Spring Cleaning

The bird cherry is flowering this week

Some people clean their houses in spring, not us! We clean out alpaca houses. Our house might need a spring clean but there isn't time for that. Cleaning out the alpaca houses is one of those jobs we know we have to do and pleased when it’s all over, mucking out is never an easy job and it took us most of the day. We have tried an experiment with the boys’ house this year and instead of just putting wood chippings in the drainage channels which worked well, we put a whole layer of them over the floor. We will see if it helps to keep the bedding drier even in the wet times and if it makes cleaning them out next year easier. If it is we will do the same in the girls’ house. We must admit though that we hadn’t got the energy to do the same in the girls’ house this year, as it meant finding one of the wood chipping piles that we have around and then shovelling it into the trailer. If we decide to do it next year though, we can be prepared beforehand.

A cleaned out alpaca house with some of the wood chippin
layer.

It looks quite creative now with the contrast between the
soil and the green. The barley is growing well and the two
stripes on the left are clover. The beans and sunflower
seeds went in the curved section in the middle

That wasn’t the only major job that was done this week. We also prepared the garden at our other flat and put the potatoes in. It might be a bit weedy this year, as they have gone into a rather weedy old strawberry patch, so I am not looking forward to keeping on top of the weeds, but at least there are only two sites this year for planting, as we have given up one of our gardens. Ian also rotavated the field out on the land again, so I could plant sunflower seeds and beans and in preparation for buckwheat and oats. We have a seeder to put in the larger seeds and although it was rather pricey for what it is, in terms of materials used, it has been worth its weight in gold for saving us both time and backache.

Now the chickens and caravan are out of the greenhouse
Ian has been able to prepare the beds for the summer veg

There are lots of cowslips this year

Here's a close up. 

Ladybirds are back

Seed trays planted up

It hasn’t saved aching feet though. There are several plates that can be fitted in the hopper depending on the seed that is being sown, so of course I chose the bean one for the beans. I noticed though that instead of planting one at a time it was planting three, so I decided to swap plates to one for peas that seemed to fit better. Which of course meant a long trip back to where I had put the other plates, so I wouldn’t lose them, one of the reasons for foot ache. For the next lot of beans which were a different colour and of course a slightly different size, I had to swap back to the bean plate – but only after noticing of course that it wasn’t always dropping seeds. What a palaver. The other reason for aching feet is the number of miles walked, backwards and forwards with the seeder.

The sheep are behaving themselves this week and making
an impression on the grass already

The new vegetable bed with straw paths for when it gets
wet, so I can still have access to the beds without getting
muddy feet. 

We still haven’t got the oats in as we would like to have done, we still need the seed and not sure if it might be a bit late now, but no harm in trying. The buckwheat is a short-season, frost sensitive crop and so can go in near the end of the month, the same as the squashes. I have though planted up about ¾ of our new vegetable bed with parsnips, carrots, beetroot, more beans (pretty coloured ones though), onions and some dahlias. I am not sure if the dahlias will come though, they look a bit dried out as I couldn’t plant them last year. I have planted up chickpeas, celeriac, broccoli and other things that I cannot remember now, in trays in the greenhouse. I have labelled them though, thank goodness and written down all the seeds I have sown in my veg plots in a book where we keep those kinds of records. It works most of the time, unless I forget – which has been known.

Riga near to part of the Latvian University

I have also been to Sigulda and Riga this week to join a summer school for a day. I had thought of joining them for two days, but it didn’t look very easy to get back home from the places they were visiting on the second day and so decided not to. I have enough of trying to figure out bus routes as it is. Since I was due to arrive in Sigulda a little ahead of the group, I fitted in a visit to a friend. We had cowslip tea, something I had never tried before and it was the brightest of yellows. It was a good year to have cowslip tea, as there are lots in the fields. I know in England they were over picked for cowslip wine and so much rarer, but here they are pretty abundant, as are most things that grow wild here. If it can grow, survive or emigrate to Latvia, then it is abundant. So wild garlic, storks, forests, wild boar – well I think you get the idea.

Who are you looking at!

One of my Masters students is out on military manoeuvres this week. 10 days of compulsory exercises, which I presume will have more of an edge this time around with the noises being made from over the border in Russia. It really brings it home who will be in the forefront should there be any action, young men and women who have nothing to do with the decisions that their leaders make. Having said that, I should say that some people feel that it is actually the media that is hyping the threat. I know I read more about the threat on American news sites than I do on Latvian or European ones. It is a worry, but so far it is a distant one.

The grapes are really taking off now and there is the promise
of lots of fruit again 

Snakeshead fritillary 

I must admit to being tired. At one point I asked God to prove he exists due to the disappointments of not seeing changes that I wanted to see. I have never, ever done that before, but God is the kindest person | know and gently showed me, he is still around and I am who I am because of my beliefs. I guess it could also be hormonal changes adding to the tiredness, since I am that sort of age for all that kind of thing, but you'll be glad to know I am feeling much better this week. I might be physically tired but not as emotionally tired. I think that has something to do with having done very little academic work this week and the physical activity has helped my brain to settle.

Lot's of dandelions again

The five spice has lots of flowers on this year, so we are
hoping for lots of fruit too

Just catching up

Now we've had some rain, it feels safe to have
a barbecue again, unfortunately the wood got
a little wet too and Ian had to use the heavy
duty fire starter - aka the blow torch- to get it
going to provide the charcoal to cook the food

This last week I was running out of steam, I was just so tired. I am not sure if it was stress? rain? physical work? virus? combination? If it was stress, what was I stressed about in particular? Who knows, but I decided not to fight it and let my body work it out of its system and sleep when I needed to. I am quite adaptable in the end and I am sure the stress of conferences will diminish eventually, actually quite soon - as long as it goes okay that is. I will talk about the conference more next week, after all I don't want to get ahead of myself and there is still a lot to say about the week just gone and since I have some time in peace and quiet I may as well just get on chronicling it.

The barbecue spot - or is that frankenbbq? After all the metal
grid was lounging around in the basement and the bricks are
redundant ones from somewhere.

One of the stresses last week was a late night rain storm, this is not good for the constitution especially when accompanied by dripping sounds. This was the second time in a week that rain has poured in through the air ventilation chimney that is in the midst of repair and necessitated buckets to be arranged under the drips. Our problem is that many good trades folks have left and gone to Ireland or the UK and so we are left with people who struggle at times with life and drink to excess far to often. I do hope though that the guy repairing our chimney will sober up soon to finish the chimneys off. There was a lot of water came down though that night and a stone in our pond out on the land that I could stand on to get water because the water level was so low i.e. about 2-3 inches (5-7cms)  below the level of the stone is now submerged by about of inch (2.5cm) of water. That's a lot of water in a short space of time, even if it does take the runoff water from our greenhouse.

The squash season has arrived. At least we
don't have to do much more than put the
squash in the sun to harden the skins at this
stage

Our summer time activities are so weather dependent that it does make us fairly obsessive about weather forecasts, we look at three sites mainly and in addition look at radar and satellite pictures and still they get it wrong sometimes. The most stressful point is when we want to harvest the hay and we feel like we are racing against time and nature, but once that is in we usually feel a bit more relaxed, until we have the race against winter and the preparations we need to make for that. As one journalist wrote recently though, sustainable farming can't be rushed, you need to take all the time you need. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow and stop trying to fight nature - it often wins anyway and when you lose on one front, you may gain on another, something we found this year for sure. We lost out on some of the seeds that got planted that haven't germinated in the heat, or possibly germinated then frazzled due to lack of water, but we gained on another front in that Ian didn't have to mow so much as the grass wasn't growing. One of the losers this year, may have been the oats. We haven't had much luck with this crop, last years lodged (i.e. fell over) due to disease, as it got rust in the rain - don't laugh! Plants can get spots that look like rust. This year, it may have been the lack of rain. Fortunately we got about four bales out of it before it fell over, the last bit was left to see if we could get it to ripen and therefore save the seed. Instead the remaining plants were mulched back into the ground, so all is not lost I guess. We are not sure about the four bales either, as we are unsure if they were dry enough to bale - they are in the greenhouse where they are dry at least and we will see how they fare - if not it is compost for them.

The race is on to the raspberries!

I had another visit to the dentists this week. I had a tooth that was not good when I went to the dentist last time, but I couldn't get them to understand that I needed work doing on it and in the meantime it has got worse. My upcoming trip to Florence concentrated my mind though as I didn't want a repeat performance of emergency dental repair work needing to be done on my teeth again, so I managed to get another appointment for during the week, only they did some work on it and then told me I had to go back after my trip, meanwhile only putting in a temporary filling. Oh boy! Hope it lasts.

It's getting mighty crowded in that nest

We had more visitors this week as one of our neighbours who lives in America most of the time, who we met last year, brought his family to see us this week, first he brought his brother, sister-in-law, nephew and mother and then he brought both parents for a longer visit. They loved to see what we were doing and to see some of the possibilities for land use in the area, especially since they normally live near the sea. His father loves plants of all kinds and knows people who have grown different types of fruit and so we are hoping for cuttings, in turn he wants seeds from some of our plants too, like my "black" hollyhocks. We spent two hours talking plants and viewing the land, I even taught our neighbour some new words that he hadn't learnt in America, whereas I have at least learnt the names of berries in Latvian - not much use for knowing the translation of redcurrants etc. in New York I guess!

That brown patch in the middle of the picture is my
strawed up bed, rotting down a bit for future strawberry
and potato beds

Oh the excitement, a royal baby! Has the world gone mad or just the media? Oh yes! It's the silly season where they seize on the smallest thing because everyone else is on holiday. Still I wish the Royal couple all the best and hope they can bring up a well-adjusted little one despite the glare of the publicity. What is the fascination with a royal baby? I am mildly interested and we have running jokes in our family about the royal family and the idea they could pop in for a cup of tea anytime, so some sort of mild affection for the institution. I do think I would rather have the royal family than a Presidential election every four years like in America, that is hyped as democratic and seems anything but, judging by the amount of dollars spent, but still I cannot quite see what all the hype is about. The announcement and a few pictures is enough is it not? Not a detailed analysis of what the world's media is saying, an analysis of what his life will be like, a round up of ..... you get the picture anyway and I'm sure you saw the news too and as for the breaking news that his grandmother said  "absolutely beautiful, the family is thrilled" - what else was she meant to say? She is his grandmother after all and hardly earth shattering news. Rant over now!