Bath time! Yeah! You all wanted to know that didn't you? Yes we have had showers, but a bath is a treat. Bath time, of course, means that the radiators in our other apartment have finally been fixed and are working properly, ten months after they blew in the freezing cold weather at the end of January. There maybe a small leak, but only to be expected with the rather inadequate components often available here in Latvia. The radiators were fixed just in time too, as winter is now upon us and we will have to make regular trips up to the apartment to make sure it doesn't freeze. We have had our first snow fall of the year. Only about 5cm though, so not a huge amount, but enough for children to throw snowballs and make snowmen. The night we had a bath, the children from other apartments were playing outside and lighting up the snowman they had made, with a bright LED torch and according to Ian it looked rather eerie. The apartment we live in though has been rather cool at about 16C, which I don't mind as long as the costs for the heating reflects that. We will have to wait and see.
The view from our other apartment
Ian used the black geotextil type of fabric to let the hay
breathe but keep off the snow. He thought it will probably
last longer than the white garden fleece he used the last
time. It has lasted quite well, but hopefully this will be
better
Ian has been busy preparing for the winter and got the sticks in to mark the road. He was a bit worried that it might already be too frozen, but it wasn't and the sticks went in easy enough. The ground is pretty hard though where it has been compacted. He has also put up the cathedral windows over the greenhouse windows (you can see here what I mean) to stop snow from drifting into the greenhouse and the sheep pen has been moved into the winter sheep field, before that was frozen into the ground. The sheep haven't been moved into their winter quarters yet, as it is still early and the snow could well disappear - then again it might not! They have plenty of hay to eat though, so they won't go hungry, although they might try and convince someone they are with all the noise they make. The can hear the rattle of a tray no matter how quietly you try and fill them and they are a good few hundred metres away from the greenhouse where Ian prepares the trays.
Turbjørn enjoying the hay now the snow is on the ground
I mentioned last week that Agnese was being weaned from her Mum, to give Snowdrop a chance to put some weight on before the next baby is due - well hopefully she is due, but she still needs to put some weight on regardless. Agnese decided that she had had enough of just hay today and jumped the fence to get to her Mum. It is better to have more distance between them, but Snowdrop isn't that bothered and normally neither is Agnese, so normally it is fine, just occasionally she wants her Mum again. Agnese is obviously another alpaca that hasn't read the manual that they are not supposed to challenge fences, especially not by jumping them. I finally got the video of Agnese eating an apple this week, as well as the morning routine of letting the alpacas out - well the girls anyway. Take a look at Estelle who is on the far right of the video being let out the second door. She is not a morning alpaca and always is bleary first thing.
Here is a video of Agnese eating an apple, with Estelle getting in on the act
Tellus looking unperturbed
We tackled toe nail trimming again this week and it was less traumatic this time. I seem to be getting better at holding onto them and have discovered that if you stop them from dropping their head, they are less able to buck to get away. We managed all seven alpacas between the two of us, which I'm rather pleased with and that was without any toe nails coming into contact with my rear end. It was a little painful the last time. The only thing that got damaged were my over trousers that got a tear in them. Annoying but never mind, it will sew up. It is amazing how much their toe nails have grown in just over two months. We are wondering if that is an indication of the better condition they seem to be in this year and the amount of fleece they have on them. It would seem that they have settled down and probably adjusted to the local diet better this year.
The chicks are getting rather large now
The cats finally got their vaccinations too, only a month later than they should have, but we got kind of busy. The vet was happy enough with them, but she did say Sofie was kind of skinny. I am not sure she will ever have much on her. She charges around so much when she is feeling active, so there can't be much wrong with her. We also finally got around to moving chickens around. There have been nine in Ark 2 and they have got too big for that number in the ark for our liking. We are still well within regulations for the available space, but we like to give chickens more room to move around. They were also getting too mucky with that number in such a small space. We were waiting to make sure which were cockerels and which were not, partly because it was important that one of them was big enough to defend himself with a group of more mature hens. Anything less than a boss would not last five minutes with older ladies.
This old lady has been laying regularly too. The only one
in the chicken house that is. She is also the mother of
the ones that are laying in the Arks
We decided that this week they were big enough to fend for themselves and set about moving them in the evening. We put one cockerel in with four ladies in Ark 1 and put one cockerel in with the three chicks in Ark 3. The cockerel in Ark 1 had been a bit bossy in Ark 2 and as we suspected he has taken charge, but we have to wait and see if he will calm down with the ladies. It is a bit of a worry as the ladies had really come into lay again this week and we were regularly getting one or two eggs a day from them. One day we even had four, although we suspect one egg may have been hidden in the hay and not laid that particular day. There was one point we thought we were going to get 5 because one of the hens seemed to be in and out of the nesting box all day, but she must have been having us on. We think that the number of eggs will go down until they settle and so Ian will just have to monitor the situation. The chicks have been getting aggressive with each other, not because they lacked space, but must be the hormones starting to flow and so we hope the cockerel will actually calm them down a bit. We put him in early, because he seems to be a more mild mannered cockerel and didn't want the chicks to get too big and bossy before we put him in. He is also the biggest of the cockerels and so we hope a good one to breed from for meat birds. Oh this breeding lark gets a bit complicated as we try and breed robust hens for meat and for egg laying, without too much aggression.
The boys enjoying some good grass before the snow
I got told off this week by one of my son's, well more a mild rebuke. Last week I posted a picture of Ian's bike on a stand that allows him to use the bike in the house for exercise and not have to brave the weather outside or roads in poor condition. Anyway I called the stand a roller and it's not, it is a turbo trainer. So after me, must repeat, turbo trainer not rollers, turbo trainer not rollers. Have we all got that now? I suppose that's what comes of having a bike mechanic for a son, he should know his stuff. Just to prove it I noticed that the Bike Store, where he works, is now doing BikeFit to make sure that the bike fits perfectly, which is good when no one has the perfect body shape that is perfectly symmetrical.
The fleece is looking good and thick
I finally finished off writing up lessons for the Sociology course that I am tutoring, so that is one year's worth of lessons written, one more year to go. All I need to do now is to think of a short project that would be fun to do, or how to enthuse students to do one and then sort out some revision topics or again how to get the students to do it for themselves. Any suggestions gratefully received. It has been an interesting exercise as I have almost come at Sociology via the back door. I haven't graduated through the stages of school exams, college, university, research, I have sort of done all of that backwards. Most of the work for the course has been looking at different aspects of society from a gender perspective, a marxist perspective or an ethnic perspective with a bit of social class thrown in. It is fascinating that they have picked on these particular aspects when examining issues and how education, families etc. is viewed through those lenses. I have to assume those are the dominant thoughts within those fields, despite not really coming across the marxist perspective much in my readings, the ethnic and gender are quite important in development for sure.
Snowy fields and frozen ponds
Anyway the final thoughts for this week centre around a phrase that kept coming into my mind all week, "Remember me!" We have met quite a few folks along our journey and we all get busy and get on with other things, especially for me in the academic field. I could really do with a few contacts coming through though and so that phrase keeps coming to mind. I found it amusing therefore, when one email that came through this week had the first words "I haven't forgotten you." Immediately after that email came through, a brief foray into facebook and a friend had posted a song by Amy Grant "I will remember you." So I guess the promise is there and I haven't been forgotten, but I still have to wait for contacts to bear fruit into something that will carry us into the next phase of life, with me earning a living.
I couldn't quite believe this little chap, crawling across the snow
It has been a bit up and down week this week, so stick with me it gets better. Sorry if the lows are getting depressing - matches the weather I think, damp and dreary. A short while ago a conference I had applied to attend and really wanted to go to, suddenly announced it was cancelled. It would be just plain annoying, but it actually takes me rather too much of my time to write an abstract (a short piece of work describing some of my research, but tailored to fit the theme of the conference). Of course it will get easier as I get more practice, but it is still annoying to go through the process and then for the conference to be cancelled. Fortunately I had already applied to another one and been accepted. I nearly withdrew my application for that one, as I would rather have attended the one that got cancelled and there is only so many funded trips I can take. Are you still with me? Life can be a bit complicated at the moment.
An ornate door that's seen better days. Still gorgeous craftsmanship
So to continue. I duly wrote an application for funding for the conference costs and got a reply to say my funding application was accepted. Great! Now I could go ahead and book since it means I will get the money back. I went to fill out the online registration and it said "online registration closed, on site registration still available" or something like that. Oh yes! I'll just pop down to Berlin and sign in, shall I? I was not a happy bunny! Well actually that is greatly understating the case. I was rather upset. I was just glad I had some work to read that didn't demand too much brain energy. I was just writing an email explaining the problem to my supervisor and pouring out my frustration about the whole funding/conference issue when I went back to check on the online registration site, because I wanted to send him the link to see what he made of it. Unbelievably the online registration was back up and running. You have never seen someone type so fast to get the booking done. It still feels a bit like a game that I still haven't got the hang of and not one I particularly like, at least the outcome was fine in the end though.
Our Christmas tree on the right. One of them has to go and so it may as well be used. It won't be cut down for a while though. I don't put up the decorations until Christmas Eve
We've had tenants in our other apartment for the last two months. Can you believe it, we've had two months without a bath. Don't worry though, we do still have showers, not quite the same though. It was worth foregoing the baths as our friends had a good time here in Latvia and enjoyed staying in our apartment. They have made the most of their time and been busy out and about visiting folks, chopping wood, chipping wood - I think between us and the camp though, we put them off chipping for life, helping and encouraging as they went. They were sad to leave, but I think they will be back again sometime and maybe by then I might be spending a little more time at home - maybe! It does mean that this week we were able to re-instigate our Saturday night routine of bath night and DVD, currently we are making our way through the Edwardian farm, but that was only because I wasn't travelling up to Estonia on the Sunday morning but getting a lift up on Monday. Watching the Edwardian farm at times makes us giggle, because some of the information in it is so basic - basic to us that is, because we've been gardening for well over 20 years now. We learnt an amazing fact this week, the eyes on the potatoes sends out shoots to make new plants. Do people really not know that? Fortunately there are lots of other fascinating snippets that aren't quite so basic and could even be useful for a more low tech approach to farming. Ian still wants a shire horse though.
I love names of things that don't travel very well. How about this for the name of a shop "Takko?" I don't think it would do too well in the UK
We finally have the inventory done on the barn. That took a bit of organising. At first the lady couldn't find the place and tried to phone Ian, but she didn't speak English. We got someone to phone her back who spoke Latvian and she then planned to come out with the architect. At least the architect knew where we lived and Ian picked them up from our apartment, after first letting the animals out. The inventory is a record of the structure, as it was a little different to the original plans. She took pictures and measurements and then asked if she could see the alpacas. She took more pictures of the alpacas than she did of the barn. She thought they were wonderful and they played up well for their audience, coming to see who was visiting. I think they were thinking they were going to get fed, but at least they looked friendly enough.
James the stalker
The mild weather has been a bit dreary, but at least it has meant that I could dig up the last of the beets for the animals and carrots for us from our home allotment. Just got a few more carrots and some leeks to sort out on the land, but unless we have severe weather, we are not hurrying. James our cockerel is performing one of his last duties this week. He is making sure that the new chicks, we introduced into the big hen house, do not get picked on very much. Apparently a dominant cockerel should keep the squabbling to a minimum. He more than sealed his fate on Sunday though, Ian has never seen James stalk me until today. Not sure why he should do that and has never done it to Ian, well not while he is on his own, but he did today as we went for a walk in the woods. So after a week or two he's in the pot and a newcomer will get his place. He has been fairly good at taking care of his lady hens and keeps them together, but his aggressive nature is not what we want on the farm. Just hope the new boys will be up to looking after the ladies.
A list of the 54 who died. It brings it home to me. Three were firefighters who were trying to rescue people. 16 children have lost one or two parents. A massive loss to a nation of just 2 million
It's been a shocking week this week for the news, with Latvia making the front page headlines for all the wrong reasons, 54 died in a supermarket and three days later 7 are still missing. People were just going about their every day shopping on their way home, at a busy time of the day when the roof collapsed. Of course rumours abound, not least the complicity of the construction company. It is still such a shame that Latvians are often robbed, not by thieves on the street, but by thieves in companies who siphon off money. From the money that has leeched out of the money allocated to road building, money allocated to water upgrades, and goodness only knows where else. A situation they are slowly getting to grips with, but maybe this time there will be a wake up call. Even if the construction company were not to blame for siphoning off money, we can only tell that when the final report comes out, lives were lost this week and how many more lives will be lost due to corruption in departments that close their eyes to substandard building, to corruption in companies that cut corners to line their pockets, to lack of finances in rescue services that does not give them adequate machinery and training? How much longer will people complain and their voices ignored? I have heard more people recently who are ready to speak out or not put up with corruption in whatever form it takes and I find that immensely encouraging.
Sunrise on a beautiful frosty morning whilst waiting for my lift
I promised to finish on an upbeat note. I got an extra day at home this week. Big deal! Some of you may think, but to be honest it has been nice. I actually got to travel up on the day of my lecture this time, because I had a lift up in a car from some of my fellow classmates, who are also from Latvia. It did mean leaving on the 6:40am bus, which is a tad early to get up to so we could meet up somewhere convenient - where I live is not very convenient to get to at all and would put a lot of extra miles on. It also meant waiting around for half an hour on a rather frosty morning, wishing I had put on a thicker pair of trousers, but rather glad for having packed a flask of hot tea and for the fact that I hadn't been able to convey to the bus driver to stop where I wanted to stop. That little episode meant I got off two stops after I wanted to and a 20 minute walk back to where I was supposed to be meeting my friends, but at least that was 20 minutes walking and 20 minutes less standing around getting cold. The trip up was lovely too, with the frost never leaving the fields the whole way up, until we got close to the city of Tartu and the sun even made an appearance during the journey. Quite nice after the dreariness. To top the day off, I got an unexpected bonus from another fellow student, as he paid me a rather good amount for looking over a paper he was writing. English is not his first language and there were a few obvious mistakes and a few poorly worded bits, nothing too major though and he was obviously happy with the work I had done on it and the comments I had digitally scribbled all over his work.
A happy find in a supermarket shop today! Wensleydale cheese with cranberries. A nice bit of English cheese
I think by next week this will look very different with the
start of the thaw. The tracks in the middle are a lynx
It's hard to write about ordinary life just after reading of such devastation in Japan, but ordinary life does go on and I am grateful for the ordinariness of life carrying on around me. I am grateful for the smiles and enthusiastic waves from neighbours (not really quite sure why the greetings were so enthusiastic, but still grateful nonetheless), I am also grateful for a warm house and food on the table. All perfectly ordinary, nothing remarkable until you realise how precious they are, how precarious it could be, how in an instant it could all be swept away by some quirk of nature, or by some revolution. In most earthquakes we read about, there is a concentration on the rescue stories, on the triumphs and the tragedies of ordinary people, but no not this time the media appear to have moved on to the threat of the nuclear reactor meltdown, or is that just the BBC? Or they are concentrating on the effects on the economy I to be honest I do not really care what speculators think of the economy of Japan, they should not be distracting the Japanese's Government from the mammoth task of clearing up and putting things to right, I think they have enough on their plate. I want to hear the stories, I want to hear how the Japanese people are? How are they doing, not the flippin' economy.
Ian dug out the drainage ditch for the
barn so the water can flow. He needed
me to give it a little perspective
So what has our ordinary life been like this week? Actually it hasn't felt that ordinary at all, things are changing - the sounds of Spring have rushed in upon us. For the first time in ages we hear the steady drip drip of the snow melting off our roofs, we find out once again which roads are the dirt roads and which ones are actually tarmac and which ones are in desperate need of repair after the winter, it all seems so long ago since we saw them. We also discover there really is still grass under the snow and it still amazes us that it has managed to survive under its winter blanket and only needs a few rays of light to change from a dark murky green to the vibrant hue of spring. It was so warm the other day ie about 6C that we sat outside our workshop on the land on our patio chairs, Ian had to sink his chair into the snow, up to the seat, as there was not enough room outside our workshop for us both to put our chairs, but it was so good just to be soaking up the rays. I would have taken a photo but it was a long walk to get the camera along a path that was only half solid enough to walk on, part of it was still soft and meant sinking in up to my knees. After two days of warm temperatures there is still a lot of snow to melt and lots of puddles everywhere.
Not quite as deep as by the barn but a
pretty good indication of how deep the
snow has been
Post winter slush and dripping roofs seems a small price to pay for the return of the warmth of Spring. It is the promise of warmer days ahead that means I don't notice the pain of having to walk in the wet slippy slush, or the fact our car is not nice and clean now but the usual two tone colour it normally is. It is part of the process of transition, not entirely pleasant maybe in some ways, but the promise of the future is enough and the rays of sunshine help to make the slush bearable. As I said there is still a lot of snow to go, as there are mountains of it piled up all over the place; the snowploughs this year ran out of room to push the snow and had to have additional vehicles just to scoop up the snow to get it off the road. Of course a lot of buildings suffered damage with the weight of snow, not just our polytunnel and we see many collapsed buildings around. Ironically though buildings are still coming down as the snow melts off them, it is almost as if the only thing left holding them together was the ice and as that melts it all comes crashing down. We were round at our friends farm to see the new baby goats and we had a look at one of their buildings that had slowly been coming down over the winter, and Ian stepped in with our friend to have a look at the bent beams, only to find out that later that afternoon it finally gave up the ghost and fell down. Scary!
Cute heh! One of friends' new baby goat
Talking of our polytunnel we have finally made a decision on what to do. We have pulled the guys off building the barn to build the polytunel instead, as right now that is far more important to us. They can't really get going on the barn yet anyway as there is far more snow down there as you can see from the pictures, than on top of the hill where the polytunnel is. They are going to start off with beams left over from the barn and try to re-use what they can from the polytunnel and then we shall see what is still needed. They said it was going to be far quicker to take down the old framework still standing and start from scratch and so will build it using a different shape. They are also going to use sturdier beams in the corners and in the middle than use the same sized timber, so hopefully it will be far more robust. Well here's hoping anyway.
Here is the other baby, obviously otherwise engaged. Mum
is not much older as she is the one that escaped to go to the
boy goat when she wasn't supposed to.
It seems like its been a week of preparation for the coming year, from finally making a decision on the polytunnel to planting seeds. It seems the promise of Spring is all that is needed to spur us into action. One of the things that crossed my mind is that if we are going to have alpacas then I really need to get up to speed on the knitting as the hope is to have some gorgeous alpaca wool from them. I have never really been a great knitter, as Ian's mother was a prolific knitter, but I do have a go from time to time and made a couple of jumpers (sweaters) for Ian and myself and knitted a few baby clothes. I decided that since I have wool stored I would start off with knitting baby clothes (no pressure kids!) and so I pulled out a pattern I have kept from years ago and got started. Well I thought I understood the pattern but as I knitted I realised I had forgotten a few techniques like how to increase stitches in a pattern, I had also never come across the instructions K1B before, I have come across KB1 and thought it was the same. KB1 means knit into the back of the stitch but it didn't give me the nice chunky fisherman's rib as the picture showed me in the pattern. I pulled that piece out four times, checked on the internet three times before I got the hang of what I am supposed to be doing ie knitting into the row below but the good news is that it is flowing nicely now.
Trying it out for size! Ian decided to move the tractor to
higher ground and it is a good job he did as this will be
very muddy by now. When it has its roof on and a concrete
floor it obviously won't be so bad.
Ian also has done a few finishing off jobs on our other apartment, like put up a coat rack. We are quite pleased with it as we used a piece of wood which was heading for firewood but we liked the design of it so put it to one side, added some hooks, and voila! Easy and very cheap. A lot cheaper than the nice coat racks in the DIY shop. He also used panelling from the apartment we live in for a bath panel. We ripped it off the walls because someone in their infinite wisdom had cut into them to put a radiator in and there was no chance of matching it up again. The bath looks pretty smart now and so we decided to christen it. Well actually we thought we had best test it out, to make sure it didn't leak, as it hasn't been tested since it was put in and we may have a visitor sometime in the next week. So we had our first bath in ages! Bliss! A bath that is long enough to lie down in and one which is deep enough to be submerged in - our American baths were so shallow they were almost pointless.
Makes our ponds look like they have sunk but we think
that it is the sides that are so deep with snow. Not sure
if they have reappeared from under their blankets yet.
It hasn't all been sweetness and light this week for me as this last week I was quite poorly for about 24 hours. I started to feel a bit achy one afternoon but by the evening I was really bad, so bad I went to bed before Ian which is errrrr very bad! I was so cold and I just couldn't get warm, so I was tucked up with the old hot water bottle trying to get some heat into myself. I was very achy the next morning too and felt really unwell when I woke about 7am, so one cup of tea and a couple of paracetamols and I went back to sleep. I slept till 12pm and that is not like me either. I don't do sleeping in! I think I could count on my hand how many times I have slept in past 9am and that is even as a teenager. Just can't do it. No idea what it was but after my sleep I felt much better and apart from the odd bout of tiredness I am fine now.
Lynx tracks. Two large paws at the front and two smaller
paws at the back. Lack of claws means it is not a dog or fox
I posted a picture of a possible lynx track the other week but we weren't sure if it really was a lynx or not. Now we are pretty certain it is a lynx and it is a regular visitor to our land. Its also probably male as our polytunnel ruins has a slight whiff of "Essence de Tomcat!". Down by our lowest pond are lots of very characteristic cat tracks and, as someone commented, the only other cat besides lynx with a similar gait and foot pattern is a leopard, and there are not many of those in Latvia, so we go with lynx. Funnily enough since the lynx tracks appeared we don't seem to have as many deer tracks, can't think why. Some of the tracks are quite incredible as there is a huge distance between each set of tracks. The lynx must have been on the run but what a colossal stride it has, certainly would not like to meet one on the run.
