We're back!

A change of scenery. The view from our
apartment this afternoon

We're back in the apartment that is! This is the first night back since March when we moved out to the land. It isn't the cold that is the problem in the caravan, it is quite easy to warm it up quickly, even on freezing cold mornings. The weather hasn't even been that cold for Latvia at this time of the year anyway. What sends us back are two things that might seem inconsequential. Firstly the long dark nights. It is a long time for two of us to be stuck in a 12m2 space when there isn't much room to move around. It is now pretty dark by 4pm and we are still about a month away to the shortest day. The second point is the washing up. We use the kitchen that was built in the greenhouse and it serves us well for most of the year, but when it gets cold and damp, the washing up doesn't dry and it is a cold job for Ian. 

Oh oh! The brief view of the blue sky is about
to be obliterated - again!

At least someone knows the warmest spots. He
learnt fast.

Even cooking is a chore too but there are a few options. One is to start earlier and bung it all in the slow cooker, another is to freeze while trying to peel spuds, the third option is to retreat to the caravan but as I said, it is a small space. 

Finally some sunshine. 

Ian doing some repairs on his trousers.
Light on to see what he's doing and not
much space as you can see.

So we start on the new routine from tomorrow, where Ian leaves every morning to go and see to the animals and returns late afternoon once he has put them away. This will continue until sometime around March when the days get long enough and the heat in the sun returns to warm the greenhouse up in the day. There will always be a period of transition too, when there are still things out on the land that we need back in the apartment and there are crates everywhere, mainly with jars from the pickling and preserving done over the summer. We seem to have a lot this year, so we won't starve. It all needs a good sort out and rearranging though. 

Ian ordered a heat pack that is suitable for horses.
We hope it will help Turbjørn. It should arrive this 
week.

Look how long Josefs eyelashes are. Incredible, 
even for an alpaca.

Another issue for us out on the land is the mud. We had a few dry days and a lovely Saturday where we actually saw the sun, but then this was followed by overnight snow and heavy rain. The paths that had started to dry nicely were once again turned into squelchy messes. Traipsing around outside, just makes everything muddier and the mud paths are widening as there is a danger of slipping on the hilly bits. The land needs a rest as much as we do. 

It looks like Freddie is developing some whiskers
under his chin

The scene that greeted me first thing on Sunday
morning

The dry Saturday meant we managed to get a few jobs done though. We trimmed the boys toe nails and Ian gave them Vitamin A, D and E injections, except for Brencis as we need help with him. I then cleared the garden of the heaps of weeds and took them off to compost in our field. I moved hay bales to protect some carrots and turnips and put a cover over the veg. They had been under fleece, but I didn't want them crushing under that with snow on top, so created a better shelter for them. It looks a bit haphazard, but it worked. I also moved the black plastic off the beds that will get manure on them over the winter and put them on the beds that will be planted up with the cabbages next year (which I hope will stop them becoming weedy before I get the chance to plant them up). Lastly I cleaned out the chickens.

Wet soggy snow, not the nice crisp
stuff.

Teeth cutting needs doing soon.

The next day was forecast to be wet and so I planned on doing jobs in the greenhouse. There was a lot of sorting out to do of those things that needed to go to the apartment and a general tidy up. There were also seeds that needed sifting through that I hadn't had the chance to deal with. By the time I'd finished there were crates and boxes all ready for the move and a nice pile of hemp and hollyhock seeds. The hemp will be used in bread and in chicken feed. The hollyhock seeds will just go in the chicken feed.

Brencis still needs his toe nails doing and an
injection of Vitamins A, D and E. He also looks
like he needs a wash. Not sure what's going on with
the patterning white and mud patterns. How does
he do that? 

Off to the field for something to eat. They do
look so organised - not often that happens.

I'm glad that isn't our field at the top, that is
quite a mess. They also take shortcuts across our
field. Not caught them recently though. Not as
if it is our neighbour either as she doesn't have
a tractor.

Chanel looks like she's been up all night. She 
needs a good brush. Ian thinks the turmeric on her
feed might be starting to help the issues around
her face. She's too spitty and stressy to put cream 
on but if she can distribute a bit of turmeric powder
around her face while eating, that might just do the
trick. We'll see.

Lady V is still plodding on, in fact she's making
a bit of a nuisance of herself by muscling in on 
others at feeding time. 

Ilvija is such a cutie

Until she starts trying to feed from her mum again.
Chanel's having none of it though and so hopefully
by the time she has another baby, Ilvija will have 
stopped trying.

Saturday was such a gorgeous day

A rather muddy looking alpaca

Still finding some green grass

Just chilling in the sun.

An ordinary life

Schmack! These photos may look kind of familiar, they
were taken last week when the snow was on the ground and
the sun in the sky. This week, it's back to dismal and Ian
hasn't taken any new pictures! Can you imagine that!

Yes! We have finally moved out of the caravan and back to our apartment in the village. So instead of having to drag myself out of bed as soon as Ian is up, I get a cup of tea in bed. Ian is an earlier riser than I am and so in the caravan we pretty much get up when he does. There is not much choice really when there isn't enough space and we haven't an awning for him to go to. The bed has to be packed away so he can have his breakfast. Only in the middle of summer, on a warm day will he sneak out without waking me. I'd still rather have a cabin out on our land though.

Vanessa looks more and more like her mum

But maybe not from this angle. This is Veronica, Vanessa's
mum

The downside is that I have had to get the apartment sorted finally, so we can move about. The dump room was just that and so I had pulled all the stuff that was lying around on the floor out of there so that I could sort it out. And there it stayed for months. I hadn't had the time to deal with it. In fact we had been in the apartment for nearly a week before I got around to it, as I still had too much to do. Another downside is having to light the fire every day. In the caravan it is possible to switch the heater on without even getting up. Having said that, I don't light the fire until the temperature is below 16C, which is usually sometime in the afternoon, now that the place has warmed through.

I like the textures of the tree, moss and snow in this shot

I don't know what Herkules is laughing at, but looks like
something was amusing him or he was singing a solo

One of the jobs we had to do before moving in though was to shift wood from the land and stack it in the basement. Ian had loaded up the horse box and there it stayed until we had a freeze so that we could get the horse box off the land. We moved about 3 months worth of wood that day and we were rather tired. I stayed at the apartment and lit the fire, made something to eat for our tea and then crashed. At least with the fire on I could have a bath. Not something I do regularly these days, but I needed to soak my muscles after filling up boxes of wood and helping Ian carry it down the stairs to the basement.

Chanel, the loving mother, but not the brightest spark. This
could be her, "if you come near, I shall spit at you" pose

The girls looking very grubby against the white snow

My ordinary life this week, though was writing and writing and writing. In fact my supervisor complained with a smiley face at the end of his email that I was too productive. At least I have now finished writing the first draft of my PhD thesis, a paper that should have been submitted December 1st and updated a protocol that needed finishing off for submitting this week. By Friday afternoon I had done all I could and I actually took the weekend off. I don't always get weekends off as I've been trying to finish off my thesis and also I take off random days in the week, depending on whether a job needs doing or the weather means I can get on with an outside job. This week I just worked late to make up for the day off with moving wood.

Someone's taking an interest in the girls

Brencis doing a bit of alpaca pruning here.

Brencis finally got his Vitamin D injection this week. He is an absolute pain to work with, although a joy when we have visitors as he always comes to see people. We did have some help as our wonderful neighbours came down. It only took about 5 minutes to do with the extra help and a great deal less stressful than trying to do it ourselves. Our cat, Sofie, also thinks they are wonderful as she keeps disappearing up to their cow barn.

Sofie soaking up some sunshine

Valeria soaking up a bit of sunshine. Good job, there was
precious little of it this week

So my first day off in ages was doing the tidying up. As I mentioned we can now move around in our sitting room. The remaining piles of stuff to move are, at least, more manageable and I shall sort those out later on this week. All the food, bowls, and pans that were out on our land have also now been stacked away, which was easier said than done as it meant rearranging cupboards. I have also spent time reacquainting myself with what we have and where everything is. "Oh yes! I'd forgotten about that!" and "Oh! That's where it is!" is heard fairly regularly.

Our snow covered car. Now it is back to just red and brown.
It's supposed to be just red but not with the dirt roads which
are slecky (I think that is a Geordie word for slippy,
muddy conditions) due to the melted snow. 

These are the bales ,what's left of them. While I was working
on one bale a little mouse popped out from its tunnel. It
obviously did not approve of the changes I was making to its
accommodation

Sunday I went back out to the land. We had a bin collection and I wanted to get all the plastic off some rotten bales of hay into the bin. They were intended for growing squashes on but the conditions weren't right for them. They
will make good compost now. It makes us realise why we do not cover our bales with the stuff, there is so much of it. Ours are either kept under tarps or under cover in a building. We had that much of plastic off 13 large bales that some of it will have to wait for the next bin collection. It is a good job we don't throw much out most of the time. I have just signed a contract to only have our waste collected every three months and even with this extra plastic, that will be enough. Unfortunately, it is too dirty and degraded to recycle.

The little pond is full of blocks of ice where Ian has hacked
away so he can get some water out. This week the well though
is within 16cm of the top. That's a lot of water pressure

Ian has been working on next year's wood supply. This week
he's been busy getting the chicken ark repaired so we can
get the chickens that are still outside into the greenhouse. I
think they will appreciate that. There are days they don't even
venture out of the ark and then there are days they stop out
in some of the most stupid of weather and get too cold. Not
exactly renowned for their intelligence.

Besides doing that mucky job, I also planted garlic and sowed some seeds. I've been going to plant garlic for ages and just not got around to it. Apparently it is fine as long as it is before the shortest day of the year. Just in time then. I also had to wait for most of the snow to melt because I had to see where the beds were. We work with permanent beds and I had covered them with old hay. It was a fairly easy job to move it to one side and the ground was still soft. I dug out the weeds that were there, not that there were many and sowed the garlic bulblets and planted up some larger bulbs. I had let them go to seed this year to increase the genetic diversity.

Freddie's colour stands out nicely against the snow

George, just pondering life. He's a bright lad. He takes after
his mum in many ways, both good and bad. They are both
intelligent ones, but they also both eat through the fence and
have snapped fence posts in the process

I also experimented with sowing rocket, mizuna, chinese cabbage, onion and parsnip seeds. I've experimented with parsnip before and found I had far more success by planting the seed in autumn than I did by planting them in spring. They tended to get away before the weeds that way, rather than struggling to compete with the weeds when sown later. They are such slow germinators that the weeds have sprouted and away before parsnips even begin to show through. I've lightly covered them back up with the straw to stop them being washed away and give a bit of cover over the winter. We'll see what happens with that! I'm hoping this will also counteract any problems of spring droughts.

Mari, George's mum

Little Ilvija has started eating the grain and now eaten out of
Ian's hand. A step forward for training. Not sure what her
spitty mother will make of that though 

So today back to the ordinary life. Cup of tea in bed, read a little and get up after Ian has left to go to the land to see to the animals. Then it's back to writing and tidying up some things that need doing for work.

Home!

A choir of celebration, in training for advent

I've actually been at home a whole week now and I'm not going away again for a few more weeks. Gosh! Home is still the caravan surprisingly. The nights are long and it makes cooking an interesting experience. Sometimes in the cold greenhouse lit by the outdoor light or inside the caravan with our new acquisition, Robbie Mark 2. Robbie is a halogen oven, we nicknamed our first one Robbie for some reason. We missed the convenience of it so much we got another one. We kept Robbie Mark 1 going for as long as possible but eventually the plastic disintegrated. It didn't help that it's been in the greenhouse for much of its life and the plastic is obviously not UV resistant. We'll not make that mistake again. The halogen oven is good for Ian through the winter as it means it is easy to heat up a pie or bake some potatoes.

Tellus hitting those high notes and Freddie smiling benignly

There's nothing like a bit of snow and sunshine to show
how grubby our alpacas are. These are supposed to be white

At least Vanessa is close-ish to white that we get.

Baking in the caravan at least adds extra warmth, not that we are cold. A single oil-filled radiator on one bar is mostly sufficient with the occasional boost from a fan heater on the chillier days (the one bar is for safety reasons as we've had too many switches cook when switched to two). We are not particularly hardy and it is warmer than our old apartment used to be when the heating company blessed us with a rather cool but constant 16C. We'll be heading back to the apartment soon though but at least this apartment is warm as we heat it ourselves.

Cheek! I don't think Valeria cares what colour she is.

It has been a bit cold. This is the ice out of the water troughs.
Ian has been using the well water for the animals, which is
filling up again nicely. Along as it doesn't get too high and
freeze, we are okay.

We might be toasty here in our caravan but our older barn cat, Sofie  has decided to up sticks again and move up to our neighbour to live amongst her cows. Our other cat misses her company or maybe just the heat. They tolerate each other during the summer months, but in the winter they are best buddies. It is a dilemma, because, Sofie also hates the heat of the apartment and we are not the type to share our bedroom with animals, it disturbs me too much. I guess we might have to create a cat cave or I make one from our alpaca fleece - only that takes time and just at the moment I'm really busy with deadlines to meet. It will probably have to be a cardboard box and hay then.

Perched on top of the kettle after we had made our morning
coffee.

Aggie enjoying the sunshine

Ilvija growing up fast. She wasn't very sure about the snow
though. Not lke Josefs and Jakobs who used to love it.

Although I'm home I still have a lot of work to do. I have been writing, writing, writing and errrr... writing. I've now got the first draft done of my PhD thesis, so now my supervisors need to read it and give me some feedback. Once that was done and I had sorted out some admin type things with work I then started on another academic article. Technically the deadline was December 1st but my priority was to get my thesis finished and they did say that a short extension was allowable for the article. I hope to have that done in the next day or two. My supervisor is going to love me as there will be so much to read.

Show off! 

Such a look of innocence. Even when he's not cooperating
he kind of looks sweet. He just won't let us do what we need
to get done.

So apart from loads of writing there has also been the usual stuff, like laundry. Now when we live in our apartment that isn't a particularly onerous task, but when we are in the caravan it means a trip into the village to spend a day there. At this time of the year it means we can heat the apartment through, so we don't have burst pipes and I can also check the post, do some shopping and bring meat from the freezer. Well I can't waste time now. The alpacas also all got their Vitamin D injections this week, except Brencis who wouldn't cooperate as usual. We used to struggle with his uncle, Turbjørn, but even he is relatively well behaved these days. At least Turbjørn is smaller and I can hold him down, Brencis is just too tall for both of us. Ian cannot lean over him even, which helps to keep them under control.

And this is Brencis' uncle, Tubjørn

Here he is being his usual grumpy self.

That according to the ancient texts, is the sun!

Outside it is Christmas card white. We had a proper dumping of snow/a dusting/some snow - depending on your perspective and your expectations of weather at this time of the year. Since I have friends from Finland to Spain, perspective matters. It's not likely to last though and it is due to disappear by the weekend. It did look pretty for the first Sunday in advent and we even got to see the sun. I think it might have been October when Ian last saw it and I only saw some because of visiting friends in Spain - at least when I was on the east coast of Spain that is.

A dusting of snow

A day later! It was a bit more than we were expecting. 

I forgot to mention a bit of excitement last week. One of my Tartu friends asked if I was going up to the university before Christmas and I told her that I probably wasn't. She asked for my address, which I gave her and then mentioned I was actually passing through Tartu on the train. We agreed to meet there. I say meet, I mean in the few minutes the train was at the station. The train pulled in and there were two of my friends waving at me. That was a surprise. I nipped off the train, but only briefly as I didn't want it to go without me and all my bags were still on the train. I also didn't want to lose my seat as people were piling on. There was enough time though for my friends to hand over some presents and give me a quick hug. That was kind of special!

Another one enjoying the sun

And the snow

Magical frost on the snow

Lady V had her vitamin D injection before the rest. We were
waiting for an order for some more to give the rest there's

What's that stuff? We are not coming out!

Well maybe we will come out but we are not going down
there in that white stuff. We need to get them in the
greenhouse like the other ones, but only just got the other
ark out of the field. It's been too wet to get it and it needs
repairs before it's habitable.

Jakobs out for a stroll in the snow

Our Christmas tree has been decorated by nature

We went for a walk in our magical forest

Beautiful. It never ceases to amaze me that we actually own
a forest.

It never ceases to amaze me how much the wild boar can dig.
The ground is not frozen and so they can still turn it over. This
one has obviously not succumbed to the African Swine Fever.

The view on the way back from picking up my milk from my
neighbour this morning.