It's Christmas time

Not quite Latvia! I have my oldest son to thank for the
photos this week as I keep forgetting to take my camera

On Christmas Eve, I had a surprise, Ian finally accepted my friendship request on FB. The surprise did not last long when I found out he didn't mean too and I had to explain how to unfriend me. Don't worry I'm not overly concerned. We can always send emails to each other..... errrr I mean talk to each other instead.

They wanted to see pictures of the alpacas

Usually on Christmas Eve, I decorate the apartment but not this year. I would be travelling and it would mean Ian putting all the decorations away and he's not that bothered. What he is bothered about is the Christmas food though. So instead of decorating I did the cooking. However, I didn't even try that hard with the cooking. Just enough to make it a bit special. It's hard to think of what to do when I bake so many cakes and we eat locally sourced, organic food throughout the year. Dried wild mushrooms? No problem, I have jars of the stuff. Different herb mixtures? I dry my own and use them regularly.

My helpers in the garden

I attempted croissants but they didn't work as well as normal. My arm was still aching so tried the pasta machine to make thin sheets of pastry. That bit worked all right but the croissants weren't as light and flaky as normal. They were alright and we still ate them for breakfast on Christmas day. At least I didn't have to do any cooking apart from making some Yorkshire Puddings. I also left Ian with a pile of leftovers to keep him going for a few more days before he had to start cooking for himself.

Taken on a family walk

On Christmas day I went with Ian to put cream on the animals that needed some extra TLC (tender loving care) before I went away. I also sorted out some of the things still left out in the caravan or in the greenhouse while Ian showed visitors around. We had a young couple from Riga. It was the husband's surprise treat for his alpaca-mad wife. He even blindfolded her in the car just outside of our village before they arrived, so she couldn't guess where she was. Ian took Brencis to the car for her to reach out and touch before he took the blindfold off. They promised to come back in warmer weather.

Well nearly all the grandchildren together in order of age.
One was not so happy about the idea.

On Boxing Day (2nd Christmas day) I took the early morning bus from our village to Riga so I could get to the airport to travel to the UK. It was weird to arrive in Riga with Christmas preparations still ongoing. A couple of guys were trimming the bases of Christmas trees for sale and at first I couldn't work out why, then it dawned on me that for those celebrating Orthodox Christmas (7th January) the preparations would just be underway. Since the proportion of Orthodox Christians is 26% in Latvia and most of those live in Riga it makes sense.

Opening more Christmas presents

Travel on Boxing Day is difficult in the UK and so my parents arranged to pick me up. Well I arrived but there were no parents to greet me. I sent texts and tried to phone a couple of times but got no reply. I headed for the Terminal pick up point and on the way I finally got through to my parents to find they were stuck in traffic at one of the large shopping centres. So having spent a huge amount of money on presents that might not last long, much of the population head to the sales to spend yet more money - and some people wonder why I don't live in the UK! Eventually my parents arrived and I went to their house for an overnight stay.

My youngest son and the amazing cake my
daughter made. She based it on a car that
my youngest designed and actually
went into production for introductory
level racing

The reason for leaving Ian alone for much of the Christmas period and into the New Year is that I wanted to be in the UK for one of my grandson's 7th birthday and my youngest son's partner had organised a surprise birthday present for his 30th birthday on the day after Christmas. I could spend about a week at each of my children's houses and still get to both birthdays. The surprise was a little dented in so far as we got stuck in traffic again, between my parents house and the venue for the party. We ended up nearly an hour and half late. At least we didn't spoil the initial surprise of having a party organised for him.

An evening meal with the grandchildren before their parents
went out in peace for a meal and left me to babysit them
all. They were all in bed by the time I was left alone with
them though. 

This time I travelled with my older son and his family to stay at my daughter's home as we were all staying there until the New Year. My youngest son came up for a pre-arranged day that he did know about and so I was together with all my children, their partners and children - all 15 of us.

Together!

So happy New Year to you all, may this year ahead be one where we can move forward and address the many issues that have held us back and threaten our future from the last decade. May we all be bold enough to rise to the challenges of changing our societies to ones that care more for each other and the environment.

Prepping

The roadsides are looking gorgeous this year with the mix of
meadowsweet and rosebay willowherb. I got permission to
cut some rosebay willowherb from a neighbours field away
from the road, as it makes a great tea. That has now been dried
in the solar dryer

Our youngest son surprised us recently, he rang out of the blue and asked us if we would like to go to the UK paid for by him. I was a bit flabbergasted really. He explained that the grandchildren were growing and they rarely saw us together and could we therefore spare a long weekend to come. He realised that longer would be more difficult to arrange since we have to get someone to look after the alpacas. We have been to the UK for longer periods of time, but not at the same time, as one of us - usually Ian - stays behind to look after the animals and the land. So it is all organised for later on in the year, the flights are booked and he has already arranged the Friday and Monday off, so that he can pick us up from the airport and take us back. He is even organising a get together with other members of the family. So I'm looking forward to being pampered for the weekend, I am assuming of course that we will be well looked after.

A rather sweet looking strawberry. The strawberries are coming
to the end but our red and yellow gooseberries, redcurrants
and raspberries are all maturing nicely now. 

It's play, spot Ian time

Besides all the regular jobs we have been prepping the place for our felting course that starts this week. We want the place to look as neat and tidy as possible and so Ian has been strimming round the garden and mowing the lawn. I say lawn, but really it is a rather large lawn and he still bears a grudge that I didn't let him buy the motor driven lawnmower. In my defence we only had a small lawn in the US when we bought it and a driven motor was not really necessary for that. I have to admit it would make his job easier now for those areas we want looking neat and tidy. It isn't necessary to use it all the time though, often he will use the flail mower but that doesn't give as neat a finish, but I can almost hear his regrets for not buying the more expensive lawnmower as he works hard pushing the mower up the hill.

One man went to mow, went to mow a meadow

That was a lot of work! And just in case you thought I was only
taking photos, I tied up our beans and weeded the garden, a mega
task in itself

Chanel having a roll in the dirt

Visitors are still turning up to the land to have a tour to see the alpacas and although they are not coming in droves, they are coming on a regular basis and quite willing to pay too. We even had our first contact through our website this week to book a visit. We have been talking about what we feel will be an acceptable level of visits, as we hear from friends of ours the huge numbers people they have visiting and we have nowhere near the same numbers. We don't have the infrastructure for large numbers of visitors and we are not sure we would want to totally go that route, we like the peace and quiet of the countryside and we think we would lose the joy of talking about our alpacas if we had group, after group, after group. We would want enough visitors to make it worthwhile and to run some workshops through the warmer months. We don't need much and so balancing our needs with what we can provide will be our goal.

He mowed beside the greenhouse so we can hold our course
outside on nice days

Test drilling for the well at 7am. We are pleased that he
decided to drive down where we take the tractor and
didn't mess up the area that Ian has spent all day mowing

We had a visit on Sunday evening from a guy who was recently recommended to us for digging wells. He came by and did the tour of the land with the hazel sticks and decided there was a spot close to where the last guy said. At least they agree! He also came early the next morning and brought a drill to do a test dig. It was encouraging because he had a great deal of difficulty getting the drill out at one point due to the suction from the wet ground. We do indeed seem to have a very wet layer, not exactly gushing at this point but promising anyway and only about 3 metres down, low enough to be below freezing level and not too deep that it will be difficult to dig. We presume he will be back before long to see what he thinks and then we can talk about actually getting the well dug.

The paths to the garden look neat and tidy too

Lady V the indomitable old lady

I mentioned last week that we have started the process of mating our alpaca girls. Our original idea was to put our black male, Mr. P. with our white females, Lady V and Aggie and our white male, Tellus with our coloured females, Chanel and Marie. We had to rapidly change our mind though about Lady V and Mr. P. because she will not let him anywhere near her and has completely intimidated him. She only has to look in his direction and he backs off. At least Tellus is not so easily intimidated, but Lady V. despite her age is giving him the run around. We hope she gives in soon, because we only plan to mate her this year, before retiring her. We think Chanel might be pregnant already though, as Tellus is suddenly not interested in her and she won't let him near now, although she was flirting heavily with him at first, so that is promising at least.

Yes it has rained a lot this week and so we have more rainbow
photos. Our ponds are also still continuing to fill

This fabulous looking spider was not cooperating in having
its photo taken. It crawled along the wire, upside down and
so this the best I could do. I shall try again another day

Last week a friend of ours set off on her travels and so she arranged for us to have the keys to her car. It was a good job she did as Ian suddenly discovered that we had forgotten to insure our car and it had run out the day before he found out, by which time it was too late to get it insured at the office in the village. We discovered later we could have rung and got it insured over the phone and paid today, so we will know if we ever have the same problem again. At least while I had the use of the other car, I could get on with the jobs I needed to do and Ian got the chance to change the brakes and fix the fog light on our car that was damaged by the deer we hit on our Estonian trip.