Frustrations galore

Well sorry for the delay and it is good to see that blogger seems to be behaving itself this morning.

Several incidents just lately have had us and our friends asking "What does it mean to be an adult? "What  difference does it make to how someone should act?" and "How can we encourage folks to grow up?" It is hard when dealing with people from dysfunctional families or embroiled in relationships with those from dysfunctional families. Many people here in Latvia have an alcoholic in their family or amongst their close friends and encouraging responsible behaviour in that environment can be tough sometimes . It is always heart breaking to say "Enough's enough! You've gone too far!" Tough, but necessary sometimes. It has been a steep learning curve for all involved to realise that allowing behaviour to slide is not always in some folk's best interests. Yes there is unconditional love, but love also looks for the best for the person and sometimes that is far from comfortable. Well hopefully we have all learnt something in these processes that we can use to help others where necessary. Rapper/actor  Ashley Walters came from such a dysfunctional family as his dad went to prison 17 times and left Ashley an angry young man. After a spell in prison he came out to see his young son and realised where his mistakes were leading and said in a BBC interview  "I don't see any point in that. If I have already had the bad experience, I should be able to steer him away from that. That's the whole point in being a Dad and being an adult." Well said I think and I hope that many won't get to that stage before they realise their mistakes. Before you get the wrong impression though there are lots of very responsible folks here despite the difficulties, some holding down 2 or even 3 jobs just to make ends meet or working away from family just to make sure there is some income coming in, bringing with it a new set of problems, life is sure not easy for some. 

It hasn't been all angst this week though, how can you when Spring is on its way? It is not a pretty time of the year really, with the snow melting leaving soggy messes everywhere but there is a sense of urgency and a softness in the air that suggests just a little longer and things will be different. Magpies are zooming backwards and forwards making nests (I didn't realise how widespread those birds are until we have moved around and I can confirm they are in Denmark, America and Latvia as well as England), other birds are singing their hearts out and of course the storks are back. Ian was literally just telling me that the storks were back as the first sightings had been made in Latvia according to our Swedish friend, when on cue, one flies past our house. How's that for timing? A stork flies for 35 days from its winter nesting ground and times his arrival with our discussion about storks! Amazing coincidence! We have also spotted a couple of butterflies which is odd as there are only snowdrops flowering at the moment, goodness only knows what they will be feeding on.

The melting snow of course brings flooding because the ground is still frozen and the water has nowhere to go, so it tries to head for the rivers. The rivers in turn are still solid chunks of ice as well and so the water backs up. I didn't realise how thick the ice was until the nearby river started breaking up and there were chunks of ice over 30 cm thick protruding upwards in places. In Jelgava they have already had floods and so the army have been sent in to break up the ice on the Daugava river with explosives so that the water can drain away and it certainly needed some hefty explosives to break it up.

As to be expected, our land is rather soggy, and once again it is deserving of its nickname, the Everglades. And guess what with all this soggy mess we are still waiting for our polytunnel to be completed! We were told last week that the wood would be ready to finish the frame and they would start on Monday, which we were led to believe  meant last Monday but no. No one thought to ring to say what was happening and poor Ian is getting a bit fed up chasing folks around (do they want a job or not?).  Anyway someone did turn up this Monday to have a look, only a week late, and there is a real problem with the amount of water that is literally pouring through the channels that Ian has dug, but heh! that is not our problem we did suggest it be done sooner while the ground was still frozen, so they will need to be creative to get it finished and not covered in mud.

I said the ground was frozen still and so I watched in amazement as a lorry went by with a pipe laying machine on the back. It is quite amazing they are starting back to work now on laying water pipes because the frozen ground is like concrete and I know the pipes have to be laid below the permafrost layer, but they have to get to it first. It will be like digging through a metre thick concrete slab. Incredible! Rather them than me! Having said that the moles seem to have managed all right to dig through the frozen ground, judging by the number of mole hills up the garden - maybe that is what they use, an army of moles?

It is amazing how travelling about makes you think about your own heritage more and also the heritage of others (or maybe it's just me) so it was interesting to read on the Timber Butte blog about Tri Robinson and his heritage as an American, and descendant of pioneers. I have to say American's often have a greater knowledge of their own heritage than those of us from Europe but I guess it is all that moving about that makes you search for your roots. Seeing just a little of the vastness that is America in our two years of living there helped me to understand some of the American culture, to think that today's folks are the descendants of those who had to keep going to reach a place to settle, who had to lose things along the way that weighed them down, who had to be fixed on the goal or perish. All this makes sense of sense of thinking they know best, the determination to carry on in the face of opposition, and the courage to get up even after a fall. Those characteristics are admirable sometimes but they do have a flip side which is not so good but understanding where it comes from has meant I am more tolerant when I meet it - well sometimes and no doubt I have my own cultural foibles that are hard to understood by the good folks here.

So what about my heritage? My grandparents are all from different towns of England which is unusual for my grandparents era as people were not so mobile then. My Grandfather though on my mother's side wanted to start a new life in Australia but my Nan would not move away. So my heritage is one of those who wanted to go and those who wanted to stay, those with a sense of adventure which was never fulfilled and those too frightened to step out. It is odd that our daughter, her great-granddaughter has finally made it there to Australia. It sort of echoes how Abraham's father set out to go to Canaan but never made it, he settled for the comfort of Haran instead (Genesis11:31) and it was Abraham who made it to Canaan after a little encouragement to get up and go from God. Of course if my Grandparents had moved I wouldn't be here writing this blog or having these adventures as my parents would not have met. Sobering thought! But what is more sobering to me is the fact that Terah never made it to his destination, he settled too soon. I never want to be someone who settles for less than the goal of God's life for me, I never want to settle too soon. That does not mean it is time to leave Latvia, there are other goals to pursue than just places to go to but I just don't want to settle down yet, I haven't finished my journey through life yet, God has a purpose and a plan for me and I don't want to settle for anything less. That helps to spur me on with my studies despite the set back I had this last week. Up to now on my new course I had been getting distinctions but for the assignment for this new unit, one I thought I should have had no problem with I got what they called a marginal fail (not sure what that means yet) and I felt rather down about it, I suppose it knocked me off my pedestal a bit. It is a set back but not I presume an insurmountable one and so I shall determine to carry on and reach my goal. At least for now I have two weeks off my studies so I can relax and rest my brain.

You can see a big difference between this week's photos and last week's.
Photo 1 our rustic workshop still under construction, but the banks of snow at the side of the path are fast disappearing
Photo 2 but the snow is still deep in places, Ian had to take a photo first before he would help me out.
Photo 3 Ian digging drainage channels in the polytunnel
Photo 4 The polytunnel - not a pretty sight
Photo 5 The destructive effects of the melting snow on a road. The land to the left up to 3/4 of the way up the hill is ours too, and used to be a ski hill.
Photo 6 The children's playground and if you look back you can see how the snow was pretty much up to the swings and the top of the bin.
Photo 7 Our reappearing garden.

Humour needed!

Thought I would give a little update on the Latvian lessons first. We are by no means fluent in any shape or form as I have just not had the time to do more than glance at the books before the lessons and Ian is struggling to memorise what he needs to remember but we muddle on through. The great thing is though that our teachers are wonderful and patient and when things aren't going well we can laugh. I was listening to a service which was part translated on Sunday and I realised that I could recognise quite a few words which was great and I even managed to follow along with a piece that wasn't translated - I don't think I got the whole of it but at least I think I got the idea of what they were talking about which is encouraging.

Last week I mentioned how Ian was switching between the roles of consultant, farmer and househusband and the pattern continued for the rest of the week and the result of that is that he is off to Cyprus at the end of this week. He told his colleague that he will only go if she can guarantee some sunshine to which she replied she couldn't guarantee the sunshine as it is cooling down now in Cyprus, but she can guarantee it will be warmer than in Latvia. How true! The Everglades have just begun to defrost slightly with a rise in temperature and the snow that fell at the end of last week is disappearing but it is going ever so slowly, the crocodiles are ever so sluggish!

Just in case you think we have finally lost it and maybe you are not so far wrong on that score, our piece of land was jokingly labelled the Everglades last week as the ground has become rather saturated over Autumn. The problem with jokes in our household is that they have a tendency to rumble on for weeks, if not years. It is a trait of Ian's family! Honest! His Dad used to joke that the Queen would regularly pop in for a cup of tea on her travels and the spin offs from that joke still rumble on now and Ian's Dad died a couple of years ago but they are heroically kept alive by son and grandson in his honour. So various jokes about the Everglades have abounded, hence the crocodiles and the frequent mention of hovercrafts. 

One of the things we have to get used to in Latvia is the attitude to private land is rather different to that in England. I would never dream of venturing on land in case it belonged to someone but here there is no such scruple and perhaps that is as it should be, as long as they are not damaging land and respecting the environment. Often people go into woods to collect mushrooms or willow which is fine. One incident that I had forgotten about from the previous week happened to Ian while he was busy clearing out the wood. Ian came out of the wood and spotted a lot of people with high visibility vests on, Ian's first thought was that it was the police and there had been an incident, especially as they were all in a long line walking across the ploughed bit of land. Ian summoned up courage and went up to one of them and asked if they spoke English (Angliski?) which fortunately the guy did and he explained that it was a hunt. Phew! Well they set off into the woods "whooping" as they went along, I guess they were driving the game towards those with guns - no wonder they had high visibility jackets on then. Not quite sure what I think about folks driving game off the land we are stewarding but in some ways I just hope they reduce the number of wild boar as I can foresee they maybe a real problem if we try and grow veg. I perhaps would feel better if we could benefit from their activities though, I don't think I have actually had venison but wild boar is pretty good. 

We don't often have guests turn up unexpectedly very often  but  this week was an exception which has been fun. I agree with one blog site that measures how beautiful a home is, not by the elegant setting or the eclectic chic appearance but by the abundance of generous hearts, so hopefully our guest was blessed by arriving at a meal time and my eking it out to feed three instead of two, he seemed to appreciate it anyway. Our young American friend, Marvin, also came round for a meal for the last time this week as he is off back to America, he will be sorely missed around here. His last visit will be memorable for one reason in particular though as he made an explosive exit  - well not him personally but the front glass section on my oven shattered while we were in the kitchen preparing the meal, thankfully no one was hurt. Not sure what I am going to do about the door now and it is proving interesting trying to get food into and out of the oven as it does not stay fully open due to the lack of weight from the missing glass front and it requires an almost yoga type exercise in order to keep the door open. 

A few weeks ago I asked on a forum site if anyone had any good ideas for marrows as I had used them in just about any way I could think of and had run out of ideas, an interesting suggestion was to make marrow rum. The recipe was easy enough, brown sugar, juice of an orange and some yeast all packed into the hollowed out centre of a marrow and left for a few weeks.  Eventually the marrow started leaking and so we thought we had better deal with it as we didn't want anything exploding in our dump room, I think that would entail a far more complicated cleaning up job than the exploding pumpkin down in the cellar (anyone get the impression that it is getting dangerous around here?). We opened up the marrow and a very pleasant but alcoholic smell began to permeate the apartment, we tipped the juice into a plastic bottle and added more orange juice and yeast, scraped the rest of the flesh out of the marrow and left it to drain in a colander to extract the maximum amount of liquid. The sweet alcoholic smell lingered and wouldn't you guess it that is the time for more unexpected guests to turn up, we smelt more like an illegal distillery and wondered what our neighbours would think as the smell wafted out the door. Alcohol is a major problem here in Latvia so they probably thought we had just succumbed to the onslaught of poor weather and turned to drink. Fortunately our guests saw the funny side of it and we laughed and giggled about it. 


Last week I mentioned that our tractor had been driven back to the tractor company and wondered how long it would have taken them as it takes an hour by car and our tractor is only little, well we found out it took them three hours. Three hours of bumping around on dirt roads for our little tractor - poor thing! Can't imagine whoever drove the tractor was in good shape either at the end of that. Worse thing is that didn't even solve the problem, our front loader is still not fitted. Somehow the wrong part was either ordered or sent and we have to wait for the right part to come from Italy. We had the tractor delivered back to us for the time being though and would you believe it, it arrived one snowy evening! And yes the transit pulling our tractor on a low loader did get stuck didn't it! And yes Ian pulled ended up pulling it out to the land. He is going to have to get a new tow rope at this rate but Ian did say it looked rather peculiar with our red truck pulling a big transit that was pulling a low loader with a tractor on it. So what is the betting that the part comes next week while Ian is away? I have to go and get tractor driving lessons to learn how to reverse it out of the tight space where it is parked just in case. Deep joy! Advantage of the returned tractor is that Ian could turn the tractor lights on and the guys finish off the concreting for our poly tunnel base, we are kind of glad that bit is finished despite the mud, rain, ice and snow, just not so sure about the wisdom of trying to concrete in the ice though. Only time will tell on that one.

Our eventful week was rounded off by the announcement that our chimney is ready for our new stove. We weren't able to find the right parts but that doesn't seem to matter here in Latvia, if you don't find the part, you find someone to make it for you. That did mean that our living room needed a radical rearrangement. Well we kind of put it off as long as possible as changing furniture around and deciding where it is going to go is fraught with problems in our household, Ian hates change - I think it might be a man thing, not sure, but I love to change things around and would do it a lot more if it didn't cause so much strife. The thing I don't like though is the wires to all the bits and pieces of electrical stuff - now that causes me strife. Well we survived the trauma without too much strain and if anyone asks the yellow bruise on Ian's nose is because a twig hit him last week. OK!

Just a quick ponder this week so here goes, as I sit and write this blog it is 20 years ago since the fall of the Berlin wall. I remember the shock of that happening and the consequent falling of the communist regime. It was amazing how such an act can have consequences down the line and even the fact that I am sat here writing this blog here in Latvia would not be possible without the momentous changes that  occurred all those years ago.

And talking of wonders that will never cease an influential think tank released a blog this week that supported the work of the Latvian Prime Minister in the face of the IMF and doesn't think he deserves the flak that he is getting and believes that the IMF has been making a hash of things in Latvia. Now where have I heard that before?

Pictures 1 & 2 - Our wintry village

Pictures 3 & 4 - The cleared out woodland and the pile of brush (I know I am only little but that pile is still huge and one of I think three)

Pictures 5 & 6 - More scenes from the land.
Picture 7 Our new stove, do you like the fire?

Contrasts and hold ups

Our life at the moment is full of contrasts, well maybe not full of them but certainly a mixture of what feels like bizarre moments. For instance today, I was studying as usual and Ian was in the kitchen dealing with pumpkins, two of them had rotted whilst sat in our basement (fortunately these ones did not explode like the other one) so it was decided that the others needed dealing with now rather than later. Ian was actually hanging around waiting for a phone call from the tractor company to tell him a tractor service engineer was on his way to fit a front loader on our little tractor (only three weeks late but who's counting) which is why he wasn't out at the land dealing with wood, as he has been for the past few weeks. So there is Ian up to his elbows in pumpkin when he gets a call from Cyprus, his hospital technician's experience was required, so he switches into consultancy mode, that dealt with and it is back to pumpkins, next the awaited phone call from the tractor company, the service engineers are on the way, farmer mode. As for me, I acted as secretary whilst Ian couldn't answer the phone as his hands were covered in pumpkin gunk, finished off the pumpkin seeds that he had been in the middle of sorting, then a while later cookery agony aunt "How do you roast a chicken? Thought you might know!" says the voice on the other end of the phone, next moving onto sorting out details regarding our house in England which we need to deal with since our daughter finishes her course in about a months time and will be leaving and somewhere in the midst of all that I am trying to write up an assignment. My assignment might get finished soon! 

Ian gave the land a nickname this week "The Everglades", because the land is so completely saturated that the lake which briefly appeared after the snow melted in April has reappeared  as have other small ponds. Unfortunately for Ian the Everglades, Latvia is a tinsy winsy bit colder than the Everglades, Florida ie 28C in Florida and freezing here or maybe that is not a bad thing as now our Everglades has begun to freeze over, so maybe it will be possible to skate on the Everglades before long. Still at least we now know what to expect next year and where the problem areas are. This is such an important part of getting to know the land, rather than rushing in and inflicting whatever solution we feel like and ending up with a mess, we are spending the time information gathering from the internet, gleaning information from locals and by good old fashioned observation. Of course there are jobs to do and Ian has been clearing out the mass of tangled undergrowth in the woods and giving the taller trees breathing space and room to grow, so he is not bored, in fact you can see the wood pile he has amassed in the photos from the fallen oak tree branch (by the way kids your dad says "See, he hasn't lost the touch of building a wood pile") but these are really frittering around the edges jobs and this winter we will really have to sit down and start planning what is going where and how we progress with everything, maybe the ubiquitous 5 year plan, well kind of. 

Progress continues to be slow with the polytunnel. The holes that were dug for the concrete are now full of water. Ideally Ian would have dug the holes out with a digger he bought but it didn't fit the tractor (that was another saga). If it had fit then the polytunnel would have been up by now. After a lot of emails he finally found out that it would fit with a £1000 special attachment. Ouch! (I do have to point out at this point that Ian had done the research and the digger should have been fine for the tractor but nowhere did it mention that each tractor has to have its own attachment as they are not standard) Plan B, a friend brought out a machinist who apparently works wonders, an old chap but friendly enough. Well we all stood around the tractor and our friend translated back and forth between Latvian and English, and the old chap seemed to think that he could create an attachment to fit the tractor. Perfect! Can do it in a couple of days! Brilliant! All we had to do was get the tractor up to his place. Problem! The front loader was meant to be fitted today and as I said earlier the guys came out to do it but there was an issue and they decided that they needed to take the tractor back to the company, an hours (car) drive away and they were going to drive our little tractor back there which perhaps manages 2o miles an hour. Hopefully they got the tractor back there, or maybe they are still wending their way to the tractor company as I write? So no tractor for the time being. Plan stalled yet again!


I know the post was a little long last week so I left something out that I felt was noteworthy, so here it is. An Estonian saying goes "In order to see new things, you have to follow common paths - paths you know." so said Urmas Tartes after winning a photographic award. How true, how often we miss the obvious or the new because the path is so familiar. Wonder what I have missed along the way?

The Latvian meteorite which was spread across the news sites last week certainly did turn out to be a hoax, in fact it was all a marketing hoax to demonstrate that Latvia is a creative place! Hmmm! The Latvian interior ministry was not amused though and requested payment from the company for the time involved, all 13000 LVLs of it. Makes me wonder how many people were involved because the police are not that well paid at the moment, about 400 LVLs a month, but it broke down into 3000 LVLs for the policing and 10,000 LVLs for the military for maybe two days work at the most. Sounds like it may have escalated into a major incident.

I was chatting with a friend online this week after I posted a link to a newspaper article that gave a pretty fair appraisal of the economic climate in Latvia and she asked what God was calling us to do regarding the problems facing Latvia. Good question! After a bit of thought I replied that I was going to pray for an apology from the Swedish government and banks for their part in the crisis. They have not shown a compassionate face in all of this and they are as much to blame as the Latvian nation but to listen to them you wouldn't think so. I think though more significantly God delights to raise up surprising solutions from out of the way and despised places and I pray that God raises up a solution here in Latvia, one that will bring joy and health to this planet we live on.