Our special visitor

Well there has been lots of landscaping going on. Ian's been landscaping around our barn

Starting the process (Picture by Mavis)

Nice and level by the side of the greenhouse in preparation
for the snow in winter

Levelling off the ground by the barn

and the wild boar have been errrr hindering

Not helpful! Right between our raspberries and
currant bushes.

The wild boar have not just been digging up our land, they have been having a good go at the neighbouring properties too.

I know I am small but the photo gives you some idea of the
depth of some of the wild boar digging. If they would just
take off the top layer it would just be annoying but big holes
like this are dangerous for tractors. This hole area was one of
several about the same size.

I started my project this week of monitoring the pig activity and I first need to walk the perimeter of the farms and then log all the activity that looks new, so that I can record any done over the next few weeks or so. The problem is that it is a mammoth task, firstly walking all the way around as they are quite large some of them and then logging the damage, they have been so active just this last week that it is going to take me ages just to log the work they have already done, never mind what they will do over the coming weeks. Never mind! I shall be as fit as a fiddle by Christmas doing this, after the pumpkin weight training programme and the tomato challenge of carrying umpteen kilos up several flights of stairs in recent weeks.

Here we all are at the local hotel. Mavis is in the middle.

Last week, however did get off to a reasonably relaxed start, as we had our special visitor from England. It was quite wet most of the week but that was good in some ways as it just gave us lots of time to chat, and eat and chat and errr eat and chat some more. Mavis has been reading my blog now for over three years and has been such an encouragement, although we have never met in person, and so it was a thrill when she mentioned she would love to come and visit to see what we are doing. You can read Mavis' perspective on the trip on her blog. Besides chatting we also took her to visit our friends on their farms and one of them treated us to home-made pizzas using ingredients from out of the garden and cheese from her own goats, followed by honey cake and I suspect that was home-made too, using honey from our friend's bees. The other friend gave us a guided tour of the barn with all the animals in it and even gave us a milking demonstration, which she does by hand. It was very funny watching the calves being fed the milk afterwards and after they had finished the milk in their buckets they licked each others faces as they were not wasting a single drop of the precious liquid. It looked like they were kissing. Mavis has now got to see our land for real as well as the flats we have renovated over the few years we have been here. She has seen and heard firsthand some of the challenges and seen the joys of living here and hopefully taken away a real flavour of the place. Just a shame that it rained all day on the Friday she flew back and so Riga was more like a flying bus type tour - on your right you will see..... and to your left is ....... - in between mall hopping that is, where we ate and chatted some more, at least we stayed dry. The other shame is that Mavis missed the first tow of the season, as the very next day one of our young neighbours had managed to get stuck at the bottom of the allotments - not really sure what he would be doing there, but he was going nowhere fast if we hadn't helped.

Kissing calves (Photo by Mavis)

This weekend I started stripping the buckwheat seed of the plant, while Ian was busy landscaping. I got half a bucket, but it took me all afternoon, I hope the rest goes a bit quicker. We need some animals then we could just beat the living daylights out of the plants and then let the animals pick over any seeds left, but using the flail does seem to leave a lot of seed on the plants. Or we need one of those engineering types that love tinkering about developing little one off machines, anyone up to the job? At least harvesting the buckwheat will provide a rainy day project, as we can harvest the buckwheat in the greenhouse, even if I can't get out studying wild boar damage and Ian landscaping and digging drains.

The turkeys at our other friends farm (Photo by Mavis).

Looking ahead I finally got our plane tickets sorted for our Christmas trip to the UK, as they had special offers on for the days we were interested in travelling, the problem is that the next day airbaltic decided to announce cuts to staff and flights. It would appear though that the announcements are to do with a spat between the head of the airline and the Latvian Government. Hopefully they will sort it out very soon, instead of being yet one more casuality of brinkmanship between a powerful guy and the Latvian government. The Latvian government are actually the majority shareholder of the airline, but do not have a say in how the airline is run, and want to buy out the minority shareholder who runs the company. Not sure how that happened but doesn't seem to make sense really. The CEO is now back in Germany as he fears being arrested in Latvia for fraud charges. Not sure if the charges are real or trumped up either, but shows some of the challenges Latvians face.

I will just finish off with an excellent article on the effects of austerity on Latvia. The two authors are spot on about the reason for the drop in unemployment here in Latvia, it is mainly down to many people moving away looking for work rather than due to an improvement in the economy. We really need to generate a new economy now, one that does not penalise the poorest for the mistakes of the bankers - they maybe back in profit but the people are hurting.

Wedding Part 2

Wedding Part 1 in sunny Perth, Australia. 

It's a good job that I write notes to remind me of things we have done or I have read during the week, otherwise I would forget, especially this week. It has been rather a hectic week that started out in sunny Perth, Australia and now ending in a wet and windy England. Door to door it was 25 hours of travelling and it was so nice to roll into bed at the hotel at the airport, at least that way we were in a fit state to travel on to our friends the next day.

Wedding Part 2 England. Notice the difference? The shawl
was needed for this one.

We were impressed with the Emirates flights as the food is certainly not bad as airplane meals go, sometimes a little too spicy, but not bad. The service is good too with plenty of entertainment to while away the hours. It is amazing how much difference pleasant staff and reasonable food can make to a plane journey - something the American airlines as a whole could learn from. The ambience on the emirates planes is intriguing, as they play bird song near the end of each flight, not sure if it is to wake passengers up or relax them but it is nice, along with the changing colours of the dimmed lights as we are coming into land finishing with lights reduced to what looks like star light at the end. All very pretty. Getting off the plane in England though, I was shocked by the filthy state that passengers left the seating area. Does it really hurt that much to pick up sweet papers and lids off the meals? I know people are paid to keep the planes tidy but there is no need to leave that much mess. Our journey was good, 40 minutes early in Dubai, an hour late in Manchester which didn't bother us, but I guess inconvenienced many others, but our daughter's journey a couple of days before was rather worse as they had to divert to another airport due to fog and ended up sitting on a stationary plane for 7 hours while they waited for fuel and crew to be delivered to an airport not geared up for the larger planes. Not ever so helpful for their preparations for the second part of their wedding.

Shawl detail. I appliqued and
embroidered poinsettia's onto the shawl
along with lots of stars to hold the fabric
and base layer together

Well wedding part 2 was good, the shawl/stole/pashmina whatever you want to call it was completed the day before the wedding, thank goodness and we managed to get into the hall and decorate. It was really weird to be working with our friends, Graham and Steph again, who we have worked with for many years in children's ministry setting up in the very same building where our daughter was getting married. We still seemed to have the knack of working together each doing our separate things and yet working together to a harmonious whole, we were pleased with the result, this was despite me getting up at 5:30am to be ready to get some flowers for the arrangements.

Love this photo as they look like they are having
so much fun

The wedding itself was a little different as our daughter and her new husband were legally married in Australia and so it was a chance for them to decide exactly what they wanted to do and arrange it the way they wanted as they did not have to go through any of the formalities. I was proud of the way they rejected the rampant commercialism and tried to do everything as well as they could and yet not spend a fortune. I was also proud of the fact that people were invited to all of the wedding and not just parts of it. I never understood the way many invite people to the wedding service and then expect them to go away until the evening do, while the selected few ate a sit down meal. I know part of it is due to costs but why go to the expense of a posh meal if you can't have everyone there? Why not do something simpler and share it with everyone or wait until later to have the sit down meal after the main body of guests have gone? Each to their own I guess! We did enjoy the chance though to join our daughter and her new husband the next morning for breakfast, after the busyness of taking down all the decorations the night before and to give them a big hug before they set off on their honeymoon. We then spent a lovely afternoon with our oldest son and his new wife (the ones who were married in October remember) looking at all the photos from the day before and laughing so much over many happy memories which spilled over into the Sunday lunch with our friends who had done so much to make our daughter's wedding special. A very tiring but thoroughly enjoyable weekend, not bad for a wedding really!

The decorated hall. White material down the poles with
ivy and red bows. Fairy lights and fabric around the cross
plus two carnations in a glass vase. One large flower
arrangement

I was rather pleased with this
arrangement, it didn't take me nearly
as long as I thought it might after such a
long period of time since I last
did arrangements.

It has been a privilege to see our daughter married in Australia and England but also a privilege to see so many willing helpers prepared to make both days special. Rather than impersonal services provided at great cost by a company, the wedding was prepared with love and care by those who demonstrate the love of Christ through their actions. So if you are reading this, thanks very much to all who helped, you made the days very special and a precious time to remember.