The Winds of Change

One day on the way to do a spot of gardening at our
other apartment I noticed these huge practice
climbing poles looking like huge silver logs. The are
for the aborists to practice climbing trees, but in the
years that have gone by they have changed from
brown to grey and in the morning sun they glistened.

This blog comes to you in instalments, so maybe a bit random at times. Back home the summer is passing by so quickly now and there is a noticeable change in the way the wind rustles through the leaves of the trees. I wonder if the rest of the world hears the change too? The song "The Winds of Change" wormed its way into my brain this week and eventually I looked it up. I could remember the general tune and the title being sung in the chorus, but not much else. I'm terrible at remembering band names or even lyrics properly (no sniggering from my children please!). I had forgotten that it was written around the time of Glasnost and the fall of the Berlin Wall by a German band, The Scorpions. The lyrics speak of change blowing through Europe and dreams ignited in the hearts of the young that change was coming. It also spoke of the tension of the time, as soldiers marched by. Those were heady days when the news was unbelievable. I and many others never imagined that the Iron Curtain would fall so quickly.

Ian prepared to do battle with some
hornets that had decided to take up
residence in our barn. Hornets are bad
enough but if they take up residence in a
tree away from where we mainly operate
we let them stay, but the barn is out of
bounds

So many years down the line and sitting in a country that was sat on the other side of that Iron Curtain to the one I lived in, it is difficult to comprehend how far this country and those like it have come and yet the echoes of that time still rumble from time to time. I sometimes wonder if Europe catapulted itself into a heady hedonism from which it is beginning to wake up. Blindly, naively, rampant capitalism was allowed to take charge and community suffered. People chased a dream that thought stuff would bring them contentment. Are the dreamers waking up? Are hearts stirring for change? Will the markets finally serve the people and not the people serve the markets? Hope is in short supply at times, but it is hope that can bring radical change, just as it has done before. There is always that brief moment in time when the path of history can take several directions, on the one side down to chaos and on the other to a road that leads to freedom. Not freedom to accumulate more but freedom to live simply, in community with others. Even that road can be a rocky one though, but worth the effort of clearing the path through.

Part of the hornets nest. A remarkable feat of engineering,
just not welcome in the barn.

I love gates and there will be a few
more of these. Also on the High Street

So back to the land, the electric fence to stop the wild boar getting in didn’t work. They got in and trampled more barley and so we have perhaps lost half of it now. It doesn’t help that it has been hot here, at least during the day, and so the ground is dry, which doesn’t help the electric fence. There must be a problem with the set up too as it is loosing too much power from the source and as I mentioned before the battery operated sheep fence is giving a better power output. It is so frustrating, the barley was ready, we just hadn’t had the time to get it in. We did get some cut, half of that processed and the other half drying a little closer to the greenhouse where there is not as much pig activity.

The High Street, Aberdeen. Not exactly the hub of trading
these days, but I guess in days of yore then this was the
very centre of the city. I also imagine that come the start
of the University academic year it will be heaving with
students.

I like little alleyways too. Full of mystery

Ian went to find out about the costs of installing a fence, as the nearby sheep farm has started fencing in their land. It is quite a dilemma, because the cost of putting up a fence will run to about €2000, money we could spend on getting new stock, but the chances are that by next year the African Swine Fever will have taken its toll and reduced the numbers of wild boar. The epidemic is building but still no evidence of it being in our immediate area yet. Once it reaches there will be a number of dead animals, but do we put up with the damage now? Even with a few wild boar around it is still possible to get damage and all it takes is one night to lose a large amount of vegetables or grain to even a small herd of boar. The wild boar rarely used to take people’s vegetables as they were quite shy and stayed in the forest, according to the locals, now they are used to being out in the open and I still wonder if that lack of fear will still not change, even if many get sick and die. So once again it is, shall we or shan’t we?

This street is called Wrights and Coopers Place, so it is fairly
easy to assume that the Wheelwrights and the Coopers were
engaged in making wheels in days gone by. 

I decided to practice some biosecurity this trip because I do not want to be responsible for importing African Swine Fever to the UK, especially since we have had so much wild boar damage and so the risk of importing a disease could be high. I washed and sprayed my hiking boots. I have no idea if I am going near any pigs in the UK or how likely it is that I could spread contamination, but I am taking no chances

A formal garden. I ate an ice cream there
because surprisingly it has been very
warm today.

The rest of the week has been gardening or preparing for a presentation for the conference this next week. I now have to switch back into researcher mode and it doesn’t feel easy with the harvest starting to come in now. I have taken up all the winter onions and they are drying in the barn, courgettes have been sliced, sautéed and frozen, sliced blanched and frozen, dried with salt and solar heat or used in cooking. The beans are starting to produce now at last and so I have had to leave instructions with Ian to slice those thinly and dry them in the solar drier, along with the courgettes, because I know he won’t have enough time to blanch them for the freezer and besides the freezer needs some serious sorting.

The more informal edges to the gardens

I also took a trip to the dentist, as I wanted to be sure I wasn’t developing an abscess before I travelled. I think that the bending over to do the weeding in the heat was making the spot where I had the tooth extracted ache, which was a little worrying. Fortunately nothing was wrong and she said I will probably not even feel it by next week. If I hadn’t have been travelling I wouldn’t have gone, but abscesses and flying do not mix – trust me on that! I have experience and not one I wish to repeat.

But sometimes the edges were also very formal. The flowers
were certainly past their best, but still putting in a good
display of colour

At least the trip to the dentist meant that we could sort out the mobile internet while in the big town. We upgraded to a Wifi unit and 50Gb download limit, up from 10Gb. The lower limit was fine for Ian out on the land on his own (unless it was really wet and he started watching too many Youtube videos), but could be a problem if we are both out there a lot and if I was working. It was also cheaper than our home line by about €5 a month. I wrote to cancel the home line and a very nice gentleman rang of course to ask why we were cancelling, his English was good too, which was a plus. I told him that it was easier for us to have a mobile internet, as we needed the access in an area where we couldn’t use a landline. He then offered us unlimited access but downgraded to 5Mb download speed for a third of what we were paying for a supposedly 8Mb line (Ian tests it from time to time and never seen that kind of speed, which I told the young man). Since it is still handy to have the home line we decided to stick with it at that price. At least it does mean that overall we now pay less for our internet and have Wifi out on the land and at home. 

Even the Scottish flag was in flowers

Ian's mother's house sale went through this week. So that keeps us going for a little while longer. It does take rather a long time in the UK normally, but this took even longer due to some minor hiccups. No idea what they were, but just glad that is all done and dusted. 

Cathedral gates

As I am likely to be away a lot in the not too distant future I got myself organised and uploaded the first terms worth of academic lessons ready for the new year for the online educational organisation I work for. Since the lessons are for a GCSE exam course then there are not many lessons left to prepare, which is good news for me. I heard from one of our organisations ex-students this week, he is now going to start organising students at a small international school to use our organisation - shows how long I have been working there when the students are now becoming the teachers. Scary!

The hotel in Riga. The bed was a little
solid, but not the worse I have known,
so I slept okay.

So for the next instalment I’m writing part of this sat in a hotel in Riga. Only after I booked the hotel did I wonder if it was a place of dubious character. It seems alright anyway and it was cheap enough. I think I’m the only person staying. Everyone else is at the Riga Festival in the centre I think, which suits me fine. Annoyingly the Wifi has a password with Latvian characters in it and my computer will not let me enter non-standard letters. No idea why not. My ipad is also not even seeing the signal for the Wifi, so I guess the internet will have to wait until I get to the airport at an unearthly hour of the morning, because the lady on the desk doesn’t speak English and my Latvian will not stretch to working out how to sort out the internet in Latvian. I was hoping to get away without checking in luggage, but with all the paraphernalia for looking reasonably smart that I needed to carry I wasn’t able to, along with the fact it is hot here in Latvia and I’m going to Scotland – which means I need jumpers and rainproof stuff that is too hot to wear here. Fortunately I am flying with SAS and so the luggage is not an extra I have had to pay for, it just means I need to get there early enough to check my luggage in. I only found out today that I couldn’t check in online anyway, because the second leg of the journey is with a different airline – why that should be a problem for some airlines and not others I have no idea.

That ivy must have been there a few years

And so for the final instalment. My conference is in Aberdeen and on the way I met a largish contingent from the Latvian University who are also on their way to the conference. I don't know where in Aberdeen they are staying, but no doubt I shall see them around again. It is hard to keep good contacts with the Latvians, they are not very good at answering emails and perhaps I need to use the phone more, but I think that sometimes adds stress to relationships when people are not confident in the language, especially with a native English speaker. Oh well! I will try and make sure that more contact is kept this time. 

King's College chapel grounds Aberdeen

One of the things I have been completely bowled over with is how friendly the Aberdonians are. Latvians are quite shy and so smiles and politeness are not particularly in evidence most of the time. When you get to know folks, that is different but it takes time and something I have got used to. So it comes as a shock to meet such overt friendliness. It started when I went for the bus. The instructions suggested that I take almost any bus and ask for King's College. The bus I chose did not go that way exactly but it was close, only 5 minutes the driver said. He was very nice about it. A young Romanian lady overheard our conversation and she offered to help me. She had been on the same plane as me so also had luggage. She got me off at the right stop and the bus driver said "Thank you" to me! In Latvia I always say "Paldies" and I am lucky if I get a "Ludzu" out of them, here they were thanking me before I could thank them. It kind of threw me off guard, but in a pleasant kind of way. Next the young lady tried giving me instructions on how to get to the place, it seemed to make sense but I must have looked a bit puzzled as a gentleman stopped and asked if we were lost. He didn't go on his way, until he was certain that one of us knew which way we were going. The bus stop was apparently outside the young lady's house, so she dropped off her luggage and kindly showed me the way to the university and gave me a bit of a guided tour on the way so I could orientate myself. It was so incredibly sweet of her. 

The view of the gates heading out from
my accommodation 

The all important kettle on the table on the right

So my angel left me at the gates to the accommodation and after that it was fairly easy to find my way around. Inside the friendliness continued, as a gentleman directed me to my room, explained the different keys I needed and then made sure I knew to collect a Wifi password at the main entrance after I got settled down. I almost cried when I spotted a kettle in the room, complete with tea-bags. I so badly needed a cup of tea after my rather early start to the day. 

Another week over....

A butterfly on an onion seedhead

Where does the time go to? It has been a hot and sticky week this week. Temperatures up around the 30s and high humidity. The smells and the warmth reminding us of places we have visited that were always strikingly warm for us Brits, such as Cyprus, Pensecola in Florida and Brazil. Even this evening at way past 9pm it is still 23C.

Not quite sure why these Jerusalem
artichokes are so high. The original
ones are as high as the tips of my fingers,
these are another 40-50cm taller

From the enormous to the tiny. These are not what you
might think they are, these are not watermelons, but
cucamelons and are about the size of nail on my little
finger at the moment. Apparently they grow to grape size
and taste of cucumbers with a tang of lime. When they are
ready we will let you know, but they are cute. We also
found out this week, they can be treated like a perennial
if stored in a frost free place over winter - we will be trying
that out

I finally got to the dentists and had a tooth extracted. It seems to have passed without incident and healing okay, although I half wondered today if I was starting with an abscess, but I think it was just a combination of heat, a woman thing and tiredness. Certainly not the kind of thing I want as I head for a conference next week (which reminds me, if I don't post next week, you know I haven't forgotten).

The grapes are suddenly ripening in the heat and we have
even had a few of the sweet ones. These are a picture of the
more sour ones that we are hoping to make some wine out
of this year.

Of course the heat means that some of our squashes have
exploded in size. Much to our relief

The hot days means the farmers around here have been busy because all fields need to be cut by August 15th to receive their EU subsidies and there hasn't been many dry enough days to get it all done since the week we got our hay in at the end of June. Silage was okay, but hay no, that needs heat to get it dry or a good long period without rain. Although we don't get EU subsidies, we have still cut our remaining fields meaning we now have another 102 bales. We haven't gone down the subsidy route yet, because we know there will be certain criteria that needs adhering too, such as cutting down trees that are now growing in the middle of fields. Some can stay for shade, but many need thinning out and it will be too much for Ian to do at once. EU subsidies are not always that generous and Latvia gets some of the lowest, so not really worth it just yet. Plus alpacas do not attract subsidies yet either. Something the Latvian Camelid Association are or were working on.

Cleared!

Forty down, sixty-two more to go!

The hay is not so great, as it is passed its best but it will make good bedding for the alpaca houses. Ian nearly sold a baler the other day, well he could have done if he had the contacts necessary. A gentleman saw Ian baling and stopped the car and asked about the baler. He couldn't speak English, but Ian was able to tell him how much it cost. He was very interested. Our baler may take longer than the huge balers, but the the rewards of manageable bales is invaluable to us and I guess it was for the gentleman who stopped. Well when I say manageable, the bales are manageable if they are not too densely packed as some of the ones were this week. Some I can throw up onto the trailer without too great a difficulty and some I struggle even using a bit of application of mechanics and rolling it up over another bale.

Amaranth, for their seed. It can be used a bit like quinoa

Flowers forming

Damage at the top of our land. You can tell how large an
area by the size of the bale - that they also messed about with

The wild boar piglets have grown recently. How do I know? The damage to the fields has suddenly gone up and so the herds must be on the move and not just solitary animals as we have suspected up until now. They have got into our barley field and made a mess of that, up to a quarter of it was lost and it is so close to being ready to cut. We have put an electric fence around it now which is connected to the mains but the dry weather means it is not very effective, especially at the points where the pigs get in, as that is quite sandy. Ian has contacted the nearby sheep farm to ask about their fencing, they have been busy putting some up in the last few months and I think we are going to have to do the same. We keep contacting the hunter and we even think they visited last night - there was some bread on the floor in one lot of digging and we can't explain its presence in any other way - unless of course the pigs have started carrying around bread to make a sandwich with the things they find at night.

Damage to the barley crop. It is a bit weedy too, but that was
the least of our worries

The fence from the outlet in the barn. It registers 10,000V
inside the barn, but by the time it gets to the orchard plot it
is down to 4000V

By the time it gets down to here it is around 2000V and at
the top of the field it is barely registering. Not good!
Problem is that neither of us really want to test it either.
We have a tester and that is how we know what voltage it is
pumping out. Even the sheep fence, run from a battery, is
currently pumping out 4000V

These are called strawberry sticks. They look interesting,
but not something on the list to keep. The fruits don't
taste of much and the leaves are small and so not much of
a replacement for spinach. We have plenty of other leafy
things that can replace spinach in meals that are far easier
to grow and far more productive

We were in our caravan last night and Ian could hear some squealing (I can't, I'm as deaf as a post. Okay! Not maybe that deaf, but I certainly do not hear well). He thought it sounded like a bird but didn't recognise it. We are now beginning to wonder if it was the pigs, as the mess this morning was pretty bad, fortunately just on grassland and not the crop fields again. We keep wondering when the African Swine Fever will hit the numbers, but the known infections are still just a little way off.

Chenopodium giganteum makes a far better replacement
for spinach. It is productive, grows well and high. It also
is related to quinoa and so the seeds will be edible too.

I didn't think you would want to see pictures of skin
problems and so there is a cute picture of her son Brencis
instead

Veronica our oldest alpaca has been having skin issues again this week. The fly numbers have gone up in the heat and they have been massing on any little sore she has, so much so that she has been gnawing away at her fleece. I have used a liquid with plantain juice in it to calm any itching and we have also applied engine grease to it. Sounds a bit drastic and awful, but we had to do something to keep those flies off and the insect repellants were useless. Apparently, according to one of our farming friends, a sheep consultant had advised her to use it when the sheep get cuts at shearing time, as it is the only thing almost guaranteed to keep the flies away. At least it does seem to be having some effect, but those flies are persistent even when there is no sore to attack, as we know from trying to collect the hay. We also gave her an injection of Ivermectin in case it is mites that is setting off the irritation.

The peas have also come on a lot this last week. They are
likely to go over just as fast in this heat though. Still
looks like a good enough harvest from them now.

As if there isn't enough pictures of cute kittens on the
internet. Eyre is starting to get quite explorative these days.
She also killed a vole today that was around the hay stack

We got the results back from the fibre testing this week. Agnese's fibre quality is acceptable for a first time cut, not excellent but certainly acceptable. So is Estelle's and surprisingly Veronica's, who should have the worst due to her age, was only slightly thicker than Estelle's. What was even nicer about Veronica's fleece is her's didn't change as much through the year, it was fairly constant and has a smaller range of fibre widths - all very good qualities for a fleece animal. Unfortunately, Tellus' fleece, as we suspected, is not as good as we had hoped. Not only that his fleece quality went down over the winter, obviously he is being over fed. We knew he was putting on weight but was surprised that the winter feeding of grain was making his fibre thicker. The amount of grain being fed has been reduced substantially, especially for the boys. There will be no midday winter feeds, either from now on, as they don't need it. At least that should save us some money.

Has it stopped raining yet?

A piece of artwork on the Latvian/Estonian border
depicting the Baltic Way when thousands of Estonians,
Latvians and Lithuanians joined hands from Tallinn to
Vilnius to show their solidarity with each other in the
face of the Soviet Union.

It rained a lot this week (and no I’m not expecting a lot of sympathy from my British friends who apparently have had really rotten weather this summer), it just means that normally I wouldn’t have much to write about, because heavy rain all day means not a lot gets done. This time it is different. We noticed that the forecast was pretty grim and so we organised plenty of visits instead. Why sit around in the caravan moaning about the rain when we could be out and chatting with people?

Brahma chickens, these are seriously huge, maybe even
bigger than our broiler chickens

Our first visit was to someone who first visited us to see our alpacas. He and I spent more time talking about what he was doing and Latvia in general than looking at the alpacas. I was interested in his story of how he came to be a beef farmer when he had actually trained as a mechanic at the university. He started out with just 5ha (12 acres) of land and now maintains about 140ha (350 acres), not all his, as some is rented. Impressive for someone who only reached the age of 30 years old this year. His support came from his family and other young men doing something similar, but mainly in his attitude and desire to do something productive with the land. That gives me a lot of hope for the future. His mother and wife also put together tea blends from herbs and berries they grow themselves that they mainly sell in gift packs at Christmas time and they gave us a pack to take home. The Latvians are indeed a generous people when you can connect with them.

My supervisor and his wife were paying a visit to Latvia and we travelled up to see them. It has almost become an annual tradition. There have been some changes at their place in the meantime. The last time we went it looked like The Battle of the Somme, there was so much mud everywhere from excavations to re-create the ponds that had become little more than swamps over the years. A winter has passed since that time and now the ponds are full. Amazing how much water can be collected. In fact they overflowed in the winter. The areas around the ponds are also beginning to grass over and to cover up the scars made to the landscape. In some places it is hard to think there was ever any earthworks done.

Some of the border crossings between Latvia and Estonia
are tiny and quite picturesque. Just a sign on a country road

We arranged with a neighbour of ours to look after the animals for two days and then took off to Estonia, as you do. We wanted to meet up with a guy I met at a conference in Tallinn earlier on in the year. He and his wife run a horse therapy place and a sustainable education centre. It was fascinating talking to someone who runs so many different projects, using the various different skills he has, in order to make a living and to carry on doing the work he enjoys. He encouraged us to try many different things, rather than one big project, as this is more sustainable in the long term. Schools work, workshops, small gift shop, working with the unemployed etc. Big projects have a habit of suddenly ending and then leaving people with a gap and no income, small projects can run side by side and as one small one finishes another one can fill in the gap. At least that is the plan. Many of the ideas we threw around seemed a little more feasible. We also stayed overnight in some guest accommodation they have and ate loads of pancakes.

 

The border

We stayed in the little house on the right. The steps I
presume are because of the straw bale floor to keep the
place warm. The walls were thick and despite the
inclement weather the little room was cosy and warm.
We weren't sure what to expect, so had gone with
sleeping bags and blankets in case it was cold
(more pictures and website here. All in Estonian though
but they speak good English if you ever fancy a visit)

We did have one minor hiccup in meeting up. The guy we were due to meet sent me an email when we were already on the road and as I phoned to confirm we were nearly there, he explained he was on his way to pick up his tractor, which had just been fixed and he wouldn’t be around for another three hours. He explained that we could go to the nearby town of Paida, as there were things to do there and shops. We first found a little coffee shop to while away some time as it was still raining. Estonia seems to do coffee shops, not necessarily something that is easy to find in Latvia outside of Riga. Our village has a bakery and coffee shop, but not all do.

 

The outside toilet made from cob walls and green roof

A donkey hut and a chicken house in one. The walls
were laid on a sandbag base and built from cob and wood

After a little while it stopped raining so we took the advantage of a little walk around. Ian was in Heaven, there were so many shops with DIY equipment and a shop he had been wanting to visit that had workwear. We came away with two masks for when Ian deals with hay, as he is worried that the dust is affecting him, a pair of socks for him and a pair of winter work gloves for me. Not quite your everyday trip to the shop, type shopping, but the sort we tend to do now if we get the chance. With the threat of more rain we headed back to the coffee shop to wait until it was time to head to our destination once more.

 

This is inside the little hut, the donkeys
sleep at the bottom and the chickens
in the floor above, just under the roof.
The skylight lets in light

A close up of a cob, wood and bottle wall. Sorry no pictures
of alpacas that we took, it rained so we went inside and
then talked a lot. They have pictures on their website though

Amazingly enough, our next destination was only 25 minutes away from our first stop in Estonia. It wasn’t planned that way, it was just how close the two places were that we wanted to see. This time it was to an alpaca farm. The people who run this farm, which they had only been doing for about 18 months, had set up an Estonian Alpaca Association and were trying to encourage good breeding of alpacas to maintain fleece quality. We were interested in trying to foster some Latvian and Estonian cooperation and they were keen to do the same. We both recognise that alpaca breeding in both countries, at the moment, is very low and to encourage good husbandry would require some joint initiatives to arrange training. We swapped information on feeding, processing and just generally talked alpacas for about four hours. All too soon it was time to wend our way home.

 

One of their animals from Wile Farm website
gallery (link here)

I would love an outdoor kitchen like this one. It has a pizza
oven in the corner

On the way home the skies cleared and so our rainy days were over for the time being. On the way back we stopped at a restaurant I had stopped at before on a couple of my many trips back from Tartu. From one of the tables an English accent wafted through the air and our ears pricked up. Sometimes Ian will have a chat with such folks to see where they are from and what they are doing in Latvia, but there was no way he was going to with this gentleman, we were so embarrassed. He was rude and tried to joke with the waitress, but his joke was just confusing and made the waitress feel uncomfortable. He was also very loud. This was no youngster who had still to learn his manners but an elderly gentleman, who time had not taught wisdom or humility. At least I felt a sense of accomplishment when I managed to do the whole of my order without resorting to English at any point and even Ian managed most of his. We even got a smile from the waitress.

 

Deluxe straw bale and cob rabbit
accommodation. They should be toasty
in there in winter

The walls have symbols created from different coloured
clays. They are such organic looking walls, not perfectly
straight

Saturday I had to do some catching up on work that I need to have done for deadlines and although I got off to a slow start, things picked up when I realised I was actually further on in my work than I remembered. Little by little I am whittling down the list of things that need doing, before I set off on my travels again later on in the month (and goodness me it is August already, where has time gone?). Sunday was playing catch up with the garden too and I finally dug up the garlic. Normally it is ready much earlier and although one or two of the plants looked like they would have benefitted from lifting earlier, many looked just perfect – and some were huge. Finally veg is beginning to appear. The flowers on the beans are showing signs of turning into beans and there are loads of peas to pick. It has been such a slow year.

 

Another cute looking building made from wood and cob

This is a photo taken from a previous
visit. It has lovely granite walls.

Today I thought I had a dental appointment and so arranged to visit a castle beforehand, since we were in the area, with someone who could tell us about the history of the place. As it turns out, I had got mixed up and my dental appointment is tomorrow, but it worked out quite well as it meant we had far more time to look around, have tea in a café located in a walled garden and then pizza before heading home. What was only going to be a trip of a couple of hours, turned into an all day affair. The castle, in a place called Cesvaine, was meant to be shut, but our guide asked some people and we got a chance to take a tour, they only charged us for the tour and not our guide, even though he wasn’t working for them. The café, similarly should have been shut, but someone turned up in the garden of the place and let us look around the shop and made us tea. None of this would have happened if we had gone on our own, as we wouldn’t have dared to ask and I don’t think people would have understood either. Our guide has a gentle way of asking and people were very accommodating. The castle also had a textile exhibition that was held in rooms that had been badly damaged in a fire a few years ago. Much of the castle is being restored, but these rooms still require a lot of work. They made fabulous, dramatic backdrops though for the textiles. If anyone wants to see them, they are open until October.

So, as you can see, we have sunshine and that means the
fly numbers have increased. It might have been a cool
summer and everything is late getting started, but that has
meant it has been relatively bug free so far. Ian had to resort
to the bug net to keep the flies away from his face when
cutting the grass though this time.

So a quite different week to one that would have been expected with the weather and now summer has arrived, at least for a week according to the forecast and that means back to some hay cutting to cut the remaining grass. We don’t need to bale this for feed, it might do for bedding or it might do for insulating projects of which we have many ideas for over the last week. It still needs cutting though and so as I write, Ian is walking up and down with the two-wheel tractor with its sickle mower attachment. There will be a few more hours of that over this next week before he is finished. I must now go and pick peas before we go home too and before our little kitten starts to try and join in with the writing.