Part 2: The ups and the downs of farm life.

Karla is growing up fast. She started losing fleece on her
face due to the flies but now it's growing back well

When I said I would write part 2 later, I wasn't intending to take so long. A couple of rainy afternoons though has given me a bit of time to catch up, as do the earlier nights. So these are the highlights in brief or lowlights as the case maybe, but still probably long enough to grab a cup of coffee and put your feet up, or just look at the pictures. 

Karla feeding

You can see a faint blue tinge on her fleece from antiseptic
spray we had to put on after op.

I was applying insect repellent to Karla's head one day to keep the flies away from her nose and eyes with Ian holding her when he realised that she had a rather large lump under her belly. After a closer inspection he realised it was an umbilical hernia. Maybe if it had been caught earlier it could have been strapped up but this looked large. It doesn't help that Karla's fleece is growing remarkably quickly and hid the bump rather well. In the end it meant a trip to the vets for an operation. She was heavily sedated but not put under a general as alpacas do not do well with general anaesthesia. With the help of vet, two trainee vets and Ian, her hernia was repaired. Ian was holding Karla and also trying to find a vein for a drip. I even helped at one point in holding the fluid bottle. It got a bit crowded around the table. The good news is that she seems to have recovered well and is bounding around the fields now and even getting a bit bossy.

Chanel and Ilvija are rarely apart. A misty day after the heat
was a welcome change for the alpacas.

Cloudy sky

Unfortunately the next incident did not have such a happy ending. Silla finally went into labour but her baby was stillborn. It was almost as if she was waiting for some respite in the weather to give birth, as she delivered one evening in a the alpaca house with a thunderstorm rolling in overhead. Ian assisted as the baby seemed to be a bit stuck, an unhappy task indeed as it was already dead. Silla then seemed to be in shock and so I went to get our neighbour to check her over. The rain was pouring down and there were flashes of lightening as I drove onto our land. I drove as close as I could get but I nearly forgot about the electric fence being in the way, fortunately I spotted it in good time. It just meant that we had a bit longer to walk in the pouring rain than I had hoped. By the time I got back to the alpaca house with our neighbour, Silla seemed to have recovered a bit and was up and about. 

Spot the swallow on the door. They are raising
their second brood of the year

Military planes have been making regular flights over us. 
Can't be too secret as they are trackable on FlightRadar24

Silla didn't seem unduly concerned about the baby and we are not sure if that was because she knew it was dead or a trait in her family (more of that later). Hopefully we will find out next year as she has been mated to George. Yes! George! He finally realised what he was supposed to do. We put Tellus his dad on one side to mate with Valeria and George on the other side with Silla. Something clicked. We suspected that Silla might be helpful as she is extremely compliant and just sits down when male alpacas come in - that's also how we knew she was ready to be mated. Female alpacas can be mated two weeks after giving birth. We also tried George with Ilvija again and this time he knew what to do. Phew!

My waterlily is really growing. It's a pity it's in the pond
furtherest away from where we spend most of our hours

According to a scan in November, Mari was pregnant, but
she hasn't given birth and certainly does not look pregnant.
She also seems pretty grumpy these days, so Ian would like
another scan to see what is going on. We decided to try
mating her in April next year, along with any others that are
not pregnant and not retired.

So far we think that Silla might be pregnant now, she certainly seems far more resistant to George, Valeria may be pregnant to Tellus and we are almost certain that Amanda is pregnant as she is normally very compliant but turned on Brencis and spat in his face, despite their difference in size. Ilvija we don't think is pregnant yet. 

We've had a mixed year with the trees on
our land this year. Some have rocketed
away, like this Gingko that has been in 
years and grown little by little, but this year
has taken off. Some trees have died though,
like one of our cherry trees.

I'm pleased with my dahlias that were grown from seed

Aggie was also late and struggling with the heat. Ian was of course really concerned and our vet gave him some medication to induce her. Ian was in a real dilemma. He couldn't find much on alpaca induction and so was concerned that this wasn't regular practice. There are plenty of accounts of alpacas going way overdue but of course after Silla's stillborn he was very anxious. We did find out later that older alpacas with first time pregnancies do run an higher risk of stillborns. Hopefully that will not be the case with the second. Anyway, back to Aggie. Ian went back to his charts and it dawned on him that he'd got the dates wrong, she wasn't as far on as he thought she was. He decided not to induce her. 

These are quite dramatic Safflower. I have grown it
to make a dye. Not tried it yet though.

Aggie and Lolly

Aggie finally gave birth a week later. You can imagine how Ian was feeling, his favourite kept him waiting and waiting. The day of her giving birth did not go particularly smoothly though. She seemed to get so far but didn't seem to be pushing. I went to get our neighbour again and she helped deliver the baby. Her and her son hung around to watch the little one get on her feet. It was funny. We named her Lolly after Ian's mum. Our daughter pointed out that she was also born on what would have been Ian's Mum's birthday. I'd completely lost track of the dates just lately.

These two are always first in to see what's going on when it
comes to new births

Aggie interacting with Lolly, talking to her and nuzzling her

At first Aggie was attentive, just like she was with Josefs, but she didn't seem to encourage Lolly to feed. We waited until we couldn't wait any longer and instead milked Aggie and gave the little one a bottle of her Mum's colostrum. A little later we tried to get Lolly to latch on. Aggie meanwhile got more and more agitated. We remembered how aggressive she got with Josefs and so didn't persist with it. We thought that maybe like with Josefs she would get over it and bond. No! Despite several attempts to get the baby to suckle she wouldn't. She had got used to the bottle and Aggie was getting more and more difficult to milk. We tried to milk Aggie as often as we could and then topped up with cow's milk but after a week we stopped, as Aggie was drying up. Lessons learnt! Lesson one Aggie will not be having any more babies, although she delivers cute babies she is not a good Mum. Lesson two, really persist in getting the baby to latch on in the first 24 hours, even if the mother is aggressive. At least when hornmones calm down she may bond later and baby will know what to do.

Aggie would stand still but not long enough for Lolly to work
out what to do.

The rest of the herd coming to find out who the new one
is

Sometimes Lolly does sit with Aggie, which is unusual for Aggie as she is not usually very tolerant of little ones. So there is some sort of bond, but not a strong one. Lolly though is just as likely to be sat with one of the other alpacas or just in between them, not with anyone in particular. Her and Karla have formed a bond and we now have Amanda (Karla's Mum) up in the same alpaca house so they can be together. Although Aggie can be a bit of a grump with the other alpacas, especially with other baby alpacas, she is good with the visitors and will tolerate a lot of stroking as long as she gets food. The reason we are worried about Silla though is that Silla's grandmother is Aggie's mother, so we are worried that the lack of motherliness could run in the family. Aggie's mother was attentive enough, just a bit hyper and a bit spitty in her excitement. She wasn't able to feed Aggie very well as she didn't have enough milk and so we had to bottle feed Aggie too when she was younger. That might be part of Aggie's problems as she may have attachment issues. 

Early days

Karla meeting Lolly

The weekend that Lolly was born was also the weekend the chicks hatched. How on earth we still managed to hatch 14 chicks that weekend I will never know. Firstly we forgot to check the dates for the eggs in the incubator and suddenly realised they should be taken off the rocker and the humidity increased. As I said to Ian when I got back from doing that task, the little chick said, "Thanks for checking but could you have done that the day before?" Fortunately it was none the worse for rocking slowly backwards and forwards. Later that morning I went to do some washing and defrost a freezer at our apartment in the village and got a message from the electric company that our electric was off on the land and wouldn't be back on until 2pm. 

The chicks with their "guard". Actually
GT is just taking advantage of the soft
sleeping place with the added advantage
of warmth coming from the chick heater
that makes sure they don't get cold and 
is a stand in for mum. 

2pm came and went and I got back to our land and checked in on the eggs. Yikes it was heading towards 5pm and they were still in the barn and it was rather cool. No other chicks had hatched and that one was looking a bit cold. I took the whole unit up to our caravan that was now in the sun, opened the curtains because we usually keep them closed during the day to shade the interior from the heat. The poor little thing huddled up to the warm side of the incubator. I took it out of the incubator for a bit and warmed it in my hands. After putting it back in the incubator with the eggs, I covered the shaded side with a towel and let the sun do the rest. It was just before 9pm before the electric came back on. Over the next two days the chicks hatched and so far they seem a healthy bunch. Phew!

The weather did finally break and we are not seeing such high temperatures now. It is generally far more pleasant. We are also getting some rain now, although we still seem to be missing the majority of it, so the ground is still bone dry. As I continue to write there is an enormous thunderstorm to the East of us and we've been on the edge of it for well over an hour. The plants are soaking up what little rain we've had and are therefore still green, but it was close to having to either water or let some things die off. 

A bee on beebalm

Aggie and is it Chanel or Ilvija? They are so hard to tell apart

We could still do with a week of dry weather to get the rest of the hay in from an area where we claim subsidies. The date for that is August 15th so rather close. They might extend it, but I'm guessing it might be unlikely as there was plenty of time earlier on. The reason we didn't get the all the hay in was that our tractor was not working so well. The tractor guy finally came to repair the aircon, which was essential in the 30+ degree heat and we had enough time to get the ski hill hay in before the rain - just! There was a brief shower as we were stacking it but it was onto such dry hay we probably got away with it. At least the bales were that dry they were incredibly light and so it didn't feel such hard work as it normally does. Still hard though, all the collecting and stacking of over 250 small round bales around 25kg each.

Normally I don't have to try and catch Lolly to feed her. She 
comes running when I call her. Tonight though, Karla 
came running too. She's become very interested in what
Lolly is doing. In fact I've had to call Ian twice now to help
so that I can feed Lolly without Karla distracting her and
trying to play with her. 

My days now revolve around feeding Lolly. She is fed every two hours more or less during the day and every four hours through the night. Better than every two hours day and night when she was first born anyway. Also I'm feeding her and not Ian because she could become too attached to Ian as the main carer which could present problems later on. Sometimes we wonder if this is part of Aggie's issues after bottle feeding her. Maybe, maybe not! She comes from an odd line of alpacas as I mentioned earlier. I just feed Lolly and then go, which feels a bit heartless at times but it is for the best and she's mixing with the others, so not too bad. All the jobs I have been doing have to fit in around this routine. I never thought I would be so tied to feeding a baby again at my age. Oh well! 

Feeding Lolly like this means she stands still and
I can make sure her head is in the right position to
feed.

Head up and warm milk are essential for making sure the
milk goes into the third stomach

One of the issues this did cause us is that we still had not been able to shear alpacas in Estonia. Fortunately the owner with the most alpacas managed to get a sheep farmer into help. One of the other owners did some investigations but couldn't really find someone and so Ian went up on his own to shear two groups on separate days. They all managed fine, after all he's been shearing for them for a number of years now and so everyone knows the routine. There are still three here in Latvia that need shearing and so hopefully they will done this week.  

I keep trying to feed her with the bottle in front of me, but 
she is such a fidget. I won't want to be feeding her like this
in a few months time.

I think she's full. Look at that hair
though! I was so pleased to get to the
hairdresser today. Milk feed was a bit
late but she was fine. At least she can
eat grass already.

When I've not been busy with Lolly, I've been busy in the garden and greenhouse and still busy with some meetings for an expert group that are only taking a break now. I also had an academic paper that had a submission date of the 6th August. I thought I was going to get a nice long break but that didn't turn out to be the case. I'm having an extra week off though to make up for it. Everyone else seems to be off at the moment anyway.

Very pleased that Lolly still goes and spends her time with 
the other alpacas and seems to be well enough accepted.

Despite the work done on the garden, it is rather
untidy. The wind and rain haven't helped lately.

I finally tied up the tomatoes in the greenhouse and got lots done in the garden. I've pulled up the peas, before the maggots ate the lot, pulled up the chick peas as they had gone over and Ian and I picked blackcurrants and I've bottled them. I've also been replanting the empty beds where I harvested onions or peas earlier with some autumn veg and managed to get some seeds in before the rain. I sowed carrots, peas, broad beans, turnips and beetroot. There was no point in putting seeds in before unless I was committed to watering them since the soil is so dry. The courgettes have been hanging on in there even without the rain, probably the alpaca poo has helped. It holds the moisture well. At least they have started producing more and I'm now getting to the stage where I have to work out what else I can make with them. I will bottle some up for the winter in the same way I usually bottle cucumbers, since I don't have many of those planted up. Hopefully it will work. Otherwise I will have to take the courgettes back to the apartment and freeze them.

Mallow grown from seed. This always reminds me of our
friend in Cyprus as it was there we found out the leaves were
edible.

You're a bit close!!!

Talking of freezers, we had a disaster with our fridge-freezer. I'm not sure what happened exactly but it failed or I failed. I defrosted the freezer section and transferred all the meat into it. Yes! All the meat we had! Those lovely hams and pork joints along with other bits of meat we had in the larger ones in the basement. Away I went and about a week and a half later Ian went back to the apartment and the place reeked. The door wasn't closing properly and all the meat had gone off. It wasn't pleasant. Fortunately as we have a truck, the boot is separate to the main cabin of the car and Ian could bring all the meat out to be disposed of without gagging on the way. We thought the freezer itself might have packed up, but that at least wasn't the case, It still seems to be working - the plug was only half in. Maybe I unplugged it and forgot to plug it in, but that doesn't explain the issue with the door. Sigh! 

Karla now has someone to run around with.

And they sure do like to run

Along with all that, we've also been getting a steady trickle of visitors. Two groups came from a camp catering for those with special needs. The children and carers had a look around and fed the alpacas, then had a picnic on the bank overlooking the boys field. Occasionally the alpacas would come up to see what was happening and ran up when one young boy started to cry loudly, but generally they just ignored everyone and carried on eating grass peacefully. It was very soothing. The group were lucky with the weather too as it was often raining either just before or just after. 

So tiny! She's much bigger now and growing fast. The 
milk from our neighbour's cows is obviously suiting her - 
after I've skimmed the cream off first though. We found she
was starting to refuse it and then I realised the milk had a lot 
of cream in it, so now I take that off first and then give it
to her. There will still be plenty of fat in it as my neighbour's 
cows have very rich milk.

Karla does look like her dad at that age.

Ian did start to build a new haystore but didn't get very far before events or weather overtook that project. We also managed to get Mr. P's teeth cut and Mr.P's and Josefs' toe nails trimmed. Everyone else will also need their toe nails doing soon, so that will be an ongoing project for next week possibly. So as you can see, it's been a rather busy time and not much time to blog. I still keep going with the blog though as it is a good record for us of what we've done and something we can look back on. So I'm not going to promise to blog regularly for the time being, but at least I won't suddenly disappear from the blogosphere, I will be back. 

I'm home honey!

Autumn colour

Yes! I have spent a whole week at home. Can you believe it? And the most exciting thing we have done this week is watch someone cutting alpaca teeth. Riveting heh! I can see you are on the edge of your seats. So what have we done all week? Well let's rewind a little. For a start the paper I have been trying to write for an academic journal was returned again and still requires "major modifications!" Sigh! I have done all the little tinkering about they asked for, but I still have to get my head around how to word the most important part. I won't bore you with the details, but it is hard trying to think of yet another way of phrasing the same material again, for the fourth re-write or is it the third? Something like that anyway. I think I'm getting there, but I have had other things to try and get my head around this week and they have taken priority - partly because I get paid to do that and not paid to do my doctoral studies.

Autumn raspberries

I have explained that I work for an online educational organisation and recently started tutoring the Sociology studies. There is only one student this year and bless him he was not up to speed in handing in any assignments. I was getting a little concerned and sent an email - nothing, sent another email to check if he had got it - nothing, sent an email off to my boss to see what he thought and he suggested copying in his mother. Oh that did reap benefits, two assignments no less, however, that then meant I had to mark the work. When preparing the lessons I hadn't got my brain into gear about how to mark the work and so that took me a little while to apportion the right number of marks to the piece of work that reflected the input required for the question. I also had to think about how to approach marking the work and what helpful comments I could put in. Tricky one really. I have been trained for higher education and not for 14-16 year olds, but the same principles apply. I have also had experience of teaching my own children at home but not in this subject. Still we all have to start somewhere and I know I will speed up as time goes by.

Part 1: This is a stockade that Ian built about three years
ago to store old hay, wood chippings and compost

The weather hasn't been brilliant this week, warmer but damp and dreary. One day it was forecast to rain for most of it and so Ian text me to see if we should go and visit a couple of friends of ours, who we hadn't seen in ages. They have a farm too and we just don't get much time to see each other in the summer months, there is too much to do, especially this year for Ian with the extra animals. The rain filled days though are a different matter, as the ground becomes soggier there just isn't the amount of work to do, apart from some winter preparations. Most of the harvesting has been done, there are only some winter brassicas, carrots and beetroots still left and they can stay in the ground until we either need them or until a hard frost is forecast. So nothing exciting to report, just sitting around drinking tea and chatting about this and that. Nice really. Nothing too academic.

This was the stockade this summer with the squash plant
taking advantage of the lovely compost

Gone! Ian has cleared up the area, as it was beginning to
look rather tatty and we would like the place to look
neater. The compost has gone down to the bottom end
of the new garden area, the wood chipping pile
temporarily moved ready for putting on the road way and
stones moved down to the forest edge.

I have also had the news that a Latvian student is willing to undertake the Latvian side of the study that I am trying to research (for any newcomers I am looking into how rural inhabitants can be included in development planning in the area where they live). That is a great relief and will make a good contrast to the Estonian research. I shall take a trip into Riga to have a chat and see where we take it from there. I was a little shocked though that the student in question does not do Skype and doesn't like the application. Not sure why that is, something to find out I suppose. For me Skype is such a boon and has meant I have been able to chat to all my children and grandchildren this last week. It was so funny seeing a picture of my grandson with an ipad on his knee whilst chatting to us, that his mum took with her phone. I still remember my own children pretending to talk to grandma and grandad on the phone and wonder how the two little ones will pretend to talk to us.

Our errant sheep back where they should be. Any remorse?
I doubt it. 

 The highlight of the week was a weekend of pottering. I pottered around the garden on the day when it was forecast not to rain and thankfully it didn't. I uncovered more of a strawberry bed that had got inundated with weeds and hoed paths to keep on top of the places I have already weeded. There was one point when I heard sheep. I looked out and couldn't see anything and thought it must have been my imagination playing tricks again, then I saw them run past the greenhouse. The only problem is that they were supposed to be about 300m away up the field and not running around the greenhouse. They must have got bored with their surroundings and came for a visit. Ian fetched some feed and off they all set back up to where they should have been. No drama or anything.

I'm partly adding this photo for a friend to see what we built
to trap our sheep in when we want to do anything with them
or when Ian wants to move them and he has to dismantle
their fence. It has proved fairly useful over the summer

Can you tell where the sheep have been? The grass is not
recovering so quick at this time of year

The strawberries are on the left of the picture in front of
the blackcurrant bushes and in the centre. Oh yes! We will
have two full rows this next year and I will work on another
for the end of the year.

I then pottered about the house and cleaned. The problem with communal heating is that they put it on when they should and not a day before, so no heating until October 15th (just realised that's only two days away) and even then it is always a debate if they will. It hasn't been that cold, but cold enough and damp enough to start stuff going mouldy. We had to bring the dehumidifier back from the other place where it was still drying out the apartment since the last flooding we had there. We have also been sinking under stuff here at home. Stuff that we are keeping just in case and I really feel the need either to sling it, or at least stash it better so we are not falling over it. I dread turning out like those folks who compulsively hoard. They don't tend to use their stuff though, just keep hoarding it, but we do use lots of stuff and need endless bottles to keep produce in, bottles for the home-made vinegar, bottles for jams, chutneys and dried foods. Then there are bags of fleece that needs processing and the time to process it. There was a child's car seat sat in the middle of the floor too and that will come in useful for when the little ones visit. As for the piles of papers on the desk! Well that's next week's pottering sorted. At least most of the windows have now been cleaned with bleach. I don't like using bleach but the mould was getting in and needs must.

The strip on the left has more blackcurrant bushes in and
we are trying some suckers from the five spice plant we
have in the greenhouse to see how it fares outside 

And that leads me onto today's riveting day. Teeth cutting! One of our alpacas needs her teeth cutting badly, but we have been struggling to get it done. On a visit to a camelid breeder we know, they told us that some of their animals needed theirs' doing. We got a text yesterday to say the vet was coming and if we wanted to watch then we could come over. An early start for us and we went across. In the end it was just as traumatic for them as for us. We are now seriously thinking of buying a tooth cutting implement that costs a lot of money and then Ian going to cut their animals' teeth too, as a way of recouping the costs of the machine. That and possibly learning how to shear the alpacas properly and he could have quite a viable business going. Well that's the theory, now all he has to do is go on a course and see where we go from there.