All things alpaca

Jakobs and Josefs in their new paddock

I mentioned last week that we had just moved Josefs and Jakobs to join the big boys. They have settled in quite nicely and paired up with George and Freddie. Josefs finally stopped moaning around mid-week. Bless him! Aggie wasn't very happy with me either. I had to go and encourage the girls back into their paddock one day before it started to rain and she pounced around the field, tutting away and let me know I was definitely not her favourite person. It was me who led Josefs away and anyway she is much more forgiving of Ian, being her favourite human.

At first they were a little bit separate but eventually they
integrated with the others

As you can see it has been pretty dusty

So yes we did finally got some decent rain this week, of course it arrived just before we planned to shear and so had to keep the alpacas in for a day and a half. It wasn't a deluge, which is probably good but it could have been more and it could have been a tad warmer. In fact at one point it snowed with big fat flakes. This wasn't great as we had a big group of 5 adults and 10 kids to visit the alpacas at the time, but at least the big children had fun trying to catch the flakes in their mouths. Oh the joys of childhood. I also had to lend my rather ancient warm coat to one of the adults as she had lent hers to one of the children. A week ago that wouldn't have been necessary, so I think we are all feeling the cold - I've even reverted to the thermals again.

The number of lorries going past do not help

This is what we expect in the middle of summer, not early
spring

With having to keep the alpacas in to keep them dry they were in a moaning mood for our visitors. At least being alpacas it was more amusing than annoying. We had another group of three after that, so they got to moan to two lots of visitors but were well fed in the process. The last group wanted to take the alpacas for a walk, but despite the rain stopping for them, the grass was wet so we couldn't risk it. We did warn them first and they talked about coming back later on in the year. As it was rather chilly it was perhaps not so bad to have to show them the alpacas inside rather than standing outside getting even colder than we already did.

The boys in a fog of dust

Would there happen to be a wagtail nest in the wood pile
again? By the way, we saw the first swallow of the season
today. Ian tried to direct them to one of the three alpaca
houses but not sure that it listened. We do hope it does as
the flies this afternoon were atrocious. Amazing what a
bit of rain will do

The threat of rain had us running around doing some preparation. Ian sowed some grass seed where the pig damage is and harrowed it in and then we went over to the nearby camp to put mulch on the tilled beds so the soil didn't wash down the hill. Ian has tilled the soil across the contour of the hill to reduce such events but even so, if there is a possibility of a deluge, it would still take the soil with it and so we made sure the mulch was on to slow the effects of the rain and allow it to soak in better.

Yes I should think you are embarrassed for harassing poor
little birds

We were a little worried about Josefs as he did seem rather
agitated and wanted to get back to his mum of course. The
problem is that even fairly young alpacas have been known
to mate and we can't take the risk. He has stopped trying to
escape now anyway thank goodness.

Ian needs to sort out the this year's application for EU subsidies on our land but the times the lady is open in our village are a bit inconvenient this week as we are shearing at a mini Zoo near Riga. We decided to go to a nearby village instead, but when we got there there was quite a queue. The queue also did not move very fast either, this was partly because the lady didn't turn up until after we did and even after she arrived it did not move fast. I had an online Skype meeting that I needed to attend, so we had to give up. Hopefully we'll get it sorted next week. We have until the 22nd.

And now it is spot the difference time. Jakobs and Josefs.
Of course the first thing they usually do is have a roll
after being sheared. Sigh!

A close up of Josefs. We were surprised by how dark he was
underneath

This weekend was the annual Spring market. We've had a few heavy frosts just lately and because we have an unheated greenhouse it took quite a few of our little tomato and pepper plants, even though they were well covered, so I decided to get some from the market. I also got a few plants that were further on than ours such as cabbages to get a good start to the season. I have quite a few planted up, but they have been growing slower than I would like. I may also have spent some more money on plants - well actually a lot of money for me. We got more berry producing bushes that make good hedging plants and a few more herbs to add to my collection. I also got a plant that translated as mushroom grass and yes the leaves do taste of mushrooms. Interesting anyway.

We didn't realise how spotty Josefs was either. He looks even
darker from above. 

As usual Turbjørn was first to be sheared. I'm sure he laughs
at the others

Today was the first day of shearing for us and Ian is not happy. We seem to have caught the Estonian disease of needing lots of combs and cutters because they have been going blunt so quickly. It could be due to the dry weather we had last year and earlier on this year. I'm beginning to wonder if they would have been better outside having a shower, but then they would have been wet for shearing and that wouldn't have been good either. Mr. P was the worst or at least looked the worse, He was also the worst to shear.

A rather dusty Mr. P

Herkules looked rather fed up after his shearing

It was nice that we had help this year. It is a lady and her son who are thinking of buying two of our alpacas and they wanted to see the shearing process. They also had lessons in how to catch alpacas. They weren't meant to be having lessons in catching alpacas, but we had escapees today, not just once but twice. The first escapees were from the training pen where we had put just over half the boys ready for later. There isn't enough room to pen them all up inside now there are so many of them. It is only a training pen and the gate is not the best, well it was even worse than that as it turned out. We let the first sheared alpaca out of the alpaca house - Turbjørn as we always shear him first because he is so nervous - and the next thing we know, Josefs comes running across to see who this new strange alpaca is. Hmmmph! That wasn't meant to happen.

Tellus looks a lot smarter now, well if you don't look too closely
as he has so many fat lumps on him that he always looks a bit
of a mess after shearing. At least he isn't actually as fat as he
has been. That should be good for him.

Freddie and George are still pretty much the same, but you
can see how much darker Josefs is as he is the one with
his head down at the back. Brencis is his usual mucky
colour, having just found somewhere to roll no doubt.

We left the boys out to roam around until after lunch, we then herded all the boys into the training pen usng a rope and then took the unsheared ones across to the alpaca house. Only I managed to let go of Mr. P's lead and he ran off, but I managed to catch him okay. Just as we were finishing off the penultimate alpaca the guy who had come to help us said that there were some alpacas outside the fence. Sure enough, three of Vanessa's crew were stood on the outside of the fence, eyeing up the boys with their new haircuts. Not good news, they are perhaps the most difficult to catch as they are still a bit nervous of us.

So this was the photo from last week's blog of Jakobs

Compared with today's photo. He's still got the little heart
shaped brown lips and big eyes

Freddie close up

Anyway out came the rope again and the four of us panned out holding the rope. The girls headed straight back to where they had escaped from. That at least was encouraging. Ian moved the half demolished electric fence to prevent them going down the bank and we moved in towards the girls with the rope slowly. They decided that it was better to be inside the paddock area and they were then shut in. Phew! Our helpers were quite surprised it was so easy as they have had to recapture their own cows before now and taken a couple of hours to do that. We were just pleased it turned out to be so easy with the girls. The boys were still in the paddock area and unlikely to escape from that, so not too bad. The girls were more free to roam further.

Getting ready

A lovely sunset

It is still that time of the year when it is tempting to get everything planted up and yet it might not be a good idea. There is still a long way to go before we can be certain (or as near as you can be) that there won't be any more frosts. We reckon on the end of May as our more certain time. Having said that, there is still a lot that can be planted, either indoors or a lot of work that still needs to be done to prepare for them.

Mr. Tellus looking happy with himself

So far the potatoes are in, mainly tucked into some alpaca manure beds or beds of old hay to save digging new beds. Last year's potato beds are a beautiful dark colour and now planted up with parsnips, carrots, turnips, beets and onion sets. There is just a little bit of space left in some beds for more onion sets and some are waiting for squash plants that I will start off this next week if all goes well. The strawberry bed that I remembered was too old has now been covered with a thick layer of hay and pockets of fresh soil from an old compost pile added for strawberry plants that I had dug up. We shall see if that gets over the issue of the bed being too old and full of disease with less work than digging it all over and moving it somewhere else. If it doesn't work then the hay will rot down and give me a fresh bed for something else next year.

Not sure about his rather wild hair do here though 

As well as sorting out beds for vegetables and still sorting out our old apartment we have been sorting out the EU subsidies for the land. This entailed going into the village to see the local contact lady and using google translate and gestures to sort it out. It was a bit of a slow process but it got done with enough goodwill and hopefully finished for now.  We should get just a little more than last year, which all helps to keep us going financially.

The clouds were building tonight at sunset and now it is
raining and we maybe in for some thunder

The weather has not been good all week and so there was an opportunity to go and visit friends. We went to our friends' goat farm nearby to do some catching up and then our friends further afield in Estonia to also catch up on what they are doing and collect six months worth of alpaca feed. I was rather jealous of their lovely new farm shop with all their alpaca products, coffee making facilities, some tables to sit at and lots of lovely space. I am sure it would make a great felting venue. They were busy prepping for their new season and so we didn't get to stay long.

Ian has been moving wood to start preparations for our
shelter for the caravan. It is getting a bit old now and
could do with an outer protective layer. It is certainly still
liveable in, but we are worried about being out in the sun
and rain over summer which will eventually end in a leak
somewhere. Moving it doesn't do it much good either these
days

I have also been doing some work on my paper but that is still going slowly. It didn't help that my supervisor was on a family holiday and so replies were not immediate - but then again maybe I shouldn't have been getting them at all really. At least it is still heading in a positive direction and not stalled completely. Hopefully I should get to hear soon about the other two papers that are already submitted.

George has been wowing the visitors with his cute face. I will
be glad to get him sheared though, so that he can see properly
again

The last two days have been very warm and this has brought out the visitors - well kind of. Yesterday we had a call that someone was planning to visit in the early evening. Technically we shut at 5pm, but we are not inundated with visitors and so quite happy for people to call in up until putting away time, which is getting quite late these days. We got everything prepared and set up and waited and waited and waited. I even went and got on with some work, as I got fed up with waiting. Eventually Ian texted to see where they were and apparently they ran out of time. It would have been nice to know. We can't leave everything out as our cats would sleep on it all, which is not good with dust and straw about. Oh for a nice purpose built shop!

The boys have gelled together quite nicely. We haven't had
any issues between them. Freddie was a sweetie today, as he
even took carrots from some visitors. 

Today we had three groups of visitors, although one group decided not to stay for an excursion around the property as they didn't speak English. They could have joined the group who had already turned up, as they were fluent and would have translated, but they decided not to. That is fine with us. If we know ahead of time that someone is coming who is not able to speak English, we try to make sure someone is around to help us, but that does require booking in advance and not everyone does that.

Despite Turbjørns elegant stance, he will not be in any
wedding photos - he is much too skittish for that

One of the reasons the first group came was to talk about a possible visit to take photos for a friends' wedding. This is something we have discussed ourselves but when you look at the wedding photos that people post, the alpacas are always in full fleece. Here in Latvia, it is not usually a good idea to have them in full fleece during wedding season, it is too hot. We also need to shear early enough to try and make sure they have enough fleece by the beginning of winter. It might look nice in the photos, but a hot and bothered animal is not a good idea. There is still a chance they might go ahead with it even though they might not be so fluffy, so who knows. Watch this space, either that or people need to organise their weddings for now, when ours are at their fluffiest.

Storm brewing

We had everything out on the tables again for the first group as they had booked in advance and I said to Ian as we were packing it all away that maybe we should have left it up in case we had more visitors. I should have listened to my own voice of reason, as we were half way through a late lunch when the next lot turned up. We had to hurriedly stick our sandwiches in a drawer to stop the cats nabbing them while our backs are turned and then went to meet them. When I asked them if they spoke English (asked in Latvian of course) the lady turned to her young son and he immediately started translating. He looked about 12 or so but translated very well. He was also quite curious himself and so he also asked lots of questions and didn't just translate for his mother and grandmother. We could do with someone like him around.

Lady V, looking contemplative

So all in all, it is definitely the start of the busy season. We never know who will turn up and yet still have our farm chores to do on top of that. I also still have my academic work and that probably will continue so that I can try to finish my PhD before the end of the year. It's no wonder I am not appreciating our early alarm calls - we really do need to move the chickens further away soon. At least it is getting warm enough to do that.

Our boys were pronking around the paddock this week. We haven't seem them do this before, the girls we have, but not the boys. If you are not sure what pronking is, then you will need to see the video from our Facebook page. (Link here)

Donk! When life has just got too much for you! Actually it is
probably Aggie just having a good scratch around her ankles

You put your left leg in, your left leg out!

So close!

You can tell we are heading into summer with where the sun
sets. So different to mid winter. This was also taken after
the light snow shower and after 9pm. Not a sky promising
good weather tomorrow.

I was going to tell you how the weather has got warmer and winter seems to have gone, but oh no! The temperature dropped again today with a bitterly cold northerly wind and it keeps trying to snow. Fortunately nothing serious (except as I am writing and big flakes start to come down), but it sure is not pleasant. Such a shame as I was out in the sunshine yesterday preparing more vegetable beds. At least I managed to weed and water the cabbages, Brussel sprouts, mizuna, beetroot and poppy seeds that have all sprouted under fleece. I also wrapped them up with some mulch too, so that will have helped in this cold wind. It will stop them from getting quite so hammered by the fleece as the fleece is just laid on top and is not over a framework. Ian also ploughed a small patch that we are going to plant up with buckwheat and squashes, which at least do not have to go in just yet anyway.

Sunrise on a cold and frosty morning at 5:37am - yes Ian was
up early

An early rise means the animals are allowed out early too

At least this week we have sorted out a few things. Firstly the debt we allegedly owed to what was the heating and water company and is now just the water company. It all goes back a loooooooong way, when they were not supplying adequate heat and we argued with them and then refused to pay for the heating part or rather lack of heating. As I mentioned the last week, the new director promised to have a look at it and we now have a reasonable reduction in the amount owed. I am not quibbling over the amount, as he did explain the difference in calculations and where I would not agree with how it was done, it is what it is, as a friend of ours would say.

We don't get out to this bit of the land very often. This is the
old ski hill with the rest of our land over the road on the left
hand side and one of our neighbour's to the right. 

Signs of spring! Really! Lesser Celandine I think

The other bit sorted was the application for farm payments. We have about 13 hectares total, but about 3 hectares is forest and some of the land has been taken over by trees and would not be allowed under the payments. We also decided not to add in another section that would have been complicated to put on the map, maybe another year, but not this one. We won't be retiring on the amount, that is for sure as it only amounts to about 5 hectares and EU farm payments in Latvia are some of the lowest in the EU, but at least it will pay for the summer diesel for the haymaking.

These little daffodils have hung in after being uprooted by
the wild boar. I expected a whole clump of them by now

An early morning visitor to the land. We also had the previous
owner out to the land today with his son. A nice surprise

One thing we didn't manage to sort out was getting an authorised receipt book. To collect money from visitors we are supposed to have an official receipt book that has a stamp on it from the tax office. For that we have to drive 45km just to get the stamp and for them to register the book, that you can buy in an ordinary bookstore, on their system. There is no way of doing this locally and I wonder how some people manage, although I can guess. Unfortunately we arrived on the wrong day. Not only do we have to drive all that way, we also can only go on a Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays and we went on Wednesday of course, silly us! In this day and age, there should be a way of registering a book online or locally at least, such as at the local council offices. Anyway the lady at the tax office spoke very slowly after several requests to do so and then took us to the door to show us the days the tax office dealt with registering receipt books. At least that was clear now.

Our old oak tree with moss growing on a branch in the morning
sunlight

Mr. P

Fortunately it wasn't the only thing we went to do, we also went to have a look at a builder's merchant we had been told about. It was in a small village near to the big town, in an out of the way place and not the sort of thing you would find by accident easily. Not exactly on a main road and yet the stock looked good. We ordered some more fencing and then returned on Saturday with the trailer to get the fencing and roofing panels for a new alpaca house and to replace the roof on the boys place. The boy's roof is deteriorating badly and so we are just replacing it with a metal one. At least it will last. The owner was quite a character. He didn't speak more than a few words of English but we managed and he just rattled away in Latvian.

And Mr. B looking very fluffy

How does she manage to do that when she is so pregnant?
She is due in a couple of weeks

I said last week that we had a cancellation for our felting course, but we are relieved that we have got another lady to fill the place. So we are back on track now. The pieces for that are starting to come together now. It was all decided on before Christmas, but of course we have to double check that everything is in order and transport booked. Our biggest worry at the moment is the weather. It has been so cold that shearing is later than anticipated. We had hoped to have that done at the beginning of the month, but it looks like it is going to be the end of the month instead and does not leave me much time to test the fleece samples before the course. We still have some fleece left from previous years so that will help at least. The wonderful thing about our greenhouse though, is that although it might feel like Christmas outside, at least inside it is nice and warm. The good news is that we also have a booking for all three days on the August course too.

Getting big. 

The girls enjoying the sunshine in the cool morning. They
did struggle a bit on the warmest day and sat inside then,
but on the cooler sunny days they sunbathe. I half expect a
worried passer by to call in and tell us our animals are sick,
but no, they really do like a sunabathe

A gorgeous day when spring felt like it had arrived, even the
trees were coming into leaf

Talking of the greenhouse, we have had an unwelcome visitor, another cat. I had a bowl of uncooked sourdough mix left out on the side in our greenhouse kitchen which it ate. Eeew! Hope it had a poorly tummy after that lot. We decided to block off the hole where it was getting in, which meant our cats were either in or out. If they wanted shelter they had to go down to the barn. The problem is that one of our cats worked out a way to get in. We had no idea where and one day we decided to find out as she was just on the outside. We rattled some food in a pot and sure enough she revealed how she was getting in - through a hole in the plastic. Not a good idea. Normally they go under the framework of the greenhouse, which is fine, but through the plastic is a definite no, no! Especially when a certain little cat is still getting on the roof from time to time and putting holes in the roof plastic.

Lady V is starting to show her age, we really hope she is
pregnant before retiring her. 

Doing some gardening

I have been continuing to work on an article for a journal and at least I am making progress, even if it meant printing out all the interviews on a ream of paper in small print to sort it out. At least it feels like I am getting some sort of structure worked out to categorise it and I might even be able to use the material for another paper that will be in progress later on. Even if I can only work on it for an hour before having to take a break and do some gardening. I saw today on Facebook that the National Geographic has an article on the customs and traditions of one of the places I am working on in Estonia along with its troubled history as a tribe divided by a modern day border (you can see the article here). It was funny to see the faces of people I have heard about through the interviews gathered by the students who have been helping me.  One annoying problem I have had this year is having funding turned down twice for a conference in July. It is only on every other year and it is a relatively important one too. I'm not happy. It will go in for a third attempt this next month, but I have to think about booking flights etc. to get there and there is still a risk I won't get the funding.

Savouring every blade

There is some grass there, honest! 

While I was getting on with the writing, Ian had the harder job of clearing out alpaca houses. He did the girl's alpaca house on is own but he had help for the boys'. The young lad who came to help us had cerebral palsy, which made helping a bit of a challenge but he was willing and between him and Ian they worked out a system to do the work. They also fixed the boys fence, as that is definitely a two person job. We will definitely be happy to have him back and help, but we will have to work on how that will be a good experience for him and manageable.

Having a chase

Ian re-baling hay

One really big issue we had was the hay for bedding. Ian decided to break open one of the hay bales we bought but it was hardly usable at all. They obviously had the same problem we had with bales that were baled in September and hadn't been dried properly due to the weather. Out of three big bales of hay he managed to put bedding down in the boys' alpaca houses and re-baled four bales into the more manageable small bales we normally use. He didn't want to use the hay in the girls' because of them being pregnant and due relatively soon. We usually layer the hay over time and only clear out twice a year. We would have expected to use one bale for both houses and they normally take three or four bales each, which means that 3/4 of the bales were lost to mould.

Blow dried hair

Someone found a cool place to sleep

One other important job was to get some sorting out done in our apartments, ready for summer visitors. It has meant doing some rearranging and now all Ian's tools are in one place and he brought out his shelving and fixed them up in the barn. He has also been doing some sorting out in the barn as so much stuff is piled in that it is difficult to get to it and so doesn't get used properly. It also needed a bit of rearranging to get the fridge in that lives in the barn in the summer months. It wasn't really needed until this week as the barn was quite cold enough for food and we had a big box to store it in.

I love the clouds on this breezy but sunny
day

The sheep were finally let on the grass this week too. Ian seems to spend a lot of the week moving fences at the moment because he cannot leave the alpacas on for long before they have eaten what is there and we were hesitant to let the sheep out as they eat twice as much. They needed grass though but you wouldn't think they appreciated this when they come to the gate in the evening and stand there baaing away for grain. Our chickens probably need grass too, but they are on lock down still due to the threat of avian flu- although we do notice quite a few people disregarding the rules, which to be honest is probably healthier for the chickens. It is a bit like cooping everyone up in an office during flu season when it would be healthier to get some fresh air and some good food. It is probably why the chickens are getting picky with what they eat. It has been cool enough to keep them in the greenhouse - just, but they are getting fresh food for health reasons.