It's a process

Hello! Lolly is fully weaned now and she seems
to have accepted this graciously. She doesn't
bother Ian for milk in the morning. 

Well not quite a monthly blog, but getting that way again. There have been more changes since last month, but it is all part of our regularly yearly cycle. The timing changes, to some extent, but they still happen. We are back out in the caravan as the animals are going way at night so late that it is difficult to find a sensible time to eat together. Fortunately, although the nights are cool, they are not that cool that they are unbearable and so we made the switch. Okay, -6C overnight was a tad cool but snuggled up under a quilt and blankets it works, plus the radiator is only an arm's length away and soon warms up the small space of a caravan.

Wearing our presents from one of our 
Australian grandsons. Not quite sure
how long it took to first get them to us,
via the UK and then for us to finally get
around to taking a photo, but we did it 
in the end. Oh and please ignore the hat
hair - bit of a problem at this time of the 
year.

Tuesday 5th April

Finally the snow is beginning to clear properly here. I drove up to Estonia recently for work and it was amazing to see stretches of land with no snow and then I got back to our land and there was still 20-30cm in places with hardly any grass showing. Gradually, gradually though it began to reduce in height and larger stretches of grass.... errr... I mean moss began appearing. As the snow got thinner larger areas of green appeared quite suddenly. It is startling to see green where earlier in the day it was white. We still have the occasional snow or hail shower but nothing that lasts and it finally feels like winter is drawing its last breath and fading away. I know, I know... it can still turn white, it is still early April and we are far north. 

Saturday 9th, yes a dusting of yet more snow and 
not much difference to four days before.

And three days later, Tuesday 12th. I
do believe it is finally going.

Well are you going to feed us
or not?

The normality feels deceptive whilst reading the news. The horror of the situation in Ukraine is awful, especially as I have read the history of post-Soviet countries. I can't even begin to imagine the sheer awfulness of the butchery that has been meted out on civilians, but a shudder went through me when I heard of people being bussed to locations in Russia, which sounds so innocuous but isn't. I've read about the forced deportations from Latvia to Siberia during the Soviet era and it is frightening to think deportations are happening again. This is not a benign action to take people to safety, this is a systematic attempt at terrorising a nation. A nation that knows its neighbour has been guilty of deliberate mass starvation (Holdomor) and forced deportations in the past. 

The crinkled effect of melting snow

The gas oven all cleaned up
and ready to go in the 
greenhouse! As you do!
Mind you, not sure how 
much use we will get out of
it this year, if there is a gas 
shortage. Good job we are
not dependent on it, we have
other options.

Another aspect that horrifies me is the slow response of governments to change for the sake of peace. Oil and gas is the currency that keeps this war going. On the one hand governments are supplying arms to support Ukraine and on the other the nations are paying out for the gas and oil that fuels such butchery. The reason given is that it would decimate the economy. War decimates an economy. War in Ukraine will have serious impacts on economies. When people die due to bowing down to the economy, then the model is wrong. One thing I have learnt over the years is that things like famine are not a failure of harvests, it is a failure in society. Famines happen when society lets it, after a failure of a harvest. There is no reason for sections of society to suffer unnecessary hardship due to a severe shock to the economy if the rest of society pulls together and works together then everyone can weather the storm. 

Yes the storks are back. Really! Look hard!

I guess the frogspawn will be appearing soon
then.

We only have to look at how Ukrainian refugees are being absorbed into societies close by to see how societies can pull together. It is possible to take care of and support others going through a bad period. This, of course, will not be a short-term event. Even if the war ended tomorrow, not all will be able to go back. Some will need to heal, some will make a new life in a new land because they do not feel able to go back, some will have to wait until there is some restoration of their homeland. We are in this together until we are through it, which we can, if we want to. I know I don't want to live in a society that puts the economy first and people second. The economy should serve the people and not the other way around. 

Oooh! Sunshine! I'm not one for sunbathing like
Silla, but I know how she feels to see that 
sunshine again.

The paddocks have been pretty wet as the snow
has melted. Mind you, it is surprising where the
water appears at this time of the year. How is
it so wet on the top of hills? 

So what do we do now? Grow as much as you can. Hoard or not to hoard? Maybe hoard what you will consume, like societies used to do before the advent of ever open supermarkets - in other words, store your excess from the summer for the winter. Share what is needed. I had thought I would take a year off from growing veg, but I've put that idea on the backburner. I'll throw in what seeds I can and hope for the best. Maybe help will turn up? Who knows. Our cabin is on order and as soon as this snow goes and the ground dries enough to stand on we (or Ian) is out there preparing the ground for foundations. 

Tasty!

Someone needs a haircut!

So is it crazy to be planning veg beds and cabins with Russia rattling its sabre? Who knows! They seem to be pretty occupied at the moment and we are in a NATO country, unlike the poor Ukrainians. So we carry on and wonder what we would do. We have the kind of animals you cannot just shove in the car and drive off, so that complicates matters. How do you even process these kinds of thoughts? I guess we don't. We watch, we wait and we pray, or stick our head in the sand, whichever is the most appropriate at the time. We have food, we know how to grow food, we know how to store food for the winter without using electricity, we know how to forage. We've already had our first meal with wild greens of the year - admittedly they were growing in the greenhouse. Does this prepare us? No not really, but it helps.

Arrrh! That's better I can see now

Greeeeeennnnnnn! Well nearly! Kind of
green anyway

At least with today's accessibility to information there seems to be more time to make the kinds of decisions to leave if we had to. I just wish someone would turn off the tap that fuels these kinds of atrocities (no pun intended), wherever they are in the world, not just Ukraine. We need to get serious about renewable energy for a more sustainable future in more ways than one. Let's hang on in there and be kind! Please!

There's nothing like a good scratch, but could you
do this while being 8 months pregnant.

Finally outside enjoying the sunshine and finding
the odd blade of grass.

The wagtails are back

Just chilling! 

The snow is getting further and further away

Mr. Tellus

A crane. They've been back longer

Not snowdrops - but snowflakes.

We don't know how much is snow
and how much is manure in these
beds yet.

The snow wasn't deep enough to
protect this bush that was trying
to be an apple tree.

Slowly, slowly melting

Rocket Ron is still an active cat but Ian had to take
him to the vet today as he's got ever so thin. We are
hoping it's just worms, although he was wormed 
recently. He has expensive kitten food, several 
injections and big tablets and he goes back to the
vet 26th.

The willow is budding

There are still a few piles of snow around

Who needs to dye eggs? Actually I think
the light was playing tricks on me. There
aren't really purple and pink eggs, more
a delicate hue perhaps, but they really are
green eggs.

A Tough Week

One sunny frosty morning and the boys are outside for a
change

It is weird how this week seems to have been both a long hard slog and yet flown by. It's hard to believe that in a few hours I will be going to collect Ian from the airport. As I mentioned in my last blog i was waiting for someone to come and help us to cull our sheep. The sheep were content enough waiting as they had hay to eat. That is until it was time to get hold of one of them. Apparently she was a little stronger than my friend anticipated and so escaped. In trying to sort that one out, another escaped. I managed to catch the last one and kept her pinned up against the fence of the pen whilst the others were enticed back in. They were a bit wary, until my friend had the brainwave to feed the penned in sheep with some grain and the others decided they wanted what she had, so in they trouped. Don't worry, I didn't unduly stress the one that was pinned up against the fence - I'm only little and she was a big sheep. Not sure what I would have done if she had actually struggled at all, she just stood their quietly.

It's been a mixed bag as far as the weather is concerned with
snow coming and going all week. Sometimes I have had to
break ice and sometimes the roofs are dripping in the moist
air filling the water troughs

One of the new girls sitting outside on a snowy day. I guess
she must be feeling warmer as it is no longer -12C like some
days last week, more like between 0 and -2C

Culling sheep is not a noisy affair and it was done as quietly and respectfully as possible. We started about six and were finished at nine, with the carcasses left to hang from the beams in our barn. I rolled into our apartment at about 10pm that night after defrosting the car before I could set off- so a long day. I spent the next two days sorting out the meat, ready for the freezer, so yet more long days. The meat needed cutting up, wrapping, labelling and sorting out into fatty bits and small pieces of meat for pies and stews. Some was minced and frozen in packs and some was turned into burgers. It was hard physical work and so I was absolutely whacked by the end of it all. Meat in our household is precious - we know where it has come from, what it has eaten and how much effort has gone into preparation of it, so we do our best not to waste any of it.

One of the days we had ice rain
that covered everything in a thick
layer of ice

It was beautiful if difficult day.
These plants look like glass

The trees were struggling though under the weight of ice.
Fortunately nothing really major but I did have to stop on the
road at one point and remove a small branch that had come
down

Finally after three long days I got an early night. While Ian has been away I have been going to bed earlier and reading a book with a cup of cocoa or a cup of tea. I find it a nice way to unwind at the end the day and get off to sleep, so it was good to get a chance to do that again. My current evening read is Wendell Berry's "The Unsettling of America". Back in the mid 90s he was arguing that we need to think carefully about the soil and how much it means to us and our sustainability, and how we should be caring for it. I wonder if he has the feeling of "I told you so!" because it is definitely a very current topic in agricultural sustainability. So much soil has been lost to the air or through water erosion. Not just centimetres but in some cases metres of topsoil has disappeared, either ending up in rivers and estuaries or polluting the air. The very stuff we depend on for our vegetables and grains - gone!

Brencis and Turbjørn outside. They look so alike and yet they
are nephew and uncle really. 

More melting snow on a misty day. This is the worst of
weathers to be driving in on the dirt roads. Even travelling
slowly in a 4x4 I was slipping, I resorted to the diff lock

Wendell Berry also talks about how much we have lost the connection with the land, from agribusiness to urban dwellers alike. On the one hand it is amazing to read and think that someone agrees with what I have been saying just lately and on the other hand I feel sad that someone has said it all before and not just recently but decades ago. The warning signs were there and we didn't heed them. Now we are heading for calamity unless we change course quickly. We have to reduce our consumption, we have to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels that not only affects our climate in terms of temperature but it pollutes our air, our waterways and our bodies. He likens it to us stealing from our future generations. In reality it is not 'just our future generations, it is our current younger generations who will be left with the mess we are making. Not a pleasant thought!

Is there some for me? Afternoon treats of carrots, squash and
alfafa pellets. I had to lead Chanel to a tray, she kept
wandering around. The others just got on and found a tray

  

Jakobs is getting the hang of this feed time now. I started him
on the grain at nights when he started pinching some from his
mum's tray. He now eats the squash and alfalfa pellets. He
doesn't seem so sure of the carrots though. His mum helps
him out - or steals from him, whichever way you look at it.

Well as I get ready for Ian coming back the apartment is beginning to resemble a home again and not a place just for passing through. The washing up is finally all done, scones made - Ian needs his energy, our evening meal ready for tomorrow to save time and the wood brought up from the cellar ready for the next few days. Maybe tomorrow I can relax a bit in the evening. Maybe!

Poor Jakobs just looks bemused by it all. He keeps investigating
the trays but doesn't actually eat anything. At night he goes
for the hay in the feeders whilst the adults are all occupied

Mum can I have some milk now? I think the answer was "No!"

One of Vanessa's crew aka new girls eating the snow. They do
like the Christmas trees to eat too

Beauty in winter

The pond is finally beginning to fill, but you
can see the pipe along the upper most rim
of brown. That's how full it should be at this
time of the year.

Talking stuff and shifting stuff

Preparing for my Skype conference, thought I had better
check how I looked 

Skype has been immensely useful this week and I wonder how I would get on without it. First of all I did a Skype video presentation to my tutor and a colleague on the topic I wish to research for my Masters. It was a very technical experience, as I used two computers - are you impressed? My old laptop, that was repaired, has a bigger screen than my new one and so I could have Skype on and see my tutor and his colleague as they listened to my presentation and have my notes in front of me for the presentation; on my newer laptop (no I'm not greedy, it was just we didn't realise that Apple would repair the computers before I bought a new one) I had my presentation slides, so I could see the slides that were being viewed far away on the Isle of Lewis where my tutor works. There was also the usual chats with children on Skype and the not so usual, the usual how are you doing and the not so usual hope you are okay and help my computers packed in and I haven't backed my stuff up and I'm panicking sort (have to admit to that being a wake up call and I went and backed mine up immediately after that call). We also had the opportunity for a fantastic chat with some old friends from our church back in the UK and one of them even treated us to a bit of ukulele playing. Modern technology can be an invasive experience but for us it has allowed us to do the things we are doing, while still maintaining contact with friends and family. Which is especially good when our daughter had a car accident this week and it was good to know that she was fine.

A lovely sunset after a busy day

Of course it wouldn't be much of a life if we lived it solely online and we have a couple of great opportunities to enjoy good company with some good food this week. A friend of ours and an old friend of his from overseas joined us in the hotel this week, not planned, but one of those lovely impromptu moments  that just happen. It was a really pleasant experience chatting about accents and misunderstandings and different experiences that life has thrown our way. Our next meal followed an impromptu invitation to some neighbours of ours who are working hard and one day looked like it was going to be worse than normal; with two little ones in the household I could just picture the evening arriving home and the lack of energy to do much in preparing a meal - I have been there quite a few times when our children were little, at one point we had three children under the age of four and life could get a bit fraught at times. In the morning I had made use of the slow cooker to start a meal off with chicken stock and some borlotti beans, then added some salted beans, barley and beaver sausage and I knew that meal would stretch to a small family with addition of some potatoes and baked squash. An easy meal knowing we would also be busy during the day. In fact they did us a favour by accepting as the bean casserole needed the additions to make it a great meal, the casserole on its own needed toning down with the potatoes and we got to be entertained by the little ones to. Bargain!

The moon added to the show

Our kittens have also been a little surprising this week. They had to go back to the vets for their second injection and it was there that we found out it wasn't just Bella that has surprising agility. Sofie, our usually calm, placid kitten is beginning to show streaks of not being quite so calm or placid and in the vets she was decidedly not happy with the injection and twisted herself around in a way a cat should not be able to and ended up giving the ver some rather nasty scratches. The vet was rather apologetic because she said it was her fault as she was not expecting that reaction at all - neither were we to be honest. This is from a cat that likes tummy tickles and paw massages!!!!! Bella was well and truly pinned down between us though, as we weren't going to have a repeat of that episode. Reminded me of the time I used to help out at a vets as a teenager to find out if I wanted to be a vet or not in later life. The other episode involved Bella, our mischievous one, who managed to get up onto the higher rafters of our greenhouse but was struggling to find a way down. Several times she crossed backwards and forwards looking for a way down, even walking on the fleece that is stapled for shading below the apex - at which point I felt sure she was going to come through it. Ian was just about to head off for the ladders when she decided to make a jump for it, it was rather a long way down but although she looked a little shocked she is none the worse for the event. So far though the kittens have not caught a mouse that we know of but I found one out in our allotment patch and ended up killing it with the spade - not something I enjoy doing but we do need to keep the population down to manageable proportions.

Our new beds with the sawdust path

Most of the week seems to have been spent shifting things around. I had to shift some old manure and compost around the garden to make room for some new manure. Ian used the tractor to shift two loads of manure, one to each garden and two loads of wood chippings, one load to our neighbours garden and one back to our land, plus a car trailer load. Having written that down it doesn't look a lot but it took two days to do, albeit short days due to the shorter days and being dark by 4:30pm. One thing Ian discovered today is that all this transporting things by trailer has improved his ability to reverse them. He had to reverse the tractor trailer with one load of manure quite a distance and managed with just one or two small deviations from the path and today he drove a trailer into a building with a heavy saw on it that needs renovating, not only did he reverse it, he had to turn the trailer into the building to put it where it needed to be put. All I can say, is it is a good job it wasn't me, I am getting better at reversing our truck but it is still tricky as it all has to be done by wing mirrors and not looking over my shoulder. There was more shifting on the land as all those wood chippings needed to be put somewhere as there are still more to come, so I started putting rotted straw down where the vegetable beds should be and then put a good covering of wood chippings on the top. It won't be perfect for vegetables next year as they will need a good lot of compost added to give the roots something to anchor into but the year after it will be great and hopefully easier to manage for weeds. I also began laying the sawdust paths, not sure that they are deep enough to stop the weeds coming through but decided a light going over with a blow torch to any that dares to put its head above the sawdust will do the trick (and no I am not going to set the sawdust alight in the process!!!!! Trust me!)

It was like this all day, on one particular day, the frost lay
on the ground all day, never bothering to shift

I read a lot about sustainability issues and I had to laugh this week when I read an article about building with sand filled water bottles. Comments were made that there was now a worry that the area would run out of sand due to the amount required in the building. It harks back to the idea that if you find a sustainable building method then you multiply it and replicate it lots of times, but that is not sustainable. Sustainability is about applying principles not blueprints, each area needs to find creative solutions bearing in mind the type of area it is. Sustainable solutions will not be mass produced, but small scale. Reliance on single products for the answer to all problems is not an option, that is what got us into the mess we are in now. I suppose that is similar in principle to the Occupy protests at the moment, the world is looking for "one solution fits all" answers from the protest groups, but the groups are not providing answers, they are seeking first the right questions and then looking for principles that can be applied, not blueprints that once applied with help us to live happy ever after - that just won't happen. Sustainable solutions to today's problems will take a lot of time to work out as they are going to take some massive rethinks in how we do business, how we live and how we interact with each other. Interesting times indeed!

Frosted grass

Okay I know you have to tilt your head to see this
it won't turn round. It is correct on my computer but
Picasa won't turn it around. Okay now I have moaned
what you can see is a dusting of snow. Winter is on its way