Been and gone!

Grey days but plenty of brightly coloured trees

Ian arrived back late on Wednesday night and I picked him up from the airport. The animals didn't give me any more issues, well not that I was aware of at the time, apart from noticing that one of our sheep was limping one day. It did rain a lot on the Tuesday so I made sure that Ian's wellies were in the car when I went to pick him up, our land is just so muddy it is unbelievable. The rain meant that there were lots of jobs to do on the Wednesday before I set off to pick Ian up, like emptying drain holes from alpaca houses and putting in fresh hay because they had been in all day chomping on hay and weeing a lot. I think we will have to tackle the drainage around the alpaca houses, as it is obviously a problem in these wet years.

A little light reading for Ian on his course

Our son is a bike mechanic and so keen to get his children
riding bikes. His daughter finally cracked the balance bike
this week

The next day we went for a walk around to see what I had been doing and to check on the animals. The sheep which had been limping the other day, fortunately seemed to have recovered but we then found out that one of the lambs was on the opposite side of the fence to the other sheep. We tried to get her back in through the gate and she nearly did a few times but in the end decided to try and jump the fence and bust an electric post in the process. Sigh! At least Ian had spare poles handy nearby for just such eventualities. We didn't have long before I had to set off for Riga though on the bus as I was attending a conference on Alternative Food Networks on the Friday and Saturday, which meant staying overnight in a hotel.

My son and daughter with some of their children

A serious face!

I managed to find a hotel, the Mosaic Hotel, in the centre of Riga that was quite cheap, relatively speaking. It was also clean, comfortable and above all, quiet. Well it was quiet from the point of view that there was no traffic noise that I could hear, but there was the steady drip of rain on metal windowsills. It also had tea and coffee facilities in a common room, which was a bonus. It was more of a hostel than hotel really, but that was fine with me. I actually prefer that for the extra food making facilities they have.

But he's not often so serious!

Our little school boy looking rather grown up

The conference was very good, as we were looking at issues related to the perceptions of post-Soviet countries. In the academic literature growing vegetables in the West is often viewed as an enjoyable hobby, or a reaction to consumerism etc. but then portrays it as a reaction to poverty in the post-Soviet countries. The same with sharing that produce, it is considered as altruism in the West and merely supplementing meagre incomes in post-Soviet countries. The reality is different. Gardening is a much loved activity with healthy food and taste being the main motivators. Sharing food and finding ways to get food from what is considered more natural sources are all important. In fact I think the post-Soviet countries are often ahead in this respect because they have not lost the knowledge of gardening and often maintain contacts with rural farms through friend and family networks and so can obtain food directly from farms much more easily.

Zipping along

Not to be outdone!

The waistcoats I made from old
denim jeans and lined with alpaca
fleece for warmth fitted - just. It's
a good job they have someone to
pass them onto

My presentation went down well, which was nice as I hadn't planned on doing one at first. I had a small survey of allotment gardening in Latvia but didn't think I had enough respondents to put something together until I chatted with the guy who had given me his set of questions for the survey that he had used in Czechia and Poland. He really encouraged me to go forward with what I had and I must admit as I analysed it more carefully for the presentation I realised what a wealth of information there was. What surprised me more than anything was the fact that people took the time to write more detailed comments after the general questions. They really wanted me to know how much they valued the growing and sharing of food. It was important to them and an act of kindness that they enjoyed. I also added some personal observations from living in Latvia and this was appreciated by the Latvians there. They told me it was nice for them to hear an outsider appreciate an important aspect of their culture.

I think Ian captured this shot beautifully. She's a lovely
handful 

The new - well new to us - spinning wheel

Ian came to pick me up after the conference as that meant I could stay until the end but also it meant that we could pick up a spinning wheel that someone was giving us. It belonged to her family but was not being used and so she offered it to us. Ian has been working on it today as it was another drizzly day. Although it has obviously some signs of age and woodworm (not active we think) he was able to get it running smoothly. He hasn't tried it with any fleece yet as it still needs a bit more cleaning and the metalwork needs polishing up, but we think it might still work well.

A little woodworm artwork

The youngest grandchild (for the moment) who I saw earlier in
the year when I went to help our daughter with her older two.
Apparently he's a smiler

We have had some nice days and yesterday was one of them. It was a kind of pottering about on the farm day and we were having a relaxed lunch when Ian got a phone call. One of our neighbours had got his car stuck, could we help. We went round in our car and tried and then managed to get our car stuck in the process. Ian had to walk back and get the tractor to first pull out our car and then the other car. It was a good job he had a long winch cable because it meant he could pull the other car out from a nice dry section. We came away with a bag of apples and two lots of Michaelmas Daisies, a purple variety and a wine pink variety. Now what was I saying about the joy of sharing? We were told we could go back and collect more apples if we wanted to because they wouldn't be able to get back soon to collect more. That's actually quite handy as we haven't had many apples on our own trees. We got to do our own sharing today, another neighbour came to borrow our chipper. Seems only fair!

Oh he is a mucky kid! It's hard to believe that Brencis is
our youngest alpaca as he is probably the biggest now.
Fortunately he is also the most docile and submissive of
them all. That is one reason he is so mucky as one of the
others managed to sit on him in the mud.

I love the colours of the autumn leaves. This is a grape leaf

Well to finish off with I thought I would share the news about the grandchildren. Two of them started school this year and one has got "star of the week" and the other one gone up a reading group; they are obviously settling in well. The other piece of news is that we are expecting grandchild number eight next year. So I hope to make a trip over to see the new one next year and that is on top of seeing grandchild number seven at Christmas time.

Our greenhouse gradually emptying

The bacon's in the cat and other tales

Sofie earlier on this year in the greenhouse

Oh yes! Sneaky puss! It took me ages to work out why there was no bacon in the bag that I had brought for our lunch. I thought for a while that I must have been having a senior moment. If it had been our other cat Bella, the evidence would have been all over the floor, but not Sofie. Since Bella is still missing it could only have been Sofie. She is so sneaky that she gently takes the food out of bags and so the only evidence was an empty bag inside another larger plastic bag. Unfortunately it meant our guests over the weekend had to have an egg and veggie burger instead. At least for one of them that was fine, as she is vegetarian.

January 3rd and our snow has nearly all gone

So with that introduction you can tell that we have indeed had guests over this last week. It was my crazy young friend, who I meet up with from time to time and her boyfriend, who I haven't met before. We had a good few days, despite the rather miserable wet weather we had. The snow that fell last week left us under the rather relentless rain that heralded the New Year, but it did fair up just enough for our friends to pay a visit to the alpacas of course. Our new friend is a chef and so he commandeered the kitchen one early evening and made his own version of pumpkin pie and rather nice it was too. He can come again anytime.

January 4th and it is back again

I love the way that the frost has made a star pattern on our
barn door

Because the weather was rather dreich (I do love that Scottish word, so evocative of wet, miserable weather) that we were sat in the caravan for much of the visit to our land, but while we were sat there, two of our cockerels who had just started crowing, decided to start a fight. Normally when our cockerels fight, it is because a slow developing bird suddenly finds its voice and tries to challenge the top cockerel. The challenger then finds out that it is a stupid idea and rapidly backs down. These two though, appeared more evenly matched and after a couple of minutes we realised neither of the cockerels were giving in. It wasn't pleasant to watch at all. Ian had to step into the ark and grab one of the cockerels and isolate him. As the weather was still mild, he was eventually placed in the horse box and we dispatched the pair the next day, as neither were for breeding, although we had hoped they would put a little more weight on. Still tonights tea (I'm northern, so it is still breakfast, dinner or lunch and tea in our house in that order) was roast chicken, roast veggies, mashed potatoes and steamed beans, all home-grown and very tasty.

A frosty morning

Our hens seem to be responding to the longer days and the relatively mild weather we have been having, by upping the production of eggs. We even had four eggs one day from our four very productive hens that have been keeping us in eggs over the winter, normally we have been getting been one to two per day from that ark, occasionally three. Another chicken from one of the outside hen huts has also started laying and I'm not sure if it was shock or fear, but one of the young hens started laying for the first time that was in the ark where the cock fight happened. Maybe they took me seriously that they would end up as stock or soup if they didn't get a move on and start laying.

I made this felt waistcoat from Tellus' fleece. 

I have been enjoying some down time over Christmas and getting some presents made. I know, I'm a bit late - No I'm very late actually! At least I feel on a bit of a roll now and I feel like I have sort of got the cleaning under control in our apartment, which leaves me freer to create. I have been fine as long as it was handwork, such as knitting and hand embroidery, but eventually I managed to get organised to do some sewing on my sewing machine. Unfortunately that didn't last long as my machine started to mangle up the stitching. The bobbin case cannot handle the old cottons I have and the annoying thing is that even when I have bought supposedly new cotton from the local shop, that wasn't new enough either. I am not happy with my machine, a BabyLock Quilters Choice - so not a cheap machine and I am beginning to regret buying it. When it works, it is very good, but not much use to me if it is temperamental over the cottons I use. I did a little research on the internet and I think I can buy 10 bobbin cases for my machine from China for the same price of two in Europe or America and then I can use a silicon spray on the threads to stop them snagging on the bobbin cases. If that doesn't work, I will be very annoyed. Only thing stopping me, is that I have never used Alibaba before or bought anything directly from China before. Hmmm! At least today, four parcels were winging their way across the waters to the UK with some belated Christmas presents.

A close up of the alpacas that I cut out and sewed onto
the waistcoat front. I love the bobbly texture of the felt.
Not quite sure why it did that, but it works I think!

Some felt Christmas tree decorations. The wooden bead
heads were also turned by Ian on his pole lathe

I said last week that the snow had come and gone and come and gone again. We have had a little of the same weather again this last week, as you may have gathered, but there was at least enough snow to finally get my skis out. I don't think I got them out at all last winter. The wind was a bit keen and the snow not so perfect, so I didn't ski for long, but at least I did manage something. The snow blower has also had another couple of outings, as we try to keep the greenhouse clear. We are perhaps a little paranoid about it not falling down, but one 18m by 6m greenhouse falling down in the snow is quite enough, thank you! There was also enough snow to get our car stuck, or rather enough ice underneath the snow to get it stuck. Fortunately it was out on the land and so Ian just got the tractor out and dragged it out while I tried to steer. It was a little difficult to get it heading in the right direction, but we managed.

More snow blowing duties

Making a path up to the sheep

My exercise for the day, clearing the
snow from around the greenhouse
that had slid off the roof.

Today I feel like I have spent most of it, trying to organise a meeting. It had been due to happen tomorrow, but the longer distance travellers were reluctant to travel for a one and a half hour meeting when it takes them four hours to drive down and the lady we were meeting up with has to work, so couldn't meet for any longer. I was a tad annoyed that I had to cancel it at the last moment, but in the end it works out better for me, as it means I can get a lift back up to Tartu and so fits in better with my timetable. Some you win, some you lose!