The confessions of a hoarder

Yes another of those impossibly serene landscapes.
I never get tired of seeing them but they do look
unreal I think.

I wasn't really sure what to write about. It's winter, which may or may not provide lots of nice pictures depending on whether it's blowing a blizzard, in which case not, or a brilliantly white landscape set against an impossibly blue sky that looks rather surreal and also staggeringly beautiful, so perfect for pictures but maybe a bit samey. It is funny being very busy and not really having much to write about. Working online means lots of contact with people from many different countries, many of whom are not living in the countries of their nationality. It's fascinating and their stories brighten up my day, but not really appropriate to share. One contact though did have an unexpected connection, as his aunt has an alpaca farm and part of a rural development network - that could be a promising networking opportunity. 

Ilvija looking like a bat with white nose disease
(yes it's a real disease, but not for alpacas)

A little bonding time? No! Not likely! More like,
"you're not coming in here".

Is this Brencis singing of the joy of winter?

So what do I do all day? Well slum around in my dressing gown, or so it may seem, but my nice thick dressing gown saves me putting on any heating until well into the afternoon, so that works out well. Just a bit embarrassing when the postie rings the doorbell and opens the door to hand me the post. I wish she would wait then I could quickly discard my dressing gown for a few minutes. I also wish she wouldn't open the door, it feels kind of rude, but I guess it's just I'm not used to it. It wouldn't happen in the UK for sure, unless you lived in one of those out of the way places where the postie is probably one of your relatives. 

What is that son of mine doing? 

And now here's Tellus' daughter playing peek-a-boo

Meanwhile, Ian is out taking pictures in our forest!
I still can't quite get used to saying, "Our forest!"

I spend a lot of time on the computer, trying to learn Latvian, keeping in touch with friends and getting work done - currently I'm working on three projects as well as preparing for teaching two courses, one in spring and one in autumn of this year. One project is looking at whether citizen science can influence how the environment is managed or policies made or does it just take the learned experts to get things changed? One is looking at lessons that can be learnt from plans to avoid harming biodiversity and feeding that information to some policymakers. Lastly another project is just trying to finish off a database that is taking longer than it should. Added in a bit of proofreading and working on developing the courses keeps me out of mischief anyway. 

Not such a frosty day, but beautiful in its own way.

Time to soak up some sun.

More white nose disease. Mari also soaking up
some sun.

Over the course of a few Saturdays though I managed to cut up old t-shirts that are in my rather large stash of fabrics and old materials waiting for projects to use them up. Ian was complaining of having to stand on a cold floor in the mornings and so I decided to make him a modern version of a proggy mat - well that's what he would call it, I would call it a rag rug, or hooked mat. This was the quicker version of an old method of using up fabric that was not fit for much else. I cut the t-shirts up into lots of scraps 3cmx8cm (or thereabouts) and then sewed them down the middle onto a large piece of old thick interfacing. I then folded them to one side and sewed on another row. Eventually I filled up the interfacing and it certainly looked like an old rag rug by the time I'd finished - so no more complaints of cold feet. 

Now Mari is sharing a bit of gossip with Aggie.

A different angle to our land for a change. Looking
through the trees at the wintry sun.

Tracks in the snow. A hare? 

I know there are quite a few half-finished projects in my dump room and there are so many potential projects that I get overwhelmed with what to do next. At least I did manage to make a pair of baggy trousers from some self-dyed fabric, which I'm wearing and they are surprisingly warm. I have cut out some fabric to make some more, but I want to see how these one work before sewing up the other pair. I think the pattern needs a little adjustment. I also confess to starting some felted scarves this last weekend and now they are added to my half-finished pile as I didn't have time to finish them. It did use up some of the fleece we had lying around the place though, so that is a plus. 

A more subtle scene with a cloudy sky, but still
amazing to see such frosted trees.

Looking at Lady V's residence for young ladies
aka one of the alpaca houses from another different
angle.

The snow is not deep enough to cover the 
molehills. We must have mole city under our
land. 

So while I am slaving away on my computer Ian has been doing lots of snow clearing, poo clearing from the alpaca houses as they don't go outside so much on the more miserable days and feeding Lolly. When he gets back to the apartment we eat and then he washes up. Quite a few days this week he has then been spending some of the evenings testing poo samples for parasites. Exciting heh! So exciting he fell asleep in the alpaca house. He needed a poo sample from a couple of the alpacas and it is a good time of the year to just spend time with them and get them more used to his presence, so he took up a chair to watch them. 15 minutes later (so he tells me) he woke up with two contented alpacas either side just chewing the cud. 

Karla having a bit of trouble with a long piece
of hay.

Such peaceful scenes

This freeze/thaw cycle is not much fun

The other news for this is week is my car arrived. It was driven from Riga along some quite icy roads to our village and then we had to drive to the big town to get it registered as owned by me and the bank. The only piece of paperwork we couldn't do electronically. Very annoying really as that was a couple of hours of my time, when most of the procedures in Latvia are going across to digital signatures, which I can do. Oh well! At least I'm now able to travel up to the university this week for staff training. The young guy asked if I had owned a car in Latvia before and the answer was no. We've had a car for 14 years but it has always been registered in Ian's name. I did once take it for its technical inspection because he was away, but other than that, my name has not been on anything to do the car. I have had a Latvian licence for 14 years but wouldn't have thought that would make a difference, but somehow it did. I have six months of full insurance for just over €50, I was expecting double that at the very least. I'm still conflicted though, as I would rather do without a car, I realise the environmental costs but I also have to get to work from time to time. 

A series of plants with their ice-crystal gowns

The neighbour's land.

Sun on snow

Cattails 

Vanessa in another of her contemplative moods

The snow is creeping up the greenhouse. Fortunately
it has melted next to the plastic so not leaning on
the plastic.

Much higher and it will be more like a rather large 
igloo.

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!

It is finished

Winter has nearly finished, not much left to go now. Mind
you I've said that before, about three times this winter.

It is finished indeed and no I'm not just talking about Jesus' mission to save mankind accomplished on the cross, I'm talking about my thesis. I finally completed the writing for my course and now it is just awaiting some photos, a grammar check and then it needs assembling into a complete document to send off to my tutor for his perusal and marking of course. It has taken me four years to get to this point, the first year I studied Development Management with the Open University, but due to the increase in fees I started a bit of hunting around for another course and found Managing Sustainable Rural Development with the University of the Highlands and Islands. I am so glad I did as I think this course is much more applicable to Latvia, where I now live, than the OU course, good though it was. The OU course was aimed more at developing countries, rather than a European setting, but it still gave me a good foundation in what development is all about  and the history of it that has helped me enormously in the current course. It also gave me a good start to get back into studying, for which I am very grateful, as it has been rather a long time since I was at Uni, in fact in the meantime my eldest had started a nursing course and is now nursing - that should give you an indication of how long ago it was. The course also gave me a Post Graduate Certificate in Development Management, maybe it will come in useful at some point.

A little creativity to stop me burning my fingers

Last week our car passed its technical inspection, or to be more precise the previous week, but who's counting? It is always a relief when our car gets through the technical without a hitch, especially as one year the inspector, who was inspecting our car, shook the car so much to test the suspension that we suspect it damaged the wheel bearing. It may have been going anyway, as the roads around here are tough on cars, but the shaking it got would have made it far worse. Even the tyres passed which is surprising, as we are still on the original tyres and we've had the car 4 years now, we will change them this winter though as they are slowly starting to perish. As you can tell the dirt roads we have around here maybe tough on the suspension, but they are not so tough on tyres, unless there are nails in the roads of course and we have picked up a few of them along the way. The dirt roads have been particularly bad this spring and we have never seen such a bad state in all the time we have been here and not to such a large extent, think giant washboard and you might get the idea. We have a robust 4x4 and even we were travelling at 20km an hour to save the car and I have never seen so many Latvians travel so slowly, it was like serious off-roading on road. We were expecting the roads to remain bad over the Easter weekend and so were very surprised to see the grader out on the Saturday and I'm glad to say the roads are greatly improved.

We even have flowers now

That reminds me we learnt the word for potholes in Latvian this week, fortunately it was through the insurance lady when we were sorting out the comprehensive insurance or kasko as it is called here - it is a name that kind of worries me, as it reminds me of the word catastrophe and I know that is what we want to insure against but I would rather not be reminded of that, comprehensive sounds so much more friendly. Anyway just in case you are wondering the Latvian for potholes is bedre and there are plenty of them around on the tarmac roads at this time of the year (yes we do have some around here, they are not all dirt roads). For small cars they are definitely worth insuring against as some of those holes are deep and you can bet they won't have enough money to do a good job on the roads and so once again as soon as the frosts are a thing of the past then the guys with their lorries of hot tarmac will be out patching the patches. Getting our insurance was quite a mammoth performance as we managed without an interpreter (although we had been in about a month ago with an interpreter to check things through and so she knew we would be back). I think we were there about an hour which included her photographing the car and getting us to test the alarm. The question is though, how do you test the alarm without actually breaking into the car? We managed in the end by winding down the window, locking the car and then Ian waving his arm madly through the open window and eventually it went off. Nice to know it is not over sensitive - I think! Next she needed to take some photocopies of the registration document, but wasn't sure which way round to do the copies so that the front and the back of our document was visible on the same page, side by side (it would have me confused too), meanwhile the photocopier jammed too. Well eventually Ian and the insurance lady managed to get the thing sorted and we were finished, apart from nearly leaving the registration document in the photocopier - bit of a problem as you are supposed to travel with that at all times here in Latvia.

Coltsfoot

Having finished my thesis meant I had a real sense of freedom for the start of this Easter holiday, rather apt really. Friday was a lovely day, if a little cool and so I went out to the land with Ian to soak up some sunshine and do a little pottering about. On the whole it was a fairly restful day, until Ian wanted some help shifting some timber that is. He was sorting through the timbers to see what was leftover from building the barn, as we want to build a shelter for the caravan. It is a bit old to be left standing outside and it would be better under some kind of protection. We are thinking of making it a more enclosed shelter then we can have an area in front of it that we can sit and relax out of the weather, rather than sitting in the greenhouse. It was a bit tricky negotiating with some rather long pieces of wood and I managed to slip in the mud, no bones broken, no ankles twisted but managed to get caked in mud. Yuck! Must remember to leave some spare clothes in the caravan.

The little finger puppet I made. The fabric
is some I had dyed a while ago and had tested
machine stitches on it. So as you can
see there is a reason for me never throwing
out scraps of material

On the Saturday I still went out with Ian, but took some sewing, as it was lovely just to sit in the warmth of the greenhouse and sew. I sewed a little finger puppet for our neighbour's little girl as we were invited to her first birthday party. I love going to the kids birthday parties as it is a great chance to sit and listen to Latvian in full flow and our neighbours fill us in with some of the conversation so we don't feel left out. It is also lovely to feel included, even though we are quite a bit older than our neighbours who have children, but somehow that doesn't seem to matter. We were treated to rasols or a sort of sausage and potato salad and cake and plenty of cups of tea. We also got to try maple juice, the sap from the maple tree. We've tried birch juice before and that can be okay but usually it tastes of aspirin to me, but this maple juice tasted of a slightly sweet but refreshing water. I guess that is another new taste to add to a whole host of other things we have tried since living here. The storks also arrived back outside our other apartment on Saturday and so now it finally feels like Spring may have arrived.

Purple flowers too. Must try and find out
what they are, wouldn't mind but I planted
them. 

Sunday saw us heading off to see some friends of ours that we have made through my course. Simon has written academic papers about Latvia, some of the few that I have found whilst investigating topics for my coursework. I realised that Simon was not a common name in Latvia and did a bit of digging around on the internet and found some contact details and contacted him. I was really interested to know what his research had shown about Latvia and Latvians as I thought it might be useful. Although Simon does not live in Latvia, he does have a house here and when he comes along with his wife, he gets in touch and we meet up. Simon and his wife have a wealth of experience of different countries and development and they love Latvia and so we always have much to talk about. We had a very pleasant day with good food and talk and a walk around the area but it was a little disheartening to walk around as Simon showed us the new wild boar damage they have and it was pretty extensive, not deep but certainly a lot of turf turned over. After my research on wild boar damage in our area I can see there could be trouble ahead in his area unless the hunters get on the case and take some decisive action, which they maybe doing fortunately; hopefully they won't end up with the same scenario that has happened around here with wild boars digging up year after year after year.

Gathering up the hay, yet again. This will only be good for
mulching and composting but that suits us fine.

At least the snow on Sunday didn't amount to much and didn't even stick, which was a little surprising since you may recall, if you follow this blog, that as soon as the snow has just about gone it has snowed again. Our friends to the south weren't quite so lucky though this time as they had about 4 inches of snow (10cm). That did mean though that Monday saw another glorious if cold day, another good day for those piles of snow to continue to melt away and for the ground to start to dry up. We pottered around the land in the morning waiting for the ground to melt a little and I got some tomatoes potted on into bigger pots and in the afternoon we started on picking up the hay off the field that we hadn't had the chance to gather up before the weather turned bad last year. Most of it was remarkably dry, but some was heavy and sticky and the ground became squelchy in places - there's still a lot of water in that ground. I seemed to spent a lot of time shifting hay by hand over the last few years, hopefully this year it will just be in small bales and not using a pitchfork. We need to shift the hay, otherwise it makes it difficult later on in the year to cut the new hay and also it gives the grass a chance to grow back better. It is also less of an attractor to the wild boar and there is enough of that damage on our land this year already from before the winter. If the weather stays dry enough then we might be able to get out and start to sort out some of the damage and get some grass seed down, now that will be nice. Hopefully I won't be too sore tomorrow either. Nearly forgot, we sold another 7 bales of hay to our neighbour and so we have just about sold all our spare hay now and nearly covered all our costs - very pleased.

Sophie

Ian ordered me a birthday present this week, not so unusual you might think but it is. I have been known to wait two years to get a present and not only is this present actually ordered, it is ordered in plenty of time that I might even get a present on my birthday, as it isn't until much later on in the month - now there's a novelty.

There's no pontification this week but I will share a little about our cats, as I haven't shared much about them lately. They are quite talkative cats - is that because they are female cats or are they just noisy? I do wonder as we've only had male cats before. I think Sophie has learnt off Bella, who is definitely the nosier of the two. Bella just tends to be noisy when she wants something but Sophie seems to try and communicate. It is hilarious though when Ian sort of says "neowww, neowww" and Sophie then rolls over on the floor - I thought it was only dogs that rolled over for their owners. Being the fluffier of the two she also slides across the floor easier, which she seems to think is a great game and lets Ian do it quite a few times and comes back for more, he's even started calling her Slidy Soph. The cats are also enjoying their freedom a bit more as we let them out of the greenhouse and even took them down to the barn this week as we hope they will keep the mice at bay in there. Well there is another week on the Baltic equivalent of the Archers combined with the Little House on the Prairie as one friend described our tales.

Bella being noisy

Mulching, watering and battling hornets

These colourful wooden insects are based outside the
local bakery for children to play on

I like the banking arrangements this week, as we started to get money back in, instead of it going out, which is encouraging. Also encouraging is the fact that hopefully our house sale will complete on Wednesday, that should make things easier to manage as it will finally mean only having one tax authority to deal with and not two or even three as I have had to do some years. I shall enjoy filling in our final British tax form and informing them it is all finished with. Yet another piece of encouraging news is that I am a couple of steps nearer to completing my diploma, as my tutors have almost finished marking my work, just one piece more to be finished and I will know for definite if I have passed and what kind of grade to expect. So far it is looking really good.

Looking quite neat and tidy

We are getting the greenhouse planted up and it looks nice and organised, pity the plants have suffered from being too long in small pots, so we'll have to see how they fare later on. We have even finally planted up our grapes that have survived two winters in pots as well as adding two more vines to our collection, so now we have one white vine which looks like it is going to give us our first harvest of grapes, our old red grape is still just hanging on in there after dying back to the roots for the second year in a row, but at least it is recovering well now; we also have another red grape and one bluey coloured one. I have refrained from planting much else as it has been far too hot and too dry and with a bit of a breeze to really dry things out it would mean even more watering than I am doing now. I think my arms are stretching with all the carrying of water and this is made even more interesting when I have to navigate the electric fence which doesn't have a gate and so it means ducking between the wires (don't worry I do turn it off first or it would certainly make the navigation even more interesting). I have been putting as much straw as possible around all the plants to reduce the drying effects and I am just hoping we can nurse things along until some rain, hopefully this coming weekend but with temperatures up to 30C in between it is not good, especially since it is over two weeks ago now since we had a small shower. So we would gladly trade a few days rain with anyone who wants to send some our way, even Ian is hoping for rain which is not normal as he is definitely a hot, sunny weather kind of person.

Our white grape with flowers

Besides watering I haven't really done much else this week apart from weed plots and mulch them. I did have a scary experience with the mulching at one point today as I was in competition with a hornet for the straw. I think that it was contemplating using it for a home and was not best chuffed when I was removing it for my plants, in fact I decided to give it a rest this morning as I didn't really think I stood much of a chance against an angry hornet with just a hay fork for protection. If you have never heard a hornet or seen one, they are scary - think humungous wasp on steroids and you have the picture, next add in the drone of at least 10 bees and you have the sound. I hadn't realised how much straw is coveted as a home for bees and hornets until we have built piles of the stuff, we have two bees nests in the straw on the land that we try and remember when we are shifting it for mulching but they don't tend to build their nests in the most convenient of places and it is a pity they are not honey bees either but still they are important but hornets are not something I particularly wanting to encourage to set up home. I think the one from the morning has given up thinking of moving in as this afternoon it did not reappear, much to my relief.

The red grape just hanging on in there

I did manage a creative few hours which is wonderful. We took as much of my sewing stuff up to the other apartment as possible, so I can get on with some panels to hide curtains which will be different sizes and also to make a belated birthday present of some cushion covers for our daughter. Not sure if she will like the designs so far, but I had fun making them and if she doesn't like those, they will end up in the panels instead. In fact something similar may end up in the panels anyway as I had so much fun making them.

Ian trying to hide behind a pole. Actually
he is tacking up the fleece to give a degree
of shelter from the sun. 

Ian has been pretty busy too, getting the greenhouse sorted as well as the land. As it is so hot he has to get out there early to open up and stay late to close up. Sometimes he bikes out there so he can spend time in the gardens at home but most times he is out on the land. This week he has been using the two wheeled tractor to tackle the ground elder, particularly before it flowers. It has definitely become an ever increasing menace and we hope that by continuing to cut it every couple of weeks we will give other plants a chance to out grow it and drive it out, but it is certainly a battle. At least using the two wheeled tractor is a lot quicker than strimming it as Ian has done in the past to keep it down. He has also been ploughing a vegetable garden for our neighbour as all the other tractor drivers she normally asks to plough for her are either busy doing their own plots or broken. It was a good job they mentioned it yesterday as Ian was going to swap the plough for the spring tine to sort out the piece of ground he ploughed the other week. Our next task is to hopefully get some buckwheat as it is a short season grain to put in. That should be an experience harvesting that.

A tenacious daisy growing in the dry and compact soil

The E. coli outbreak in Germany has thrown up some interesting debates on our approach to modern life and how we abuse the use of antibiotics. The E. coli is apparently resistant to many antibiotics, but in some ways this should not be of particular concern as antibiotics should not be given to patients with diarrhoea anyway, as it can knock out the good bacteria which helps to combat the dangerous E.coli. Our digestive systems are full of bacteria and living in harmony most of the time, it is only when they get out of kilter there is a problem. We can help to keep our digestive systems healthy by eating certain foods such as yoghurt or kefirs and other fermented foods too. I hadn't realised that sauerkraut and certain pickles were actually probiotic foods until recently and apparently very healthy for the gut and so a return to home-made processing of foods maybe a good thing for our health - which is very convenient when one of the books my daughter got me for my birthday also contains recipes for fermenting foods. Another issue the outbreak raises is the routine use of antibiotics in factory farming as this is part of the reason for the increased in multi-resitant bacteria. If animals were not housed in confined conditions they wouldn't need to use the antibiotics, as they would be much healthier, so our cheap meat comes at a great price in terms of quality and health of animals and humans. Isn't it about time we thought more carefully about where our food comes from and maybe going for more expensive, well-cared for meat eked out with some cheap pulses like beans and peas, than continuing with our addiction to meat?