A title?

So what do you think Aggie? Have you got an opinion? Yes!
Aggie does have opinions and usually it is "What are you
doing here?" When she sees me. I guess she was relieved
today that I was not putting cream on her feet. She's doing
pretty well this year.

How do you title a week like last week? From the minutiae of daily life to potentially life-changing events over which I have no control. Life has been full of the little things and one of the extraordinarily large ones. Little things like we now have a working electric smart meter. I no longer have to make sure that Ian gives me the reading from our land to send to the electric company, it updates our records automatically. That won't stop Ian from checking on a regular basis though - Mr. Excel-man. If it's measurable, it's in an excel sheet somewhere.

Frosty mornings

Ilvija. Baby alpacas are cute. She looks like she is going to
be much darker on the top of her head than her mum.

There are also the little things like having to put my magic cream on the legs of two of our alpacas. Lady V must be starting to feel the immune-suppressing gloom we have had just lately, as this is the first time I've had to put cream on her in ages. Freddie, unfortunately has inherited his mother's over reactive skin problems and it is starting to spread, so he is a regular for my cream. Little Ilvija has started eating out of Ian's hand and so it gives him the opportunity to start the training to accept a halter. First he gets to tickle her under the chin and then stroke her face. The more used to touch the better as we do not want another spitty alpaca that hates any form of contact and lets everyone know about it within a 2 metre range, like her mother. Don't get me wrong, her mother is a lovely alpaca, just not when you have to try and put cream on her, or give her an injection or at shearing time and so on.

Lady V in contemplative mood

Freddie, the other recipient of the magic cream

Eyre, not Sofie. Eyre is the one usually in trouble, but not
this time

There are also the little thing challenges of having a cat, who is determined to get out. We had been keeping Sofie in our greenhouse to stop her going up to our neighbours, but she clawed her way through the plastic when she couldn't get out of the hole in the back of the greenhouse that she dug out years ago and Ian had blocked up. Ian taped up the hole she had made at the weekend, only today she tried to go through again in two separate attempts. This was despite the fact that the hole was unblocked and Ian showed her that she could go through after the first attempt. Not happy was he!

It's a good job she will be darker on her head than Chanel. It
will be difficult to tell them apart otherwise in years to come.

Ilvija is still feeding but Chanel is not giving her enough
to keep up with a growing alpaca, so it is nice that she is
now eating the feed like the others. She gets her own tray now

Ian finished off the repairs to one of the chicken arks that had sat outside in the rain until recently. We had managed to collect it one frosty morning and take it down to the barn where he could work on it. It needed a new base as the old one had rotted through. As the ark was in two pieces we could easily slot the components through the gaps beside the caravan and set it up in situ. Finally we could bring the last group of chickens inside the greenhouse. The last few days they have enjoyed not being rained on or sitting huddled in their hutch all day. We even got a blue egg today. The hen that lays the blue eggs hasn't given us an egg in ages. Unless of course she's been eating them. I wouldn't feel too sorry for them though, the stupid chickens quite often refused to go in and would sit up on top of the ark, in the rain and even the snow, rather than go in, or even sit underneath the ark where there was shelter. It has also been relatively mild, but it is nice to get them inside before the real winter weather hits.

Has someone been sitting down?

The alpaca pruned Christmas tree

Not the same Christmas tree. Ian cuts down Christmas trees
for the alpacas to eat. Plenty of vitamins. These are the weed
ones that need taking out to let the grass grow, or other
trees to thrive

Snow clouds gathering over the girls' alpaca house

Talking of weather, the snow has come and gone again this week. Now we are just back to gloom and wet soggy land. Ian even had to get the tractor out to sort out the roadway and create a run off to take the water away as it was just getting more and more boggy. This of course made a right mess, but hopefully in the long run it will improve. He now has the water running into the ditches the road company made. At least the rain means the water table is high and hopefully soaking its way into the underground stores, keeping the pressure high in the springs and water bearing sections of our land. 150 litres of water went into our well yesterday and once again it is close to the top. This represents quite a force to keep the water at near ground level on a slope. The actual water bearing layer is about 2 metres down.

A gloomy day, but not as gloomy as today after the snow has
melted

Hello Mr. Tellus, how are you today? Good? 

We took a trip into Riga this week. I planned to visit the Latvian Aquatic Ecology centre to see someone I had met in Helsinki. Ian took me in so that he could get some tyres for the car. Here in the sticks he would have had to order them from one place, then organise to get them fitted at our local garage. In Riga we can just go in and get them fitted quickly, without waiting weeks, but of course it costs in fuel and time to get it done. At least this way it was an opportunity for me to visit without an early start or having to hang around for buses. So while he was getting the tyres fitted I had a tour of the small centre. Despite its size, the centre had a range of labs for testing numerous aspects of the Baltic Sea. Heavy metals, toxicology experiments, algae experiments, nutrient load etc. I think there were about 8 or so small labs. It was fascinating to see the work that up until then I had only been reading about.

Hmmmm! Sunshine. Mr. P doing a bit of winter sunbathing

Minimalist headgear worn by Josefs.

The people in the centre were also a lovely bunch. I'm not sure they get many visitors and so they were quite keen to show me around and tell me about what they are doing. I got to talk about pharmacology and the issues with pharmaceuticals in the water with people who understand the issues. In our EU project that I'm working on, I'm the only one with any pharmaceutical knowledge and my knowledge is a bit antiquated. At least I understand the concepts and the risks and so it was nice to talk with people who shared my concerns and to confirm that I wasn't way off base in my thinking. Meanwhile Ian arrived back and talked to some of them about alpacas, as you do.

All attention on a little, teeny, tiny cat!

Jakobs often looks like he's wearing make up

At least this was on a day when I needed a bit of a distraction. It was election day in the UK. Up until recently I only kept a distant interest in the ins and outs of the UK elections since leaving. I didn't think it was fair to inflict my choices on those who still live in the UK. Now it feels unfair to have choices inflicted on me with no say. I left the UK over 16 years ago. After 15 years I have no opportunity to vote, whether it affects me or not. The saddest thing I saw was a lady who had worked on behalf of the UK government for over 20 years being denied a vote that would mean her job disappeared. She was settled in Belgium, her children were there. Now! Who knows and who in the UK government even cares.

That is a serious eyebrow work there, but maybe a bit hasty
with the lipstick.

George, Jakobs half brother is not into the make up though.
He's more into the natural look

It was with a degree of schadenfreude that I saw Anne Widecombe was denied a seat in Parliament. She will shortly be leaving the EU Parliament, where she and the rest of Farage's team only seemed to offer stupid comments. At least she and Farage will not be able to walk into another parliament to utter further ridiculous pronouncements. I doubt they will suffer the heartache that many will feel who will now also be losing their jobs for certain in all the EU agencies. All those jobs rested on being from an EU member state. About the only bright point is the uncertainty will end, but not the negotiations. Finished by December 2020. I think not! Democratic decision? No way! How can a democratic decision be made when over 80% of the output consists of lies? What kind of democracy is that? Something is definitely broken in the politics of the UK. I hope and pray that this galvanises a rise from the grassroots level to put it right. Meanwhile I will be looking at learning Latvian to see about Latvian citizenship. I pray my brain will cope.

Soaking up the sun

Jakobs mum

Antonia also looks like she likes a bit of make up. More the
Egyptian eyeliner look though

Going to be a frosty night

These next three photos look like they have had a filter put on them, but this was the colour in the sunset. So weird. These were taken about 13 days ago when we had more snow.

Spring fever?

Our free range chickens enjoying the spring grass. 

Not sure about Spring fever, we've had a few nice days and the grass is greening up nicely, but today is back to cloud and rain and I'm feeling under the weather too. I have an eye infection, again! I say "again" as if this is a regular occurrence or after a fairly recent happening, but when I look back at the last time this happened it was 4 years ago! I knew it wasn't last year, but I thought maybe the year before that. So time must have sped by. I'm not sick that often and so it is a bit of a novelty and one I would be quite happy not to become too well acquainted with. It was also an event seared on my brain because it took weeks for it to go the last time and two rounds of antibiotics and included two visits to the local doctor and once to the hospital. Hopefully that will not be the case this time. I also woke up with a sore throat and swollen glands but that is on its way out now, so I'm hoping the eye infection is related and then that will take a hike too.

These were the first three hatched. The more sprightly
yellow one and the black one were hatched yesterday and
the more timid looking one this morning. It had to find its
feet a bit yet, unlike the other two.

We started off a batch of chicks 21 days ago and two hatched out yesterday, which was a bit of a surprise as we have never had them hatch after 20 days. So far we have 11 chicks, 2 of them black and the rest varying shades of yellow. Two of our lady alpacas are also starting to look pregnant, which is a relief but the youngest we are still not sure about and have even noticed her standing in the corner of the paddock gazing at the boys - not a good sign really. If she is not pregnant then in about a month's to six week's time, we will try mating her again for next year. Apparently it is normal for young ones to not get pregnant the first time.

I said last week that the storks were back and here is one in
our pond. This stork has incredibly red legs, and I think
the trip down to Africa must have done it some good.  

Some of you may have noticed that there is a little bit of election fever going on in the UK. It looks like it might be an interesting race, as the UK is more used to two horse races and not multiple parties vying for power. I did get incensed at one point by an Easter greeting from the current Prime Minister. I thought it was hypocritical, but I was informed he has never made a secret of his faith. Okay fair enough! I suppose I mustn't have taken that much notice then. It wasn't just the fact he gave the message, but it was the "Britain is a Christian country" line that got to me and how concerned we should be about all the Christians being persecuted. Now before you blow your top at me, don't get me wrong, it does concern me, just I don't stop at concern for Christians, but stretches to anyone who is persecuted or tortured for their faith, their politics, for any reason whatsoever and I don't have a scale of concern depending on their faith, my scale would tend to follow the degree of persecution.

Enjoying a saunter through the woods

The alpacas ignoring the stork and the stork ignoring the
alpacas

As for Britain being a Christian country line - I know many of the laws of the UK are based on Judeo-Christian laws, but those kinds of laws are not exclusive to Britain nor the Christian faith. Neither does it explain why it took 26 years to get slavery abolished and only due to such forceful personalities as William Wilberforce and took Lord Shaftesbury over 50 years of his life to get people with mental health issues treated as people and not animals, not to mention the over 10 years he took to get reforms for children to spare them the horrors of the factories and so on. That in a supposedly Christian country and not even attempting to get into the colonial era and the abuses that occurred then. The UK has many fine people of faith and no faith and they are all valuable to the life of the nation. Besides, how can a country have faith? It is the people who have faith.

This has been Ian's project this week. Unfortunately it didn't
go completely to plan. See if you can spot the difference

So those were the thoughts I was mulling over in the garden the other day. At one point I felt God say "why does it matter to you?" Hmmm! Good point! The people who decide on who is going to be in the Government for the next four to five years should be the people who live there and I live in Latvia. I had decided it wasn't right for me to take part, even though I could (at least for another four years anyway). It could affect us if the UK decided to take themselves out of the EU, but that would be a bridge we cross when we come to it. So why was I letting this get to me? Why was I getting steamed up on the one hand and refusing to vote on the other? So who was being hypocritical? Hmmm! So a decision was made. No more comments on the political scene in the UK for this election, or at least I will try. It is hard, I am an activist by nature, which is why I do the research that I do and feel as strongly about politics as I do too. Still there are plenty of other issues to get steamed up about and it won't do my health any good to constantly be mulling over the things I cannot change or shouldn't try to.

We now have a sign up. Only it wasn't up in time to let the
bin (trash) men know where we were. It was also set up in
stages in between the showers. We did get our bin though

At least whilst mulling all that I did get two beds dug over or weeded, lots of parsnip seed sown, a very small plot of wheat, another very small plot of hulless oats, garlic transplanted because the little seeds I had planted ages ago were now showing up in weedy spots in the wrong part of the garden and some spinach. The small plots of wheat and oats are from a small-scale seed company and so the aim will be to grow them up for seed next year, rather than try and make a loaf of bread out of them. That will come much later.

A close up of the sign. So have you spotted the difference
yet?

This week I won't be heading up to Tartu, as I thought I was supposed to be - probably a good job if I have this eye-infection. I despair though at trying to organise anything at the moment. I had an email late on last week announcing that they would like the slides for the presentation for the conference at the end of this week. Gee thanks! I had that down to do early next week, as I am still trying to finish of this major paper that is due the beginning of May. I did get some headway on the short paper for a conference that is in September, as the deadline for that is next week, so that is something. That was well enough organised anyway. Roll on mid-May when most of this stuff will be finished and I get on with the mega-seed planting season.