Chillier days

Frosty morning

Winter reared its head this week with some distinctly frosty days. One night it was -6.7C in the greenhouse and last night it was -5C. Staying out in the caravan in these temperatures is starting to lose its appeal. We are still warm enough, as our quilt and two blankets help a lot. Menopause also has its benefits. The disadvantage is waiting for the caravan to warm up sufficiently to want to get up out of bed. At least the heater is within reaching distance and the caravan warms up quickly, since it is only a small space. Of course our electric use has gone up, but our travel costs, or Ian's travel costs are still low because he's not travelling backwards and forwards all the time. I am also out and about on the land rather than cooped up at home this way too. At some stage it just won't be worth staying out as the nights will be so long in a small space. I know! I keep saying that and we are still out here. 

These two are forever fighting it seems, but I think they would
miss each other if they were separated.

A picture of me last week, filling in for Little Red Riding
Hood. I used the alpaca scarf to good effect. It was really
warm and kept the cool winds at bay.

I spent the week in Latvia and at this time of the year, it can become a bit of a novelty. I have several trips planned all ready and one to arrange. I did go into Riga though and had a great day chatting with some lovely people. One was a connection for professional as well as personal reasons. Lovely chap who I've worked with briefly in the past and we both value each other's inputs on rural development. Good to thrash ideas about and would be great if we ever found a project we could both work on. I'm sure we could spark some good ideas between us

Aggie looking rotund and hopefully pregnant

Chanel glowing in the autumn sunshine. She really is the
colour of autumn too

The other meeting was meeting up with some with an aim to start putting together a programme for a felting holiday (details to be announced in the near future we hope). I am working on finding activities for day trips for people to experience more of Latvia, including Riga and a chance to be inspired by Latvian art and design. It is mainly aimed at those from abroad of course. We hope to arrange various types of felting courses, to suit different budgets, so we hope to make some more accessible to local people and some for people who would like to come for the experience of felting on an alpaca farm and visiting Latvia for the first time. All this planning will mean we can also put together holidays tailored towards individuals or groups. Quite exciting really and not the sort of thing we had thought of doing before, but if it works then great. 

Eyre warily eying the alpacas, as they do like to chase her

A friend who I met at the local camp last year and this year is helping me organise the Riga city tour aspect and she also introduced me to a lovely textile artist Ieva Prane. Ieva's work is very varied and it will be wonderful to include her on one or more of our felting courses. She is really open to sharing her work and what she does, which not all felters in Latvia are unfortunately. I also briefly met her husband Guntars and as I write this blog, Guntars' music is playing on the radio. He produced an album of Gregorian chants from ancient records he found in a library in Riga. Very peaceful! 

All ready for our visitors. At least it was nice and warm in the
greenhouse

I am surprised that we are still getting visitors turning up on our farm, particularly at weekends. I even sold my first felted product this week, but don't get too excited it was just a felt ball, at least it was a start.We had one group from the local regional rural consultancy bureau during the week and a family who stopped to take a look at the animals at the weekend. We even have another booking for the end of the month for a small group who will be in the area for two days. It makes me wonder if we can do something for Christmas but that would be a challenge to come up with something but could be fun. 

Felt balls

A range of shawls, socks, pendants and scarves for sale

The ones that got away. The amaranth in the greenhouse grew

some lovely big seed heads and we harvested lots of seed

but these ones were much smaller. Unfortunately the wind 

seems to have also taken all the seed with it. No doubt there 

will be Amaranth growing all over the garden next year, as 

well as hemp

We are still making slow headway in finishing the harvesting. I collected all the beans from the garden on the land and started the process of drying them. Those that dried on the vine look fine to plant next year, but those that hadn't got frosted and I think they are only good for the pot. It was a shame as I was hoping for more beans to grow next years crop. We have also been collecting apples. Some of course are frosted, but many seem to have survived the frosty mornings. We have now got quite a few crates stored in our cellar. We hope they will last into winter and if not they will be processed at a later date. At least the chickens are enjoying the bonanza.

Sofie sitting in her favourite place when we are trying to move
the chicken arks. As we carry them to their new position, she
tries to lick or rub up against Ian's face. Not easy to carry the
ark with two hands and fend off an affectionate cat.

The humungous potatoes with a teaspoon for comparison

As usual our garden got a bit overgrown but I managed to find some potatoes that must have grown from some potato peelings which were in the compost heap and they were absolutely huge. I know there are lots who say you should never put peelings in compost heaps, but we do and not really have many problems apart from random potato plants from time to time. Unfortunately these ones also had brown, hollow centres. This is due to the hot dry weather when they started growing, followed by the wet weather which stressed the poor things out. Unlike blight though it doesn't affect their taste thank goodness, just a little disappointing to find they are not as big as they look.  One advantage to the frosts is they make parsnips sweeter and so we have started digging these up for a distinctly wintery flavour in our meals. 

Shawls outside for pictures for the
website

This one was inspired by dandelions, not
that they look like dandelions, but that
was the inspiration

Mari looking out for Eyre, our little grey cat

The greenhouse tidy up has continued in preparation for putting the chickens and the caravan in for the winter. This has definitely been a slower process than usual. Normally it is cleared much sooner, I'm sure. Or maybe it just feels like that. Certainly last year they were inside much sooner and there were more frosty mornings than this year. The steady drift towards winter though means that the animals are getting through the grass quite quickly and need to be moved more often as the grass stops growing. Soon they will be just on the hay, but the longer they can stay on the grass the better. 

Mari chasing Eyre off

Open all hours

Still waiting, but Snowdrop is getting
much more interactive and almost in
your face with Ian, a sure sign something
is either imminent or something up.

As I said it would be last week, this was another varied week. Tuesday we hared off to Madona to get a photo done for Ian’s passport. We already had some photos, but after some rather fruitless searching around the house that did not unearth the previous photos, we decided it was quicker just to head into town and get some more. So Ian’s passport is hopefully now in the process or lost in the post. I spent the rest of the day getting ready for being away for a few days and even baked some cakes for Ian. I don’t usually cook for when I am away, as Ian is perfectly capable of cooking for himself, but cakes are more difficult. One day I hope we have an outdoor oven out on the land and that will make things much easier for him, hahaha.

The view from my hotel window in Nitaure

I joined the Latvian Rural Communities Parliament for the first day and got to hear the outgoing Latvian President for the first time. I also sat behind him at lunchtime, but I didn’t actually speak to him or anything. Not much point anyway since by the end of the week the next President was announced. According to someone I was chatting to, at least the new President is not connected with one of the oligarchs who wields, or at least did wield, too much power over the Parliament, so hopefully a step in the right direction.

My room in the hotel

There were lots of painted birds on the walls of the hotel
this one was in our room

The folk band "Ore" with three kokle's, a Latvian folk
instrument with a gorgeous sound

It was good to work on some suggestions and solutions for problems facing rural areas. The first one we worked on was the use of IT in rural areas. Since I work online, I have a Masters gained through an online course and utilise the Internet to connect with supervisors and colleagues for my PhD all while living in a rural area, it was quite a good opportunity to share my experience and highlight the positive aspects of the net for rural dwellers. Another lady from Estonia also shared her experience of working using the Internet as a medium to work and she shares office space in the local village hall with other entrepreneurs, so of course I have her contact details.

The owner of the woodworking place,
Vienkoču. This boat is just for demonstration, it is not perfect so he says.

The next day was a chance to network, with people involved in development from many different countries and organisations, from a young chap working with the World Bank to a lady working with migrants and potential migrants in Moldova. It is nice to have some intensive chats about development in particular and from that respect it was far more practical than listening to pre-arranged lectures. This continued on the next day, as we went on various tours around the area. I went on a tour to meet the Master craftsmen of Ligatne, the village where the events were being held. We visited a craft centre that works as a hub and meeting place for the local village, a bakery and café that was set up in two mobile units and from those two units they catered for over 300 people at the event I attended and a woodworker who specialised in making objects from one piece of wood. I would definitely recommend these places for a visit, as they were fascinating (Link to these places and others in the area). The range of tools in the woodworking museum was astounding; I have never seen so many axes, planes, awls, froes and many more things I could not even begin to name. He even had a cabinet full of Stanley tools from Sheffield – a place where Ian and I have lived for five years and some of you dear readers know that place so well.

These have been used. You can see the woodworking
museum in the background too.

A model mill, one of the many miniature buildings along
a trail associated with the woodworking attraction

A playground made from wood

A cordwood house with bottle windows - I want a shed/office
like this

It was amazing how many people I had met previously who were at the event. Some were only to be expected as they were at development or academic events but some were a little more surprising. One lady said hello and although I knew her face, I could not place where I had met her before and embarrassingly had to ask; it turned out to be a local event earlier on in the year where she was talking about Leader projects (a European rural development programme). Another young man was staying at the hotel I was in and we got chatting, again his face kind of looked familiar. This time it turns out we were sat on the same bus last year while I was travelling from Tartu and he was working on his computer and I happened to notice some interesting information for my research in what he was typing and started chatting to him, as you do! He remembered me too, once the connection was made. I suppose it is not often someone gets asked questions by a nosy, English lady on the bus. My roommate for the event was a lovely young lady from Slovakia and since she goes to a charismatic church there, we were able to chat a little about our faith too. During the week before the event there was a cartoon about how awkward it can be when greeting people, do you nod and say hello, shake hands, give them a hug, give them a hug and a kiss and is it one or two kisses. So confusing, especially with an international crowd. I was rather surprised by one guy, who I have met a few times now who gave me the international hug and kiss on the cheek, but then he has just returned from the Ukraine, so maybe they do that a lot there, just not necessarily a very Latvian thing to do.

A close up of our old lady, Veronica

While I was away Ian had a visit – typical when I am away. I have lost count of the number of times he emails me to tell me he has had visitors. This family had travelled all the way from Bauska and were heading for Cesis, so it was rather surprising they found us. They spoke excellent English and so Ian had a really good chat with them for an hour and a half. He explained about our growing small-scale grain, but said we had a bit of a problem processing it. It was fine for the chickens as they can sift through it themselves but no good for the alpacas. Apparently the chap has an old seed sorter and said if we want it we can collect it and he even emailed us to show us the photos. We hope to get some help over the summer and so maybe we can take a day trip out to pick it up. That will be fantastic and help us enormously. I guess we will have to build a shelter for it though.

An onion growing at home
for fresh leaves.

They weren’t the only visitors though this week and so I didn’t miss them all. In fact it is beginning to look like we are on the local tourist trail, as we had three groups over the weekend. The first group had come with their grandmother who lives nearby. We wonder if she had been wanting to see us, but was waiting for a visit by her grandson and his young family who do speak English. I was down in the field hoeing beans when Ian phoned me to say we had visitors, so I could actually get to meet some. The old lady was lovely and really thanked us for being so open and sharing and she finished by shaking my hand really warmly.

Ian shearing the neck of Tellus, whilst
strung up with ropes to stretch Tellus
out. The boat pulley made the job
a lot easier and the animals were happier
with the carpet we managed to get
that was being thrown out. The tarpaulin
we used last year freaked them out.

The next group turned up, just as we were about to start shearing the boys the following day. They even said hello in English and not labdien in Latvian when they saw us and were obviously aware that we spoke English. They were neighbours of ours and one of the guys Ian recognised from a previous visit. So it sounds like word is definitely getting round. My supervisor then also turned up as he had volunteered himself to help for the day with our shearing. I am so pleased he came, as it meant someone to help with Turbjørn’s teeth, which we also did at the same time. He is one of our most difficult alpacas to handle and his fighting teeth had started to grow back, unfortunately. Also three people, just makes the job that bit easier to do.

One down, two to go. We sheared Turbjørn first since he
is the most nervous of the animals, but he actually behaved
the best on the day. Here he is looking quite smug, since we
are sure he knows the other two still need to be sheared

The boys out in the field

Shearing was so much easier this year. Ian’s shearing was much more fluid, there was a greatly reduced amount of second cuts – which is the short bits that shouldn’t be in the fleece if cut well and the animals just looked so much better finished this year. While we were shearing one of the animals though, another group turned up, so it was a really good thing there was three of us, as it meant that I could show the group around. They had two little children with them and unfortunately a dog that followed them onto the land, as they didn’t live far away either. Fortunately one of the guys corralled the dog and went and put it in the car. They also knew we spoke English and so I didn’t have to ask. I could only really show them the girls as the boys were already a bit nervous and this group didn’t quite understand the needs of the animals – they weren’t badly behaved or anything, just alpacas do need a bit of space, as they are not really petting animals, especially when Ian isn’t around. I had to get food for the girls, because they were not coming near to me, even Agnese who is usually such a show off. They did come for food and even ate out of the little ones' hands, so they still managed to get some good photos I'm sure. There were a few alpaca selfies going on.

Agnese after shearing. The finish was not as good, but that
reflects the fact that her fleece was so much finer than the
rest (see last week's post to see the difference)

I don’t think Agnese will be quite such a show off today though, I think she is in a state of shock, as she got her first shearing. There was just Ian and I today and no visitors, so we were fine. Estelle got sheared first and that went much better than last year and Ian got a nice finish on her, but then it was Agnese’s turn. Shearing wasn’t as much fun with her as her fleece was so incredibly long and fine. She also seemed to have longer fleece in more inaccessible areas such as her belly and so even starting the shearing process was difficult. The shears also started to struggle more with her fleece, but thankfully not as bad as last year, so it kept going. The tooth-a-matic also worked well on Estelle’s teeth, which was fantastic, as the last time teeth cutting was attempted with her there was three men holding her and Ian still got hurt in the process. Admittedly we did have her stretched out this time in what looks like a medieval instrument of torture, so she wasn’t going anywhere.

Estelle after rolling around in the dirt afterwards. She is meant
to be a pale ecru colour, not beige

A moody shot of Herkules. Unfortunately his legs still look
a mess, but that is partly because now his fleece is sheared
I can go back to putting oil on his skin to get rid of the hard
areas. While he was strung up, I was able to get a really good
application of cream onto it.

To finish off this week, I marked a Sociology exam from one of my Sociology students – part of my online work. It is so nice to be able to access the internet, even when in the caravan and even nicer that it is convenient enough to do some alpaca work in the morning and early afternoon, have a sleep (getting old) and then mark a paper in the afternoon and be able to send it off to my student (well I could in theory but not in practice as I can’t remember the procedure for doing that, but I emailed my boss to find out, since it is the first time I have done that).