don't have many more of that size left. We are keeping this years hay back for feed as we don't know yet how far it will go.
Outside our other apartment
Ian on snow clearing duties
It sure has been bitterly cold here, we have had colder temperatures before and that we can cope with, but it's the wind that is making it worse. On one day all of our alpacas were shivering in the morning but we think that is because the wind just happened to be blowing at an angle that was able to blow snow through the smallest of crevices. Fortunately after a good feed they warmed up and looked fine, even Turbjörn, this time though they were all head for the shed in between feeds to get out of the wind. We were also pleased to note that their fleece is definitely thickening up. I wonder if the sudden drop in temperatures has been one of the problems and it just means they haven't had time to grow their fleece thick enough, quickly enough. Our chickens have been fine though and those are the ones that everyone asks about. They are in the greenhouse and their arks are on deep beds, which basically means putting a deep layer of straw down and leaving it in there and then just adding layers on top. The composting manure then serves to increase the heat in the area, apparently it is quite healthy for them. They also go into their wooden boxes at night and they are packed in their with plenty of straw and so keep each other warm.
The windy day tore the protective blue tarpaulin off the side
of the accommodation block for the local school which is
undergoing renovation. I think they were trying to protect
it from the severe cold.
Disappearing objects, well they would
be if the snow hadn't whorled around them
We are still having problems with the electric and it has been off again this last week. I really feel sorry for the electric guys, especially as we have got to know one of them quite well. The poor guy hasn't had a weekend at home for three weeks and being working many a night too. Part of the problem has been the amount of ice built up and now snow on top of that and many trees have been gradually getting lower and lower which is not so good on top of the ice encrusted wires. It looks very pretty, but just not what we want. The good news is that the papers for our electric has finally come through and means we can get connected up out on the land though. That will be a relief for Ian as it is not much fun at lunchtime as the caravan is just too cold but he needs the energy to keep going and so stopping for lunch is a must. He could come home but that is a lot of fuel in the car and means he can't keep an eye on the alpacas to make sure they are doing okay. It will be so much better when we have a house out there.
I cleared down there!
And there! Not so clear but it was a lot of work you know!
I have been having fun again this week helping to set up international trade links again. It is much easier ringing up on behalf of someone to set up the links than it is to do it for myself. It is also much easier for me to phone an English company than it would be for our neighbour to be talking on the phone in English. Our conversations are full of pauses and arm waving and periods of trying to work out what is meant or what the word is that we are trying to translate and that doesn't quite work by phone. It all sounds grand but really it is just nothing more than chatting to someone on the phone that has previously emailed and just trying to work out what is needed to happen. It's looking a positive link up anyway.
A lot of snow! Could be worse. Heard in Sweden it was
5m high in places.
People keep talking about Christmas and getting ready for it, I can't quite get in the mood somehow. It was nice to hear some choral singing from some church in England on the Latvian classical station as we drove home on that snowy day over the weekend, that felt a bit Christmassy. There are some lights and things out for Christmas but nothing like in England - thank goodness, where Christmas seems to start in September. We did get a Christmas card from our son and his family - that's a first, it was a cute card taken from a painting done by our adopted grandchild, our son's girlfriend's little one of a snowman on a red background. Very sweet. I have also been trying to finish off an embroidery for my parents for their Christmas present, but the nearer I get to the finish, the further away the finish seems. I have more work to do on it to make it look complete. I somehow think it is going to be late. The other preparation for Christmas is to decide what to eat on the day, we are actually spoilt for choice now. I told you that we have some wild boar meat, so we could have that, we could have one of our chickens we culled recently or now we even have the choice of a free range turkey too, which one of our friends blessed us with. Hmmm decisions, decisions!
I think the seeds sprouted inside the squash! Whoops
they were meant for next years plants and it is a bit early
to pot them up.
I also think I ought to get cracking on the knitting front, especially after the little scare this weekend. Our son text us to say he was with his wife in hospital and the baby might be on its way. I must say that if it had been it did not take after his father, who had to be threatened with eviction to get his act together to enter the world. It is still a bit early though as the baby is only due 9th January and fortunately the contractions all died down and she was able to go home, much to our son's relief too as he doesn't do well in hospitals.
How perverse, therefore, that the contemporary news media keeps to an entirely different beat, an ever-accelerating tempo. The news cycle has been 24-hour since the early 1980s, but the number of updates within each of those hours has steadily grown. Now the letters of the threads that run continuously beneath the live reporting look to me like the cogs of a virtual flywheel, one that spins ever faster as it tries to provide our inertial present with motive force. More events, more comments on those events, still more events provoked by those comments, and in turn, comments on those comment-induced events. The actual is sliced, diced and winched forward, only to tumble off time's assembly-line into the great slag-heap of now.
Ian once had a picture where he saw a giant flywheel where God just put his finger on a switch to stop the frantic turning round. It didn't stop immediately but like a fly wheel when you flip the switch it gradually started to slow down, perhaps God will do that soon for life itself. Wonder what that would look like? All life in the slow lane, time to breathe again.
Disappearing under a blanket of white
Of course it is not really possible to finish off an item like the above without mentioning the horrible events last week where a young gunman entered a school and killed many little children in the US. Certainly an item, sliced, diced and winched forward. I did consider doing what some other bloggers did and not post out of respect, after all what is news about our weather compared to the avalanche of grief the parents, friends and families of those murdered children must be feeling. I can't even start to comprehend what it must be like for them. I decided not to in the end, not out of a lack of respect for them, but out of respect for many other children that are murdered in our violent societies around the world, many of whom will never be mentioned in news bulletins, some of whom will never even be mourned by people in this world. It is a horrible, horrible thing to happen and the grief and the shock is very real and the reason behind it will have to be addressed, but they are not the only ones and so I decided to go ahead and post anyway, my heart still goes out to the parents and families of those little ones and to all those who have lost their children. May we all work towards a better future for our children.
The swans flew in this week, I heard them after Ian beckoned me outside the greenhouse to listen, he actually saw them flying. Heralds of spring! Stupid birds! They should have listened to the weather forecast first before flying in. The snow certainly has been melting quite fast and there are, or I should say were, definite patches of green appearing, unfortunately they have just all been covered up by some rather heavy snow showers this evening. The melting snow, however, means that the Spring time ritual has ensued of channeling water to where we don't mind it ending up and away from where it will create havoc. Our greenhouse is doing okay as the drainage system is now working properly, although Ian has had to use a mattock and spade to chip away the ice as the ground is still frozen but at least it is all flowing in the right direction. The question we ask though is, where is it all flowing to? The channel of water runs neatly to our top pond from which we draw water for the greenhouse in the warmer months, but ....... it isn't building up in that pond, it is building up in the pond below it and we don't know how. Sometimes we have had a structural failure on the side of the top pond, but that would mean the water runs straight down to the bottom where it makes a quagmire, not so this time - well not at the weekend anyway. Somehow the water is going straight through into the second pond and so there must be a different breach of our defences. Ian tried to relieve the pressure on the top pond by breaking through the ice so the water has somewhere to flow and preferably not through any holes created by animals earlier on in the year. After breaking through a spades depth of ice i.e. about 20cm there was still no build up of water in the top pond, now all we can do is wait for the ice to melt and try to see where the breach is.
The new attachment for the two wheeled tractor
You know why Spring has arrived though don't you? It is because Ian got a new toy, a snow blower!!!! So of course the snow started melting. Having said that it has still been useful as Ian cut a path down past our orchard which means we can get in there quicker when it all goes, he also cut channels down hills to give the snow melt somewhere to run rather than where we don't want it to go. It has also been useful to get rid of the snow from the side of the barn to try and reduce the water seepage, unfortunately that hasn't worked. We or rather Ian has managed to keep the area relatively clear of snow, but still the water is pooling badly in the barn and so that means we (or do I mean Ian?) will have a big job later on in the year digging major drain works down the side of the barn to prevent a reoccurrence next year. The snow blower was bought mainly because we know that next year it will be a lot harder to clear the amount of snow we will need to for the alpacas, to allow them plenty of opportunity to be outside. It will be a lot easier to take the snow blower than using the brute force of the tractor again, useful though that is. Ian has been happier though that the preparation he put into last year making sure that surfaces were as flat and clear of logs, stones etc. as possible has paid off as clearing snow this year has been a far easier job - well that and the fact there hasn't been as much. We have felt a lot more prepared though this year and I am sure that if we can get the barn drainage sorted then we will have an even better chance of keeping on top of winter and early spring duties next season.
A path to encourage water to move past the barn and into the forest.
Path past the orchard
A path down to the pond. That looks like a lot of fun
Something else I have been working on, is a memory quilt for my parents. I am not sure who did the background but the pieces added are all from pieces of cloth and embroidery that came from my grandparents or pieces I did when I was younger. The crinoline lady was a very typical piece of embroidery and I am fairly sure both my grandmothers sewed some. I have added the grass at the bottom with the dandelions and the blue sky to anchor it to the cloth. The lace is a piece of tatting that my granny did many pieces of. .
I have spent the whole week working on my thesis for my project and it has been flowing along nicely, until today that is. My inspiration has got up and gone after taking the weekend off, but by the afternoon it was starting to come back. I am really pleased with the questionnaire I sent out, to date I have 207 back, which out of a population of 3486 for the whole district is not bad at all. Although it is around 6% of the population it is skewed to mainly the village I live in and not the rest of the district, also to the younger end of the population - not that that is a bad thing in itself. Knowing what the most active members of the community think is perhaps more important for the type of questionnaire I had as I wanted to know if people broadly speaking supported the farmers in their battle with the wild boar, and if they were supportive of hunting to do that and it is was fairly clear that people do. To date 74% or people don't think the wild boar should be allowed to dig up the farmers' fields and 70% agree with hunting the boar. Now before any of you get upset with me about advocating hunting, there are a few facts that maybe you should know. The first is that populations around here could be around 2-3 times higher than the point where academic papers say wild boar feeding should stop because numbers are too high. The second is that studies have shown that capturing animals and relocating them is likely to end up in either their death or them moving back, it also disrupts social family groups, hunting is actually kinder because it is quicker, with the result of possibly more ethically raised meat than in your local supermarket. Thirdly, fences don't keep out the wild boar and makes travelling around difficult for other animals. Lastly and not least before I boar you all to death, the ecosystem maybe suffering because of the high numbers of wild boar, with some farmers talking of reduced ground nesting birds, even the absence of ants and so they are not good for biodiversity at all - although that does need more research of course because I am not an ecologist, botanist or a zoologist.
The flowery piece top left is a piece I started many years ago and never finished and so that is one of two pieces to adorn this quilt. The triangular piece has lots of french knots underneath, some of my favourite stitches. The white flower is crocheted - hard to believe some of the fine crocheting that my granny in particular did. The piece in the corner is some cutwork, again both my grandmothers did many pieces of cutwork so not sure who is responsible for it, but it was never finished as it still has the blue outlines from the pattern.
Talking of ethical meat there was a report in the press this week and would you believe it they find that red meat is harmful, surprise, surprise! Is that really news at all? That statistic has been bandied around for ages. The one thing I do find is sadly missing is the details from differently raised kinds of meat. Is the meat from corn/soya fed cattle as detrimental as meat from those allowed to range freely on good quality grass? Feed animals well and they will feed you well! And it seems that the Soil Association were listening to me as they posted a report too later on in the week stating that most meat in the UK is grass fed beef and that is different to the report from an American university. Well that's a relief, but it means that vigilance is still required, as companies try to introduce, so called efficient forms of producing meat and milk. But do tell me, how is it more efficient to have someone feeding animals and tending to them because they get sick when they are all cooped up together, when they could be out in the fresh air, gathering their own feed? Saves tractor time too in cutting all that hay etc. when they can gather their own feed. Anyway when we get some eggs and hence chickens I shall be eating a lot more chicken, as I don't really fancy raising a cow just yet and although they will not be free range, they will be allowed good access to the outside in their movable ark, hopefully safe from predators.
