Weirdness continues

It snowed

Well we follow a weird year with a.... another weird year. It has only just begun and we all watched with astonishment as people invaded the capitol building in Washington DC. I'm not quite sure what was the more shocking, that people actually desecrated what is considered a sacred space for American democracy or the fact that they didn't seem prepared for that to happen. For me it was the latter. I'm even more shocked when I hear of people who still believe Trump is actually good at heart and this was not his fault. I don't get the impression he cares one bit. All he seems to care about is that people think he's wonderful no matter how much he disregards their well-being. It was a relief to read an article by Ed Stetzer (dean and professor at Wheaton College and a leader at the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center) that suggests the leaders of the evangelical church need to take a long, hard look at the whole episode and consider what sort of repentance is needed to have followed Trump so gullibly. Character does matter!

Ginger Tom is obviously into ice-lollies. 

Snow outside the apartment. 

The weird year also continues with lockdowns and rising Covid numbers in much of Europe. We have had our weekend curfew nights extended here in Latvia until the end of the month and the hospitals are struggling to cope. My heart was torn by one medic friend of mine who posted a notice to show that staff were being called into a hospital in Northern Ireland to deal with an emergency situation and bluntly said, forget your conspiracy theories, wash your hands and stay home, your actions are killing people. What drives a kind and caring young medic to say such things so bluntly? Another friend of mine is a nurse in an ICU and she told me how sad it is to see so many just gasping for air. These friends of mine are not heroes they are just ordinary people but doing extraordinary things.

Brencis does like to sit in the doorway, rain or shine
or in this case snow.

After a day of fine snow with more to come
over the next few days.

Heroes are expected to do super-human things but these folks are not super-human. They would be the first to admit to being flawed human beings like the rest of us. Someone to look up to but not idolise. So I won't call them heroes because that does them a massive disservice. It puts them on a pedestal that is easy to fall off because they do get angry or irritable with people from time to time, like we all do. They don't need us to clap them, they just need us to do the extraordinary thing of staying home until this situation can be got under control, so that they can continue to do the extraordinary things of caring for whoever comes through the door, whether they believe that Covid19 is a real threat or not, whether they wore a mask or not, whether they agree to take the vaccine or not. 

We hear of many alpacas that would choose to 
stay outside no matter what the weather. Our lazy
lot choose to stay inside. Sensible, I agree, but
there isn't much to do except eat hay inside and 
put weight on.

Frosted patterns on the greenhouse plastic. 
Nature is quite an artist!

I've not been out to the land recently. I've been home still sorting through stuff. I finally got around to actually doing some sewing and that was chugging along nicely until my sewing machine snagged and then it kept on snagging. I was beginning to wish I had never bought the super-duper all singing, all dancing quilting machine - okay it's not that grand but it is still a bit grander than your cheap and cheerful machine. I've had issues of it snagging so easily, which has driven me mad. It doesn't like old thread because it's too fluffy apparently - but that would be such a waste and besides this is a quilting machine, it's supposed to be used for making quilts from old fabrics isn't it? So old thread shouldn't be an issue? I walked away from it and pottered around the house. I sorted out half a bag of potatoes for a friend since we have so many and then looked up the issue on the internet. 

We have a few options for clearing
snow

A good job really

There's been quite a bit of drifting and so the 
snow is building up in places

I found a video that described the steps to sorting out a jammed machine. Half of it seemed a bit over the top, but I followed the steps and the last part involved changing the sewing machine needle. It was at this point that I remembered that changing the needle should be the first thing you try. Doh! So now I've ordered a lot of needles so that I can make those lovely patchwork dresses for my grandkids that I mentioned last week and not jam my machine. After sorting out the machine, I finally managed to finish the seams on some t-shirts that were too big for me. I need some new t-shirts ready for next year and many of mine have now got holes in them. 

Pathways get difficult to see 

It's a good job that the ground was still soft so
that Ian can put the electric posts in. The wire
is not electrified but works on the principle
that deer have poor depth vision. They are
happy to jump high but not cross two wires. This
is to stop them chewing the bark on the fruit
trees.

This week has been a week of breaking things and it makes me so nervous with my new computer. Every time I close it I check and double check that nothing, absolutely nothing is in the way. At least the sewing machine wasn't really broken but I had a few hours of thinking it was. Unfortunately for Ian the camera that is supposed to work with his microscope really is broken. This was another of those bits of kit we wonder if we made a mistake in buying. He already had to have the camera replaced shortly after he got the microscope and he hasn't had much use out of it. He has a windows computer from our son-in-law specifically to work with the camera. Normally he doesn't need it because he can see that there are only a few parasite eggs in our alpaca poo samples, but just occasionally there is something on the slide that he can't identify. The idea is that he takes a photo of it and sends it to the lady who taught him the techniques for doing parasite testing on alpacas, only now he can't and we really need to know what it is that he has seen. This episode did at least lead to a solution and Ian found he could use the camera on his phone to take a photo down the eyepiece. Phew!

There is a roadway there somewhere, down to the
barn.

This was taken in mid-December but you can see
the problem with her legs to some extent. They
also bend inwards making it difficult to walk.
You can also see on our Facebook page in this
video (link here)

The test he was doing was on a sample from Veronica or Lady V. Just recently her health has been suffering. She is pretty hungry, losing weight and her legs are getting more and more bent. It could be parasites, it could be her teeth that are often a problem in old alpacas or it could be rickets despite the Vitamin D injections. Ian has set up a hoist to help him get her up every morning, because I'm not out there in winter time. Once she's up, she's fine and stays up for quite a long time. Unfortunately, this is not a good time of the year for an alpaca to be down. It snowed most of today and will continue on and off , but mainly on for another day, before the temperature takes quite a dip to around -18C. We were nervous of the repercussions for her over winter with her bad legs already before she started losing weight. Oh the joys of owning geriatric alpacas, she is 17 1/2 now, not the oldest alpaca we've had but still getting on a bit.

George is such a handsome chap

A little snow on George's ear

Eyre is such a grumpy looking cat. She's actually
quite grumpy by nature too. She's taken to 
following Ian around the farm and now even
she is not as afraid of the alpacas. 

To add to the frustrations, Ian has been struggling with adding his photos to my old computer. I just copied them across when I upgraded to that machine, but Ian has lots of additional information he wants to copy across too and it won't do it automatically. As you know his photos are precious and it is generally his photos that I use in this blog. He spends ages labelling them all so that he can easily find photos in the future. He finally found some software that would do the conversion from one version of Apple's photo storage software to another, which involved having to leave the computer plugged in for three days. It was tense. His frustrations were added to when he managed to drop a 2 litre glass jar of milk outside the door of the apartment. Not good on a freezing cold and snowy day. It's a bit hard to see shards of broken glass in the light of a head torch against the snow in a pool of milk. Sigh! I guess that's partly the problem of being ecological and reusing glass jars to buy milk from one of our neighbours instead of buying plastic bottles from the supermarket.

The boys' paddock is there somewhere

At least the snow will anchor the plastic down 
over the bales. 

Still, there is no crying over spilt milk as they say. There are more important issues in this world and our troubles are small compared to others'. It is weird though how it is the small and insignificant things that can take on massive proportions in a time of chaos and uncertainty. It is too easy to get angry and annoyed over the slightest thing when there are more important things to get angry about. At least I think we are beginning to find a bit of balance, may be it's the vitamin D, or the fish oil tablets making a difference. Funny how Ian usually begins to start whistling after taking fish oil tablets when he has had a period without them. Not quite sure what the effect is, but they seem to affect his mood in a good way.

We are starting to get eggs again. We have really
appreciated the eggs this year, much better than 
the eggs you can normally buy.

The chicks have adjusted well to their new ark

They are growing well

Who are you looking at?

We were worried about the cold for the chicks
and we still have the cold temperatures to come, 
but I think there is quite a bit of insulation now.
When we bought this greenhouse we bought
the one that would take the biggest snowloads. 
Looks like that might have been a wise choice.

Snow has been building around the shed
too.

RIP Alicia

Alicia

Well after coaxing Alicia to stand for a couple of weeks, Ian came home one morning and said, "she won't stand at all. Can you come out and help me?" I went out with him and we tried to get her moving, we tried rubbing her legs to stimulate the circulation, in case they had gone to sleep by sitting too long, but she was having none of it. Ian at this point decided, enough was enough and we called round to see the vet. We opted to have her put down the following day, as Alicia didn't seem particularly distressed and she wasn't making a lot of noise calling to the others, as they do when they are bothered about sitting on their own. The vet came the next day and I noticed that Alicia seemed to have ballooned up, so something was going on. Ian held her head in his arms while the vet found a vein and while the injection took effect. She passed away peacefully. We then had to carry her out to the tractor to transport her to our barn for an autopsy. Not exactly the most elegant of transportation, but needs must. We found out the reason for her ballooning up anyway, it was fluid collecting in her abdomen and it contained a lot of protein that would suggest liver failure, but her liver looked fine. On reading up on the internet afterwards, we are inclined to think it was heart failure. The vet thought her heart looked big, but she wasn't sure how big an alpaca heart should be. She is now buried up in the corner of one of our fields, it wasn't the most pleasant of jobs, as it was difficult to do it gently, but we figured she was past caring.

Alicia's corner. A nice restful place

Veronica hogging the water bucket

Of course Ian found it hard, she was a lovely alpaca who would stand a bit of molly coddling and they had been through a lot together, what with the baby she gave birth to in the coldest of months and then the lung infections - or at least that's what we thought might be the case. Maybe it was her heart all along, making it difficult to breathe at times. I don't know, I'm not a vet, I'm a pharmacologist or at least was back in my younger days. Today, though Ian is thankful we did what we did, it has been so hot and if she couldn't stand, she wouldn't have been able to reach the water bucket. She was also our only black alpaca and as such would have absorbed a lot of heat. Our two pregnant alpacas have been suffering in the heat, one takes her place by the water bucket, continually sipping out of it and won't let the others near. I'm off tomorrow to get extra buckets. They won't even go out much to eat the grass that is finally growing, they just sit inside their shed eating the hay, out of the sun. I had a bit of a brainwave this morning and suggested to Ian that he moves their fence to incorporate the trees and so they can sit out under those. It is nearer to the boys paddock and a bit of a stretch for the fence from the girls, but they take priority at the moment. They get the afternoon shade too, as they are nearer the trees, good in summer but colder in winter. You can tell how hot it must have been, it is 9 o'clock at night here and still 24C out on the balcony. This is May isn't it?

Well why go out in the hot sun, when food is right out
the door?

They do eat the grass sometimes

It wasn't much use attempting to shear the alpacas at the beginning of the week, they had been spending their days out in the rain getting soaked. Inside when it was dry and out when it was wet. We can't shear the girls, until after they have given birth and now we are beginning to wonder if the sooner they are mated the better for next year (Alpacas have 11 1/2 month pregnancies). The earlier they can have babies the better we think, it might be easier to keep babies warm, than to keep them cool in a heatwave and May can get quite warm. If the alpacas are born later on in the year, the alpaca cria (babies) might not be big enough for the winter to keep warm. A delicate balancing act for sure.  Whilst I'm on about shearing, most people guessed that the mystery object was a pair of shears, but they have been modified with a wooden block. Last year, shearing was a bit of a headache and took absolutely ages and so Ian has been doing some investigating and noticed that there was a special attachment for alpacas that gave a longer cut that cost a huge amount of money and so Ian experimented to see if the wood block might work. If it does work it might be a good idea for when the biting insects start and also may make shearing easier. We tried it out on Alicia, just before the autopsy, one for a reminder of her and two to make the autopsy easier. It seemed to work well, so we hope when we get around to the boys that it will work as well.

Wandering chicken

We are not coming out

We have wondered if our boys are too warm and that is why they have been sitting around the hay feeder, but now we are beginning to suspect that they are just being lazy. The girls we can appreciate not wanting to go out, they have less shade available, but the boys! Ian decided not to fill up their hay feeder and make them go out on the grass. Today though, they sat inside, there is still hay in their shed, as their bedding is made up of hay. Might have to take more drastic action and make them go out in the mornings when it is cooler.

Gorgeous place to be

Ian's hard work, preparing the ground for other crops

There has been some niggly little things happen this week, which only added to the general feeling of misery at the beginning of the week. I broke my crock pot when some weights slid off and hit the bottom of the pot from some dandelions I had cooked and was pressing the juice out. We made dandelion syrup last year and loved it, so we thought we might do the same again this year. It was the merest of cracks and at first I thought it was just chipped, but no, the crack went through. So now we have a planter for outside the caravan and the electrical part will have to be binned at some suitable site when we go to the big town. The breadmaker broke too. Ian thought he might have managed to fix it, but it didn't work, unfortunately. All it needs is a new copper bearing apparently, the rest is working fine. Pah! The part doesn't seem to be available either. Double Pah!

None the worse for his swim

Another cockerel tried to go for a swim again this week, this time chased by the dominant cockerel and not us. They are obviously mistaking the grass growing in the pond as walkable on. Wrong! We have been discussing what to do with the chickens. Someone is interested in buying some off us, so that might help, but they are still wandering near and far. We even discussed things like having a kite with a hawk shape on it, but then it isn't always windy near us. We jokingly thought a drone hawk might be a good idea, flying it every now and again to make them go in. Probably freak out the alpacas too. At least we have sorted out the errant cockerel that wouldn't go in at night, Ian caught him and we put him in the horse box to wait for the culling of two of our cockerels in one of the arks and then he can go in there with his own set of ladies. Rather curbing his freedom, somewhat, but we hope the company makes up for it.

His wandering days are over though.
Next stop one of the arks with some
new lady friends

The oak tree looking good.

Another reason for curbing the dear chaps freedom was the rude awakening at 4:50am the night we decided to stay in the caravan. He decided to cock-a-doodle-do right outside, not a good move. It did mean we were up and moving around quite early that morning. I think we were in the garden before 8am, which was nice since it was quite hot later, in fact so hot we decided to have a snooze in the afternoon - how Mediterranean! This time the other cockerel decided to pay a visit to the greenhouse and started crowing whilst he was in there, I was awake and up running outside in my stockinged feet to chase the blighter out. Fortunately I don't think he damaged anything, since our tomatoes were all planted out. Not a good day, awoken twice by cockerels. We still ponder our decisions about how to deal with them. I think tomorrow there needs to be decisive action.  The drier weather at least has also meant chance to get things in the garden and we have planted out a lot of kale plants (hope they are going to be all right though as the sky has gone a really weird orange as I write this blog, I think a storm is imminent), I planted out more beans, some fodder beet and done lots of weeding, before they really take off. I even managed to tidy up my herb bed and made it look neat and tidy again.

It did rain too earlier on in the week though

At least a nice rainbow to make up for it

Sofie our cat has gone missing again. Why she goes on these little jaunts we have no idea. We do wonder if it is something to do with either the ticks or the tick medicine. She had that two days before she went missing. She does seem to make an annual event of this, maybe she is just away on her holidays. She could send a card though and then we would know where she is. The longest she has been away is six days, so hopefully she will be back soon.

After the rain, the sunshine, so plenty of
solars for our solar drier. Drying some
sage.

A rather handsome chap don't you think? Not sure if it is
harmful or not though.

It hasn't all been bad news this week. Our daughter and husband sold their house this week in Australia, all preparation for coming back to the UK. Our youngest finally got a job this week, so relief all round. It should be quite stretching for him as it is a design engineer job, so he needs to learn some more about engineering principles of design, he knows some but his degree was more design based. But after nearly a year out of work, after finishing his degree, it was getting really worrying for him and he was understandably quite despondent. All credit to him, he kept plugging away looking for jobs though.

The dandelions look absolutely gorgeous. Pity we don't
want this many though. We want grass. Ian is holding
off cutting them, because they still turn into seed anyway
after cutting. We are gritting our teeth and letting the grass
grow, as that way they will shade out the sun loving
dandelions. Or at least that's the theory

Barley take two! The stuff we planted before winter died
so we are trying again with a spring one and also the
seed we had last year. Maybe it was spring barley too, it
grew faster than the one we know was spring barley.
Oh well! It will make forage whatever happens.

My studies over the last few weeks have been about making maps with people or for people. It has been an interesting exercise, but something struck me as I read yet another paper that either didn't meet the true participatory ideal, i.e. including at least a representation from all sectors of society that feel the effects of decisions, or are part of the decision making process or bemoaned the fact mapmaking by the authorities wasn't truly participatory, that instead of saying "it isn't happening" type of thing, we should be saying "so how can we make it happen? What needs to change?"I think there are a few things in life that we could add that kind of thinking too and not just in the wishful thinking category, but seriously applying our noggins to the issue (for my friends who might struggle with Google translate for noggin, it is a word sometimes used for head, or brain). Identifying the problem is one thing, but instead of getting stuck there, we should be working towards making it happen and often that means really examining what is done and looking for issues, but also trying to think outside the box. Unfortunately politicians aren't very good at thinking outside the box these days. Sometimes that's a good thing and sometimes its not. Nowadays though, we need some real creative thinkers to generate some alternative outcomes for our planet - otherwise, one way or another we are in trouble.

Apple blossom time! Taken with my new camera

This evenings rather ominous looking sky

Now what did we do exactly?

The view from our new house perhaps? The sun glinting
through the autumnal looking aspen trees.

Ian and I were reflecting over the week on Sunday and we were having trouble remembering what we had done, apart from the highlight of the week a belated Jubilee party, there was little else of note really, just more general tasks and more harvesting; oh yes! and the addition of another piece of equipment to our repertoire. Could be a short post then, unless I get into the flow of something.

Our Jubilee package

Some of you maybe wondering why we had a belated Jubilee party! It wasn't going to be, it was just going to be a meal round at friends. I had organised to cook, but take it round to their house as it was easier for their two children to keep to their normal routine and yet still fit in around our routine of putting the animals away. Life can be complicated sometimes over the simplest of things. Anyway that morning a parcel arrived from our son with Ian's belated birthday present from him and one from me, plus a few extras such as union jack paper plates, union jack flags, union jack cups and some masks of the Queen and Prince Phillip. As one of our friends is British too, we thought it was the ideal opportunity to have a British meal, cottage pie followed by apple crumble and custard with some British tableware. It added a bit of fun to the proceedings.

Maybe the view from the rear of our house?

Others maybe wondering what more equipment could we possibly need? I wonder the same thing at times, but as we work on the land, we find there are different needs. One of our problems is cutting down grass in areas where it has been neglected, as it often means we have a lot of grass that just sits in clumps and doesn't rot down very well, either that or we have to spend time collecting it. We want to improve these areas so that they are producing good quality hay again, but that means either ploughing and reseeding, where we would lose the special qualities of the local mix of grasses and could end up with a problem of soil erosion or we keep cutting the grass back and clearing it. Well now we have another alternative of a mulching mower, only this isn't your normal lawnmower or even a sit on and ride model - neither of which would be suitable because of the size and topography of the land, this is one that fits onto our two wheel tractor and weighs in at 94kg. The first runs with this colossal machine had Ian exhausted, but he realised eventually that the quick release mechanism which acts as an extension was altering the angle of the machine and making it more difficult. Raising the wheels a bit also made for a much faster and easier run. Ian is now happier that the machine will do what he needs to keep the ground elder down and encourage more grass growth, as well as tackling places where it is not feasible to use the tractor.

Meet the Blade Runner!
Before

After! Might not look much, but that
is long tough grass and not the sort of job
to tackle with a normal lawnmower

Serious lawnmowing. You can see where he has been by
the stripes. 

This week someone made the comment that Ian and I are deep thinkers, this isn't the first time someone has said that, but it always comes with a bit of a jolt to me. I thought that thinking through ideas and projects was what you are supposed to do, especially in our walk with God. I realise that many people get busy and don't have much time, but the bible encourages us to think and meditate on God's word, that doesn't just mean the bible, but his words to us during our lifetime. When I look back we have accomplished a lot, we have made quite a few significant life-changing decisions and yet we don't pack into a week what some folks do. It is amazing that it is possible that you can be so busy doing things that you don't actually do anything significant. Living in rural Latvia means we can live life at a slower pace, we don't have a whole list of activities that we join in, but we interact with people, we watch so that we can learn from the cultural clues and we get on and do what we need to do on the land and in the garden. Nothing too demanding, but it does give us time to think. We have busy times of course, that comes with the rhythm of what we do, our work is governed by the seasons, our busy times governed by the weather. If it isn't raining then there are always jobs that need doing outside and if it rains, well then it is a quiet day or an opportunity to work in the greenhouse, the barn or on our home. Winter is a true time for relaxing, when jobs on the land are few and far between, unless it snows a lot of course. Winter is also a time to reassess, to think through the year that's been and reflect on what we could have done differently and to plan for the year ahead. Well that's the theory anyway and on the whole, that has been the pattern of our life for the past four years, weddings notwithstanding.

I was messing around with a picture of me
when I was a baby for the student café that
I monitor. They probably already think I'm
ancient and so I gave it a sepia tint - have to
confess, it would have been black and white
otherwise. Not that young then!

On the more mundane side of things in our life this week, the carrots have now all been harvested, we have three crates of carrots, so that should see us through the winter. It is very different to last year when the carrots were okay but we had an abundance of pumpkins, this year I have a reasonable amount of broccoli harvested and it is still coming, enough beans and plenty of carrots and onions, but few pumpkins. Ian will be disappointed that I won't have enough pumpkins to do spiced pumpkin for his breakfast in the late winter this year. I also had a bit of a disaster today, my blender broke. Big deal? Yes it is! I use it such a lot and so it means we are going to have to go out and buy another one, otherwise I will have to work out another way of blending the tomatoes to a pulp and that will involve more washing up and since my dishwasher (Ian) hasn't been so efficient until yesterday when I commented I might have to trade it in for a newer model, that is not a good idea. The dishwasher, aka Ian is currently trying to fix the broken shower that has flooded the shower room floor - not a happy lad is he! It was working fine before when I used it last, late this afternoon, but I must have done something to start it leaking. Oh joy of joys! I need a shower soon, hope it gets fixed. There does seem to be much muttering and the words "why can't they make things properly these days?" was uttered more than once. (Update: It's fixed but he has resorted to drink, and he is sat with a bottle of beer - don't worry it is not every day he does this!)