Round Two

Ribwort flowers, also known as English plantain

The second phase of hay cutting has begun today. The weather forecast just lately kept promising rain and mainly it still passed us by, until last night that is. We had a very powerful storm, resembling one of those tropical cyclones, that bent over trees and even snapped a willow. It also dumped a fair bit of water on us in a very short space of time, which was good. Fortunately it didn't cause too much damage in the process but it made sure everything got a good soaking. At least by early afternoon it had dried up due to a gentler breeze than yesterday and apart from the fact we are melting in the humidity, it seemed good to go for haymaking. There was a point when we had a short, sharp shower of rain, right in the middle of Ian doing the cutting but hopefully that was it and the bit of rain forecast for Wednesday, either will not materialise or we get the hay in beforehand. Whichever doesn't matter to me.

The boys have been play fighting a lot just lately

Who us? Fighting? 

We had a few visitors over the weekend. The first group was by someone who had been before and she brought two friends with her. They hadn't decided what to do but in the end they decided that coming to us was better than going to the beach. This is the second time the lady has taken the alpacas for a walk too. They took Brencis and Mr. P. for a walk and Ian went with them with Freddie. They all did very well walking the track that Ian keeps regularly mowed. I had to make a quick keyring with Aggie's fleece, as that was the one the lady wanted and I hadn't made any with her fleece yet.

Unfortunately for Mr. P. the play fighting with Brencis got a
little more serious. Put it this way, Brencis will be having
his fighting teeth removed very soon.

The large horseflies have been bothering Mr. P and so has
the humid hot weather we have been having. We are not
sure if he is starting the fights or not due to this.

Brencis is such a placid, easy going sort normally. Here he is
investigating the chickens who are close to the paddock at
the moment. They have been moved further away tonight, so
they are on fresh grass in the morning. One of our nightly
routines.

Our other visitor was also a return visitor and was a bit more of a social call, so we sat and chatted. We also drank Rosebay Willowherb tea, which she made herself and ate cakes from the local bakery, which all sounds like a scene from Wind in the Willows on a lovely summer's day. She also brought tins of moose (or just for my supervisor, more correctly Eurasian Elk) and a contract for a local hunting organisation. We did have a contract with an organisation but apparently it is now invalid due to the rules in Latvia.

The three young swallows are close to flying now. There isn't
much room in that nest

Lady V is still plodding along

Each hunting organisation has to own land or have a contract with landowners in order to hunt. There is also a minimum amount of land in order to get the relevant licenses and the amount depends on the animals hunted, so around 1000 ha for wild boar (unless it has changed lately) and the areas must all be joined together (otherwise it is difficult to have a hunting strategy). To hunt on your own land or to invite hunters on, you must be part of the hunting organisation too. From time to time landowners change the organisations that they sign up with and for some reason some neighbouring landowners who border our land and belonged to the original hunting organisation must have signed up with someone else. That left us with the choice of either no hunting organisation allowed on our land or sign with another one. Whilst we haven't had to call on the hunters this last year as so many of the wild boar have been culled or died due to African Swine Fever, it may only be a short time before they reappear in sufficient numbers to tear up our land again. We try to live with wildlife damage but we have to draw a line somewhere.

I love the curls on Chanel's face

The view from the old ski hill. If you look
carefully around the middle electric pole you
can see a fairy ring of dark grass. Our visitor's
land is over the hill in the distance on the right.

Our visitor has a property nearby and around 17 wild horses, well when I say wild they are allowed to roam a wide area and are not used for anything else except maintaining the land. They are descended from the Polish Konik horses. She took us to see them and the horses seemed friendly enough. They came galloping over the hill when she called and then ate slices of bread from our hands, they took them very gently too. It was funny seeing the other side of the hill. It is not an area we go to very often and it has a much more open vista than our side of the hill. Our little piece of land is quite enclosed, although there is more of a view from what used to be the ski hill of course, but we don't go up there often.

No lump there now. All stitched up and covered with blue
spray to deter the flies as well as being an antiseptic.

The vet came out to look at Herk and we decided on surgery to remove the lump. Even if it was nothing to worry about exactly, the flies were bothering him so much as it was oozing a little, that it was decided it was best to remove it. The whole thing was done in the alpaca house with Herk pinned down as we do for shearing time. He was just given an local anaesthetic and the lump was removed without a problem. We allowed the trainee vet to stitch it up, after all she has got to practice sometime and we are quite keen for vets to become used to working on alpacas. If our girls need help to deliver their babies when our regular vet goes on holiday, she will be the one we call on anyway. Of course we hope it doesn't come to that this year. We are still waiting though and Mari at least seems to be showing signs of possibly going into labour sooner rather than later - how soon, no idea!

He's doing fine and doesn't seem that bothered about it. He
was a bit stiff straight afterwards but not even a limp now.

The rather distressed little squirrel. It's a good
job Ian was wearing the gloves to handle it,
he or she did try to bite a few times when it
was examined, whist trying to work out what
was wrong with it.

Our cat, Eyre, turned up with something large in her mouth this week. When we went to investigate we found it was a squirrel. We don't see many squirrels around here, probably too many predators, not just our cats but also lynx and foxes at least. We found out it was still alive and so managed to get the poor traumatised thing in a box to rest. When we tried to release it and encourage it to go up a tree out of harms way a few hours later, we realised that something wasn't quite right. We decided to put it in the hamster cage that we normally use for our chicks. Eventually we worked out that there was something wrong with its neck, not surprising as the cat was carrying it by its neck. We gave it food and water, since it still seemed quite active and decided to let it rest and check on it every now and again. Unfortunately it didn't survive. It was such a sweet little thing and died curled up as if it was asleep.

A rather large mushroom we found in our greenhouse. They
have been popping up in the straw. They are tasty.

Aggie has still been slumped about, but she doesn't like the
heat or pregnancy

I am still in a bit of a fug with my faith. It still seems rather distant. I struggle at times with wanting a house, somewhere to call home on our land, but we aren't any nearer to working out how to do that. I've travelled about a bit and lived in three countries now and until recently, my faith was always my home wherever I went. So this struggle with home is unsettling. Really it's a first world problem. I have a home, two in fact, a caravan for summer and a flat for winter. That is more than many people have. It is also so ironic to be unsettled with the concept of home while studying a sense of place in Estonia and Latvia. So why the fug? "So Lord! How do I make progress and move on from where I am?" was my cry and the phrase that keeps coming back to me, "Is start with what you have!" It reminds me of the story of the widow who asked Elijah for help and he replied "What do you have?" and she told him only a little oil. He told her to start with that and the oil kept pouring from the jar until the bottles she had got from her neighbours were full. We shall see where that leads us then!