Oh so quiet! Not!

The first time one of our alpacas looked like the one in the
middle, we thought he'd died. But no! Alpacas like to
sunbathe. In fact two of them were doing just that before
the photo, but one decided to sit up, just as I was taking it.

It's all quiet down on the farm, well if you ignore the roar of the tractor, as Ian digs up tree roots and the clacking of the two wheel tractor as he does another marathon grass cutting session. At least the work is paying off as the invasive ground elder is slowly disappearing. There has also been the sound of hammering as Ian continues on with the new alpaca house. Also in the distance there has been the continual yap of a neighbours dog - wait a minute, it didn't used to, maybe they have a new one, must pop round one day and find out. I don't have any tales to regale you this week on our attempts to capture escaped animals. They've been quite well behaved. Well that was until this afternoon. Some of our chicks were looking under the weather yesterday, and one we call Ronnie Runt for obvious reasons was quarantined for a couple of hours in the caravan, but then he/she picked up again and was sent to rejoin the flock. This morning they were all looking fine, but by this afternoon one had died and Ronnie Runt and another chick are back in quarantine for the night. It was about this time last year that we had similar problems and so we will have to try and work out what's going on with them.

The side view! If you look carefully, you will
see that the top looks like it has ventilation
between the uprights, but Ian is putting a
second layer on over the gaps. Don't want the
beasts getting cold now do we!

We do have more news though on the alpaca front, the deposit is paid for our new girls and we have agreed a possible date or range of dates with the transport company who brought our boys across. So far so good, but this is Latvia and we don't get too excited until the animals are in their paddocks (and not escaping everywhere). At least Ian is now getting on well with the alpaca house and he went to a local shop and found they actually have the kind of OSB sheets that he wants - amazing. The next big job will be trying to find the right kind of wire to do the fencing. These little darlings will have to be well and truly fenced in, to stop the babies escaping next year and one of our dear boys from joining his potential girlfriends. We do not want winter babies!

The pipe with a plastic cover and this is only about 10m
from the house (updated as promised)

Ian took his tractor up to a friend of ours this week to help him dig up a broken sewer pipe. Our friend did a test dig and discovered that it was crushed and needed to be dug out some more to see the extent of the problem. Boy! Was a sight to behold. It's a fairly new installation, but it would appear that the local company charged for pipes not even put in (prior to our friend's buying the place that is) and the pipe that was put in was not even a sewer pipe but a pipe to drain water from the land, in other words a pipe with holes in, and so the result was that instead of carrying away the water, it has been leaking overflow sewage from the septic tanks into the ground - fine if it was into sand and if it wasn't so close and uphill from their well or so close to the house. The result is that in spring the garden is a smelly swamp and they are not very sure about the quality of the water from their well. Ian dug a trench away from the short pipe that had been put in, along a line that could have been the result of some previous excavations and there was some more pipe, just not connected to the other sewer pipe. Is it any wonder that this local company, owned by the local pagast (council) is forever digging up around our village! And does this sound familiar? A company owned by the pagast, i.e. owned by the people really, who does shoddy work for the very people it is supposed to be working for?

The pipes used, not sewer pipes at all

The trench that Ian dug and the new pipes
ready to go in.

Showing the inside of the panel

We've had more visitors out on the land this week, at this rate we'll need to produce guidebooks. One couple have been meaning to come and visit since we got our alpacas last year and we have just not got organised. That isn't to say we haven't seen them or visited them, just not got our act together for them to visit us. One comment that was made, that we've heard a few times is that they had heard our stories, but until they had visited they couldn't really imagine it properly. So the moral of the tale is: if you've read the blog, or heard us ramble on and on, come and see for yourself what we are really doing. See the pole lathe and have a go, come and spend a few hours cutting grass - you'll never complain about cutting your own lawn ever again, come and chop wood or how about using the solar dryer, since it now works - although perhaps maybe next year, it is getting towards the wrong end of the year for that now. We also had a visit by a possible builder for our house, but there are still costs to examine. At least we should get to know what type of ground we are dealing with as he will borrow a drill to drill for soil samples. Looking forward to that.

Autumn is here and so are the smoky fires.

I have been having a few Skype chats with my grandchildren this week, the wonders of technology, well kind of. It is odd how frustrating it can be when the picture quality is not so good and yet a not so long ago not even that was possible. Our littlest granddaughter gave me plenty of smiles, until she got tired that is and then she went crabby, we nearly gave up on the chat, but she fell asleep and so we just continued on. Our grandson looked like a little old man at one point sitting on the floor with his hands on his knees watching his dad set up the tv with us on. It was very comical to watch, we were crying with laughter at his faces. Our rubber granddaughter (now for this you need a bit of Swedish. Apparently it is a term of endearment for an adopted into the family person, so our friend was called a rubber mum by her partner's Swedish son after he visited them for the first time) anyway as she was on her way out she shouted out "Bye Grandma Jo," whilst I was talking to our youngest son. I guess that makes me a rubber Grandma then. Languages are fun aren't they with their little quirky sayings.

It's a .......

A baby sleeping bag in process for another new grandchild.
This one is made from a recycled picture I was making for one
of our children that never got finished. It was going to have
velcro dinosaurs to stick on the fleecy fabric. The picture
was completed but the dinosaurs never materialised.

Boy! Yes our first grandson was born on Wednesday, carrying on the family tradition of being born on that day of the week. I was born on a Wednesday as were all three of our children, one only scraping in by 10 minutes, having been born at ten minutes past midnight. Ian is the odd one out, as he was born on Friday. It was meant to be a home birth but ended up a hospital birth at the last minute due to a minor scare, nothing serious and mother and baby are now doing fine. What was scary was to discover that he is one lucky little boy, as there was a knot in his cord, which does not seem to have caused him a problem in the end. I knew about the impending delivery in the morning and was on tenterhooks all day and in the end had to stay up quite late, knowing nothing of the transfer to hospital until after the event. It was a little nerve wracking as I didn't want to intrude too much, but I was also obviously concerned about what was happening. At one point during the day I had to go out to the shops and as I was walking the name Calum came into my head. When I got home I looked the name up and it is a Celtic name for dove, a peace bringer. His name is not Calum, but his name has a similar meaning (sorry no names here) and he is already spreading some peace and reconciliation, as a neighbour of the young family, who they were not getting on well with for one reason and another has given them gifts for the arrival of the new baby, obviously an opportunity for reconciliation.

Delivered safe and sound

It was not the only delivery this week our microwave finally arrived, a day late but at least it arrived. I said last week it was late and so the following morning I phoned to ask what happened and within two hours it apperaed delivered by an older couple, not the normal delivery type of guy. We live on the second floor (UK), third floor (Europe and US) and so deliveries of heavy goods is never easy, the poor guy looked rather puffed out as he stood at the top of the stairs, he wasn't a sprightly chap shall we say. Our next challenge was the instructions, they are in Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian, not in English nor Danish or Swedish - languages I might have managed with a bit of checking. I now have to polish up my technical Latvian to understand the finer details of the cooking programmes. I have managed to work out though how to microwave, microwave with grill, microwave with fan oven and use the fan oven. Not bad for guesswork! The crisp function and steaming function are new to me and so I'm not sure how they work yet.

One of our better roads. The sides of the roads
are starting to get rather high. Another good
load of snow and it is likely that they will be
looking for places to dump it.

Ian is spending a lot of time out on the land on his own and I do try to get out with him occasionally. The problem for me is there is nothing I can do, except ski that is, and so Ian has made a trail for us to try out. It wasn't too bad, but not quite flat and no grooves for cross country skiing and so I ended up doing a little bit of skate skiing which I'm not terribly comfortable with. Ian meanwhile powered himself round, virtually by upper body strength with parallel skis - I did give that approach a little try but gave up after a minute, I haven't got his strength that's for sure. The track obviously needs a little working on, but it's a start. One of the interesting things about the snow this year is it is soft and powdery, nothing too unusual about that as that is the type of snow you get at this time of year in these temperatures; what we found out one day though as the sun came up is how easy it slides off the roof. We were stood at one end of the greenhouse, just chatting about this and that, when suddenly the snow started sliding off starting at one end and working its way systematically section by section to the opposite end, it was like we had shutters and someone had pressed the switch to open them in perfect order. Obviously the sun had set off a chain reaction, but it was so weird to observe.

My new rolling pin

Ian hasn't much to do either. Working in the forest is difficult with the snow clinging to trees from previous wetter snowfalls and getting quite deep now as bit by bit the snow builds up and so he doesn't do that. There is no land work, apart from clearing snow from time to time as it builds up a bit too much. The alpacas aren't cleared out, we let the bedding build up as that is supposed to keep them warmer and also you cannot move frozen bedding, so layering the dry bedding on top works just as well. Clearing that out will be a spring time job, that we are both looking forward to (well if you believe that you'll believe anything). The chickens likewise don't need much clearing as anything that is liquid freezes solid and cannot be a health hazard at that temperature, anything solid sinks to the bottom of the bedding, so again it gets layered up in the ark. Their sleeping compartments get cleared out on a regular basis and that is about it. Which all goes to mean that Ian still needs to find things to do and as mentioned last week, he is really getting into the woodworking lark.

A toasting fork. The copper wires works but they are soft, Ian
is hoping to find some stronger but thin wire and he is
going to soften the rather abrupt edge as well. 

Up until now, Ian has been what you could call a functional woodworker. His work has been solid but not exactly aesthetic, although I guess aesthetics is in the eye of the beholder. His work this last week though, has been developing quite nicely with some quite artistic pieces being created. He has been finding out what it is like to work on different kinds of wood, alder and oak mainly. Alder has a lovely way of turning from a pale wood, to a wood with an orangey hue as it oxidises. The oak though has a lovely grain to it. So this week he has made two dibbers, one for us and one for a neighbour (a dibber is a handy gadget for making holes in the ground for planting young seedlings), a rolling pin just the right size for a tray I have, that I make my pastry on, and a toasting fork. The handle really is beautiful, but the wire for the fork needs a little working on.

Instead of a sloping side, Ian has straightened
the side to create a nesting area.

Ian did get back to the more functional woodwork in the week though as he made an extension for one of our chicken arks. The accommodation area for the first ark he made now seems a little small for the number of chickens to be cooped up in at night since they have grown quite big and so Ian added on a little chamber for nesting and removed the hardboard separator where the previous nesting area was. This has opened up the main area and made it more comfortable for the birds at night - at least we hope so, without actually hooking up a camera we can't tell for sure, but at least the chickens are using the new nesting area. We had a record number of eggs today, four, two from each ark, which at least means that some of the hens in the other ark are now coming into lay. We are still waiting for the day when we have nine eggs, then we will know they are all in production.

Here you see the access area to the nesting area
so we can get to all those lovely eggs. The string,
by the way is not to hold it on, it is the string to
raise and lower the door for getting into the
accommodation block

A dibber

We had a lovely unexpected chat this last week with the kind of friends who you can pick up and chat with as if it was only yesterday you last chatted. We haven't actually chatted for at least a year I think, maybe even more. They have a new Kindle and unbeknown to me, one of the things you can use them for is for Skype and so they were trying it out and I happened to be on. They are two people I really respect for growing in wisdom, not from book learning but from listening to God. People not defined by their education but by their faith. They have always been folks who sought to walk with Jesus from the start, even though they have been a bit isolated at times due to the fact they lived further away than most and to be honest not your usual church going backgrounds. It makes them more real at times than some folks I have known and their faith more immediate and it shines out of them. Love 'em! Skype is wonderful for keeping up with our new grandson too, we had a lovely chat today while he was awake - clever kid you see! Okay! I'll be honest, he cooed a bit, and I chatted to him and his dad, but he was listening, you could tell. Will be fantastic when we can interact more, looking forward to it, although I am looking forward more to when we get the chance of a cuddle.

Talking stuff and shifting stuff

Preparing for my Skype conference, thought I had better
check how I looked 

Skype has been immensely useful this week and I wonder how I would get on without it. First of all I did a Skype video presentation to my tutor and a colleague on the topic I wish to research for my Masters. It was a very technical experience, as I used two computers - are you impressed? My old laptop, that was repaired, has a bigger screen than my new one and so I could have Skype on and see my tutor and his colleague as they listened to my presentation and have my notes in front of me for the presentation; on my newer laptop (no I'm not greedy, it was just we didn't realise that Apple would repair the computers before I bought a new one) I had my presentation slides, so I could see the slides that were being viewed far away on the Isle of Lewis where my tutor works. There was also the usual chats with children on Skype and the not so usual, the usual how are you doing and the not so usual hope you are okay and help my computers packed in and I haven't backed my stuff up and I'm panicking sort (have to admit to that being a wake up call and I went and backed mine up immediately after that call). We also had the opportunity for a fantastic chat with some old friends from our church back in the UK and one of them even treated us to a bit of ukulele playing. Modern technology can be an invasive experience but for us it has allowed us to do the things we are doing, while still maintaining contact with friends and family. Which is especially good when our daughter had a car accident this week and it was good to know that she was fine.

A lovely sunset after a busy day

Of course it wouldn't be much of a life if we lived it solely online and we have a couple of great opportunities to enjoy good company with some good food this week. A friend of ours and an old friend of his from overseas joined us in the hotel this week, not planned, but one of those lovely impromptu moments  that just happen. It was a really pleasant experience chatting about accents and misunderstandings and different experiences that life has thrown our way. Our next meal followed an impromptu invitation to some neighbours of ours who are working hard and one day looked like it was going to be worse than normal; with two little ones in the household I could just picture the evening arriving home and the lack of energy to do much in preparing a meal - I have been there quite a few times when our children were little, at one point we had three children under the age of four and life could get a bit fraught at times. In the morning I had made use of the slow cooker to start a meal off with chicken stock and some borlotti beans, then added some salted beans, barley and beaver sausage and I knew that meal would stretch to a small family with addition of some potatoes and baked squash. An easy meal knowing we would also be busy during the day. In fact they did us a favour by accepting as the bean casserole needed the additions to make it a great meal, the casserole on its own needed toning down with the potatoes and we got to be entertained by the little ones to. Bargain!

The moon added to the show

Our kittens have also been a little surprising this week. They had to go back to the vets for their second injection and it was there that we found out it wasn't just Bella that has surprising agility. Sofie, our usually calm, placid kitten is beginning to show streaks of not being quite so calm or placid and in the vets she was decidedly not happy with the injection and twisted herself around in a way a cat should not be able to and ended up giving the ver some rather nasty scratches. The vet was rather apologetic because she said it was her fault as she was not expecting that reaction at all - neither were we to be honest. This is from a cat that likes tummy tickles and paw massages!!!!! Bella was well and truly pinned down between us though, as we weren't going to have a repeat of that episode. Reminded me of the time I used to help out at a vets as a teenager to find out if I wanted to be a vet or not in later life. The other episode involved Bella, our mischievous one, who managed to get up onto the higher rafters of our greenhouse but was struggling to find a way down. Several times she crossed backwards and forwards looking for a way down, even walking on the fleece that is stapled for shading below the apex - at which point I felt sure she was going to come through it. Ian was just about to head off for the ladders when she decided to make a jump for it, it was rather a long way down but although she looked a little shocked she is none the worse for the event. So far though the kittens have not caught a mouse that we know of but I found one out in our allotment patch and ended up killing it with the spade - not something I enjoy doing but we do need to keep the population down to manageable proportions.

Our new beds with the sawdust path

Most of the week seems to have been spent shifting things around. I had to shift some old manure and compost around the garden to make room for some new manure. Ian used the tractor to shift two loads of manure, one to each garden and two loads of wood chippings, one load to our neighbours garden and one back to our land, plus a car trailer load. Having written that down it doesn't look a lot but it took two days to do, albeit short days due to the shorter days and being dark by 4:30pm. One thing Ian discovered today is that all this transporting things by trailer has improved his ability to reverse them. He had to reverse the tractor trailer with one load of manure quite a distance and managed with just one or two small deviations from the path and today he drove a trailer into a building with a heavy saw on it that needs renovating, not only did he reverse it, he had to turn the trailer into the building to put it where it needed to be put. All I can say, is it is a good job it wasn't me, I am getting better at reversing our truck but it is still tricky as it all has to be done by wing mirrors and not looking over my shoulder. There was more shifting on the land as all those wood chippings needed to be put somewhere as there are still more to come, so I started putting rotted straw down where the vegetable beds should be and then put a good covering of wood chippings on the top. It won't be perfect for vegetables next year as they will need a good lot of compost added to give the roots something to anchor into but the year after it will be great and hopefully easier to manage for weeds. I also began laying the sawdust paths, not sure that they are deep enough to stop the weeds coming through but decided a light going over with a blow torch to any that dares to put its head above the sawdust will do the trick (and no I am not going to set the sawdust alight in the process!!!!! Trust me!)

It was like this all day, on one particular day, the frost lay
on the ground all day, never bothering to shift

I read a lot about sustainability issues and I had to laugh this week when I read an article about building with sand filled water bottles. Comments were made that there was now a worry that the area would run out of sand due to the amount required in the building. It harks back to the idea that if you find a sustainable building method then you multiply it and replicate it lots of times, but that is not sustainable. Sustainability is about applying principles not blueprints, each area needs to find creative solutions bearing in mind the type of area it is. Sustainable solutions will not be mass produced, but small scale. Reliance on single products for the answer to all problems is not an option, that is what got us into the mess we are in now. I suppose that is similar in principle to the Occupy protests at the moment, the world is looking for "one solution fits all" answers from the protest groups, but the groups are not providing answers, they are seeking first the right questions and then looking for principles that can be applied, not blueprints that once applied with help us to live happy ever after - that just won't happen. Sustainable solutions to today's problems will take a lot of time to work out as they are going to take some massive rethinks in how we do business, how we live and how we interact with each other. Interesting times indeed!

Frosted grass

Okay I know you have to tilt your head to see this
it won't turn round. It is correct on my computer but
Picasa won't turn it around. Okay now I have moaned
what you can see is a dusting of snow. Winter is on its way