Oooh the excitement!

The train station in Tartu. I have spent many a Tuesday
morning here. The toilets are good! Actually the station
itself has been beautifully done out and retained many
old wooden beams.

Forgot to mention that last week one of my neighbours was on the bus too and we haven't actually seen each other for a while, explains a lot when she is off to Riga all the time and I'm off to Estonia. Anyway we had a lovely chat for a few hours. This week the bus was really quiet, I wondered if the storm yesterday had scared them all off, it certainly wasn't as full as last week, when there was numerous people having to stand. I even managed to get off at the right stop this time, by telling the driver which stop it was I wanted and adding "ludzu," instead of just asking for the next stop like last time (it was in Latvian though, honest!). Despite the storm in the night, the day dawned bright and clear. Unfortunately the bit of snow we had yesterday made for treacherous pathways, but so far I haven't taken a tumble. It was an interesting morning this morning, as I had a slightly frantic phone call from one of my travelling companions whilst I was waiting for them to appear in their car for the second leg of the trip. Something was wrong and our driver was not where he should be! Oh!Oh! Someone else was sent to pick me up, so I wasn't left out in the cold. I was taken to where my travelling companions work - which turned out to be quite nearby and we waited. It turned out that our driver was appearing in a publicity film for the company and even though it was scheduled for the next day, the film crew turned up this morning instead. Fortunately we set off in enough time and we arrived with 15 minutes to spare.

A little bit of freedom, the chicks have
been let out into the greenhouse, from
their arks

The hospital. Ian has added gates onto the pen we built
last year, as it has its first resident. One of our sheep
has not thrived and was laid down on its side last week.
It was quite weak and Ian had to carry it up to the
greenhouse. Our friend, who has raised many sheep
came to give it an injection of vitamins and it will
be wormed next week. Although it has recovered, I'm not
sure if it will be kept all winter, we need them for breeding
and since it hasn't grown well, it might not be good to keep.

That wasn't the only excitement this week, the Prime Minister of Latvia has gone. A man who took on the premiership at the beginning of the economic crisis back in 2009 and was re-elected despite the austerity he and his government imposed. He resigned to take political responsibility for the collapse of the supermarket, since his Government were responsible for cutting jobs in the department for oversight of constructions and, despite the fact that many consider he is generally a man of integrity, corruption still occurs in government departments and hasn't been wiped out under his long - by Latvian standards - tenure. Interesting times indeed, but that wasn't the end of it. I had been surprised by the lack of comments coming out about those who headed the corporations involved, such as the supermarket, developers and construction company and finally Gintaras Jasinskas, chairman of Maxima Latvia (the supermarket), sparked anger by saying: "It is those who feel guilty who resign," commenting on the Prime Ministers resignation, this was swiftly followed by the shareholders of the Lithuanian owned company sacking him for his insensitive comments. 

Behind bars in the hospital

Icy roads

To add to the excitement I took my first lectures at a university this week. In the first I was talking about impressions from different countries we had lived in and at one stage I talked about England of course. I asked the students for their own impressions and one student said we had weird food and when asked what weird food in particular, he said "fish and chips." How is fish and chips weird? Sigh! Overall the lecture didn't go to badly, but I got really tired towards the end and had to cut the last section short or risk repeating myself or getting lost in what I was trying to say. My fiercest critic, my hubby even said I did quite well, that was a relief. One problem though was that I thought it was a two hour lecture, but at the last minute I was told it was actually 3 hours - too short a time to organise some activities to spin it out. I must admit though I did not want it to go on much longer as the roads were pretty icy on the way in, even if I wasn't driving since my dear hubby did, I still didn't fancy a late icy trip back home. Happily the roads had improved on the way back, as the temperatures went up enough and I think they put some grit down.

Ian chopping sticks to start a fire

The second lecture was for the course I am on, where I am learning about higher education teaching. The lecture was not exactly accessed for a mark, but it was necessary to complete in order to pass the course. By contrast this was a mini-lecture of 15 minutes and was supposed to give a flavour of what we would do in a teaching situation and get some feedback from our fellow students. I used an activity where all the students had to hold hands in a circle and then tie themselves up in a knot, I then had three volunteer "experts" come and unravel them. I timed this at 1 minute and 22 seconds. The next task was to do the same exercise without the experts and the task took 15 seconds. This was an activity one of the speakers organised at the summer school in Peyresq (France) and I felt it sent a powerful message to the young experts attending the course, that local knowledge is sometimes more effective. The students that I taught the exercise to also noted that the people were not waiting around for the experts to get them out of the mess, they cooperated with each other to solve the problem. My point was not that experts were irrelevant and no one fortunately took it that way, but they did understand very well that a motivated group of people can be quite adept at sorting out their own problems. I went on to talk about how experts and locals can work together and in an ideal situation is how participatory development works - and that neatly encapsulated what I would teach on. I got some very positive feedback and one or two helpful suggestions for improvements and things to look out for when or if I do ever get to teach again. The students enjoyed the activity that much, that they even suggested that it would be okay to do earlier in a course and not wait until everyone knew each other - must admit I would have been uncomfortable with that. I was uncomfortable with doing the activity myself in Peyresq after a few days of getting to know the other students, but felt it was worth it because it made the point so well.

Freedom might not be all its cracked up
to be though. These are our excess chicks
who have joined the bigger ones out in
the field, where they can free range.

Ian wants a camel and a llama now. To think he was a bit
unsure about having animals at all, apart from cats a
couple of years ago. Now he is developing quite an
affinity with them.

Oh yes! And there's more! What more excitement can there be in one week? Besides the will it, won't it appear comet? It is now declared dead, by the way, in case you missed that piece of information, although it did briefly reappear. No that isn't the news I was going to tell you about, it is the news about the Latvian Camels and Camelid Association. Last year we took my parents on a visit to a camelid farm, partly because we wanted to visit the farm ourselves, as they had alpacas too (alpacas, llamas, camels, vicunas and guanacos are all camelids, just in case you are wondering). In our defence, at least my parents did get a day out and about and not just to the camelid farm. We had been going to phone the farm to visit and talk alpacas, but Ian's had a cold and we were waiting for that to clear, when I got an email from them. What I didn't realise at the time was the trouble they took to get our email address.

One of the ladies who runs the camelid farm (Rakši) remembered our visit last year, but all she could remember was where we lived and we had alpacas. She was talking to a friend of hers who has moved out to our village and she asked if she knew of us, she didn't, but she said, "I will ask my friend." That friend happened to be one of our neighbours who knows we have alpacas and has our email address. The lady from Rakši said it was as if our email address dropped down from heaven - that made us smile. So thanks to a wonderful load of coincidences, we were sat in the first meeting of the Latvian Camels and Camelid Association. As far as the Association is concerned there are only four places in the whole of Latvia that keeps alpacas, ours being one of them, one is quite huge though with over 60, but the others are not so huge. So for the whole afternoon, we talked camelids and ate some great food and then talked some more, all made possible by the fact a friend of ours was also willing to put our animals away for us, allowing us to stay for a good long chat.

The various animals are all concentrating on a dog that is
chasing a stick in the enclosure. This was an exercise to
show how a herd of camelids will react and chase him off.
Not quite sure how ours would react. Sometimes wonder if
they would just keep on eating

Outside the train station in Riga

And just to finish off, we have another snippet of information. While we were away at the association meeting we had a visit to our land to assess if we can get the internet there and it appears we can. Of course it will cost to put up a dish, but at least it is possible. Now what to do about the home line? Hmmm!

Will someone tell this sheep it is not an mountain goat.
They do like to climb though!

Easting the hay stack

Frost on the wire

We're not going out in that!

It is finished

Our orchard all nice and green

Yes the blog is finished, but also other things too. So first of all sorry for the late blog again, but some friends of ours were free and wanted to look around our land and see what we are doing, so we took a trip back out there and had a very interesting time chatting about land and edible plants, how to keep wild boar away and lots of other things. Anyway back to those things which got finished this week.

The view from my office. The lilac of course
helped the essays to flow, well maybe not!

I managed to get all my course work done and handed in and now I am just awaiting the marks. This finishes the diploma part of the course I am studying, which for those who don't know is Managing Sustainable Rural Development with one of the newest UK universities the University of the Highlands and Islands. I study this online which is why I am living in Latvia but studying with a Scottish University - complicated heh! In the next academic year I have a thesis to write for my Masters, and that will take up the whole year and one I have to plan myself, so no more tutors asking for specific work or for me to read through specific books, I have to find them for myself. Scary!

Yes finished! Rather nice isn't it!

Having finished the course I now switch into gardening mode and I am busy planting up seeds and plants that should have gone out a couple of weeks ago but had to wait until I had time. Yesterday I went out to our land with Ian to work on a plot that we have just turned over for vegetables and we were surprised to see the guys working on our greenhouse (Monday). They only work at weekends usually as two of them are still at construction school and this weekend they only made it on Saturday as one of them at least has exams and needs to study. They really worked hard to finish the framework of the greenhouse on the Saturday, but we resigned ourselves to it only being finished at the end of this week when they returned back home from school, which is why we were surprised to see them in the morning. Well they didn't half crack on with the work and one even had his lovely wife on the job too to make sure it all got done. So it is finished and it is looking good. It looks very sturdy and robust and so we hope it lasts a lot longer than the last one ie more than a year will be very good.

Before they put the plastic on they erected a wreath
of birch leaves. It is a Latvian tradition to celebrate
finishing the highest point of the roof. We will not
go into the other symbolism of it all, I will just take
it as they were pretty glad to get to that point. You
may have noticed that they hung the wreath by
the door when they finished the plastic

I mentioned a few weeks ago that we had given up part of our allotment outside our house to an older lady who had recently moved in, well we have watched in amazement as this lady, who is a pensioner, first dug over the section of the garden which had already been dug and plant it up; she spent many an hour on it. But did she stop there? Oh no! She then started on the patch which had not been dug over in all the time I have known it. Next in line were the trees. This dear little white haired lady was out there wielding a chainsaw and a machete and cleared the branches off to the local fire spot about 200m away. Did she stop there? Nope! Next on the list was a small greenhouse which was erected with a great deal of precision, which you don't often see here. And it goes on, because on another day I wasn't paying much attention,  as I was busy sorting out our garden, but could hear the drone of a machine and just assumed it was another neighbour who I knew was cutting the grass, when I looked up, however, I was absolutely gobsmacked as supergran was out there with a rotavator, not a little one either. Is there no end to what this lady will do?

Inside the greenhouse, looking pretty
sturdy. Ian did find out the hard way
though that this plastic lets the UV
through, unlike the other plastic we had
on that cost four times as much.

Earlier on in the week, dear hubby took me up to our other apartment for some peace and quiet so I could get on with my work because my eye has been bad and I have been ultra careful about making sure I didn't go out when it is windy, as it seemed to set it off again. He took a bit of time to have a cup of tea before toddling off to do whatever he was going to do when he noticed another leak. This time in the kitchen and not the bathroom. Doh! Fortunately we still had some spares and he spent a bit of time getting that fixed rather than doing what he would rather do and that is be out on the land. Good job we also have a dehumidifier for all these leaks we have had. Good job it also appears my eye is completely better this week when I need to be outside a lot.

Our new vegetable plot on the land, mulched up to protect
the plants from the hot dry winds of summer. Just in time
for this plot but our other plots are in bad need of the same.

It has been an active week in Latvia on the political front, first of all the Prime Minister published a book called "How Latvia Came Through the Financial Crisis" with a Swedish economist. Bad move I think! In one way Prime Minister Dombrovskis may indeed be right in the traditional GDP sense of the word and yet he is almost certainly wrong on many other measures. I think that the financial crisis could be over for Latvia, but only because the people are choosing to dig up more land and plant food for themselves to see them through this next winter and not trust in the Government to provide for them or they are just leaving the country looking for work. But I think he is oh so wrong to be pinning his hopes on economic growth as an indicator that all is well with the economy, and I think he is oh so wrong in looking to financial models to get this country out of the mess. A new day is coming and a new way of working and it is happening out on the fringes, out perhaps from underneath the noses of those in power.

10pm at night and it is still bright outside

It does seem funny, however, that on a week that the book "How Latvia Came Through the Crisis" gets published, we are beginning to feel like a bank. We've had four requests from friends and relatives for extremely varied reasons, and we are only too glad we could help, but temporarily for one day we had a cash flow issue too - a case of exceeding daily limits - must go and sort that out. In some ways though, the reason we have had to act as a bank is because the crisis is not over, people are still active in business maybe, but there is not a lot of cash sloshing about. Neither is the crisis over until people get their incomes raised to pre-crisis levels, when cuts are no longer applied to education, police and local authorities, as they continue to be. Only then can we really talk about an end to the crisis and not some arbitrary rise in the GDP.

Ian with good old sudocrem, chamomile
and honey cream. He promises to wear
suntan cream tomorrow when he works in
the greenhouse again. We actually think
we will add fleece or one of the filtered
plastics on the overhead struts to cut
down on the UV inside, otherwise I will
look even worse when I go in.

The most surprising event of the week though was the President calling for a referendum on the dissolution of Parliament. The President, who is elected by Parliament, does not have many powers apart from ceremonial and the ability to call referendums and next week there is an election to decide on whether to re-elect President Zatlers or another to the post making his decision an incredibly brave moral stance. The Parliament voted last week to decline the request by the Corruption bureau to search the house of one of the MPs and this was a step too far for President Zatlers, he stated that the lawmakers should not be above the law themselves and by that act had distanced themselves from the people, which is why he called for the referendum to see if people will agree with him or not. Whether he gets re-elected or not on Thursday of this week there will be a referendum and if people agree with him then there will be another election in October. Interesting times!

Just to finish off I have been reading the lyrics to the song "Joanna" sung by Jon Allen, quite amazing how it follows what we are doing in following new paths here in Latvia. My favourite line is "we'll train our feet to follow the footprints of our dreams," what a great description.

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?