Getting older

Mushrooms in our forest. We still have to
identify these though

We are getting older, happens to us all, funny how that works! I noticed it when going to Hamburg and despite the fact I have taken to wearing my glasses all the time now, I still couldn't see the underground map properly at the train station to plan my route, so that meant a trip to the opticians when I got back and a new set of glasses ordered. Ian's eyesight is getting worse too, he used to have 20/10 vision or is it 10/20 vision, not sure now but it was certainly a lot better than average, so good that once a nurse complimented him, as he was the first person she had seen with such good eyesight. Whilst out shopping though he had to ask me what temperature some grease was able to handle, because he couldn't read the small print on the tube and fortunately I had my glasses on. For your information it goes down to -40C and up to 120C, so that should be alright.

Our pond is still low, despite the rain.
Good job we are not really watering
the things in the greenhouse now

We had quite a successful day the day we went to the opticians, as we also managed to hand in the paperwork to the land office as the first part of the complicated process of getting projects planned and already built onto the land book (the official record of what a property is made up of and if there are any debts associated with the property). It went pretty smoothly in the office, there was only a minor tweak that the lady made and she hand wrote the necessary addition and had us sign it - that was it! Unbelievable, it had taken us three visits to get that far. The problem came when we went to the post office and we were trying to sort out the payments for paperwork, it was here that a little knowledge of the language proved to be a dangerous thing, because it sounded like she wanted something that she already had the information for in front of her and so I was well and truly confused. Eventually we did manage to sort it out and pay. Well that was two things completed successfully and in addition to that we also managed to buy a fridge for our guest apartment - we've only been going to do that since the beginning of June. We were spurred on by the fact that we have guests there for two months. It is one thing to do without a fridge for a week, quite another to expect people to cope for two months.

They have eaten this lot down fast. Now where to move
them too? The pigs dug up the obvious next step

It is not just us getting old, so is the year. The temperatures have dropped quite dramatically and Ian, especially is feeling the cold. It has been damp and chilly some mornings and we have got used to the heat over the summer. It seems really peculiar to feel cold when it is 7 or 8 C, when that will feel warm in the Spring - but then again that is six months away and after temperatures that have dipped to -20C and lower. The alpacas have been on a feeding binge and the hens had all but stopped laying, we haven't had an egg for days, until today that is. So it is not just the trees preparing for winter but the animals are sensing it too. We finally managed to get Herkules' teeth sorted and it was a bit hairy to say the least. Our vet's husband is a builder and he came with an angle grinder. He was full of confidence that he could do it with that and to give Herkules credit he was very still for the whole thing, mind you there were three of us sitting on him at the time. The advantage with the vet's husband doing the cutting, is that he is very used to using an angle grinder and kept the angle grinder quite still and into his body, but it was still scary to watch - apparently. I was sat on his rear end and so didn't see what was going on, thankfully. We also managed to get his toe nails cut at the same time, but not with the angle grinder, I hasten to add. We joked that it would be interesting for our new acquaintance to put alpaca dentist on his CV

Guerilla knitting in Tartu. Take a close
look at that colourful tree

I'm now toing and froing from Latvia to Tartu in Estonia again. This time it is for the didactics course. At least now I know what it is and it is just a course in higher education teaching. The didactics being the processes of learning and the ethics of teaching. When I look the word up though, I am still not convinced it is used correctly. I have a feeling it is one of those words not often used by English speakers but regularly used by those who have English as a second language, like the word pedagogue that crops up often in different countries and is still a word that confuses me. At least the class went fairly well. Most people are reasonably confident to voice an opinion in a nice enough way, which makes class discussions interesting instead of forced. It is quite an interactive class that aims to draw out the values you have as an educator or a potential educator, since one of the requirements of the doctoral course is to teach some classes at some stage. It is nice to see them teaching something that is more interactive, as it is not something that comes naturally to educators in the ex-Soviet countries, where classes are more about the information than the learning process and it is the sole responsibility of the students to make sure they learn for themselves, regardless of how boring the lecture/class is. Fortunately this is changing gradually.

The beans were once screening the
chicken arks. But the frosts we had
this week have killed them off. The
chickens are also busy eating their way
through the old strawberry bed and
fertilising it for the next crop, then
 they will be put in the greenhouse

I didn't take the bus or the train up to Tartu though, as someone kindly lent me their car. This meant that I could bring up enough clothes to have some spare, which is much easier than carting a suitcase through Riga, which was one of my plans. It also meant I didn't have to travel up on the Sunday for a Monday afternoon lecture and it means I can travel back at a reasonable time tomorrow. It was a lovely day to travel up as well, the sun came out and lit up the already brightly coloured trees. It is proving to be a gorgeous autumn with some intensely coloured leaves after the dry and hot year we've had. I wished I could have had time to get out of the car and take a picture for you, but there wasn't enough of a leeway to do that, as I needed to make sure the paperwork was complete for the first lecture (paperwork seems to be featuring rather heavily here) and I wasn't too sure of where I was supposed to be. I did get a little lost, as there are rather a lot of parks at the top of steps in Tartu near to cobbled streets which were the descriptions I was working on. Fortunately a very nice man was able to show me on a large map where I was and where I needed to be. I was a block away from where I should have been, but fortunately got there just in time.

And there are the Borlotti beans, already
for de-podding. I love Borlottis beans
and hate them all at the same time. They
are mainly creamy white with varying
speckles of pink on them, some are deep
red, but they all look like the chocolate
eggs I used to get as a kid. Makes me
hungry to see them

Oh yes! More beans. Don't worry we
won't be eating all these, we will be
feeding them to the chickens over
winter too

Life at the moment is like juggling balls, not only are we juggling some of the different demands on our time, we are also switching some of our roles within our marriage. Ian used to be the one who travelled a lot and I stayed home, now it is the other way around and so some of the things I used to do, now have to be taken on by Ian and vice versa. It's not easy and sometimes we end up dropping the ball or having to re-negotiate priorities and even that is a shifting from month to month. Take this month, the alpacas have been quite a high priority on our list, not because we think animals should have a priority over anyone, but because we have four new ones coming and two are pregnant. We have been negotiating for a long time to get them and only have a small window to transport them owing to their condition and also the condition of our roads in winter and spring. If you add into that mix that the guy we are buying them from has only a limited amount of time when he is at home, to make sure they are sent off in good condition, our transporter fits delivery in around transporting horses and we have other commitments you have a recipe for confusion and a headache. Plans are coming together and now we wait for the confirmation of the date of delivery.

More empty spaces. The long grass is
where the squash plants had crept across
the orchard grass. The frost finished them
off too

I should have done a before and after picture of this herb
bed. The weeds had taken advantage of my travels and
done a take over bid. They are sorted - for now!

If that was the only headache inducing decision making we had to make it wouldn't have been so bad, but we also have some family dos that we want to attend and that has been a bit of a nightmare to arrange and I wasn't doing most of the planning. It all got very complicated, but hopefully it is sorted now - well maybe. All this would get a bit too much for me, if it wasn't for my faith and belief that what I am doing is part of God's plan for me and my life. Not that I think he has a plan set in stone for me, but it is part and parcel of my walk with him. There are new things for me to learn and explore as part of my journey with him. Sometimes I have to remind myself of that and to reflect on how far I have come. Being at home with three young children many years ago felt like an important thing to do and it was, but God had other plans for me as well. Plans that would have absolutely scared me if you had told me then what I would do, such as helping to lead children's work for hundreds of children, preaching in foreign countries, not just moving house but moving countries and so on. Sometimes I get a bit apprehensive about what my next role will be, but a song from my first days of stepping out came back to me again this week "Beyond these shores" by Iona. It talks of stepping out beyond our known shores and casting off, confident that it is the path laid out for us and even if it isn't, that the path won't take us beyond the love of God. It is based on the life of St. Brendan who set off from the West Coast of Ireland, not even knowing if there was anything out West, just feeling the call to go.

The nearly empty side of our greenhouse. All the tomatoes
have gone, except for these red currant tomatoes that seem
to go on forever and very tasty they are too

Peyresq and a little bit more

Not quite Latvia! The view from our lecture room on
my course

Well what can I say about the last two weeks? It was good! Very good! It started off with a fleeting visit by some friends from Fort Collins in Colorado, where we lived for two years. Unfortunately we couldn't manage more than a couple of days between us and all too soon we were waving them goodbye at the airport, only it was me leaving by plane and not them. They went on to meet other friends in Riga. One of our friends helped me pick tomatoes and I managed to process some of them for the freezer, but not all of them, the rest was left for Ian to continue, along with a whole list of other jobs I left him with. At least they got to see our home and where we live now and we had a chance to talk - nothing new there then, there is always time to talk. I am sad to hear, though, that while I was away that Fort Collins and places further afield - places we visited like Boulder and Estes Park, have been hit by flooding. Some of those canyons that looked remarkably like places I visited this last week have been deluged with life-threatening storm surges of water racing down the canyons. It always amazed me to see the signs "In case of flood, climb!" I used to wonder how on earth anyone could climb out of those canyons in a hurry. Those signs were obviously designed for times like  now.

My morning walk to breakfast

It was all too early in the morning as we set off to the airport a week and half ago and so soon after the drinks were served on the flight I fell asleep. I woke up to see a cloudy scene with some small wispy bits of cloud above the main body of cloud. Well that's what I thought at first, then I realised they weren't wispy bits of cloud but mountains covered in snow sticking up above the clouds. I had reached the alps. We flew in to Nice from over the sea and it was obvious why the coastline is called Cote d'Azur, the sea indeed was a beautiful azure blue and quite breathtaking from the air, so was the airport and not for its beauty. The airport is situated on a spit of land in the sea, come in too early and you would be in the sea, go too far and you would be in the sea also. Well that is what it looked like as we flew in, but it was bigger than it looked from the air - thank goodness!

Or maybe this way instead

But not always easy to walk on

Peyresq, perched in the mountains

I arrived a good hour before the bus to my final destination, but I soon spotted a someone who looked like they maybe heading for the same place I was. It is not every day you see someone in the airport with a cardboard tube and a backpack, sure enough it was a young lass from Poland attending the same course I was on. It was a good job really as I would have looked a bit silly introducing myself. By the time the bus arrived, there was quite a group of us who had gathered, all except me I think was carrying either a cardboard tube or a plastic poster holder. My poster was in my suitcase, the largest suitcase we had, as I didn't have a cardboard tube, as I mentioned last week and it was the only suitcase big enough to hold the poster (birthday/christmas hint here, as I am sure it won't be the last time I carry a poster on a trip). I felt rather silly with such a large suitcase and I was rueing the decision when we got to the village, which was going to be home for the next 10 days. Not only was my room nearly at the top of the house, it was up a rocky steep path and I had to carry that enormous suitcase up it all. Fortunately someone helped me with my rucksack that I was also carrying. It didn't help that Peyresq is situated at 1500m and so I was also a little breathless. It was a good job that I was shifting hay bales earlier on in the year, in obvious preparation for the task.

A steep gorge in the Alps. Those cliffs are
vertical

Pituresque windows 

I was a little worried about the course, as I knew I would be far older than most of the other students, but fortunately for me there were a few others who were older than my children. The younger ones were very gracious though as they accepted us all regardless of age. The only time that age was anything of an issue was when I sensed a need to urge on the younger generation. They will have far more time than I have to make a difference in this world and I am sure that many of them there will go on to do that. They had such a passion for this world and the living things on it, as you would expect of ecologists and conservationists, but also a passion for people that was a refreshing mix. Too often I see scant regard for this living planet, which I believe was created by God and as such believe that we have no right to decide that a species doesn't matter. If it was created by God then save it, if at all possible. I don't think it is an issue either that justice for people trumps these issues, as often the race for profit impacts indigenous groups and the poor, just as much as other living creatures. What was also refreshing was seeing scientists getting all touchy, feely instead of just objective as they have been taught to be. Scientists have feelings too and often they are deeply saddened by the impacts mankind are making on this planet and rightly so. Well rant over, I shall move on.

It was not all sunshine! Honest! Someone stole the mountains

The little church in Peyresq

I think the best thing to do would be to highlight some of the snippets of my time in Peyresq, a little village perched on the rocks in the Southern French Alps. On the first day I was rather amused by God's sense of humour that meant that the "random" piece of paper I was given with a statement on, was Genesis 1:28, but written in old English. We were meant to decide whether the statement was more about society or about nature and more about man's domination of nature or nature's domination of man. Well in the old version, words like "man having dominion over nature" meant the meaning was quite clear, but it is not a view I take due to the context of other verses, where man is supposed to care for nature and I said as such. When asked if I was a Christian, of course I replied yes, as did the other guy who got the same statement. Coincidence! Methinks not and I'm sure I heard a snigger from my Father in Heaven.

Spot the shepherds hut

My roommate was a lovely lass, but she was a little concerned for me after the first couple of days when it became obvious that we weren't heading for our room around the same time at night and so she organised to go to a separate room and that meant I had the room to myself. I was also blessed by the care and concern of many on our downward decent from a long walk in the mountains to visit a shepherd who lives on the mountains with the sheep in summer (although the one we met was a stand in, I think the other shepherd was sick). My knee started to act up about half way down and folks were rather worried about me when I had to stop to stretch muscles. One of the leaders fortunately had a spare walking stick with him and so he lent me his and I therefore made it down fine after that, I even carried on carrying my rucksack despite the offer from one gentleman to carry it for me. I have felt rather spoilt at times this last week, especially with the food. The food was very good, although I really appreciated the term demitarian by the end of the week. A demitarian is someone who eats less meat and more vegetables, a state that is a mystery to someone from the Provence so we were told.

I love old doors! There would have been more
but my camera batteries died

I didn't just get to spend the week with a highly intelligent bunch of people, they were also great fun to be with and incredibly creative. We were often entertained by one guy playing the piano and sometimes a lass joined him and they ad libbed the music, others joined in with tambourines, shakers and guitar. On the last day the students put on a play to encapsulate what they would recommend to people in the region where we were studying, based on some of the things we had learnt along the way. Unfortunately I missed actually being in it due to a miscommunication, but it meant I got to watch the whole thing and it was great. The best part for me was when a guy playing Jesus, told everyone what a mess they were making of the world and gave them a second chance. Brilliant! Now what would we do differently if we were given that chance? Well in the play, the ageing farmers weren't the only ones cultivating the land the younger ones were also there and developing plenty of local products to sell to ecologically aware tourists who respected the farmers and their farming ways. They utilised other forms of energy, such as wind and solar - of course! The flocks of sheep were kept in smaller herds and had more people looking after them to give more employment and meant they didn't over graze the mountains and so on. As I said, brilliant!

Lavendin field

We also got to go on a day long tour of the area errrr I mean field study trip of course. This meant visiting the lavender farms or lavendin farms as we found out. Lavender grows wild up in the mountains but the big farms utilise a more productive hybrid of lavender. The soil is so rocky though that the fields there are not as lush and green as fields around us here in Latvia, but then again we don't grow hectare after hectare of sunflowers and lavendin. We didn't go at the most beautiful time of the year when the lavendin blooms, they had already been cut when we got there. That was maybe a good thing as the scent of lavender was heavy in the air without the blooms, goodness only knows what it must smell like with the flowers in bloom. The sunflowers also looked rather sad, with their heads hanging low. They must have been close to being cut as they also looked rather dry. We visited a goat farmer who told us how they took the goats up the mountains to feed amongst the trees of the mountain slopes. The trees were planted to stop soil erosion after problems in the 18th century due to the forest all being cut down. The farmer was paid to graze her herds of goats by the State so that it reduced the risk of forest fires. The only problem now though is that wolves are moving into the area and her herd has been attacked a few times now. The goats are now accompanied by someone, but of course it is  getting scary. We wended our way along canyons and through pretty villages also clinging to rocky outcrops like Peyresq and along the valley bottoms populated by people now that villages don't have to cling to rocky outcrops for protection from raiders. We visited a lake that was created by a hydroelectric dam, providing water for two cities as well as electric, but in the process flooding productive agricultural land and places where 4 tonnes of truffles were collected annually and bringing in a revenue of millions in the process. Progress? Difficult one that as the lake also provides flood protection, except one year when the normal rate of 30m3 per second was increased to 1400m3 per second.

The lake, under which used to be the truffles
the farms and a village. Now clean drinking
water for cities

The goat farmer also had pigs. These pigs are taking
advantage of the acorns from the oak trees

Well those are a few of my highlights from the last two weeks. Of course there is more to say and maybe some of my new friends will add their favourites, but for now that will do from me. If you want to know more, then you will just have to come and visit and spend a few hours chatting. I will finish though with this story of my trip home. I've been talking about the wild boar and the problems they cause a lot over the past week and on the way home we nearly collided with a whole family of them. I've seen family groups a couple of times before but never so many, it was obviously a good breeding year for them. Hmmm!

Clinging to the gorge walls

A small French village in the Verdon region

A view of a valley in the Verdon region

And the answer is......

Okay time to reveal the answers to last week's competition. No one got the right answers but they sure made me giggle. So here is the completed construction no 1

Any the wiser? Does this help?

Probably not! The phone on my camera is not very good for close up shots, but that is a picture of two dead horseflies. The idea is that the horseflies are attracted to solid blocks of colour and they then fly around the solid blocks of colour. It is annoying to say the least to hear a horsefly sizing you up as it buzzes around making circles around you, well that is what it tries to do with the black fabric but it can't see the clear plastic and so bashes into it and stunned falls into the water to which is added some washing up liquid so it can't float on the top. We can't say it works very effectively yet as there are not that many horse flies around at the moment, so it has probably caught three of the six that have been buzzing around. So a cautious result on that one. Ian can't claim to have thought up the idea, it was something he had gleaned from the internet and kind of based on this link amongst others. Before I reveal construction no 2 from last week's competition, I will mention another cunning plan to thwart the biting insects, another lifted from the internet by moi! So here is the link and below are the pictures of my interpretation of them. One is made from an old oil bottle and the other from an old plastic vinegar bottle.

First the tops of the bottles are cut off and then inverted into the bottle a yeast, sugar, water mixture is added to the bottom of the bottle which releases C02 which attracts the mosquitoes, they fly into the bottle through the inverted top which acts like a funnel and either drown in the sugar solution or get disorientated and can't fly out. It works too but Ian reckons we need about five in the area of the barn to make an impact on the numbers and so as bottles become available they get converted into mosquito traps.

Now for construction number 2 from last week. Here is the finished article

Note the black wire mesh, the plastic cover and the net over the openings.

Here is the article in use! Have you worked it out yet? It's a solar dryer for our fruit and vegetables. Now all we need is a bit more sun, it worked quite nicely for the first day and then it has rained ever since. Even on a cloudy day though it does still get respectable temperatures, but it could do with just a little more heat then it will be brilliant and it will save us some electricity in the summer. The rails are for trays which still have to be constructed but at least it can get working on herbs hung in bunches.

Hoppy's house

Eleven more of our chicks moved out of the house and out onto the land this week. They are turning out to be a varied and beautiful flock of birds, from creamy coloured ones, to buff coloured ones, ones with barred markings and some which are more spotty. A motley crew indeed. Ian had to continue with the constructing this week though as he had to make a house for Hoppy and Hoppy's housemates. It is now almost completed . Hoppy is not going to be able to make it up the ramp of the bigger arks on one leg and so Ian has constructed a house that is nearer to the ground for Hoppy and housemates. The picture on the left is from a few days ago, it still needs a proper roof but it rained today rather heavily and in frequent bursts and so Ian wasn't able to collect a sheet of OSB to finish it off. The chicks need to be moved out of the house and so it has a temporary fix until it is dry enough to collect and they will move out tomorrow.

Ian putting the chicks into their new
home

Forgot to mention that I officially got my results last week for my Masters dissertation unit and I got a distinction. One thing is absolutely certain is that I could not have got that kind of result if people had not been so helpful and open and gave up their valuable time to talk to me and and for the people who helped me by translating the more local interviews. Collaboration to get results does not come easily in Latvia and a lack of trust is a big issue and so I feel very privileged to have been entrusted with so much information. All I can hope is that my work has helped make some difference, no matter how small. Even the chance to be an encouragement to some folks who were getting disillusioned in their fight to get a fair say in what happens with wild boar management was reason enough to do the work.

Our broiler chickens are getting quite big now and have
definitely put on a lot of weight this week. I guess now
they have their all feathers they can concentrate on
getting bigger

I was disappointed to miss an encounter Ian had last week, especially since I had spent a whole year studying wild boar management here in Latvia. Someone came to offer a hunting contract and was willing to pay for the privilege and suggested that we cancel our new contact with the other hunting organisation. He was rather upset that we weren't for sale and I don't think he could understand that money doesn't always talk. This encounter has a whiff of something not being quite right and so Ian requested a meeting with our hunting organisation for an explanation of the politics behind this. We are still waiting for that meeting but there was a small detail of a rather large Latvian celebration over the weekend that got in the way and so we are not too surprised.

No idea what the flower is but it sure is vivid

We didn't celebrate Ligo this year, which is widely celebrated here in Latvia with barbecues, bonfires, singing and dancing and depending on whose company you are in, it might also include a lot of drinking of beer and eating lots of cheese until the sun comes up. To be honest we are pleased we didn't get an invite this year as we were so tired, we could barely stay awake during the day, never mind into the small hours of the night. What with planting and weeding for me and constructing and mowing for Ian, it has been a long week. We have just about completed all planting now as there are only two trays of plants left to put in the garden. I am hoping the neighbours don't look too closely at some of the plants I planted as they might think I'm planting weeds. Quinoa has a remarkable similarity to the rather abundant weed fat hen and the only way I can tell them apart is because I know what was in my tray ie I can't tell the difference really either. Maybe the stem looks different but the leaves, well! They look exactly the same. I have a feeling that they will only look different when they grow to 6ft tall and the seed heads change to all colours of the rainbow - if they get that far of course.

Fence posts all ready for driving into the ground

Other jobs we have got done include getting the posts in for the alpacas and as soon as I have finished this blog I am going to pay the deposit on the alpacas, yes we have moved a step nearer to getting them. Exciting heh! Other exciting news - well it is for us, the strawberry season has now begun and they taste wonderful.

It is finished

Winter has nearly finished, not much left to go now. Mind
you I've said that before, about three times this winter.

It is finished indeed and no I'm not just talking about Jesus' mission to save mankind accomplished on the cross, I'm talking about my thesis. I finally completed the writing for my course and now it is just awaiting some photos, a grammar check and then it needs assembling into a complete document to send off to my tutor for his perusal and marking of course. It has taken me four years to get to this point, the first year I studied Development Management with the Open University, but due to the increase in fees I started a bit of hunting around for another course and found Managing Sustainable Rural Development with the University of the Highlands and Islands. I am so glad I did as I think this course is much more applicable to Latvia, where I now live, than the OU course, good though it was. The OU course was aimed more at developing countries, rather than a European setting, but it still gave me a good foundation in what development is all about  and the history of it that has helped me enormously in the current course. It also gave me a good start to get back into studying, for which I am very grateful, as it has been rather a long time since I was at Uni, in fact in the meantime my eldest had started a nursing course and is now nursing - that should give you an indication of how long ago it was. The course also gave me a Post Graduate Certificate in Development Management, maybe it will come in useful at some point.

A little creativity to stop me burning my fingers

Last week our car passed its technical inspection, or to be more precise the previous week, but who's counting? It is always a relief when our car gets through the technical without a hitch, especially as one year the inspector, who was inspecting our car, shook the car so much to test the suspension that we suspect it damaged the wheel bearing. It may have been going anyway, as the roads around here are tough on cars, but the shaking it got would have made it far worse. Even the tyres passed which is surprising, as we are still on the original tyres and we've had the car 4 years now, we will change them this winter though as they are slowly starting to perish. As you can tell the dirt roads we have around here maybe tough on the suspension, but they are not so tough on tyres, unless there are nails in the roads of course and we have picked up a few of them along the way. The dirt roads have been particularly bad this spring and we have never seen such a bad state in all the time we have been here and not to such a large extent, think giant washboard and you might get the idea. We have a robust 4x4 and even we were travelling at 20km an hour to save the car and I have never seen so many Latvians travel so slowly, it was like serious off-roading on road. We were expecting the roads to remain bad over the Easter weekend and so were very surprised to see the grader out on the Saturday and I'm glad to say the roads are greatly improved.

We even have flowers now

That reminds me we learnt the word for potholes in Latvian this week, fortunately it was through the insurance lady when we were sorting out the comprehensive insurance or kasko as it is called here - it is a name that kind of worries me, as it reminds me of the word catastrophe and I know that is what we want to insure against but I would rather not be reminded of that, comprehensive sounds so much more friendly. Anyway just in case you are wondering the Latvian for potholes is bedre and there are plenty of them around on the tarmac roads at this time of the year (yes we do have some around here, they are not all dirt roads). For small cars they are definitely worth insuring against as some of those holes are deep and you can bet they won't have enough money to do a good job on the roads and so once again as soon as the frosts are a thing of the past then the guys with their lorries of hot tarmac will be out patching the patches. Getting our insurance was quite a mammoth performance as we managed without an interpreter (although we had been in about a month ago with an interpreter to check things through and so she knew we would be back). I think we were there about an hour which included her photographing the car and getting us to test the alarm. The question is though, how do you test the alarm without actually breaking into the car? We managed in the end by winding down the window, locking the car and then Ian waving his arm madly through the open window and eventually it went off. Nice to know it is not over sensitive - I think! Next she needed to take some photocopies of the registration document, but wasn't sure which way round to do the copies so that the front and the back of our document was visible on the same page, side by side (it would have me confused too), meanwhile the photocopier jammed too. Well eventually Ian and the insurance lady managed to get the thing sorted and we were finished, apart from nearly leaving the registration document in the photocopier - bit of a problem as you are supposed to travel with that at all times here in Latvia.

Coltsfoot

Having finished my thesis meant I had a real sense of freedom for the start of this Easter holiday, rather apt really. Friday was a lovely day, if a little cool and so I went out to the land with Ian to soak up some sunshine and do a little pottering about. On the whole it was a fairly restful day, until Ian wanted some help shifting some timber that is. He was sorting through the timbers to see what was leftover from building the barn, as we want to build a shelter for the caravan. It is a bit old to be left standing outside and it would be better under some kind of protection. We are thinking of making it a more enclosed shelter then we can have an area in front of it that we can sit and relax out of the weather, rather than sitting in the greenhouse. It was a bit tricky negotiating with some rather long pieces of wood and I managed to slip in the mud, no bones broken, no ankles twisted but managed to get caked in mud. Yuck! Must remember to leave some spare clothes in the caravan.

The little finger puppet I made. The fabric
is some I had dyed a while ago and had tested
machine stitches on it. So as you can
see there is a reason for me never throwing
out scraps of material

On the Saturday I still went out with Ian, but took some sewing, as it was lovely just to sit in the warmth of the greenhouse and sew. I sewed a little finger puppet for our neighbour's little girl as we were invited to her first birthday party. I love going to the kids birthday parties as it is a great chance to sit and listen to Latvian in full flow and our neighbours fill us in with some of the conversation so we don't feel left out. It is also lovely to feel included, even though we are quite a bit older than our neighbours who have children, but somehow that doesn't seem to matter. We were treated to rasols or a sort of sausage and potato salad and cake and plenty of cups of tea. We also got to try maple juice, the sap from the maple tree. We've tried birch juice before and that can be okay but usually it tastes of aspirin to me, but this maple juice tasted of a slightly sweet but refreshing water. I guess that is another new taste to add to a whole host of other things we have tried since living here. The storks also arrived back outside our other apartment on Saturday and so now it finally feels like Spring may have arrived.

Purple flowers too. Must try and find out
what they are, wouldn't mind but I planted
them. 

Sunday saw us heading off to see some friends of ours that we have made through my course. Simon has written academic papers about Latvia, some of the few that I have found whilst investigating topics for my coursework. I realised that Simon was not a common name in Latvia and did a bit of digging around on the internet and found some contact details and contacted him. I was really interested to know what his research had shown about Latvia and Latvians as I thought it might be useful. Although Simon does not live in Latvia, he does have a house here and when he comes along with his wife, he gets in touch and we meet up. Simon and his wife have a wealth of experience of different countries and development and they love Latvia and so we always have much to talk about. We had a very pleasant day with good food and talk and a walk around the area but it was a little disheartening to walk around as Simon showed us the new wild boar damage they have and it was pretty extensive, not deep but certainly a lot of turf turned over. After my research on wild boar damage in our area I can see there could be trouble ahead in his area unless the hunters get on the case and take some decisive action, which they maybe doing fortunately; hopefully they won't end up with the same scenario that has happened around here with wild boars digging up year after year after year.

Gathering up the hay, yet again. This will only be good for
mulching and composting but that suits us fine.

At least the snow on Sunday didn't amount to much and didn't even stick, which was a little surprising since you may recall, if you follow this blog, that as soon as the snow has just about gone it has snowed again. Our friends to the south weren't quite so lucky though this time as they had about 4 inches of snow (10cm). That did mean though that Monday saw another glorious if cold day, another good day for those piles of snow to continue to melt away and for the ground to start to dry up. We pottered around the land in the morning waiting for the ground to melt a little and I got some tomatoes potted on into bigger pots and in the afternoon we started on picking up the hay off the field that we hadn't had the chance to gather up before the weather turned bad last year. Most of it was remarkably dry, but some was heavy and sticky and the ground became squelchy in places - there's still a lot of water in that ground. I seemed to spent a lot of time shifting hay by hand over the last few years, hopefully this year it will just be in small bales and not using a pitchfork. We need to shift the hay, otherwise it makes it difficult later on in the year to cut the new hay and also it gives the grass a chance to grow back better. It is also less of an attractor to the wild boar and there is enough of that damage on our land this year already from before the winter. If the weather stays dry enough then we might be able to get out and start to sort out some of the damage and get some grass seed down, now that will be nice. Hopefully I won't be too sore tomorrow either. Nearly forgot, we sold another 7 bales of hay to our neighbour and so we have just about sold all our spare hay now and nearly covered all our costs - very pleased.

Sophie

Ian ordered me a birthday present this week, not so unusual you might think but it is. I have been known to wait two years to get a present and not only is this present actually ordered, it is ordered in plenty of time that I might even get a present on my birthday, as it isn't until much later on in the month - now there's a novelty.

There's no pontification this week but I will share a little about our cats, as I haven't shared much about them lately. They are quite talkative cats - is that because they are female cats or are they just noisy? I do wonder as we've only had male cats before. I think Sophie has learnt off Bella, who is definitely the nosier of the two. Bella just tends to be noisy when she wants something but Sophie seems to try and communicate. It is hilarious though when Ian sort of says "neowww, neowww" and Sophie then rolls over on the floor - I thought it was only dogs that rolled over for their owners. Being the fluffier of the two she also slides across the floor easier, which she seems to think is a great game and lets Ian do it quite a few times and comes back for more, he's even started calling her Slidy Soph. The cats are also enjoying their freedom a bit more as we let them out of the greenhouse and even took them down to the barn this week as we hope they will keep the mice at bay in there. Well there is another week on the Baltic equivalent of the Archers combined with the Little House on the Prairie as one friend described our tales.

Bella being noisy

Spring cancelled!

Well it was nice while it lasted

After all the excitement of seeing the grass again last week it was sad to see it get covered again under a layer of snow. Spring and winter have had a right spat this week, with any signs of spring being rapidly covered by yet another layer of snow, then the sun comes out and melts the snow and spring fights back, only to succumb again later. Currently it is white again. Not white enough to keep the storks away though and I saw one today flying in over the nearby school. Silly birds, they should have waited until the weather warmed up.

Green grass! Okay I know for most of you that is not the
most exciting thing in the world but it was a sign of spring

At least Sunday was lovely, well out of the rather brisk northerly wind that is. It was lovely to see the snow receding throughout the day and although the grass looked a little weary, it was still good to see. Our land was still wet but not gushing, as the amount of snow still left to melt receded. I mainly pottered around the greenhouse and took forays out in the sunshine to take photos. We have peas, cauliflowers and cabbages starting to sprout in our greenhouse within the greenhouse, but we had to put a layer of polystyrene under and over everything to help ward off the cold night time temperatures.

But it didn't last and we saw signs like this most of the
week on and off.

Today though put a stop to all that euphoria as it snowed for much of the day and Ian has been trying to tiptoe around me as I continued to work at my dissertation. I have been trying to make sure all my references are squared with the text and typed up correctly - a bit of a nightmare and a tedious job really. Ian doesn't do that well cooped up any more, but at least a brief wave of domesticity over came him and he changed the bedding and got his outdoor clothes washed. I'm sure it won't last and he'll be out in the fresh air for much of the day again. He did manage to fix the leak from our top pond and it was not as bad as he feared, with a realignment of the overflow pipe and a big stone to block up where the pipe was laid originally and the pond is now as good as new, waiting for later on in the year when we do some more re-sculpturing to strengthen the ponds and level off the forest side of things.

We have had nice sunny days and you can see the snow
has nearly all gone in places. A bit tundra like though
and the wind was raw.

Ian has also been trying to co-ordinate a trip to the UK to get some alpacas and that is proving to be a big headache. First of all we want to travel using ferries as much as possible to save long overland trips with our horse box, but there will be nothing in it on the way to the UK, going back though we will have animals. With me so far? Well on leg one Klaipeda, Lithuania to Kiel, Germany it was easy, provisionally booked no problem, leg two same company, Esbjerg, Denmark to Harwich, England we have to book as cargo!!!! Leg three Harwich to Esbjerg we have animals, further complications, and leg four is also cargo division but different department! It's all the same company and I won't bore you with all the details but suffice to say, it is no wonder people travel by plane or drive.We are now seriously looking at seeing what is available in Sweden as Ian got a much more prompt reply from Tallinlink who do the Riga-Stockholm link than from the DDFDS routes to England. It is also a bit cheaper than we thought it might be and is making the extra costs of the alpacas look worthwhile. So we now email the Swedish alpaca people and see what they have to say about costs and see what they have. The internet does have its uses in many ways like for booking trips and finding out information, but I also think it makes it even more frustrating when things don't work well, there seems to be less excuse for systems not to work.

The overflow pipe from the top pond to the middle pond
is creating some amazing ice sculptures. They look like
crystals in the sun

I was reading an article this week on municipal ownership in America where a district is planning to take over the provision of electric for the area. Now you would think it should work wouldn't you, power in the hands of the people? Yes it can work when the people are motivated enough to make sure it does, but when people do not expect much, then it won't, as many of us have experienced in times past when local authorities ran many of the local services in the UK and sometimes it was not run well at all. Problems often begin when people expect poor service and don't know how to challenge the status quo, then it doesn't work and the service becomes run for the interests of a few and not the people who really own it. That is the problem with the heating company here, it is supposed to be owned by the local pagast or district, that means it is owned by the people, but it is not run in their interests. Somewhere along the lines it has been hijacked and run with only a few interests in mind, but so badly its own debts are high. So who will be accountable for that? Where is it all going to lead? So where is it going wrong, is it too late to bring the company back from the brink? Who knows! Things can trundle on for a while and we are waiting for the procedures to take their course before pushing for the next step. The ideal would be with a fully accountable and affordable system, it should be possible, as many people have got the resources to actually supply the woodchip boiler that heats the apartment blocks and the school and surely it can't be any wetter than the stuff they are burning at the moment. We see smoke constantly emitting from the boiler house at the moment, and that is not comforting that means they are trying to burn water and not dry woodchip. Not impressed!

The hay rake is looking a bit lost now on the hillside

Fixed!

Home-made bread! Hmmm!

Lots of little tomato seedlings using wood slivers that you
can buy for starting the fire here to label them. Hopefully
we will keep everything labelled up properly this year.