Gone! At last!

They may have got a little damp in the rain.
They look like they are on a mission though.

There are somethings I wish could be said had gone at last, but I can't and I'm sure you will guess to what I'm referring - namely a horrendous situation in another former Soviet country. What I can say though is that the snow has finally gone. There was still a bit in the forest and bits in the fields that face north until a few days ago, but now it has melted in the rain for sure. It feels really weird seeing the land re-emerge from under its white blanket after so long. Even after so many years of watching the snow come in the winter and leave in spring it still feels like rediscovering old friends... and foes! The land has many areas covered with molehills and vole and mouse runs who have obviously been having riotous parties under the snow cover during the winter. The voles and the mice have been making their runs between the snow and the soil and so there are many tracks running across the fields, along my herb beds, along the paths of my vegetable garden and probably along the vegetable beds. 

15th April

17th April. So close! Nearly gone!

 

25th April. Gone! And now it's wet.

Weird lighting effects from the setting sun

With all the open runs it is no wonder that Ginger Tom has been out and about and getting rather rounded in the process. Obviously he's well fed on mice. Rocket Ron, however, is all skin and bone. Ian took him to the vets last week as he just seemed to keep losing weight. Not sure yet what the problem was, but with another round of different worming treatment, probiotics and vitamins, he seems to be turning around and filling out. Perhaps it was all the Jerusalem Artichokes he was eating! He kept helping himself to the bag that was meant for the chickens through the winter. Or maybe just too lazy to go and get mice in the snow. He seems to have rectified that though now and also been tucking in. He very proudly showed a mouse off to me last week. Not quite the vegetarian cat we were beginning to think he was.

More weird effects. They look like ghostly trees

I think this is the handicraft output from a potter
wasp. Aptly named if it is. Pity the pots are so
small.

The other aspect about spring that is a bit annoying is that the animals all go daft, especially the boys. In the last couple of weeks we've had to separate the young cockerels after they were harassing the females too much (and some people think that they could all live together as one happy family!!!!) and the most dominant cockerel started knocking seven skittles out of the other two, going for their combs and jumping on the back of one as if to mate with it but more aggressively than with the females. The two less dominant ones are now in a bachelor pad waiting for an appointment with the freezer and the atmosphere in the arks is more peaceful. The alpaca boys are not so easy to deal with, the young ones have started fighting again. Freddie is the worst offender, the gentle, timid one! Unfortunately for him, his fleece isn't so good and so he's got an appointment with the vet this week. Hopefully the small operation will calm his hormones down and we will have the sweet Freddie back.

Sweet little Freddie. His squealing isn't so sweet
though

The storks haven't been to our fields much but
we've had our annual visit from a pair of ducks.
They never stop long as the pond is too small to 
support a nesting pair - they would be easy 
prey for a fox.

The fence posts

We've had rain, for much of Sunday, but that's okay as after the snow went, the ground started to get quite hard and the usual worries started about a drought. It is often dry at about this time of the year and makes putting in seeds a nightmare. I try not to water, but sometimes needs must. I prefer it if nature does the job for me. The ground was at least just about hard enough for Ian to get a delivery of fence posts in preparation for creating a fence for the girls. We hope that will stop the boys from getting in and having a repeat of last years escapades. We also want to extend where the girls can graze. We daren't let them out over the hill where we can't see them unless it is fenced in. It desperately needs grazing over there to keep the diversity of the plants. Sometimes we don't get the chance to cut that side and so to have them graze it instead will help. 

Last year's wasps' nest. Ian took it
off the side of the barn so that we
don't have any more wasps nesting
in it.

My birthday cake

Ian also got a welder and has been teaching himself to weld using YouTube videos. In fact he got more presents than I did on my birthday. I did get a cake though, that my daughter ordered. It's great that she can order at our local bakery even if she is half way around the world and very nice it is too. We are still wading our way through it. 

Our summer cabin will be where the sticks are. 
Those sticks had snow about 3/4 of the way up them.
That was a lot of snow.

Scruffy kid!

Unusually my birthday was a very sunny day and so I took the opportunity of flexible working to take the day off and plant potatoes. It was nice to be outside and the work isn't too hard with the manured raised beds that Ian creates over winter. Saturday was nice too until it started to cloud over in the evening and so I also cleared out one of the chicken arks, threw some parsnips, beetroot and marigold seeds in and started the process of clearing the winter debris off my flower and herb beds. I wasn't confident any of the seeds are viable so just decided to mix them in and rake the ground over before giving it a thin covering of hay to keep the moisture in and stop the seedlings when they germinate from getting bashed about. 

Obviously a trend

17th April and still some snow in the forest.

One of the nice things about gardening is having time to think and I've been mulling over the responses of the European heads of government to the war in Ukraine. I don't envy them on the one hand, but I know there are some of them who have got to swallow their fear of economic impacts and ditch the oil and gas. It will harm the economy but so will the continued addiction to oil and gas. Globally we have waited too long and now we need a rapid change away from oil and gas for the sake of Ukraine, for the sake of our children and the planet on which we live. Will that harm the economy? Probably! But how it is done affects the long-term effects. We can pull together, we can cooperate and support each other, we can grow food wherever we can - if we can do it in a war, we can do it in peacetime (whatever that is). In many ways it is part of a war effort, a war against greed, a war against authoritarian governments and a war against the harm to our children's future. So let's get digging for victory - victory of peace.

Ian gets his second hand t-shirts from his son, not
quite sure what the World's Strongest 'Oys are but
it makes us giggle. I have cropped the picture as
Ian shut his eyes when the flash went off and he 
looked rather dopey in the process. Nothing personal
really!

Yup! Ian's boots. This was an accident with my
phone camera but I thought it was funny how the
cats were sat there looking out as if they couldn't
quite believe the snow had gone too. They've been
going daft as well and running around fighting.

A doctored image of me holding a mushroom. We 
used it on a promotional picture as a background
for a seminar. 

It's a process

Hello! Lolly is fully weaned now and she seems
to have accepted this graciously. She doesn't
bother Ian for milk in the morning. 

Well not quite a monthly blog, but getting that way again. There have been more changes since last month, but it is all part of our regularly yearly cycle. The timing changes, to some extent, but they still happen. We are back out in the caravan as the animals are going way at night so late that it is difficult to find a sensible time to eat together. Fortunately, although the nights are cool, they are not that cool that they are unbearable and so we made the switch. Okay, -6C overnight was a tad cool but snuggled up under a quilt and blankets it works, plus the radiator is only an arm's length away and soon warms up the small space of a caravan.

Wearing our presents from one of our 
Australian grandsons. Not quite sure
how long it took to first get them to us,
via the UK and then for us to finally get
around to taking a photo, but we did it 
in the end. Oh and please ignore the hat
hair - bit of a problem at this time of the 
year.

Tuesday 5th April

Finally the snow is beginning to clear properly here. I drove up to Estonia recently for work and it was amazing to see stretches of land with no snow and then I got back to our land and there was still 20-30cm in places with hardly any grass showing. Gradually, gradually though it began to reduce in height and larger stretches of grass.... errr... I mean moss began appearing. As the snow got thinner larger areas of green appeared quite suddenly. It is startling to see green where earlier in the day it was white. We still have the occasional snow or hail shower but nothing that lasts and it finally feels like winter is drawing its last breath and fading away. I know, I know... it can still turn white, it is still early April and we are far north. 

Saturday 9th, yes a dusting of yet more snow and 
not much difference to four days before.

And three days later, Tuesday 12th. I
do believe it is finally going.

Well are you going to feed us
or not?

The normality feels deceptive whilst reading the news. The horror of the situation in Ukraine is awful, especially as I have read the history of post-Soviet countries. I can't even begin to imagine the sheer awfulness of the butchery that has been meted out on civilians, but a shudder went through me when I heard of people being bussed to locations in Russia, which sounds so innocuous but isn't. I've read about the forced deportations from Latvia to Siberia during the Soviet era and it is frightening to think deportations are happening again. This is not a benign action to take people to safety, this is a systematic attempt at terrorising a nation. A nation that knows its neighbour has been guilty of deliberate mass starvation (Holdomor) and forced deportations in the past. 

The crinkled effect of melting snow

The gas oven all cleaned up
and ready to go in the 
greenhouse! As you do!
Mind you, not sure how 
much use we will get out of
it this year, if there is a gas 
shortage. Good job we are
not dependent on it, we have
other options.

Another aspect that horrifies me is the slow response of governments to change for the sake of peace. Oil and gas is the currency that keeps this war going. On the one hand governments are supplying arms to support Ukraine and on the other the nations are paying out for the gas and oil that fuels such butchery. The reason given is that it would decimate the economy. War decimates an economy. War in Ukraine will have serious impacts on economies. When people die due to bowing down to the economy, then the model is wrong. One thing I have learnt over the years is that things like famine are not a failure of harvests, it is a failure in society. Famines happen when society lets it, after a failure of a harvest. There is no reason for sections of society to suffer unnecessary hardship due to a severe shock to the economy if the rest of society pulls together and works together then everyone can weather the storm. 

Yes the storks are back. Really! Look hard!

I guess the frogspawn will be appearing soon
then.

We only have to look at how Ukrainian refugees are being absorbed into societies close by to see how societies can pull together. It is possible to take care of and support others going through a bad period. This, of course, will not be a short-term event. Even if the war ended tomorrow, not all will be able to go back. Some will need to heal, some will make a new life in a new land because they do not feel able to go back, some will have to wait until there is some restoration of their homeland. We are in this together until we are through it, which we can, if we want to. I know I don't want to live in a society that puts the economy first and people second. The economy should serve the people and not the other way around. 

Oooh! Sunshine! I'm not one for sunbathing like
Silla, but I know how she feels to see that 
sunshine again.

The paddocks have been pretty wet as the snow
has melted. Mind you, it is surprising where the
water appears at this time of the year. How is
it so wet on the top of hills? 

So what do we do now? Grow as much as you can. Hoard or not to hoard? Maybe hoard what you will consume, like societies used to do before the advent of ever open supermarkets - in other words, store your excess from the summer for the winter. Share what is needed. I had thought I would take a year off from growing veg, but I've put that idea on the backburner. I'll throw in what seeds I can and hope for the best. Maybe help will turn up? Who knows. Our cabin is on order and as soon as this snow goes and the ground dries enough to stand on we (or Ian) is out there preparing the ground for foundations. 

Tasty!

Someone needs a haircut!

So is it crazy to be planning veg beds and cabins with Russia rattling its sabre? Who knows! They seem to be pretty occupied at the moment and we are in a NATO country, unlike the poor Ukrainians. So we carry on and wonder what we would do. We have the kind of animals you cannot just shove in the car and drive off, so that complicates matters. How do you even process these kinds of thoughts? I guess we don't. We watch, we wait and we pray, or stick our head in the sand, whichever is the most appropriate at the time. We have food, we know how to grow food, we know how to store food for the winter without using electricity, we know how to forage. We've already had our first meal with wild greens of the year - admittedly they were growing in the greenhouse. Does this prepare us? No not really, but it helps.

Arrrh! That's better I can see now

Greeeeeennnnnnn! Well nearly! Kind of
green anyway

At least with today's accessibility to information there seems to be more time to make the kinds of decisions to leave if we had to. I just wish someone would turn off the tap that fuels these kinds of atrocities (no pun intended), wherever they are in the world, not just Ukraine. We need to get serious about renewable energy for a more sustainable future in more ways than one. Let's hang on in there and be kind! Please!

There's nothing like a good scratch, but could you
do this while being 8 months pregnant.

Finally outside enjoying the sunshine and finding
the odd blade of grass.

The wagtails are back

Just chilling! 

The snow is getting further and further away

Mr. Tellus

A crane. They've been back longer

Not snowdrops - but snowflakes.

We don't know how much is snow
and how much is manure in these
beds yet.

The snow wasn't deep enough to
protect this bush that was trying
to be an apple tree.

Slowly, slowly melting

Rocket Ron is still an active cat but Ian had to take
him to the vet today as he's got ever so thin. We are
hoping it's just worms, although he was wormed 
recently. He has expensive kitten food, several 
injections and big tablets and he goes back to the
vet 26th.

The willow is budding

There are still a few piles of snow around

Who needs to dye eggs? Actually I think
the light was playing tricks on me. There
aren't really purple and pink eggs, more
a delicate hue perhaps, but they really are
green eggs.