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

Competition time

Lovely blossom, I thought it was a mock orange at first but
on closer inspection it didn't give off the heady aroma of
a mock orrange. Beautiful flowers though

Excited? Well you will have to wait as the competition is further down the post. First of all it has been planting, planting and more planting, weeding, weeding and more weeding this week. It's monotonous and boring really and my back aches, but when I step back and look at the result it is good and worth the while. Most of our recent plantings are growing well, some of the types of squashes are struggling a bit, but I reckon with enough sunshine they should recover as they can be fairly resilient (as long as we don't have a frost that is), if not, we won't have certain types of squashes. We have three different plots where we grow food as well as the greenhouse and some things grow better in the different places, something we are still learning about. At least, despite the still cool temperatures we have had just lately we have had a crop of peas and salad leaves from the greenhouse and our broad beans are nearly ready. One evening we had sauteed peas, radish and chinese cabbage with the roast carrots and beetroot thrown in at the end. The peas and radish were from this years plantings, the chinese cabbage was from the shop after the desire for something fresh and not stored in the freezer, jar or in boxes of sawdust overwhelmed me, and the carrots and beetroot are last years rather rubbery, but still tasty produce from last year. This mixture of veg is much more my style of cooking and something I would do regularly when we had a much larger household, it is more difficult to maintain when there is only the two of us and also when I rely on our own produce.

I love lilacs and we have loads around
here, all on the wane though now.

This time of the year does mean there is an awful lot to do, some of it can wait but often it is weather or time dependant. We got the oats in at nearly the last opportunity to get a crop, the weather being against us on that one and perhaps some lack of preparation - ie getting the seed bought, but it is not like we can just pop to the nearest shop to get some, we have to travel about 30 miles to get it, which means a trip has to double up to get other provisions and so takes time. The weeding, if left I am sure you know, can quickly overwhelm a garden and keeping on top of that can be a major task, especially if other things crop up to distract or take priority. I was disappointed therefore, this week to have to turn down the chance of meeting up with some old friends, but we had to acknowledge that we haven't got as much time and travelling quite a distance to see them for just a few minutes is not really something we can afford to do now. We are more than willing to do airport runs if it means we get a good chance to chat with someone - we don't mind chatting and weeding if the other person doesn't mind us carrying on, or there is always the evenings, we don't even mind giving up a whole day if we get a good chance to really share heart to heart with someone, but unfortunately from past experience meeting up with people at camps where they have come to lead activities is not the place for a good place to share. When we started coming to Latvia we used to teach English in some of these camps and in those days they were much less structured, they had an innocence about them, but times have changed and children have changed in the last 12 years. Today children expect more and camp leaders have got more organised, not always sure that is a good thing on either account, then again parents pay for their children to attend camps and I guess they are looking for some sort of value for money from them. What that does mean though is that camp helpers are busy and the chances of an uninterrupted couple of hours chatting is highly unlikely and perhaps a bit selfish to expect it, so we declined.

Hoppy having some time out of the box, so it doesn't get
run over in the bun fight when I gave its box mates some
potato, cucumber and oats.

Our little chicken hoppy, has been giving us cause for concern. There was one point I was praying for the little chap (or is it chapess?) and I wanted to see a miracle, a sign that healing will flow in this place. Well a miracle happened but not quite in the way I expected. For the first time ever here in Latvia I saw comfrey. I had been kind of looking out for it as it is good for composts and since one variety is called Russian comfrey I thought there was a good chance there was some somewhere, but never seen it, till the other day that is. We were wending our way home in the car and had just pulled off the land and travelled a few metres down the road when I saw some. I got Ian to stop the car and we both got out and had a look, sure enough it was comfrey and I took a leaf home just to make sure. The comfrey was so close to the edge of the road that it was in danger of being cut by the road maintenance crew when they clear the road edges, or removal by the grader when they level the dirt road and so the next day I got out my spade and removed it to our garden. As the stems were tall, I reduced the size of it as that should aid in the transplantation and it also meant that I had some comfrey to use as a poultice for the little chick's leg. We needed to get the inflammation down and the wound healing and the comfrey seems to be doing the trick. It also gave me an idea, I know there are lots of herbal books out there but I also know that my Latvian friends use different herbs to the ones we do for some ailments and I was thinking of gleaning the information from them to produce a different kind of book, one based on the seasons as well as the recipes from the Latvian countryside. Worth a try anyway and may save some of the knowledge from being lost in the process. Just have to make sure I take plenty of photos this year of all the different plants to go in the book.

Hoppy's box mates. Two got taken out last night for bullying
Hoppy and were put in the big box, but they in turn were
getting picked on by those in the big box so had to be put
back. I think they have calmed down a bit though after
the experience.

The chicks in the big box, no longer yellow fluffy chicks
as they gain their feathers. They are a varied group of chicks
some buff colours and some speckled grey and some white.
Will be really interesting to see what they turn out like

One of the stork chicks outside our other apartment. There
are definitely two and may even be three in there

The flower bed outside the other apartment. I'm really pleased
how this is turning out but I think I have a purple and blue
theme going on here. Click on the picture to see the flowers
better

Well while I have been weeding and planting, Ian has been constructing again, here are the results so far. I'm not going to tell you what they are, I want you to guess and all will be revealed next week when we show the finished constructions.

Construction No 1. Can you guess what this does?

Construction No 2. Photo 1
Is it a coffin? No! (Yes Ian has a macabre sense
of humour at times)

Construction No 2. Photo 2
Is it a bobsleigh?

Construction No 2. Photo 3
Sleigh?

Construction No 2. Photo 4
Nearly there but not quite. Any guesses yet?

Construction No 2. Photo 5
Maybe this will help? (Vital farm equipment Paul)

Chamomile

An interesting comment was posted by a friend of mine, Liz, on someone's blog, the question was essentially "Did they give the money to the wrong people? What would have happened if the money instead of being given to the banks was given to people to pay off their mortgages? The money would still go to the banks then, but people would have been better off in the process.What would they have then done with the money released from not paying off mortgages? Some of them would have squandered it surely? But what about others? I also wondered what would local farmers in this area do with a cash injection? Would they have replaced or invested in new equipment? Would they have repaired dilapidated housing and barns? Would they have tried some new innovative approaches to farming? Would that have had more effect on the economy than giving it to banks to fund bankers bonuses? At this point I guess we will never know.

I shall leave you with a video that someone posted a link to on facebook, that basically explains in cartoon form what I've been trying to say about the Latvian crisis for the past goodness knows how long. How we measure success is important and this really puts it in perspective and besides is funnier than me pontificating on the subject, yet again!