The Journey: Time flies

Off to sunnier climes no doubt!

It's been nearly a month since I've last posted. Perfect life? There were a few comments after my last blog that were really nice and encouraging but I did wonder if I'm giving the wrong impression at times. I'm struggling to balance too many things and some plates drop like this blog just lately. It's not just for reading by others but also a public diary of our time here on our land, so when I get out of sync I lose our thread of what we've done. I don't often go back and read through the blogs myself, but Ian does and tells me what we were doing this time so many years ago. It's also a great record of the weather and the changes through the years.

It was Ian's birthday on Monday
and our daughter organised a cake
as a surprise. This was made by the
local bakery that is only open
Fridays and Saturday mornings but
we visit every week.

Lolly is beginning to lose her new baby looks.
She's still being fed by bottle lots of times during
the day, but we have to start planning what
happens when it comes to us going back to the
apartment as she still has a 6:30am feed and a
10:30pm feed at the moment.

The problem though is trying to work full time or at least nearly, help out on the land, grow our own veg, do a bit of extra work for an educational organisation that serves missionary schools and home educators and last but not least try to learn Latvian. Something has to give and this blog has been one of those things. It's a busy season, but the season should start to wind down soon, the frosts are coming and Ian even heard some geese flying over - never a good sign. Once they go the wintry weather often begins about two weeks later.

I never knew how many different types of spiders
there are on our land until I started collecting
pictures of flora and fauna on our land. This is a
crab spider.

The many moods of the grasslands. This has been
brown since it went to seed but gradually as it
dies back it is getting a more autumnal hue

I'm still yearning for a cabin on the land, the trials of using a kitchen set up in a greenhouse have been a pain that doesn't get any easier. Nothing seems to be in the right place at the right time and my food preparation area is a magnet for anything that isn't food. It's a wonder we get fed at times and sometimes we do eat rather late. I don't have to go shopping very often but making our evening meal might involve going to find what can be harvested first. I like the feeling of looking at a plate and thinking that most of it is from our own land and then there are days I couldn't care less and just want to eat whatever is in front of me.

Little miss stubborn is also getting bigger. She is
one cool customer. She will just sit in a doorway
and not bother to move for us.

The alpacas ate what they could from this and
then Ian went over and mowed down the
saplings that had sprouted

All sorts of things have happened in the world since I last posted but in our own rural bubble nothing much has changed apart from the turning of the year that happens every year. Sometimes early and sometimes later. We've had a few just frosty mornings but nothing severe. I took in the squashes as a precaution and harvested the beans now, although Ian did find a few more squashes that have either grown in the meantime or I missed. The squashes are curing on the windowsills of our apartment and the beans have been drying in the electric dryer. The beans that were still green are now either in the freezer or in jars with other veg and a tomato sauce. All the tomato plants have been uprooted to put the chicks inside the greenhouse or rather the remaining chicks.

The chicks inside the greenhouse and our monstrous
cucamelons that are taking over the greenhouse

Wasps have been trying to build in this birdhouse
for a while. Ian started spraying water at it and
ended up with a sting just above the eye. It
looked like he'd been slapped on the face it was
rather swollen at one point.

One day I found a dead chick and thought it must have died over night and the others had pecked at it. Chickens can be horrid that way. I did wonder if anything had got in because I thought it was odd as all the chicks seemed healthy enough the night before. I dismissed that idea as there was only one dead one and anything that got in usually seems to dispatch them all as we've found out over the last few years. The next morning I let out the chickens and only 8 of the now 13 chicks appeared.

These nettles aren't turning, they've been this
colour for ages. Rather pretty really.

Oak leaves turning

When I looked in the ark I found that the rest had been killed, not a pleasant sight first thing in the morning. It was the darker ones mainly that survived although there were also two white ones remaining. One of the white ones though must have been attacked. I did think of dispatching it but we gave it a chance. It had a wound on its back that I covered with blue spray and we put it in a cat basket with food and water. It was hungry - a good sign. It also seemed to have a broken foot as it was not putting it down flat, but chickens can often adapt with a broken foot. After a bit of a rest I put it back with the others and a few days later it was almost back to normal, just a slight limp. Anyway they are now safer in the small greenhouse and seem none the worse for their ordeal. Obviously modifications will be needed on the arks for next year. Sigh!

Our alpaca created parkland

A view from the hill

All trimmed to a perfect height

I love the look of moss covered rocks

The academic paper that I've been in the process of writing for what seems like aaaaaaaaggggggesssss I thought was finally finished. There was the smallest of alterations needed, which we took as a good sign, but then a rather serious sounding email that said there were still issues and if we didn't sort them out then it would be rejected. Very annoying as some of it should have been highlighted before as it is pretty much the same as it was in the first submission. The technical details of this paper has nearly driven me potty, as if I wasn't potty enough. I prefer the more qualitative story-telling type of approach, where the stories of the land are told and people's connection to it. The systematic mapping process can be very tedious but also very necessary. There is so much fascinating work out there that has been done by some hardworking scientists that needs to be accessed and understood. I am now into my third mapping project and sometimes I wonder why when we get such grief from a journal editor.

An inquisitive Valeria

A pensive looking Mari

Systematic mapping is a very precise technique and it is nice for this third project to be working with someone with more experience than I have. So I'm looking forward to seeing how this process can be speeded up to get the information out on time next year. It is also intriguing to be working with someone whose work I've read in the first project - super guy to work with too. So from no career to a very active career is a bit of a jolt. I've been thrown into the middle of another grant application for funding and if we get it I will be leading a small team on a project looking at the management of protected grasslands.

Waterlillies

Meet the Herk bird. Well that's what we used to
call it. It has a call that has us running to see what
the matter is as it sounds to us like an alpaca
warning call. Herkules our old man used to
make that call and so we called it the Herk bird.
We never knew what kind of bird it is though.
When the grassland expert was with us, we saw it
fly past and make the call for the first time ever
and she was able to tell us what it is. At last! We
now know it is a Black Woodpecker.

We had a consultant come out to see our grassland and also discuss the project. It was fascinating walking around to see the place from her perspective. There were things I have never noticed before and somethings I had but hadn't understood what they meant, for instance some plants that indicated a change from a dry meadow to a wet one. She was very supportive of letting some of the the trees grow but we know there is a need to remove some as it has got a bit dense in places, however, she said the mix was good for biodiversity and this will only improve with clearing out the dense patches. She also explained the difference in approach of agroforestry between Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. So interesting to learn more about a landscape, particularly one we call ours.

Freddie looking very elegant. He doesn't look this
elegant after finishing fighting with the others. The young boys are still fighting regularly, sometimes
just playing and sometimes more serious. We
removed their fighting teeth this last month though
and so now Ian is not so worried about them injuring each other. The older boys rarely join in and so we
are hoping they all settle down soon.

This is Tellus putting Jakobs in his place without
the fighting, "Just a warning lad! No messing
with me. Got it?"

Needless to say with all that has been going on I only managed the harvesting by taking a week off work. I had planned on an October holiday but then my daughter-in-law and grandkids planned to come out. Unfortunately a passport didn't arrive in time and so the trip got cancelled. I took the week off anyway as I realised it was the best opportunity of getting things straight out on the land. Having said that due to a conference at the beginning of the week, I still managed to work my normal hours.

George doesn't join in as often in the fighting but
we think he's established himself as the boss
among the younger ones.

Poor Turbjørn though is struggling again. Not
sure if the antics of the young ones has ended
up with him jarring his neck again or just the
colder weather making him feel worse. We'll
see what the vet says.

Another reason for taking advantage of the time off is that it is the first time in ages it's been dry for more than a few days at a time since the weather broke. Ian finally got some more cutting and baling done before the weather turned wet again and so some of the hay has just had to be thrown away and the hay on a neighbour's field is sat in rows and will be rotten by now. It's a good job we just about got enough from this year and plenty left over from last year to see us through. I managed to dig out half of the potatoes - I say dig, we don't dig exactly, I just use a small hand rake to find the potatoes. No digging is required due to our alpaca manure beds that Ian prepares over winter by dumping the clear outs from the daily clean of the alpaca sheds and fields.

That juicy leaf just on the other side of the fence.
At least he isn't leaning through the fence like
his half-brother George. George has broken a
few fence posts in the process.

The boys in their field

We've had a few of the irritating things in life and Ian has had to deal with these as I've just not had the time. Some of them are the kinds of things I used to do but we've had to switch roles. He's been trying to find out why our eID cards do not work to sign in online. We suspect it is the latest version of software on our computers but that is still a job in progress to work through the issues with some techies. He's also had to try and sort out the scanner as that stopped working when we updated our software. He's also had to sort out brake cables for our horse box as it failed its technical. Horse boxes, trailers and cars tend to be Ian's job to sort out. I think I might have taken the car once to get a re-test when he was away but that's about it. Unfortunately that hasn't been easy either and we had a delivery fail because of a problem with the address. Anyway, they should come soon, so they say.

Some mushrooms in our forest

Chanterelles

Not sure what this one is even with the help of
iNaturalist

Nor this one

Hopefully right on this one,
golden pholiota but the blurb
says found in New Zealand and
the US and yet there are dots
to say it has been found in Europe.
This is where iNaturalist might
come unstuck as it seems to
possibly perpetuate inaccuracies.