Welcome to 2019

Let us out! Please! There were a couple of days of wet snow
and so they all got kept in, so they didn't get soaked before a
freeze.

Welcome to 2019. I must remember that as I have already managed to sign something with the date 2018. It was interesting to welcome in the New Year with friends this time. Quite often we have gone to bed before midnight. We decided to back out of the ramble beforehand, as we weren't quite sure what we would be getting ourselves into and it was quite a long time before the party, not easy on Ian who may have been outside most of the day anyway. I also realised that I didn't actually have the right kind of footwear for that kind of thing either. I have wellies for the land and I have hiking boots but not for cold and possibly damp conditions. Anyway, the party was good and the people friendly, so that worked well.

Please! Please! Let me out!

Brencis looking pretty dapper I think

At midnight we went outside and climbed a hill. It was surprisingly steep. I have no idea why I have never noticed this particular knoll in our village before. I guess it is mainly due to living on the other side and only really walking out by our land. We celebrated the New Year with a glass of champagne and a mixture of being wished "Laimīgu Jauno gadu" and a "Happy New Year" by fellow partygoers. The hill turned out to be an excellent spot to watch the fireworks before clambering down the hill, without managing to kill myself in the process (yes it was that steep) and rejoining the party in the old railway station.

Even old Lady V, is looking good

And of course Jakobs is just looking sweet

Later on in the week the friend who helped me with the felting workshop before Christmas came to help me make some slippers. We were both interested to see how it would work with alpaca. Due to the snowy conditions we had to collect her from her parent's farm where she is living at the moment. It turned out to be a very interesting journey there as the snow was quite thick out that way and we had only travelled that way for the first time in the dark the week before. The only way we found the road to her house, was to follow the sticks her father had put in to show where the road was. It was even more tricky on the way back as it had snowed some more during the day.

Finally time to run off some energy

Snow dunes in the garden

The slipper production went well. She worked on one slipper and I followed what she was doing on the other one. We even managed to get them to be about the same, which kind of surprised me. We made the slippers from Herkues fleece. As I mentioned last week, it is not the best for nice scarves, but worked well for the base for Ian's welly inserts last week and worked very well for the slippers this time, as it made a very solid finished product with a satisfying "thwock" sound. My friend left me some leather for the bases and waxed sewing thread. I was quite pleased with them, especially as they certainly kept my feet warm and toasty. Now we just have to see how hardwearing they are.

Sunrise in winter

The deer have been visiting the land. We weren't too
concerned as they don't dig up the land like the pigs, but
now they are starting to find our orchard and eat the trees
there. That we are not so happy about. They don't normally
come so close to the greenhouse area.

Most of the time has been spent doing academic work, so I decided to go out with Ian one day to help with giving Vitamin D injections to the girls, tablets for the boys and do some skiing. The skiing didn't happen. I went out to pick the Brussel sprouts I had grown, even though they were tiny, and on the way back my eyes were aching due to the northerly wind that was blowing. I decided that skiing was not a good activity for the day, so instead I sorted out our seed order for the year. This year we needed a lot of seeds to replace older ones and I haven't managed to do much in the way of seed saving anyway. I also want to ensure I have my seed order for the next few years due to Brexit when I may have to source my seeds from a mainland European country and not the UK. Latvian seeds don't always seem to be very good, although I might start looking around to see if there are other companies.

They maybe didn't get soaked but still a little dusting of snow
one day

Travelling up to Tartu by bus. This is Valka station

The following day I thought I had better stop in before heading up to Tartu and get my packing done. I thought I would finish off a piece of felting but then realised it was already felted enough and so started on a tunic instead - as you do! I didn't finish it and so ended up taking it with me to my friend's in Tartu. At least I got it as far as a stable enough fabric to move, even if it did mean I was weighed down with lots of bags to carry.

I then walk over the border into Estonia. The
little sentry box still stands to mark the border,
but of course there are no border checks here
nowadays. Over the border is Valga

Sofie, who is now on holiday

Our cat hasn't turned up to our greenhouse when Ian goes in the morning for a few days. We found out that she is on holiday at our neighbour's farm. I needed to order some milk from her and asked if she had seen her and she had. We were relieved she was up there, but we hadn't realised she was living the life of Reilly, as we say. Our neighbour's car had broken down and so her son rang us and asked for a lift home. Ian went to pick them up and as they got chatting he found out the life she is now leading. Apparently she is sitting next to the grain to eat the mice that come by, so at least she is earning her keep too. She is also being fed sausage and gets some milk, fresh from the cow, so not sure if she will ever want to come back home, maybe in Spring.

On the bus in Estonia

An old Soviet era train near the Valga train station

Recently I have been reading Wendell Berry's "Unsettling of America" in the mornings, one of a set of books some friends bought for me. His arguments are a little circuitous and hard to follow at times, but still there is much to ponder. I can appreciate the philosophical ponderings that overlap being on a farm and academia. He suffered the frustration of academic thought that gets locked in silos in the universities of his day- thank goodness that has moved on somewhat since his book was written, but it still exists to some extent and frustrates me at times too. Ideas and concepts can look good on paper but in the real messy world there are barriers to spreading the "pure" knowledge and rightly so. So my musings have centred on the issue of the distance between the cities and the countryside and the impact that has on society today.

George might be growing up, but he is still cuddly

Frosted hay

Cities seem to behave as if life in the countryside is unimportant. This is because those living in the cities have often lost the connection to the land and the food produced from it. They have also lost the connection to the concept of stewardship in the process, as land and people are consumed and not cared for. Food is consumed without thought of where it comes from and how it got there - until something goes wrong of course. Then it is the fault of the supplier or the farmer but not the supermarket or consumers for abdicating their responsibilities in the first place for sourcing their food in an ethical manner. Ethical to the people and the earth we live on.

Vanessa's crew's paddock surrounded by frosted trees

I love the look of these frosted oak leaves. Such potential for
some design work

The rise in veganism and the eat organic movement shows people want to care but not necessarily how to care. It is after all hard to do when the processes are so little understood. How can those in the cities understand the natural cycles on which their food supply relies unless they reconnect with the land in some way? How can this vast disconnected society be turned around? Who wants to work in the fields anyway? And yet maybe we should. We mock the totalitarian regimes that sends the workers into the fields - such a waste of talent we might think, such backwardness.

Someone else looks like she wants to get out.

I do not advocate enforcing people to go into the fields for planting, weeding and harvesting, but what happens if we re-value this kind of work? Physically getting our hands in the dirt as a communal activity once again? Many of the interviews that have been conducted in my research in Latvia and Estonia recall the times of communal activity that finished in a celebration, such as haymaking, potato harvesting and apple picking and processing. It was hard physical work, but done together, in connection with the land and the seasonal cycles that produces the food they need to nourish their bodies. Some still enjoy those activities with friends and family, but many also yearn to at least see some of that kind of activity again. Maybe it isn't such a bad idea after all.