Back home again!

This is the nearest I get to doing the garden these days.
Unearthing beets from clamps, well what was left of them
after the voles had noshed on them. Amazingly some leaves
were still green though under their bed of hay. I also
scattered wood ash and soot on the beds to help them melt.

I was back on the trail again with another trip into Riga when I started writing this blog. I went in on the bus from one of the big towns so that I didn't have to get up at the crack of dawn and spend all day wandering around Riga with not much to do. I did try to organise some meetings but they didn't work out and I don't do shopping if I can help it, so that wasn't an option. It also meant that Ian could get some supplies from a large DIY place and a small mini-greenhouse so we can start off seedlings in the big greenhouse. As I mentioned I was working on this blog while on the bus and so I wasn't taking much notice of the scenery, until one point when I suddenly realised that the landscape I was looking at had very little snow. It was quite shocking to have gone from a scene of white to one only speckled here and there. There were also lots of obviously rotten hay bales in the fields as they looked rather flat. The bad weather over the last year had not been good for them obviously.

This was stencilled on the wall of my hostel room, which
seems pretty relevant at the moment

This trip involved an overnight stop, as I wasn't able to catch a bus home after the event I attended. I booked into a hostel that was described as clean and had a good review. I was very pleasantly surprised. The owner gave me a brief introduction to the small hostel - I think there was only about five bedrooms with a small kitchen area. It was perfect and beautifully decorated. It was also blissfully quiet, despite being only a few minutes walk away from the train and bus stations. The owner and I also spent some time talking about Latvia and the problems of living in the countryside. It's always good to hear the perspectives of Latvians on the topic. I would definitely recommend the Green Cat hostel to anyone wanting an inexpensive stay in Riga,  especially as they have a kettle with tea and coffee available. That wins hands down over having breakfast available to me. Breakfast can be bought in easily, carrying a kettle around not so much.

Is it spring yet?

The meeting was interesting, especially as I have said for a long time that artists and storytellers are needed in development, only this was in the urban context. When artists move in is often one of the reasons that places become gentrified. The impact of artists is also something that would benefit rural areas, to open up the possibilities of what can be done. It often needs outside innovative ideas to stimulate the process, although it also has to be done with sensitivity to the people already there. It was good to hear of how these processes happen and maybe we can make that work in our village too. Maybe!

This young lady is starting to get noisy and demanding like
her mother. Not a good trait

It was also nice to be able to contribute to the discussions and draw out something from my observations of activists who I likened to spinning tops. They often spin so fast and are so busy that they run out of energy or they spin off in different directions. I suggested they needed time to reflect on what they had done to refocus on what they valued and that would help them regain energy and courage to carry on with a better focus on what is important. It is too easy to get engrossed in doing and forget what is important, sometimes it can't be helped but often it is unnecessary. I guess that is my advantage of being older than most of them there. One lady agreed with me and mentioned that focussing on values is always important.

Tracks in the snow

The good news this week is that the car is back on the road and functional. I had to go on the bus to collect it, so it is a good job that compared to some rural areas of Europe our bus services are okay, not perfect but fine for this sort of thing. The problem with the car was a stuck air inlet valve - at least that is what I understood and it appears to have been the problem for the last three years, because the usual issues that we have when the weather starts to warm up have also stopped. We also had a rattle that started after we got the car back of course, but that seems to have disappeared once Ian tightened up some wheel nuts. I am beginning to wonder if it is something to do with the extremes of temperatures we have here that seems to work some nuts loose, as Ian is not negligent when he works on our car. Well that and the dire state of our rural roads around here. Anyway, all is well and we are mobile again.

Chewing on life

This week has been a bit of a frustrating week from the point of view that I haven't been able to get on with much academic writing because I am waiting for replies and responses from others. I did at least get a reply from one supervisor about an abstract for a conference and he told me to just submit it, so that was easy. I must be getting the hang of throwing in the right words here and there to make it sound relevant to the discipline I am submitting the abstract too …. errr I mean I must be getting better at carefully crafting what I write these days. Whatever is happening, it is getting faster and easier to write abstracts for conferences.

It's a hard life

Another milestone this week was completing a job application for a large Christian charity. I don't expect to even get an interview really, but it was an interesting and helpful process personally. For one it got my CV up-to-date and helped me to understand the process of how to present, what after all, is a rather eclectic background to say the least. The other helpful aspect was to help me clarify what role my faith still plays in everything that I do. It is still important, even though it felt like I was wading through treacle last year. My faith shapes how I think and what I feel is important. It provides me with the motivation to do the most good that I can for the sake of others. That is not to belittle the inputs of others, but it is what motivates me the most. It was certainly an interesting and timely process to go through. Ideally, I would like to stay in academia, I love it, but I am finding it hard to find the right place because I haven't finished my PhD yet and until then I cannot apply for postdoc places. If that means me setting off in a new direction, well so be it. I know I can adapt and I love new challenges.

There are loads of these little creatures
crawling about on the snow now it is
beginning to melt. It is amazing how they
survive the winter. Mind you, they are in for
a shock as later on this week it is set to get
cold again and there might not be much snow
cover left to protect them.

We got to make a return visit to some folks who had been to see our alpacas previously, one is from the UK, his partner is Latvian but worked in the UK and then there was her brother. Well at least we did get the chance to visit once we found the place. Their Facebook page didn't help as the map only showed the village but they were miles outside of that. I rang and the lady sent me a map by text, but for some reason it first wanted to send us across the middle of a snowy field, so we decided to ignore that and go back to a road we had seen that seemed to take us in the general direction and hope the mapping software would work out a different route, which it did fortunately. Their house was in the middle of absolutely nowhere down a long forest track and was a very scenic route on a lovely cold, crisp, sunny day.

I attempted to ski again this week. The snow has been
melting though and the ski track was either rather slippy
for my liking and in random places the snow would give
way. After two rather slow circuits I gave up.

They now run a market garden, but of course apart from the greenhouse, which currently houses chickens for the winter, there was not much to see of their garden as it was under all the snow. We did get to meet their goats, sheep and geese and spend lots of time talking over wonderful soup, tea and cakes. We really enjoyed the warmth of the sunshine through the windows which overlooked their land. They are certainly an innovative and hardworking group and the nesting boxes for their chickens are designed to stop the chickens eating eggs. This is something that set Ian thinking for working out how to stop ours. Some of our hens are intermittent egg eaters but there are a few regulars who will be for the pot soon.

Chanel

Chanel has improved slightly this last week. I put some different cream on her legs, a natural Latvian recipe this time. It should certainly help the crustiness of the skin and has the added advantage of an antiseptic element to it, which is not in mine. Mine has a more anti-inflammatory and tissue healing type of action. Ian also gave her some more Ivermectin and will repeat that for a few weeks. Mari has also improved, but she usually doesn't require such aggressive intervention to heal her skin.

I sometimes put leftover bits of meat in a box
in the fridge for the cats and of course I label
the box, well sometimes! This label seems to
have landed in the right place. Sofie and Eyre
went for their vaccinations this week, they
weren't particularly thrilled to see the nice vet. 

I actually got some more felting done this week. I started on a bag, but it still needs quite a bit of work done on it. The fibres I used are not the best quality, but they should be fine for a bag. It is part of the process of working out what to do with fibres that are not so good for scarves and hats. I was trying to see if the fibres would felt properly or not, but it did end up as a bit of a cobweb bag which of course will not really do and so I shall have to work on it some more. I will also add some embroidery to it as well.

Freddie on his first walk outside the paddock

One of the features of our marriage is that we very, very rarely argue. However, we often sulk or just do not communicate well at times. I used to write a letter when I got really frustrated as it allowed me to write what was on my mind and then work on it to try and communicate without the anger. It was a good process to get things out in the open and yet not just say the first thing that came into my head, which would probably have just been hurtful. Anyway some things have been whirling around in my head just lately and so I thought I would go for the updated version of the letter, an email. This allowed me to also illustrate my point in what I hoped would be an amusing way. Unfortunately it kind of backfired and only ended up confusing Ian. The first problem was that he viewed the file only as a preview and did not actually open, the preview didn't show the amusing cartoon figure and then for some reason I had managed to send an incomplete file. Anyway when I asked if he had appreciated the cartoon I discovered the issue - it has now been rectified and we have laughed about it. So alls well that ends well.

Sunshine!

Yes really! That yellow ball of light is sunshine!

Yes! We really do have sunshine. Not only do we have sunshine we have had sunshine for the past two or three days, with blue skies too. Bliss! It does mean that it has got pretty noisy around here. Often it is so quiet you could hear a pin drop, but at the moment we hear chainsaws, strimmers and tractors as people get jobs done while the sun shines. We are no exception and Ian has added to the noise from time to time. Not to mention the 4x4 cars that kept going past all Saturday. We saw more cars in a day than we normally see in a month.

I got to feel George's coat this week and it is super soft. I'm
usually quite a good judge of fineness, so I'm hopeful that
his turns out to be a good fleece

We saw the first flock of geese heading south-west tonight though. In Latvia they say that the geese fly off two weeks before the first snow. I do hope this group have got it wrong. I know it is due to get colder and we have had snow in mid-October before but please not this year! Not yet!

Frederiks is such a cutie. His fleece doesn't feel quite so soft
but it is very dense, so probably still a very good fleece
producer

It has been, shall we say an entertaining week of sorts. On Tuesday I went into the village as normal as it is milk day (as is Friday). This means that unless I have dropped a bottle off earlier, I need to be in the village by 8am or thereabouts. It has become a bit of a bind this year and probably one we will not continue next year after we move back out to the caravan in spring. We will see if we can source the milk more locally or worse have to get supermarket milk. Not keen of the supermarket idea, so we hope our neighbour will supply us. We haven't wanted to change as we have had our milk delivered to us for near enough 10 years now from the same lady and when we are in the apartment delivery days are not an issue. Oh well! Times change and we have to adjust.

Glowing in the sunshine

A contemplative moment

Anyway, as I was saying I went in as normal and did the normal Tuesday type jobs, such as get a shower, do some washing, bake cakes and bread and bottled up some tomato sauce. I also did some sewing on my sewing machine. Not so normal though I ended up clearing what appeared to be a leak from our upstairs neighbours in our other apartment- fortunately not a big leak and one that had stopped, but as always a bit of a concern (we have had a few leaks from upstairs over the years). Also fortunately it had leaked onto the vinyl floor that is sealed so no worries about causing other issues and only needed mopping up. As I set off to go home that evening though I tried to start the car and it wouldn't fire up. It didn't sound good at all, so I phoned Ian. He managed to get a lift with one of our neighbours who was heading back into the village and they came to the conclusion there was an issue with the starter motor.

More contemplative moments and a spot of sunbathing 

Gathering on the few dandelions that have popped up 

Sigh! I was relieved though it happened this week and not next when Ian is due to go on his travels. Our friend who gave Ian a lift was kind enough to lend us his wife's car. She was going away anyway, so wouldn't need it for a few days. Unfortunately the car is just a two wheel drive car and our land was rather squelchy from all the rain. We managed to get the car on, but then got it stuck in a trench that Ian had made to divert water off the roadway. We resorted to pulling it out with the tractor and was able to park it where it wouldn't get stuck getting off the land. What a day.

We put in some barley to suppress the weeds. It is supposed
to be green manure over the winter too, but it has gone to
seed and looks healthier than any barley we have grown
in the fields. Typical it might even ripen too or not if it
snows

It still amuses me the balance of alpacas when they have an
itch to scratch

The next day Ian went to the garage to sort out getting our car repaired. The mechanic asked if we could tow the car with our friend's car, but it was not something we wanted to risk, so he got an old Fronterra and the mechanic and Ian went to collect our car from the village. After bump starting our car they got the car going and they both headed back to the garage (as Ian said, why didn't he think of that! Well it is not something that would have occurred to me either). Along the way though the Fronterra developed a fault and when Ian caught up with it, there were clouds of steam coming out from under the bonnet. Ian ended up towing the Fronterra back to the garage. Our car was fine until it stopped and then it wouldn't start, so not an issue to tow the car.

One bowl so of course the cat has to sit in it

If you go down to the woods today, you're
sure of a big surprise

That was a bit of a wasted day since it was a day without rain, but we still got the chance to get out and find mushrooms. We got a nice load of chanterelles but there weren't many other mushrooms we recognised as edible, enough for our evening meal and some to dry at least. The next day was wet again and during a discussion a few days previously we had decided on the next wet day we would have a brainstorming session. We decided to discuss what we want to see happen on our land and what our values and focus were. We were doing quite well and we were both reasonably happy and positive about the ideas when the phone went. Our car was ready! We decided to go straight away, so we could return our friend's car back as soon as possible and we also decided that since it was still rather wet, we would have a drink and cake at the bakery. End of brainstorming session!

Well that was a big surprise. It was huge.
Unfortunately also past its best

And as for these spiky little chaps

The next morning we woke to the rumble of thunder. It was quite weird as we could feel the caravan shake with each rumble. At one point we heard a crashing sound, a tree near our pond had come down. The weather cleared up after that so Ian went for a walk and found a few more trees had come down in the morning storm. I think the rain soaked ground and the buffeting wind had been just a bit too much. We managed to get some jobs done that day and so we didn't get back to the brainstorming session until the evening, by which time we were both a bit tired and cranky. That didn't go too well, but we still made progress. We decided that if we were going to make any progress our caravan had to have a permanent shelter and not one to move in and out each year. This would free up the greenhouse to make it more suitable for a workshop.

Really weird

You can see the stump of the tree in the middle of the photo.
It makes the place look a bit empty now, as it was the only tree
growing in a swampy area

The girls out in their extended area. 

Our land has beautiful rolling terrain and so trying to find flat places for buildings, even small ones, can be a bit of an issue. It took a morning of discussions to finally settle on a spot for the caravan and a method to house it that we think will work and won't require any special permission to build. It is also close enough to the greenhouse to run electric to. We also decided on where to put a barn. We had decided on an area before but realised that wouldn't work with the caravan. Such a palaver! If that goes there, then that can't go in that spot, but if we put that there... and so on! We are not sure if it will happen this year, as it depends on the weather when Ian gets back, especially with those geese flying over. The forecast is dry for now, so I guess it is unlikely to stay that way for much longer. We do at least have the wood to build it. The caravan has served us well, but it will not do so out in the sun and rain every year for six months of the year. It needs a cover and it definitely wouldn't last long in the winter weather, hence the need to move it into the greenhouse every year.

The finished fence

The last two days have been glorious and so we finally got the girls fence wired up. This is a huge area covering about half a hectare or just over an acre and the posts had been in since May. While Ian is away the girls can be just left to roam around in it during the day and I won't have to worry about moving fences. It also means we won't have to worry about visits from the boys. We nearly had an incident this morning. We were sat in the caravan having breakfast when Ian issued an expletive and said "Mr P's just walked past the caravan". I didn't compute what he said straight away but knew by the tone of his voice we had to move fast. We got outside to see Mr. P. heading up to see the girls, he had obviously missed them. Fortunately he knew where to go and wandered up to the gate where we eventually managed to catch him. There may have been some bribery involved and it wasn't quite that simple but we got him in the end in a relatively short time. Ian harnessed Mr. P up and walked him back to his own paddock where he was confined to calm himself down and forget about the girls.

The boys were really excited about all the extra space,
especially George. I'm not quite sure if Aggie wanted to join
in or was just exasperated with George for getting too close
at huge speeds. 

Our view at morning coffee yesterday. Mr. P. staring at the
girls, pining again

We are not quite sure how he managed to break the fence, but they will be getting a new area to graze tomorrow, as Ian was out putting up a new one this evening. The problem is that they exhaust the grass quite rapidly at this time of the year and have to be moved often to give the grass a break. At least with the girls behind their big fence we now have more spare poles to make the boys grazing area bigger and even if they get out, they can't easily get to the girls. Our only worry would be Veronica really as the others are almost certainly pregnant. Mind you, Veronica knows how to put up a fight when it comes to amorous males and she hasn't wanted any of that sort of thing. It is not something we want to risk though, she is too old and she is retired.

We'll have none of that carry on!

Not a good start to the year

Our magical forest

Winter has hung around this time and the snow has got quite deep, to the stage of making someone like me, with short legs, struggle to walk around in the fresh snow. That isn't too bad and I don't mind. In fact it can be quite fun and we had a lovely walk through a magical forest, which we almost have to pinch ourselves to think we own it. It was better than trying to get an article written for my studies anyway, which is progressing far too slowly.

Me and my short legs 😁

Aggie. Still with the mucky mark from her first course of
cream

Ian finally managed to get hold of some gunpowder in liquid this week, which a vet suggested we get and we started giving it to Aggie. This means I have to travel out with Ian to help him give her the medication. She seemed to calm down and didn't protest as much as she had with the cream. The gunpowder was to deal with any possible infection, but as we found out that doesn't appear to be the problem. On the one hand we are glad we did not go down the antibiotic route, as the problems caused to an animals system through inappropriate antibiotic use can make them worse, rather than better. I know that for myself, I really hate taking antibiotics now and they really do have to be a last resort. We think the gunpowder was actually helping the pain in her jaw though.

Remnants of raspberries

Aggie sitting in the doorway. The girls have stayed in most
of the time

The problem was that we had no idea what the issue was and so we got the vet to come from Jelgava, which is quite a distance and of course it was costly, compared to our normal vet charges. He is the only vet though in the country with a mobile x-ray machine. He is actually a horse vet normally but apparently horse vets quite often get asked to deal with alpacas. I guess it is the difference between treating an agricultural animal and one more used to being treated as a pet. The approach and handling I guess would be different, although I am quite happy for someone to put me right on that. Our vet also came on her day off to take a look at the x-rays and chat with the other vet about his thoughts on the problem.

Mari in contemplative mood

The lower bone has a section missing and the shadow
is a diffuse bone forming

One of the reasons for getting the vet to come is to try and increase our knowledge of issues with alpacas. If it had been a tooth problem we could have seen what the issue was. Also if it had been an infection, that would also have shown up. As we discovered though, it was none of those things. There was actually a gap in the jaw bone, as if she had been shot with a shotgun, was how the vet described it. The thing is though that there has never been an injury even remotely like that and we of course would have noticed something as drastic as that. Somehow the bone disintegrated and we do wonder if that explains a lot of scratching that we put down to a mite problem.

A cheery face with the obligatory straw

More of our magical forest

With the wonders of modern equipment and connectivity, the vet consulted with others and sent them the pictures of the x-rays. Unfortunately the general consensus appears to be osteosarcoma. This destroys bone and hence would explain the gap in the jaw. What is strange though is it also appears that the bone maybe repairing itself.

We stopped using one cream to tackle any possible infection, as it had the potential of irritating the skin and Aggie already has easily irritated skin, and we started using a cream I make up using comfrey and plantain. At least this is usually soothing.

The land takes on a different character in the deep snow, as
the normal vegetation is covered over in a deep soft
blanket

Ian of course has been busy cutting paths with the snow
blower

The thing is that comfrey also is called knitbone and there is a possibility it started the healing, but and it is a very big but, it would not be expected to act that fast, so we are not quite sure what the x-ray was really showing. The vet gave us some more comfrey but in liquid form and another drug, which I am not sure what it is, but is usually given for cancers in homeopathy. These are not low doses though, but all we can do is hope that as the vet put it, it whispers to the body  to start its own healing.

And keeping the area clear around the sides of the greenhouse
to reduce pressure on that increasingly fragile plastic

Our boundary walk

It is not easy for Ian at all, of course. We had already talked about not breeding from Aggie again because we were worried about genetic issues, such as a hyper-reactivity to mites. Her mother had a few issues with that herself and she died last January due to liver cancer. Aggie was also the first baby to be born on the farm. We had to bottle feed her at the beginning because her mother was not producing milk. Not the best start in the world. Whether this has had any affect on her, who knows. Bodies are both resilient and susceptible with a remarkable ability to heal and a remarkable capacity to go wrong too. We are just hoping and praying that the healing is happening already and any secondary problems do not happen.

Two cats taking advantage of the heat from the caravan

Hard to see who we are at the moment, at least in one
direction

Rather than finish on too unhappy a note, at least our car has been running again without any hitches. That could be due to the fact it hasn't been so intensely cold this week. We went to see some friends of ours early on in the week while the car was running and so it was good to be able to spend an evening chatting. The good news is that they got their car up and running too, as they also had issues with the cold affecting their car. Another good piece of news is we had our first visitors of the year, a young couple. The guy had been going past our farm on a regular basis and wondered what we were all about and so they decided to call in and see. It was nice to chat and a good job it was warmer than last week, still chilly but not as bad as it could have been. And finally our first felting course has three of the four places booked, so that is helpful. Still one more place though, so if you are thinking about joining us on this trip then please let us know soon

I love the bark on this tree, such a great texture

I needed some indoor clogs that would stop my feet getting
wet in the caravan. These were a pair of wellies that were
difficult to get on and off but I cut the tops away and they
make a rather snazzy pair of clogs - perfect

No one's visiting the outside loo, can't think why

400th post

I realise now I should have turned this around, it looks like
rather a large amount of potatoes and not much else. This is
Ian's plate and he needs the carbs. On the right though are
squash, carrot and mushroom burgers that tasted surprisingly
meaty, with a salad of mizuna, rocket, dandelion and lettuce
leaves, with fresh tomatoes (if you can call them fresh as they
were picked a few months ago, but they are storage type) and
the last fresh pepper.

Wow, not sure I ever thought I would make it this far, but I did. 400 posts and nearly 7 years worth of blogs. I have even managed to just about blog once a week, no matter where I was in the world. I can be very organised, or maybe I should say, I used to be very organised, but not very disciplined and never have been. I waver, I get bored, I think of a zillion other things to do and so I stop doing something, not because I planned to, but just because..... I also like short term projects, things I can get my teeth into and then move onto something else. I need new challenges to keep me going. That doesn't mean though I gad about and flit from one thing to another, after all I have been working towards a PhD for the last six years and that isn't possible if I flit around too much, but within that process I have found new challenges to keep me going and I do stick at something until its done if I have to. Aren't we all full of inconsistencies? Anyway I'm here and still going on the old blog.

The fire in the woodstore

Last week I posted this picture and someone on facebook asked "Why does Ian have a fire in the wood store?" Good point! It is not really necessary to have a fire in the wood store as the air circulation should dry out the wood. The reason for the stove though is to have a place to heat water for the animals in the winter. When it snows they often eat the snow and that is sometimes better for them as they don't get as wet trying to get water. Getting wet means a chance of freezing, whereas snow brushes off in very cold temperatures. Sometimes though, temperatures dip before the snow and we are left with frozen ponds and no way to get water easily for our animals. We then have to start bringing it from home and that is a lot of weight to cart up and down three flights of stairs. Our caravan does have electric and gas, but they cost, our wood is free to us, well apart from the petrol used in chopping down the trees with the chainsaw, so being able to heat water or melt ice using a woodstove makes sense for us. It will also give Ian an additional place to warm up, especially if the electric fails and it will also help dry the other wood out and herbs and beans in the autumn. So lots of positives for having heat in our wood store.

New wood cut and stacked to complete the walls. Shame
the chimney is outside for now. Improvements I am sure
will be made in the future

Aggie's (aka Agnese) our little baby alpaca or cria, as I should really call her, has learnt a new party trick besides escaping the fence on a regular basis. She can eat a whole apple from Ian's hand. Not in one go mind, but bite by bite as he turns it around for her. It is quite cute really and she prefers to eat it from Ian's hands than the chunks he cuts up for her. The ladies are fine with eating the chunks though. Ian is supplementing their feed more and more, as the grass nutrition will be declining as the year goes on. It is still quite green as the frosts have still not returned, but the number of daylight hours has declined and it is often dull and miserable. We are surprised that some of the chickens are still laying occasionally, even one of old ladies.

There is a door in there somewhere. Helps if you are short
like me. You can see how dull a day it has been, with the
flash reflecting off the tarp

I said the daylight hours is declining and we found out this week what is worse than waking up in the dark, it is waking up in the dark without electricity. No porridge for me then, as I usually use the microwave. No tea until we went out to the land, where at least the electric was on. The radiators were also cold with no pump, but fortunately it is still mild and we are used to cool mornings. There was also no internet to keep us in touch with the outside world - although maybe that is a good thing. Using the loo in the morning was also done by candlelight, since we have a toilet without a window - good job we have emergency lighting on hand in there just in case of being plunged into darkness at an inopportune moment.

Bottle carrots and home-made bread. All the small carrots
won't last long without some kind of processing and so
to save freezer space I bottled these ones.

My trips out to the land are not so frequent now either and very weather dependent. I look at the weather for the weekend and decide which day to go and if none of them look promising I might take a Friday off or a Monday. I am so pleased I don't have a regular 9-5 job for that reason. This week though the forecast let me down. I went out to the land on a Saturday expecting nice weather and it rained, the following day was lovely and I was stuck inside prepping carrots for storage. Still I managed to get the beetroot picked that had been under fleece. Due to the weird weather this year though, some were still quite small but there was still a whole large crateful of beetroot that were a decent size to pack away (it is layered with sawdust so not maybe as many as you might imagine at this point). The rest the sheep can eat when they get put into their winter quarters, which at the rate the grass is disappearing, might not be long.

The rest of the week was spent reading academic papers and writing up Sociology lessons. All this was made possible because last week I found a desk under a pile of papers - in other words I managed to tidy up and find some space to work. I do work much better at a desk, even though the chair is too high and I have to sit with my feet up on a little stool. One day I may get a chair that will be easier to cope with the height and a desk that moves up and down, so I can stand or sit at the desk.

Ian has been fixing up shelves and sorting out his table
where he prepares the food for the alpacas. His chopping
block is the triangular piece of wood and the knife is tucked
in behind. The roll of paper is supported on a thick piece
of electrical cable - because that is what was lying around

Ian went back into Jekabpils this week to take the car back for the timing belt to be changed. The glow plugs were also changed to make sure the car starts on those cold mornings and with our record for having work done just before a cold snap, we wonder what the weather will hold for the next month. The fuel filter was put in for free after being given the wrong one last week and a few other bits and bobs that go along with major service on the car were also done. All in all the total was €600 and Ian got the car back for 2pm. If you say it quickly it doesn't sound toooooo bad, does it?

Mild chilli peppers, basil with a rogue tomato plant in it

and a cowberry plant that was rescued before the alpacas

were put to graze around the current bushes. The cowberry

plant has never really thrived where it was put and we don't

think it would have survived the onslaught of the alpacas.

The car being ready for 2pm wouldn't have been so bad, but Ian had rung me earlier in the day to say it might not be finished in time and so could I go out to the land to put the animals away, as he might not be back on time. Sure, so I took the 1:50pm bus, as that was the only one that would get me there before dark at 4:30pm, in the rain. I got dropped off at the stop I knew to ask for and then realised that perhaps I would have been better to get the name of the next stop as it would be nearer and I could possibly get the driver to stop where I wanted me to. So I had a soggy walk to the land, and coming over the hill I nearly freaked the alpaca girls out, but fortunately they eventually realised who I was and I tried chatting to them to reassure them. I did wonder how frightening their look of intense curiosity would be to a stranger though, especially when Estelle started moving forward. At least I knew her stance was not aggressive, just curious. Ian rang just as I got off the bus to say the car was ready and he would be back in time, so I didn't need to go out there after all.

As a blogger there are always things that you write about and then somethings that do not appear in the blog, because it would not be good and is private. No one wants to mention the ins and outs of relationships in detail, although I might mention a few things to keep things real. I have also mentioned some things about neighbours, but I do not identify who they are or where I am exactly. I live in rural Latvia and that's enough for anyone to know on this blog. I might mention things in vague terms where there has been a problem, but again there is always that check, should I or shouldn't I. Well I thought I would share this incident. It did kind of shake me up a bit and worries me. I went to talk to a neighbour yesterday and inadvertently ended up in the middle of a row of which I understood very little, but what I did understand was that there was a real danger someone was going to get hit if I didn't stay and somehow intervene. At one point I physically stood between a gentleman and a child on a swing, rather than allow him to make the child get off. Like I said, I could not follow the argument but one thing was sure, the children were not going to be hurt in the process nor was I going to stand by and watch physical contact occur between adults. I even gently took the elbow of one of the women involved to stop her kind of fighting with the other woman over holding the swing that another child was on. They knew enough english for me to be able to express my concern about the children and they tried to argue back, but they could not really explain as there english was not good enough. I think that was a blessing as I could not then be drawn into the argument and without physically hitting me, nothing was going to make me move or allow them to force the children of the swings. After much verbal stuff and accusations of someone's mental state, the man and woman walked off. I spent the rest of the day wondering what on earth is feeding this hatred. It is stupid to make children pay for the arguments between parents.