Oh that hurts!

I'm on the train!!!!! Sigulda to Valga leg of
the journey. The poster at the bottom end
says that selling goods on the train is
forbidden. I guess I won't be able to sell
Ian's candlesticks on the train then.

Last Monday I had to remind myself that "Big girls don't cry!" I know that isn't always a healthy thing to think, but on Monday it was. It was only a brief moment as the train pulled out of the station without me and I was left thinking "Oh, now what do I do, I'm stuck in a town miles away from home and I don't know anyone." I could almost feel my bottom lip beginning to quiver. The first thing I did was to ring a friend, who knew people in the area, but I couldn't get hold of him and the next thing I did was search for some information. There was information on hotels that were not out of the reach of lesser mortals, there were also details of buses and there were still buses running to my destination. So that moment of dread, the one I was kind of fearing because I hadn't been able to pre-book a ticket turned out to be a way of finding a different way to get to my destination. Sometimes a calamity is just that, a calamity, but sometimes it also opens up opportunities that you hadn't thought about before. This time the journey opened up a way to get home that I hadn't thought about and instead of staying an extra day in Tartu, I was able to make my way home sooner, using a combination of bus and train. At least travel is cheap on public transport, it's just getting to them in the first place when we live out in the sticks.

Ian's been busy again, clearing out the underbrush (well
the bits that are above the snow) and cutting out some of
the overcrowded trees. Anyone fancy helping to remove
it all from the forest later on in the year will be welcomed
with open arms.

The journey back was lovely on the bus as it wended its way around some small Estonian villages, a lot like Latvia but with some better roads. The sun shone, something we haven't seen in rather a long time and there were also snow showers that glittered in the sun's rays. The nearly two hour stop in Valga wasn't a huge amount of fun, but with a bit of organisation I will probably do a bit of shopping there next time. I do need to find a coffee shop though, close to the train station. The sunset that greeted me as I walked out of the train station waiting room to get on the train though was stunning and a welcome sight, so was the train! I watched out of the window, lost in my thoughts as normal, until the sun went down completely and I even saw two deer watching the train going past.

He's not the only one clearing forest, only this one was a
bit more drastic

The seeming calamity last week was not repeated this week and I was able to get the trains without a hitch and even paid by card - that was the issue last week, I only had a card to pay with and not enough Euros and I didn't want to risk getting on a train and not being able to pay for a ticket. I wish there were Visa signs on the trains, it would have made life a lot simpler. My hitch this week though was getting off the train to walk to my accommodation, shall we say I saw a little more of Tartu than I needed to and it is great that the bus stops have maps, even if I do have to hunt around for my glasses to read the things these days.

The section on the left is the border of our forest, the section
on the right is the clear felled section, that used to look
pretty much like ours on the left before the wood cutters
got to work. Our forest is going to get a lot more light this
year and we wonder what effect that will have on ours

The hurt in the title was not the fact of missing the train last week, despite the trauma of that (okay I'm milking this one for all its worth), it has more to do with skiing. My week is rather hectic at the moment, with all the travelling and then trying to do the work for uni, so I try to make sure Sunday is a day off, if not exactly a day of rest. I think with sedentary lifestyles these days a day of rest should be a day of activity instead - not that I am that sedentary at the moment as I have to walk all over the place here in Tartu. Anyway back to the point! My ski track had got a little snowed over at our land, but it was still firm underneath and I could just about make out the run Ian made and so I created a new track over the top of the old one. I was pretty impressed with myself, I only kind of collapsed in a heap once when the new track didn't quite match up with the old track and the snow gave way underneath me as it was a bit soft. The snow is pretty deep now and when I sink in, I'm easily up pass my knees. I also slid onto my bottom rather gracefully on one round of the track on a downhill section and got up okay from that. After I finished I tried to be rather clever and ski down our road to see Ian, it was a little icy and I have mentioned before that cross country skis aren't quite as easy to manoeuvre as downhill skis and so I came to rather a sad end on my behind. The problem is that this time there was no soft snow to cushion my fall and I jolted my arm on the descent. It didn't hurt much at the time but I knew it was going to and sure enough, later on in the day I made rather a sad spectacle as I couldn't lift my arm very high. It didn't bode well for today when carrying my rucksack, but I coped valiantly (yup milking this one too), actually it has been getting better as the day progresses which means I don't have to use my good arm to lift my poorly one, which is a relief, just have to deal with the aches and pains from the actual skiing now. I know, I know, I really should ski more often then I wouldn't have these problems.

The temperatures have been going up in the
greenhouse. We had 16C on Sunday! This
means the chickens will need more water and
so Ian has extended the water trays. The tray
idea has worked so well and meant that the
chickens have not been tipping them up
and losing all the water, unlike the specially
designed chicken water containers. 

In April last year, Ian bought me the set of the "The Good Life" on DVD and every Saturday we would watch an episode. There were quite a few episodes but it was entertaining watching them again now that we are living the good life. We could see where some of our inspiration came from and we could also see some of the faults, where living the good life didn't quite match up with the programme or where some of the details were not correct. However it still makes good entertaining TV after all these years and so it was with a lot of sadness that we saw the death of Richard Briers aka Tom Good in the programme this week. It felt a bit like losing a friend, since we had spent so much time watching him perform last year.

The Russian Orthodox church in Valga. The orthodox
churches with their onion domes do look very pretty in
the snow, shame the trees are in the way obscuring the view

This week I got into a discussion about relationships and when to leave them. I won't give the source as I didn't agree with the stance, in fact I found the view quite offensive, but it did make me think a little more about the subject. When moving around it is difficult sometimes to maintain relationships with those left behind. Often it is because we have moved away and they have moved on with their life and people kind of forget about you. That's okay, it sometimes takes a little getting used to, but that's life! Recognising though when a relationship should be worked at and when to let a relationship die a natural death is hard. It is not possible to maintain a relationship with a great deal of intensity with everyone we meet. Jesus shows that it is possible to reach out to many people, but even he had his close friends and then the followers that he didn't invest as much time in. It is easy to work on relationships when things are going well and you are getting on with each other, but working on a relationship when that is not the case is a different matter. Jesus didn't choose people because they were easy to get on with, Peter was an impulsive sort, may have been quite young too and perhaps immature, but Jesus saw the potential, James and John were also called sons of thunder - doesn't sound like they were easy to get on with either and they wanted the top seats at the table, so to speak. They were his closest companions and the ones who got to see the transfiguration. Jesus was even friends with Judas, knowing he was going to betray him. He even stuck by him till the end - giving him the opportunity to turn around. Would we do the same? In the words of the song, perhaps we should just get on and "Love the ones we're with"

Major milestones

Tartu ice sculpture

Well the first one has to be that this is my 300th post, okay some of the posts are apologies for being late but at least I got this far. I really never thought that when a friend of mine in America asked me to start a blog about life in Latvia that I would still be managing to write it almost 5 years later. The milestone of having been in Latvia 5 years is itself only a few weeks away.

The Estonian University of Life Sciences -
well one of the blocks!

The other milestone is starting my doctoral studies at the Estonian University of Life Sciences in Tartu. I really felt like a fish out of water, as I had no map to follow when I arrived. That is partly because I have started mid-academic year which is never a good thing really, but heh I rarely do anything the simple way. I had to ask people for directions and follow the crowds a little. It was all rather strange as I couldn't read a word of the signs, my knowledge of Estonian is zilch! I know though that I will just have to take it one step at a time and I know it will get better, although not easy. I have been here before, landing in a country that I had only visited once before and no knowledge of the language; that happened when we moved to Denmark nearly 10 years ago. It was very bewildering at first, but eventually a routine was established and I got to know all the important words - usually anything to do with food. I also had a couple of angels to help me on my first day, one appeared to get me down to the statistics practical and another to get me out of the warren of a building before it was locked up for the night, she also took me to the supermarket afterwards. I must admit, it was very exciting discussing the actual project I will be doing. Nothing is set in stone yet, but I will be travelling to conferences and doing work with some Masters students as a supervisor, oooh and lots of other exciting things that were bandied about to think about. You'll just have to see what comes out in the wash though on those.

Another of my routines is to navigate this
steep cobbled road, Fun in the ice

My routine for the next six weeks or thereabouts is to travel up to Estonia every week and this is proving to be a bit of a headache. I have a four hour statistics practical late on Tuesday afternoons (yes I did say four hours - I hope you are sending up prayers for me at this very minute) and a two hour statistics lecture on Wednesday morning, which if everything would connect up transport wise would mean being away for two days most weeks, except on the weeks where I also have a morning lecture of academic writing. I say "if" though because it doesn't. There are not enough buses and trains that I can find the information for, to connect up and take me home in a reasonable time frame and so I have to travel up on Monday afternoon and come back Thursdays - maybe! I am going to do some more hunting and see if I can find an alternative as I inadvertently discovered an alternative tonight.

A family oriented place I guess

Oh yes! I managed to make a bit of a hash getting up to Tartu tonight. Last week I took the St.Petersburg bus from North Latvia, but it is an overnight bus from Riga to arrive in St.Petersburg in the morning and so is a tad late for me to get into Tartu at 11pm. Tartu is a safe city but I'm not a late night person. That meant I was very tired the next day, which is not a good start and by the time it came around to the statistics I was well and truly flagging. I did get a lift back though with someone travelling to Latvia, so that worked. In chatting with the driver I did find out there was a train, but for some unknown reason the train goes from Tartu to a place on the border called Valga stops and then connects with a Latvian train which goes to Riga, stopping at every little station on the way. Unfortunately the trains that connect of course only go once a day!!!!!! Well getting to Valga was fine, I bought my ticket at the train station, but I needed another ticket to get to Tartu. I got off the Latvian train and tried to find out what to do about the ticket, but by the time I found out and rushed out of the station back to the train, it closed the doors on me and left. I was stuck in Valga with no cash and not much of an idea what to do. I tried a friend who had friends in the area but couldn't get hold of him, so next I tried to work out if there was a bus. Success! There was! Next I found a cash machine, which of course only dispensed a €50 note, which I didn't think the bus driver would be happy with, since I knew the train was only €3.63 and so I had to then buy something from a supermarket. Absolute bliss! I managed to get back just in time to get the bus. So I wasn't stranded in Valga overnight then. I was also welcomed to my accommodation with a lovely bowl of soup - just what I needed after a bit of a fright.

An Estonian house

I think my walk to the uni will be a little
different in Spring

A cheery fellow to greet me back to my
accommodation

Finally! We have electric

That wasn't all the milestones this last week, the other one was to get the electricity connected up to the greenhouse. Ian can now plug the electrics in on the caravan, he can have a heater out there and just as exciting a toaster. Now that might not seem so interesting to you, but when he is working out in the snow at below freezing temperatures then a heater and a toaster are very exciting, It has been rather a long time from getting the cable laid to actually getting the meter installed, but thankfully it is mainly done and working. The barn wasn't connected up as that is going to have to wait until Spring when Ian can dig a hole in the ground, it was bad enough digging the metre into the greenhouse - well dig is perhaps not quite the right word, chippped through the solid ice would be more appropriate and then the frozen ground.

A blessing for Ian

"I'm not walking in the snow!" They are funny they want to
come for a walk but end up having to jump between
footprints or end up nearly buried in the stuff

This isn't a milestone but it could well be in the future and the thoughts I am working through at the moment. When I think of the possibilities that are available these days via the internet and technology, they are mind boggling. There will be things that our children can do that we can't even conceive of, some of course are not so great like the ability of being able to abuse each other online, but somewhere along the lines we have to trust the next generation, we have to encourage them to be the best they can be, to do all they can for the good with the technology they have. Let's not just shut down the possibilities, let's pass on what we can, which is a discernment, as they move forward. At some point whether we like it or not we are going to have to make way for the next generation to take the reins, we may as well do it willingly and with encouragement and support or we will have the reins wrenched from our hands.

"Would you have been eating the snow by any chance?"
"Who me?"

A different kind of milestone over the last few weeks is the revelation of horse meat in products labelled as beef. That has been a real eye opener for some and the cause of much embarrassment for corporate businesses. Mike Small on the Fife diet website (an organisation that seeks to help people to eat more locally) has called a complete restructure of the food supply chain and he says the last thing we need is for the corporate businesses to regain trust and then to continue with business as usual. It is a very well written article and I have to say I agree with what he has to say. While I don't advocate a collapse of the supply chain, that would be chaos, but a radical overhaul will help us get back to some better connections with our food.

A little deep in places

The view from our other apartment. There are greenhouses
in there, somewhere. I don't think there will be any growing
going in there any time soon

Religious chickens and not so religious musings

What's going on down there?

Our chickens are, or rather have been, quite religious, since they started laying they always had Sundays off. Not sure if they changed their religion this last week though, as they had Friday off instead. Mind you they at least gave us five eggs the day before and four the following day and so we are starting to move into the productive period now. Housing them in the greenhouse over winter has worked a treat. Even on the coldest of days in the minus 20s they have been fine after shutting them up in their boxes overnight. They have been scratching through the hay in their runs and turning it into lovely compost for us and eating up all the scraps we care to throw at them. Many people were worried that they would get frostbite without other animals to keep them warm, but this has proved not to be a problem. The problems we have had are keeping them watered with the tendency for it to freeze in their small water boxes, but Ian discovered just lately, they actually quite like snow and although we would have to watch it didn't make them too cold on the coldest of days, at least they won't dehydrate.

Blue sky! Looks good, doesn't it?

We are still running into problems with getting a house out on the land. This time it was the price of the architect. Unfortunately for us he is Riga based and prices are higher there than out in the sticks. It is a shame as we would have loved to have worked with him, but I am guessing that the solutions may also have been too expensive too. At the rate we are going, we may end up with another barn and not much more - only joking, but just! I am not sure how we are going to get it done, and we would only move step by step, but I do sense the need to be out there and getting involved in the farming community and for that we need a house. We also need a place out there as we are now tied with the animals. Fortunately another friend has suggested another more local architect and so we will try that route now.  I must admit that re-reading this paragraph makes it sound oh so sensible, but I did not feel oh so sensible when I read the quote from the architect. I knew it was going to be more than for the barn project, but felt quite shocked at how much more. It took me a day to pick myself up after that.

Not many candlesticks made this week, but look at the
potential candlesticks!

I have been emailing backwards and forwards a lot this week. I hadn't heard more from Tartu and decided to find out where they were at with my place. The paperwork should be done today, but lectures have already started. Fortunately they don't seem to be too onerous to catch up on, but it did mean that I had to get my act together to get myself up to Tartu this coming week. By the time you read this post I, hopefully, should be sat on a bus somewhere between Valmiera in Latvia and Tartu in Estonia. Seems weird to take a passport on a coach journey, but I have that ready too. To ease me in gently someone will meet me at the bus station and let me stay at her home again, an answer to prayer in itself. At least I can then find out exactly what will be expected of me in the next four years this week and therefore find out what my needs will be regarding accommodation too.

We found out recently we were supposed to making more
of an effort to thin out the forest from growth that was
stunting it and the weather hasn't been too bad, so Ian
has been making an effort to do some clearing. 

On the heating front, we are still plodding through with that. Our lawyer managed to get the papers done on Friday, which meant that we were able to take them down to the heating company this morning to get their official stamp and signature that they had received them. Hopefully now we might get some answers from them about the way they add charges to the bills without explanation and why they insist we owe money for inadequate heating. I'm not holding my breath though, the business is supposedly in such disarray they might not be able to. We'll see. The actual heating is also still a bit hit and miss. It was cool overnight with the radiators barely warm this morning - that was actually nice for a change as recently it has been too warm and this was reflected in the absolutely enormous bill we received. The bill was nearly 147 LVLs for one month. With average wages around 269 LVLs a month in our region (source Latvian Government statistics) and the minimum basket for foodstuffs and non-foodstuffs also at 113.36 LVLs (again according to Government statistics) that leaves 9 LVLs for electric, water etc. for a single person, nothing left for mortgage or rent. And they wonder why people can't or won't pay? We still haven't decided what to do about this months bill, there are question marks still over the way our heating is plumbed in and the new meter is suspect too. We would like some answers, not accusations.

This area is still to do and so you can see the difference.
Mind you when the snow clears we will have a lot of
tree stumps and it will be interesting to see how big
they really are.

I have had some interesting discussions via emails and blogs just lately. They have not necessarily been with people who I would agree with, mind you who could we say we agree 100% with, but it has been interesting to see my point of view challenged or supported from surprising sources. I think one of the big problems with the Christian church is its fear of challenge at times, its fear of facing questions and worse still the fear of not having the answers. Ian sent me a link to the Radio Two's "Pause For Thought" by Rabbi Shoshanna Boyd Gelfand. She talks about a Jewish tradition of Makhloket, which is a concept of arguing "for the sake of heaven." She says that the tradition was a way of rabbis to seek debate with people of different opinions from their own in a sincere attempt to get more in touch with the divine nature of God. It might even put a different spin on Matthew 18:19-21

Matthew 18:19-21The Message (MSG)^18-20 “Take this most seriously: A yes on earth is yes in heaven; a no on earth is no in heaven. What you say to one another is eternal. I mean this. When two of you get together on anything at all on earth and make a prayer of it, my Father in heaven goes into action. And when two or three of you are together because of me, you can be sure that I’ll be there.”

I've been busy too. I finished off this baby sleeping
bag for grandchild number 2. It still needs some
buttons on the bottom but I can do that later

What happens if these were actually short, pithy statements, and not meant to be taken as an integrated whole. Point one, a yes on earth is a yes in heaven, point two, what you say to one another is eternal (would we think more carefully about what we say if we thought about this more?), point three, a prayer together of agreement connects together with God in some way that one doesn't, point four when two or three of you get together for God's sake he'll be there - it doesn't say if we agree on this point, but if we get together for the sake of God. He can be there in the debate, helping us to see more clearly the breadth and scope of his work, of his desire for us a human race, of his perspective that is infinitely broader than our human eyes alone can see. We should not be afraid of talking to people who disagree with us, we should be grateful to them for showing us a different way of thinking. That does not mean we have to take on board everything that others say, but it does mean we get out of our brains the things that we believe, examine them carefully in the light of what is said and at that point decide if it is something we should keep or discard. Life should be a process of growth, where we carefully think about our beliefs, our reactions to situations, how we live our life etc.. For me there are some absolutes, such as there is a God in Heaven who cares for us, enough to send his Son who is also part of God, to rescue us from the mess we are in, he overcame death to give us life and expects us to live in that revelation. I have taken those beliefs out and I feel they have stood the test of time, even become stronger in some ways. But how we live our "church" life, the beliefs in the church on various issues, I am not as strong on, sometimes I even think they are a hindrance. I have no desire to throw the baby out with the bathwater and so I am happy for people to continue living out their faith, in the way they see fit. So let's talk about it, let's discuss it, let's not be defensive about our faith. Let us examine together what we believe and why. Above all, let us discover more about this creator who wants us on board to sort out the mess we've made and make life beautiful again throughout the world. Utopian? Perhaps! Possible? Well I think so and I will put all my passion and energy into seeing this world transformed.

I think we might need to clear our balcony

A view down the road. Yes there is a road down there

Entertaining week

The snow piles outside our apartment block.
Any wonder I sometimes have a little laugh
to myself when I see the woes of those living
in England and having to deal with the
snow there. I suppose 

Our week started off with a visit to an architect. We arranged to meet in a cafe near to where he lives in a village we know. Being a small village, we were pretty sure we would stand out as the incomers, I mean we look so English don't we? Well perhaps not! Maybe we have assimilated, or maybe it was more to do with one of the local villagers recently acquiring a car very similar to ours and so the architect was still waiting for a new couple to turn up in a different car. Not quite sure how long we both sat in the cafe before the architect approached us to see if we were the couple he was waiting to meet. In the meantime we both had ordered drinks and something to eat. I was just about to text him when he came up and introduced himself. The meeting went well though and we talked about all sorts of things, we even talked about the house that we want to build. We did worry him at one point though. After spending quite a bit of time talking about how we felt that people should be paid fairly for what they do, whilst recognising the economic realities of Latvia that not all materials can be purchased with receipts, we then got onto talking about our barn and the costs of the architect to build it, he thought we were talking about the total cost of the barn, which was substantially more. Here was the poor man thinking how could he possibly come up with plans at such a low price. He was rather relieved when we got that point clear.

I was recently looking through some old pictures and saw
some of alpacas when they first came. They look quite
skinny compare to the thick fleeced individuals we have now

For those who have been following along with our story, you may know that in the last heating season the heating company sent cold water around to our apartment block. This is not much fun when temperatures are as low as they get here. Going out for a walk is not nice when you know that there is no warm home waiting for you when you get back. The heating company were also indifferent to the request for an increase in the heat, despite the fact there were babies in the apartment block and only 9C in the flats where they were, they also blamed the apartment block for their "faulty installation." That in itself was a joke because the "faulty installation" had worked perfectly well two years previously. The heating this season has been much better most of the time, so we thought that perhaps they had listened and we would start to look at what we owed and how much we were willing to pay back, having refused to pay the bills they sent until they sorted it out. We requested a break down of the bills and how they had been calculated, especially since they had added some strange, unexplained costs to the bills. We might be willing to pay for what we feel is justified, but we are not mugs. The answer we received back from that request was not helpful and in fact rather childish and so we decided enough was enough and go and see a lawyer. Of course the process of doing that is far more costly than just paying the bill, but that is what the heating company rely on. In fact the costs of getting the lawyer involved, as usual, is far beyond the scope of most people anyway. We decided though that the principle is more important and we acknowledge that principles do not come cheap.

Looking more rounded

The lawyer was a lovely women, who asked lots of questions and took our documentation to work through. She has also dealt with the company before and knows what they are like. During the course of this obviously serious meeting, Ian suddenly leapt out of his chair and started dancing around the room, clasping his leg. Snigger! You bet! The poor guy had cramp! It didn't stop any of us from laughing though, even Ian. Fortunately cramp translates quite easily and she wasn't left wondering what kind of clients we were. We also learnt a new Latvian word, but I would think that Ian would be really glad to never having to be the source for using the word in future encounters.

What you've all been waiting for I know. Our little man
(aka our first grandchild) with his mummy and daddy

During last year, we were chatting to a friend who was telling us that his wife had had a really painful arm and after various tests was still not sure what it was, either that or it was something more serious, I can't remember the exact details now, but what I do remember is that eventually she talked to a doctor who suggested a large dose of vitamin D and within days there was a major improvement. Ian had been getting sore fingers, which of course gets put down to old age and so I thought that perhaps he should try the vitamin D, plus of course we had a fairly damp summer too (not as bad as the UK, but not good either) and the autumn had been rather overcast and so a good dose of vitamin D was perhaps necessary. There has been a lot in the media about vitamin D just lately with suggestions that it is perhaps quite important in a range of diseases including heart problems too and since that runs in my family, thought that perhaps I should take note. Well I have to warn you, we think we have discovered a very serious side effect of this medication, it could lead to a serious case of a cheerful disposition, even in the middle of winter. Now I think our children will concur with me on this, Ian has been renowned for being a bit grumpy at times and winter can be okay as long as the sun shines, but this winter there hasn't been a lot of that, but there has been a difference in Ian. His grumpiness usually leaves around March, maybe even as late as May depending on the weather, but this year he is whistling and making cheerful remarks, even smiling to himself and it is only February. It is very disconcerting. I know he is a chap with a brilliant sense of humour, but general cheeriness is not his style. Makes you realise why Vitamin D is prescribed in the mental health hospital where my daughter used to work. So be warned, if you do start taking Vitamin D, you may become quite cheery! Imagine a world populated by lots of cheery people, quite scary really.

The little man sleeping in
the cocoon I knitted for him

We hopefully have the car finally sorted, they eventually managed to find four glow plugs which didn't cost 48 Lvls each, only 28 Lvls each (say it fast it doesn't sound so much does it, well maybe not). It is funny how these things can take time to get organised sometimes. We were in before Christmas trying to find out what the issue was with its poor starting in bad weather and it has taken them a month after the Christmas holidays to source the glow plugs which were the problem and getting us booked in for the service. Still it is done now and we will find out tomorrow morning whether it has cured the problem. One of the nice things about taking the car to Jekabpils for a service is they wash the car for us, bit of an expensive way of getting a wash though but at least it is no longer quite so ice encrusted as it was earlier on in the day, the second is much nicer, we had our customary fish and chips at one of the few places in Latvia that do a nice English style fish and chips. What more could you ask for?

A bit gloomy but very atmospheric

I have still been doing my liaising for the local timber company and some of those contacts are beginning to see results now, which is very satisfying. One thing my neighbour really understands, which is sometimes lacking in Latvian companies, is the need to ensure customer satisfaction. She is very flexible in adjusting her products to the requirements of the customer - the advantage of being a small company - and will always make sure that the load that goes is to her satisfaction as far as quality is concerned. Many companies realise the importance of good customer relations and realise that is what brings the customers back again. I see though that the Swiss train companies have forgotten this important piece of business. Fining customers who have tried to legitimately buy tickets but couldn't thought issues such as broken machines or because a payment arrived a little late for mobile phone payments. The article in the BBC beggars belief for such a well respected company. Revenue from fines is no compensation if you lose the goodwill of your customers.

And it's a ......

A set of candlesticks

No not another new grandchild, the next one is due March, so not long now. I mentioned last week that Ian was getting into the woodworking lark with his pole lathe and so each night last week he would come home and show me what he had been making during the day and so far he has presented me with a candlestick or two most nights. The lack of tools has been restricting what he can make, so no beautifully turned bowls yet, as he doesn't have the right kind of chisel for that (isn't that always the case?), I must admit though there are some very nice, original examples, but how many candlesticks does one need? Looks like he could have quite a career ahead of him as a candlestick maker then! At least the activity keeps him warm and he is enjoying the creative process, he is now even eyeing up the very sorry looking oak tree that lost a large branch a few years ago for it's potential for candlesticks. He could make a set of similar candlesticks but there is one guarantee, no two will ever be the same, so not much good for a matching pair. The only other problem we now have is how to dry them without them splitting. He doesn't have enough to kiln dry them, it seems a bit much to boil them for hours and then air dry for three months, treating them with alcohol can't be cheap either and so there is the last alternative air drying them for six months. So don't rush to order them just yet.

Oh look! It's a candlestick made from
oak. I actually quite like this one. I also
thought that Ian could do some wooden
beads for me. I bought an e-book
Wee Felt Folk that uses wooden beads for heads of the wee folk. Perfect!

Over the years of living in Latvia, and Colorado before that, means that we have begun to get more used to extreme winter preparations and we get better prepared each year. When I mean extreme winter preparations, I don't mean the arrival of a snowflake or below freezing weather for more than two days. I am talking about below minus 20C (-4F). These temperatures cause us particular problems at the moment as I have said in previous weeks the car still needs new glow plugs. We are getting there, the garage now have three out of four and hopefully this week they get a full set! When the temperatures are set to get very low we decamp up to our other apartment since it is a ground floor place; Ian takes the battery out of the car and brings it inside, he covers the engine with a blanket and puts a heater in the place where the battery was. The previous weekend we saw temperatures of -25C and the car started like a dream using this preparation. Quite remarkable as the car has been struggling to start at -15C and when there are animals to feed it is necessary to make sure the car works.

Leaking into the walls above the window, it then trickled
along the window top and down both sides of the window.
A bit worrying when the weather gets so cold. We need to
make sure the water is out of the walls before we let the
apartment cool down

This weekend was a little more exciting that having to prepare for -25C though. Our doorbell rang and thinking it was one of my female neighbours who comes around quite a bit, I opened the door still dressed in my thankfully thick and fluffy dressing gown. Outside stood our neighbour from our other apartment to tell us we had a leak. Ian was nearly ready to go out to the land and so he hurried up and went around. Our neighbour who told us about the leak followed Ian into the apartment and they both looked at puddle on the floor in the toilet. We know we have a slight leak from some of the joints - a problem with poor componentry in this country at times - but it wasn't that that was causing the problem. Ian then noticed the water coming down the wall and raising his head upwards he noticed it was coming instead from our neighbours apartment upstairs, he turned to him pointed upwards and said "Jūs" (pronounced yoos and means "you"). Our poor neighbours face fell, he thought it was us that was leaking into his basement where he keeps his wood. He dashed upstairs to turn off their stopcock and by gently turning it on again found the leak was from the pipe leading to the meter. There was no sign of the water upstairs, it had all been trickling down under their floor and into our apartment.

This was the worse part that kept
dripping all day. There is a hole
that the pipe obscures that Ian
made to make it easier to drain

Well the rest of my day was spent keeping a fire going to warm the place through to dry it out, and using our vacuum cleaner to suck up the water that carried on pouring through the holes and down walls for much of the day. It wasn't gushing but dripping from many points meaning we had a swimming pool in the bathroom, a puddle that stretched out of that room into a pantry area, water coming in over the fire area and forming a puddle across the laminate in the kitchen. Fortunately it missed the electrical points - narrowly, but at least it did miss. It is also fortunate we had the vacuum cleaner and a dehumidifier to help dry the place out. We can't say for sure what the damage is yet, definitely repainting needs doing but the kitchen needed a fresh coat of paint anyway, which is always a problem with a wood burner and then there is the toilet ceiling that needs sorting out. Apart from that, so far the laminate looks like it escaped damage, but we don't know how much got wet and if it will start to buckle later. We are going to pop up and set the fire going a few more days and run the dehumidifier for the week and see what happens.

Yes! You've guessed it! Another
candlestick, this time made from alder. Mind you I think this is
my favourite

I suppose it has been quite an exciting time all in all, thank goodness not all the excitement was bad news, in fact some of it was very good news. I heard last week that my PhD proposal has been accepted by Tartu University in Estonia. I feel like this is going to be the start of a whole new adventure and I've no idea where this might lead. It does mean I will have to spend some time up in Estonia, but Tartu is a lovely place to be, so that's okay. At least for much of the time my research can be online hunting through journals for literature and speaking to people about participatory development and what they understand about that and since my research centres on the Latvian rural environment then that will be fine. It is one of the joys of the type of research I do, it means I get to talk to lots of interesting folks about subjects I really enjoy.

The sun beginning to rise

I have been acting like an unpaid company secretary again, I'm even getting to the stage where I don't even need to ask my neighbour for some of the information as I already know it. So what do you want to know about the Latvian wood trade? It's interesting and quite informative really, it helps me to understand business better in a rural area and shows me how things can work together, which is all useful stuff when I need to know how the rural environment functions, especially since wood products are some of the biggest exports from Latvia. At least hopefully one load of wood where I helped to negotiate the deal should be arriving this evening at its destination. Unfortunately there was a delay at the port and so it is a little late, but that's what happens in winter. And don't worry, I am not being taken advantage of, one good turn deserves another and my neighbour helps us out in many ways and it is nice to facilitate a fledgling company to get off the ground.

A frosty scene

Talking of wood products we also had to declare how much wood we cut from our forest to the State Forest Service this week. The system is not really set up for the local person just caring for the forest. It would be okay to just clean the forest of small diameter wood i.e. less than 12cm as long as enough is left to be classified as a forest, but we have some bigger trees that need cleared out to make room for other trees and some larger trees that are on our fields and need removing. To clear the larger trees means we need special permission to do that, it is easy to get, sort of, as long as you travel thirty miles to get a certificate to allow you to do it, but then every year you have to declare how much you have cut; well not a lot really! The expectation is that well over 10m3 of wood is cleared a year for this certificate, but we clear less than that, but we still have to go through the procedure. To put it in perspective, in Denmark we bought  2 x 2m3 crates to run our woodstove that heated our large living room every evening in the heating season. We still had wood leftover from that after the winter. Now of course we have a wood fired oven now that we run every weekend and a woodstove occasionally and so we need some wood but not 10m3. Even so it is only the large pieces of wood that need to be tallied, in reality there is more because we don't include the smaller trees. Complicated heh! I can understand having the checks and balances, because it stops people clear felling when they feel like it, it has to be approved and the forest has to be of a sufficient age to do that, then there are regulations that means you have to make sure the forest is rejuvenated properly and not just grows into an untidy mess. A healthy forest will give plenty of wood in its lifetime as weaker growth is removed to make room for the larger trees. Hopefully one day it will all be online, or at the very least we can post the information. As for all of that wood we cut out, we won't waste it, I mean there are candlesticks to make, but also fences, woodstores, alpaca accommodation for when we increase the flock and ......... oodles of projects to do. Now where is that paper to start writing the list?

A recipe from one of my friends. Equal
parts of grated ginger, lemon cut up
small and honey. Add to tea!
Makes a nice warming cup of tea,
great for beating off the colds this time
of year. Not that I get many of those!

Last week Martin made the comment on the birth of our new grandson:-

"You deserve a cuddle... then a few more years and he will be ready to work the land with the rest of you!!!"

Obviously the arrival of babies sets our minds to the future and we were wondering what our grandchildren's reaction would be to coming to see us. Will it be oh great we are going to see grandma and pops, because there are animals to feed, land to kick around on, loads of insects to observe and fight off, a pond to study, a forest to walk in, a chance to eat fresh eggs , animal tracks to look at and in winter a chance to ski as often as you like, or snowboard down an old Soviet ski hill for free and ride a sleigh with a neighbour's horse? Or will it be, oh no do we have to go there, there is nothing to do? It's miles from anywhere? No decent shops? We would love to think that maybe one day a grandson would come and share with us working on the land, but neither would we want that to be an expectation on such a young one. A child of reconciliation though would be good out here.

Not a candlestick! Are you shocked? This is for the pull on
a blind and is made from Aspen.

A book I had been waiting for since November finally arrived this week, but it would appear that one of the reasons for waiting so long is the fact that the post lady keeps making mistakes and putting the slips in the wrong box. Now she wasn't responsible for it being out of stock in the first place, but it might account for some of the delay. We are beginning to wonder if she cannot afford a pair of glasses - a very real issue here when wages are so low.

Updated labels to the post - in other words I forgot to add them first time around

It's a .......

A baby sleeping bag in process for another new grandchild.
This one is made from a recycled picture I was making for one
of our children that never got finished. It was going to have
velcro dinosaurs to stick on the fleecy fabric. The picture
was completed but the dinosaurs never materialised.

Boy! Yes our first grandson was born on Wednesday, carrying on the family tradition of being born on that day of the week. I was born on a Wednesday as were all three of our children, one only scraping in by 10 minutes, having been born at ten minutes past midnight. Ian is the odd one out, as he was born on Friday. It was meant to be a home birth but ended up a hospital birth at the last minute due to a minor scare, nothing serious and mother and baby are now doing fine. What was scary was to discover that he is one lucky little boy, as there was a knot in his cord, which does not seem to have caused him a problem in the end. I knew about the impending delivery in the morning and was on tenterhooks all day and in the end had to stay up quite late, knowing nothing of the transfer to hospital until after the event. It was a little nerve wracking as I didn't want to intrude too much, but I was also obviously concerned about what was happening. At one point during the day I had to go out to the shops and as I was walking the name Calum came into my head. When I got home I looked the name up and it is a Celtic name for dove, a peace bringer. His name is not Calum, but his name has a similar meaning (sorry no names here) and he is already spreading some peace and reconciliation, as a neighbour of the young family, who they were not getting on well with for one reason and another has given them gifts for the arrival of the new baby, obviously an opportunity for reconciliation.

Delivered safe and sound

It was not the only delivery this week our microwave finally arrived, a day late but at least it arrived. I said last week it was late and so the following morning I phoned to ask what happened and within two hours it apperaed delivered by an older couple, not the normal delivery type of guy. We live on the second floor (UK), third floor (Europe and US) and so deliveries of heavy goods is never easy, the poor guy looked rather puffed out as he stood at the top of the stairs, he wasn't a sprightly chap shall we say. Our next challenge was the instructions, they are in Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian, not in English nor Danish or Swedish - languages I might have managed with a bit of checking. I now have to polish up my technical Latvian to understand the finer details of the cooking programmes. I have managed to work out though how to microwave, microwave with grill, microwave with fan oven and use the fan oven. Not bad for guesswork! The crisp function and steaming function are new to me and so I'm not sure how they work yet.

One of our better roads. The sides of the roads
are starting to get rather high. Another good
load of snow and it is likely that they will be
looking for places to dump it.

Ian is spending a lot of time out on the land on his own and I do try to get out with him occasionally. The problem for me is there is nothing I can do, except ski that is, and so Ian has made a trail for us to try out. It wasn't too bad, but not quite flat and no grooves for cross country skiing and so I ended up doing a little bit of skate skiing which I'm not terribly comfortable with. Ian meanwhile powered himself round, virtually by upper body strength with parallel skis - I did give that approach a little try but gave up after a minute, I haven't got his strength that's for sure. The track obviously needs a little working on, but it's a start. One of the interesting things about the snow this year is it is soft and powdery, nothing too unusual about that as that is the type of snow you get at this time of year in these temperatures; what we found out one day though as the sun came up is how easy it slides off the roof. We were stood at one end of the greenhouse, just chatting about this and that, when suddenly the snow started sliding off starting at one end and working its way systematically section by section to the opposite end, it was like we had shutters and someone had pressed the switch to open them in perfect order. Obviously the sun had set off a chain reaction, but it was so weird to observe.

My new rolling pin

Ian hasn't much to do either. Working in the forest is difficult with the snow clinging to trees from previous wetter snowfalls and getting quite deep now as bit by bit the snow builds up and so he doesn't do that. There is no land work, apart from clearing snow from time to time as it builds up a bit too much. The alpacas aren't cleared out, we let the bedding build up as that is supposed to keep them warmer and also you cannot move frozen bedding, so layering the dry bedding on top works just as well. Clearing that out will be a spring time job, that we are both looking forward to (well if you believe that you'll believe anything). The chickens likewise don't need much clearing as anything that is liquid freezes solid and cannot be a health hazard at that temperature, anything solid sinks to the bottom of the bedding, so again it gets layered up in the ark. Their sleeping compartments get cleared out on a regular basis and that is about it. Which all goes to mean that Ian still needs to find things to do and as mentioned last week, he is really getting into the woodworking lark.

A toasting fork. The copper wires works but they are soft, Ian
is hoping to find some stronger but thin wire and he is
going to soften the rather abrupt edge as well. 

Up until now, Ian has been what you could call a functional woodworker. His work has been solid but not exactly aesthetic, although I guess aesthetics is in the eye of the beholder. His work this last week though, has been developing quite nicely with some quite artistic pieces being created. He has been finding out what it is like to work on different kinds of wood, alder and oak mainly. Alder has a lovely way of turning from a pale wood, to a wood with an orangey hue as it oxidises. The oak though has a lovely grain to it. So this week he has made two dibbers, one for us and one for a neighbour (a dibber is a handy gadget for making holes in the ground for planting young seedlings), a rolling pin just the right size for a tray I have, that I make my pastry on, and a toasting fork. The handle really is beautiful, but the wire for the fork needs a little working on.

Instead of a sloping side, Ian has straightened
the side to create a nesting area.

Ian did get back to the more functional woodwork in the week though as he made an extension for one of our chicken arks. The accommodation area for the first ark he made now seems a little small for the number of chickens to be cooped up in at night since they have grown quite big and so Ian added on a little chamber for nesting and removed the hardboard separator where the previous nesting area was. This has opened up the main area and made it more comfortable for the birds at night - at least we hope so, without actually hooking up a camera we can't tell for sure, but at least the chickens are using the new nesting area. We had a record number of eggs today, four, two from each ark, which at least means that some of the hens in the other ark are now coming into lay. We are still waiting for the day when we have nine eggs, then we will know they are all in production.

Here you see the access area to the nesting area
so we can get to all those lovely eggs. The string,
by the way is not to hold it on, it is the string to
raise and lower the door for getting into the
accommodation block

A dibber

We had a lovely unexpected chat this last week with the kind of friends who you can pick up and chat with as if it was only yesterday you last chatted. We haven't actually chatted for at least a year I think, maybe even more. They have a new Kindle and unbeknown to me, one of the things you can use them for is for Skype and so they were trying it out and I happened to be on. They are two people I really respect for growing in wisdom, not from book learning but from listening to God. People not defined by their education but by their faith. They have always been folks who sought to walk with Jesus from the start, even though they have been a bit isolated at times due to the fact they lived further away than most and to be honest not your usual church going backgrounds. It makes them more real at times than some folks I have known and their faith more immediate and it shines out of them. Love 'em! Skype is wonderful for keeping up with our new grandson too, we had a lovely chat today while he was awake - clever kid you see! Okay! I'll be honest, he cooed a bit, and I chatted to him and his dad, but he was listening, you could tell. Will be fantastic when we can interact more, looking forward to it, although I am looking forward more to when we get the chance of a cuddle.