Home again!

It almost looks like the alps with snow covered mountains
in the background. 

Well it's been a hard couple of weeks with a lot of intensive work. I managed to get a some chapters finished on my thesis, which is a start at least, but there is still a way to go. There are also plenty of tasks to do on the EU project I'm working on, so it is going to be pretty tricky fitting it all in. It was kind of odd this week meeting my colleagues who all congratulated me on finishing. I know that it is now a formality to complete my PhD because I have got the required number of published papers, but I still have to write my thesis and defend it before I am given the title of doctor, so it all feels a bit premature.

Early morning wake up call. I know the feeling

It's too early!

I daren't even think about the garden, especially after the wind and rain yesterday and today. My garden is pretty battered with pole beans, sweetcorn and Jerusalem artichokes all either on the floor or at crazy angles. It is going to need some intensive care and attention to get it straight in time for winter. Before I left for a trip up to Estonia last week, I had to get started on collecting some beans and get them in the freezer, as well as start on digging up the potatoes. It is annoying that the beans have only just really got into production. Still at least there are some packs of beans for the freezer with more to come if I can get them up off the floor. We also have some squashes and pumpkins that have suddenly started appearing, just in time for a forecast of a frost. Sigh!

Nice to see the mud pack the other week has washed off.
Seems to have done the trick, Herk is looking pretty youthful
here

Herk even looks like he has a smile on his face and a spring
in his step. Nice to see him up and about instead of slumped
on the ground avoiding the flies like he does over summer

I also managed to get to see the visiting gynaecologist before my Estonian trip. I thought it would just be a routine appointment but she said she wanted to send me for an ultrasound. No idea what for but my local doctor made an appointment at the hospital and then had to unmake it because I was going to be in Estonia. I wish she had asked first. I did hear today though that I have an appointment for next Monday so we will see what they have to say after that. I have been feeling really good just lately, especially since the menopausal brain fog has lifted and so I have no intention of doing anything unnecessary.

Sunrise on the farm

Rain on its way!

Visitors have still been popping along to our farm and I might hang around for some of it, but most of the time I leave it to Ian, so I can get on with my work. I shall be so pleased when I finally do finish my PhD. Maybe I will have more time, at least for the garden and maybe the visitors from time to time, or maybe I won't! I guess that all depends on whether I get more work with uni or not when my contract runs out.

Mr. P. I don't know why, but her reminds me of Guy Martin.
I think its the sideburns and dark hair.

Hello you down there!

This last week marked the start of travelling season. I started with a face to face meeting in Tartu for the EU project I'm working on. Our Estonian team were hosting our colleagues from Finland, Sweden and Germany. Because I joined the project part way through, I hadn't met any of the others before, so it was nice to be able to meet them in person and not just on Skype. The idea was to have a couple of intensive days and get a lot of work done which we did and each evening we went to a different restaurant to eat. The weather was so warm that we sat outside. That might not sound remarkable to many folks, since this is only September but we have known frosts on the first of September before.

Heads down eating. A serious business at this time of year

Jakobs is looking very fluffy already

One of my Estonian colleagues guided some of the our international colleagues on the bus and I guided those who wanted to walk to our evening meal. Tartu is such a walkable city (or large town really, it is smaller than the population of Chesterfield, which was the nearest town to where I used to live in the UK). It is also a very green city, which reminds me a bit of Sheffield, where I did my bachelor degree many moons ago. I found the Tartu Struve Geodetic point as we trundled about, it is the next point to the north of a point situated near our farm here in Latvia. It is weird to think there are two points that connect my life here in the Baltics that were marked in the 1800s to measure the meridian of the earth.

Freddie looking his usual sweet self

Just too much! It's a hard life being an
alpaca. At least it is for Josefs.

The meetings went well and I think everyone went home happy that we had made progress. After that meeting I got to see some of my Landscape Architect colleagues as we had a PhD seminar. This is where one of the students presents their work. I don't go to many of them, but since I was at the university all week and those meetings had finished I managed to slot it in. I was invited back to one of their homes for a quick cup of tea and a catch up, which was nice. I also got offered a room to stay in when I go up to Helsinki as my colleague's wife was at home who actually lives there, so that works. I have another place to stay on the way back too, so a time for meeting lots of people.

George finds it amusing though

Josefs demonstrating delinquent behaviour. Escaping, yet
again through the fence. 

We've been in Latvia now for nearly 12 years and in all that time we've not really had any issues with crime. We did have a wheelbarrow go missing one winter. We wondered if it had got buried in the snow because it was outside, but when the snow melted it was nowhere to be seen. Still it was not a major catastrophe. This last week though we found out that someone must have got into our woodstore and stole the two bikes we had in there. The door was still locked but Ian noticed that the window was not as secure as he thought it was and only held in by a bent nail. I wouldn't mind so much but I was just thinking of getting my bike out to get the milk in the mornings rather than taking the car to our neighbours. It's a bit awkward to carry back 4 litres of milk in glass jars and a bit awkward to get to our neighbours now they have dug ditches on the side of the road, so my bike would have been ideal and it had a basket on the front. Neither of the bikes were exactly expensive bikes, just Walmart specials but irritating to lose them nonetheless. Let's hope that is the last of the issues we have.

Little Ilvija is growing well and looking like her Mum
more and more each day

Chanel is keeping her condition pretty well so far. The new
food is obviously helping.

Aggie scratching her ear

Now chewing her toes

And she can still walk away nonchalantly. I wouldn't be able
to walk after such contortions.

Amanda! What is amazing is that Ian got this close. Slowly,
slowly he is gaining their trust.

Vanessa looking more and more like
her mother, Lady V. We'll have to start
calling Veronica, Dame V as she strikes
a regal pose.

Ilvija chewing on grass. A bit big that piece!

Lady V trying to hide in the long grass. Hasn't she read the
books? Alpacas do not like long grass

Oooh! I've been discovered!

It's finished! - No really! It is this time.

Thirteen hay bales. Not all are usable but at least we can
move them off the field and decide what to do with them
later.

Haymaking is finished. We nearly lost the grass that Ian cut last week. We had a day of rain and the grass was fairly green and leafy, so it looked like it might rot away before we got the chance to do anything with it. A few days of reasonably hot and dry weather, however, meant that Ian managed to rescue it and bale it. Not sure how worth it was doing it, as it needed turning and then spreading out and turning again before it could be baled. Not something Ian would do normally if it wasn't needed. At least it's all experience. Experience of what not to do next time.

Back to finding the shade. People often ask how they do in
the winter and we tell them fine, as long as they have enough
fleece on them. This year the fleece is growing well and so the
recent spell of good weather is hard on them. They enjoyed
the shower they got the other day when it rained most of the
day.

Skype call from the office to colleagues. I didn't have my
video on, I think they would have been jealous. Actually
it's because the signal strength is not good enough for
Skype with a group.

I've been busy with my thesis this last week, trying to get all the work I've done pulled together into one piece of coherent work. As I mentioned last week I started with the easier chapters to get the writing flowing and it seems to have worked, as I actually feel like I'm progressing. I have had other work to do though, so maybe not quite as fast as I had hoped. Another day of washing helped.

How is that comfortable? Joesfs a bit
soggy and muddy and that was before
the rain. We have been having some
heavy dews in the morning.

A hard life!

Vanessa's crew up on the oak tree hill. When we had the
biodiversity team come to look at our land in June they
suggested that it would be good to graze the land to increase
the biodiversity. It should be cleared to ensure it does not
get taken over by aggressive grasses. The problem is that
also driving a tractor over this patch would likely end up
damaging it and so the soft pads of the alpacas is ideal. They
munch away, taking some of the nutrients away and deposit
it somewhere else. Perfect! Job done! I hope!

Where does all this washing come from at the moment? Well that has to do with another milestone passed this last week. After the rain we organised with the young chaps to come and help us out and remove some furniture that was on loan to the people who bought an apartment from us. We hadn't got the room to move all the furniture from two apartments into one very small one and the people who bought the apartment needed some extra, so it worked for the time being. Not long ago though I got a message that they were going to sell it and then another one to say they had found a buyer who  wanted a quick sale, which meant we had to move the furniture asap. Fortunately we had already discussed with a friend that we could store it in an unused cabin and so not a problem to shift it - once the horse box passed its technical though, which it did the week before.

Tut! Tut! Amanda. You are not supposed to be eating oak
leaves. 

They have a good view of the land from up there.

This is actually a quilt cover that
was used as a curtain in the
apartment. It was decorated in
August 1992 with the help of my
two oldest children. They were the
same age that their oldest two
children are now. 

And the washing? Well we had also left curtains,  they were a tad dusty and needed washing before they get stored away. Once the apartment was cleared the post key was left on a windowsill and we dropped the key to the apartment into the postbox. And that was it! We had finally vacated the first apartment we had had in Latvia. Time to move on from that chapter in our lives. We have no idea who the new owners will be, but understand they have connections with the people in the block.

Chanel and Ilvija. It is getting hard to tell them apart sometimes

Ilvija is definitely darker though

But not as dark as her father.

Alpaca fleece drying in the greenhouse.

Ian has also been doing some washing with our little portable washing machine that we bought last year and rarely used because we ran out of well water and there was no rain to collect rain water. He has been washing some of the not so good fleece, the stuff on the legs and neck, to give to a lady who visited just over a week ago. She makes duvets with sheep wool filling and so we are going to work with her to see if we can make alpaca duvets. We are starting off with small sample pieces to see how they work and what happens when you use them and see if it will work with Latvian linen. If it works we will get the wool processed in a factory into batts - it takes too long to process it all by hand for a full size duvet. If it doesn't work with linen then we may go for a good quality cotton manufactured in Latvia. We'll see!

Lady V not looking amused. Not surprising as she has a sore
on her leg that developed quite suddenly. 

Not sure if she has been nibbling it, as I would think it is a bit
difficult to reach. The flies were plaguing her though and so I
mixed some of my magic cream with clay. I sterilise the clay
from our land and it makes a good cover for the red sore patch.

Having a little chat with friends.

I will get my own chance to do some chinwagging later this year. I was accepted to take part in the European Rural Parliament, which sadly is in Spain. I know! It's tough isn't it! Spain in November too. I am also going to take the opportunity to connect with a few friends who live there. Although they do not live close by to the venue, it is still a lot closer than I normally am.

Busy eating

A wink from Jakobs

And the final piece of news this week. I got a pay rise or rather I am being paid a full week's work, rather than the four days a week I am currently paid for. The department has money for wages but not trips and so it was easier to employ me for extra days than pay for my trips. I'm not complaining, at least the trips get paid for eventually, one way or another. So this autumn I plan to go to Hannover in Germany, via Berlin; Helsinki and Mikkeli in Finland and  Madrid, Candás and Oliva in Spain. Just a few miles then and I promise there is only one return flight in that lot, the rest is by bus, train or ferry.

Let me whisper in your ear. These flies are bothering me!

Awww having snuggles! Not! They are actually play fighting.

The three muskateers

My garden

Knapweed seeds outside the greenhouse.