Uggghh!

Our old oak tree covered in snow and lit by the sun looks so
pretty

After a week of Narniaresque type weather with beautiful snow covered trees, it rained. The snow is still here but it looks rather drab and dreary now. Such a shame as it all looked rather festive, although it did keep Ian busy clearing paths with the snowblower. Of course there is still plenty of time for snow to return before winter has finished, but for now the dark days are back.

Chanel with a bit of festive frosting

A path made with the snowblower

This time of the year is one of beginnings and ends. It is the end of the milk season for one of our milk suppliers. We have two sources for our lovely, thick and creamy unpasteurised milk. One has milk all the year round, presumably by staggering her cows delivery dates and the other opts for time off in the winter. I can understand that, as milking animals is quite demanding. Our friend the goat farmer looks forward to the rest she gets at this time of the year as she prepares for her goats to start kidding.

Mr. P shows up much better against the snow

The ponds are frozen but our well was still filling up until
a few days ago

The lighter days with the snow has meant some of our hens have started laying again and they seem to have got over their autumn moult. When the cold weather really kicks in the number of eggs usually drops off but come February time they should be starting to lay more consistently. We are going to buy some eggs this next year to raise more stock. We have managed to breed out consistent egg laying out of them, but some of them are a decent size for meat birds, so not all bad.

Eyre or Floss as we usually call her has got a good long coat on
now. So long it is starting to get all matted again. She isn't so
patient as Sofie but she let Ian comb out a huge chunk of matted
fur with the new super duper combs that have rotating teeth.

Lady V checking out the weather before heading out ....

We have our first booking for next year, on the first of January from a Russian family. We subscribed to a site that advertises rural holidays and activities but also puts tours together for individuals and groups. It will be interesting to see what else comes of this. We really do need a shop building for our products rather than bring them backwards and forwards from home though.

... for a roll around in the snow. I mean! At her age too

Investigating the old jar of oil 

On the subject of buildings, we were discussing our wish list and besides a shop we would like a purpose built workshop. I would love to have a round building that looks out over the alpaca paddocks with an offshot kitchen. The shop would be next door to that and then a barn at the end nearest the greenhouse. We were thinking of putting the barn nearer the alpacas but I think it would be nicer for people to have the possibility of seeing the alpacas better whilst doing some felting and not just when Ian brings them on a walk or far away in the distance. We would need to find funding for this though and so will have to submit proper plans, which is not too much of a problem, but we have to get organised and although we are getting there, we are getting there slowly.

Sunbathing father (standing) and son (sitting down). Brencis
is getting huge, he looks like he might be bigger than his
father. Let's just hope he remains a laid back sort of guy like
his dad.

I thought of decorating this tree for
Christmas, but I think the snow did a
better job of it

Last year we made some wine from our grapes. It was not a stunning success and the wine was at best palatable, however, it does make some rather nice gluwein. Well we like it and since we have plenty of bottles of the red stuff, we have been having a cup of gluwein on a rather regular basis. If we haven't had gluwein, we have had a hot juice drink with similar spices. We have plenty of juice from all our berries to get through but we are not big juice drinkers. We go through phases. I would rather have a hot drink though and so this makes a good alternative.

It was nice to see the sun this week

A bit cold for using the outside loo these
days

I noticed that a friend of ours had what looked like a turkey one mealtime and I asked her where she got it from. It turned out to be a goose and she got it from a friend of hers. I thought that would make an interesting change for Christmas and asked if she could help us get one. She gave me a number for someone called Martinš. We know of someone with same name and it sounded like they were in the same direction and so wondered if it was the same person. The name was on the noticeboard in our caravan with the number, so Ian checked and no it was not the same Martinš. A few days later I asked Ian to phone to arrange for the goose for Christmas, because I wouldn't be home. Eventually he remembered to phone, but the person who answered was not Martinš and neither did they speak English as we expected. Whoops! Turns out Ian had phoned the number on the board, it may have been Martinš' number before but not now and it wasn't the one I asked him to ring. Finally he got the right number and the right Martinš and so we are definitely having goose for Christmas now.

I would think the chickens are grateful to be inside these days.
This was meant to be removed and put under cover

Blackcurrant bushes forming snow sculptures

I have been busy trying to process some apples that were a bit past their best and squashes that were not going to last long. We had run short of jars but after a sort out of various jars with small amounts of jam or chutney in them I managed to free some up, a friend gave us some more and after sorting out the boxes of empty jars I managed to find some the right size. Amazing what a little sorting out will do while procrastinating a writing project. So there is blackcurrant and apple jam, wild strawberry and apple jam, there is spiced squash and dried fruit marinating waiting to be turned into christmas puddings and some orange peel being turned into candied peel. There is also dried squash and dried spiced squash.

You can just about see the sign

Tree and snow art

Another reason for the sort out was that we need to free up freezer space for lamb. We cannot keep the male lamb as his mother was the best mother of all our ewes, she gave birth unaided and took good care of the lamb, hence his good size. The other two were rotten mothers, one didn't even attempt to feed her lambs and the other was not much better and her lambs didn't really thrive. We hope it is just inexperience and next year they should be better. I say next year, they are all pregnant again and we don't know when they are due. Whoops! If the lambs from this round survive then we will cull the ram, if they don't they have one last chance before the ram has to go.

I thought I might try to cover the Brussel Sprouts, they are about
pea size now

Aggie with her dusting of snow

Such is the farming life and trying to at least maintain some genetic integrity and not inbreeding them. Next year we plan on making a better shelter for the sheep at the top of the land for routine husbandry and hopefully what was the old alpaca house will be strengthened and repaired or replaced for winter quarters. We'll see what we actually manage. It is a problem when the alpacas are our focus but the sheep do a valuable job of providing us with mowing services on rough ground and provide us with some meat. The idea is also that the fleeces we get from them will help with making felted or knitted items. A little bit of sheep's wool helps alpaca fibres to felt or hold its shape.

A bit more obvious on Chanel and looks like that fungus that
kills bats. Fortunately this will not do any damage

Digging for Jerusalem artichokes

At least this week I managed to get some skiing done. Last winter season I managed to get my skis out only once in the whole season. I hope this year to get more opportunities than that. It is always with a bit of trepidation that I get back on my skis and I always practice out of sight, well mainly out of sight. Of course the bit where I started to wobble was in sight of the road, just as a car was going past. Despite the snow, the ground is not frozen and so I also managed to dig up another bucket load of Jerusalem artichokes, so the chickens will be happy and I brought some home for us to eat. There is not much else I can do on a winters day out on our land, Ian had made all the paths necessary.

A full bucket and deep snow. Good job I had ski trousers on

The lines across are my ski track, honest!

About time too!

We have a bridge across our stream now. Now no
attempting to jump across, rather tricky for a short person
like myself!

Sorry I'm a bit late this week, yet again but we talked and talked with our unexpected visitor last night and covered all kinds of subjects, mainly the economy and where is it going. We are of course no wiser than the next man, still the economy has so much influence on the decisions we make. It was strange to think than none of us were afraid of a complete collapse of the economy, after all we would work the land we have, but this bounding around up and down, not knowing from one day to the next how it will all turn out makes preparing for the future very difficult. I don't think we are any clearer on where it is going after our long chat, but we do know we will watch all the more closely for the finger of God to point the way.

Winter preparations. Our patent road finder markers for
when it snows!

So back to what I started to write. Over the years we have lived here in Latvia I have discovered that milk can taste different. I have also discovered that unpasteurised milk that has gone off is very different to pasteurised milk that has gone off, it doesn't smell as unpleasant for a start. I did wonder if I was making it up at times and if it was just all in my imagination, but no! I found out this week that it is perfectly correct according to an article in the Guardian. I'm not sure what kind of milk I get mine from, they may be Latvian brown cows or they maybe the standard Fresian, but it tastes good anyway and is probably due to the fact they are grass fed and only housed in the barn over the winter months - which in this harsh climate is perfectly understandable. I very very rarely throw away milk these days as milk which has gone sour is either used to make scones or is used to make a simple cheese with the whey being used in bread making. Butter was another recent revelation, in fact the first time I tasted it I wasn't sure I liked it. It had a very rich taste, which was quite over powering. The butter was made from a mix of sweet cream and sour cream, hence the taste. Once I got over the shock though, I found I quite liked it, unfortunately I have to be up early to make sure I get some and so we don't have get it that often. Makes you wonder what else supermarkets do to food to make it bland and last far longer than is natural.

Our ponds are distinctly full, even the middle one has water
in it, which it hasn't for most of the year.

We spent some more time this week shifting stuff around, such as some well rotted wood chippings to our garden, a yard full of mud cleared away, and a good proportion of a huge pile of sawdust to our land. At least that helps to clear our friends' workshop up a bit, in preparation for their move to new premises and gives us some more mulch for paths and gardens. It's quite an impressive pile of stuff we have now. It also proved what a handy sized tractor we have, as it was able to work in the workshop to collect the sawdust instead of spending the whole day shovelling it by hand. It didn't stop a group of men laughing at our titchy tractor though as we drove past them, little did they know! Besides shifting stuff, Ian has been fettling again, fettling drains to keep our new barn dry, fettling a radio to keep it going for a wee bit longer (it is getting on a bit now the radio, but until it breathes it's last, Ian will keep it going, even if it means pinching two wires together to 'switch' it on) and trying to fettle a leaking pipe. I went up early to the other apartment to warm it through for our traditional bath night and ended up stepping in a puddle that had collected next to the toilet, the small leak had obviously manifested itself into something a little more serious and overflowed the margarine tub used to catch the drips. I was just grateful it was not the toilet itself leaking as I first feared, but it did mean clearing out a lot of pots of paint etc,. that we store in that little room, while the floor dried.

Fettling the damp area outside our barn with yet another
ditch. The wooden planks stretch across the ditch so the
tractor still has access.

It has been a week of change really as the weather has finally deteriorated into normal late autumn weather, wet and windy. In fact we were on the edge of hurricane Berit the other night, and some parts of Latvia had 70mph winds. I don't think we had anything nearly as bad but were still relieved to find the barn and greenhouse intact, even if some parts of the flooring are getting wet through seepage from the sodden ground. Our power went off momentarily a couple of times, but we were surprised that it came back on again quite quickly, much better than in the past. Our internet though gave up later on and so we just tormented the kittens for the rest of the evening. Don't worry there is no need to call out the Latvian equivalent of the RSPCA as they love it, although I have a feeling that the word torment won't translate well.

Ian has been laying a lot of wood chipping paths so we
don't have to walk in mud

Talking of the kittens, besides using them to brush the floor (their game - and it is their game - is to try and catch the brush while we try and sweep the floor, if they catch it, they cling on while they slide across our laminate flooring, it must amuse them some what as they play this game everyday) they are also beginning to charge around the house like a couple of overgrown teenagers and it's getting to the stage where they are big enough to start causing damage. Trying to curb some of their youthful enthusiasm is wearing a bit thin at times, but like kids, it won't be long before they grow up and become more sedate and settle down - I hope! This week it is not just Bella who has been in places where she shouldn't be, but so has Sofie. One day Ian went to lock the outer door before we turned in for the night and the next stage in our nightly routine is to shut the kittens in the living room where they can do least damage and means we don't trip over them, if we get up in the middle of the night; well we could find one kitten but couldn't find the other, until we heard a plaintive meow, which sounded like it was coming from outside, instead it was coming from between our inner and outer door - a distance of about 10cm. Sofie had snook in there while Ian was locking the outer door and he hadn't noticed. Another day Ian went to shut a door and rather unexpectedly grabbed something furry, Sofie was half way up the door hanging onto the side of the door and the handle. Is she beginning to work out door handles? We are in trouble if she has.

But it looks so nice in the sun! Although if you enlarge
the photo you can see the field is flooded. Next year we
will have a raised bed with squash in it, but how to tackle
this for future years we have yet to decide

The changing weather is bringing with it more opportunity to visit folks, when it is wet there is not a lot to do out on the land and socialising is much better than staying indoors cooped up all the time. We have had two opportunities this week for afternoon tea, how civilised and how English! Our first trip was to see the ladies who I taught English, we have all been too busy to really start back on the lessons and we have wanted to see them for ages. We text them to see if we could arrange a time to see them, but I didn't get a reply, so as it has been getting dark early we decided to go and call in and see if they got my text and check out the best time to meet up. We waited and waited outside for ages, having rung the bell and eventually a very surprised young lass opened the door with an equally surprised director behind, but we were ushered in and asked if we wanted tea or coffee and a few minutes later the rest of my English group turned up with a translator and we all settled down for a good long natter  with tea and biscuits- well Ian did. I had to make a mad dash back home to help sort out a money issue, wrong money in the wrong account - my fault. Still we all had a great time and I was requested to start back on my teaching in the New Year, "can we go back to the beginning please" was the additional plea - I know the feeling. I think we are almost the same with our Latvian. Our next trip was a wee bit further, actually a lot further but it was good to reconnect with people we haven't seen in a long while and as one of them was English anyway, we were treated to scones with jam, to which we added some cakes from our local bakery, so a rather jolly time was had by all.

A small but deep hole dug by the wild
boar, but worryingly close to our
blueberry bushes

Our land is pretty soggy now due to the change in weather, but also looking a bit worse for wear due to the wild boar. They were back again this week and this time they had dug some much bigger holes and re-dug some that they dug earlier in the year. It is quite disheartening really and means that as soon as it is dry enough in spring, we will have to be out filling in lots of holes and re-seeding the patches. From my research on wild boar I have found there are only two effective methods for keeping them off the land, one is electrified pig fencing which would be horrendously expensive and the next would be hunting. It looks like we will have to chase up the contract with hunters to restrict the damage, otherwise we are wasting our time trying to grow vegetables.

A surprising carpet of green amongst the brown

Not sure how much the problems with Krajbanka is making the news elsewhere, but it is sure creating problems here in Latvia. After all what do you do when your wages are paid into a bank that has ceased trading? Many people have more than one bank account here in Latvia and I can see why. If one bank fails then maybe there is some money in another account. Another reason for the number of accounts is that it costs to transfer money between different banks, quite scandalous really as these costs add up over time and is probably why most of the banks are back in profit so quickly.

Update: I hope the changes of dates haven't confused anyone but for some reason blogger has stopped automatically setting the date for when the post is published and reverted back to the date when I start to write it. Very annoying as I often jot notes down to remind me through the week.