Started off well

Mari looks like she has been styling her eyebrows

It was a sorting out kind of week. I had a Skype conversation with my supervisors one evening where I got some solid advice and promise of help that will hopefully push me forward to finishing off a paper and a big step forward to finishing off the PhD. I will be so happy when I get that sorted out.

A rolling alpaca having a dust bath. Vanessa's group are
enjoying the bank that Ian created. Not sure we are ever going
to get grass to grow on the bank.

Trying to regain some composure after the inelegant roll

I was using google docs for working on the paper and it wasn't working so well for me. I needed to amend the references in it and it isn't so easy, so I decided to download it to my computer to work on it using Word, as I have an automatic reference app for that. The plan was then to upload it to the cloud for my colleagues to comment on. Only the plug in for the type of reference I had to use wasn't working and so I had to deal with that first. It seems that nothing is straightforward at the minute. You want to do that? Then download this app then you need this plug in! Now you need to do this, then learn how to use the thing. Then overcome this little glitch and it feels like yet another week has gone and it still isn't finished. Not really this time, but that's what it feels like sometimes. Probably just showing my age.

Kind of strange, the grass looks like the middle of summer
but the leaves have not come through yet.

Contemplating something or recuperating from gardening

I was sorting out the gardens over the Easter weekend. The potatoes are now in, well most of them. We appear to have eaten too many white potatoes and so need some more to finish off the last row. I also potted on cabbages, cauliflowers, lettuces, Chinese cabbage and chard. Unfortunately they seem to be growing rather slower than I hoped, because the nights have been so cool. At least they are still alive though. It was my birthday on the Monday and so it was nice to be doing the potting on and potato planting rather than computer work. I know how to enjoy myself.

The moon shines down too

Is it fleece or is Chanel beginning to show a bit of belly there.
Still a few months yet before she is due, but Ian has increased
her rations because the alpaca cria (baby) puts on most of
its growth in the last few months.

My daughter tried to send me a WhatsApp message for my birthday but unfortunately WhatsApp stopped working on my phone two days before my birthday and won't update. Sigh! The phone is working reasonably well and so it is annoying to need to change it for something like that. Still at least there are more options than WhatsApp to communicate with. Messenger fortunately was still working, so she resent the message that way and I also got a message from my youngest and a video from three of my grandchildren wishing me a happy birthday.

Sunbathing on the mound

A spring visitor. This one was hopping away from the pond,
so Ian caught it and put it in the pond as there are not many
frogs around at the moment. 

Spring is definitely in the air, despite the cool nights. As we are out in the caravan now, I am using the outside loo and so as I wander on down there, admiring the backdrop of the forest, the birds singing in the early morning, all is well with the world. The problem is that just as I am enjoying the atmosphere the stupid chickens started creating a fuss over nothing. We have two cockerels who freak out at a hen announcing she has laid an egg, or a passing butterfly or whatever it is that seems to freak them out on a frequent basis. The noise drowns out the more melodious warbles and trills of the woodland birds. The cockerels crowing in the background from time to time did amuse my work colleagues though one Skype meeting. Not your regular business meeting background noise. We moved the caravan out of the greenhouse this week and so we don't get woken up so easily with the sound of the cockerels crowing right outside the caravan window deenow either. Bliss!

A nice large nesting box and they have to practically sit on
each other to lay an egg

Probably the same deer we saw, although we are seeing a lot
of them this year. Normally in March we see them as they are
hunting for food under snow, but by now the grass is usually
appearing and they disappear deeper into the forest.

It is amazing to see the forest coming to life with the wood anemones bursting into bloom once again but we were even more amazed one lunchtime as we were sitting outside eating our sandwiches and enjoying the sunshine when Ian spotted a deer in the forest. We sat and watched her for a good 15 minutes or so as she searched for food. She seemed completely unaware that we were there. She also looked rather thin. This time of the year is hard on the wildlife as the vegetation recovers from the winter, but it is even harder this year due to the lack of rain. We have not had more than the merest hint of drizzle in the last week and it is getting critical.

Josefs looking very fluffy around the face

I've seen quite a few cranes this week. No not the big industrial ones but rather the large birds, I even spotted a group of them from a train window. It was more stunning to see two of them flying slowly over our land, they were so low. We also saw two swans flying over several times and I'm guessing they may have been whooper swans, definitely not mute swans as they were making a right racket. Some must have flown over on an early morning flight as we were in the caravan when we heard them loud and clear.

At 16 years old and she can still do yoga poses. Do be
careful Veronica!

We had English visitors to the farm this week. A couple and their daughter. Apparently it was their first trip out so far from the capital and the husband was a little unsure and wondered if they were lost. It is a lot of countryside with not many people around if you are not used to it. Fortunately they found us okay and we spent a good couple of hours chatting about life in Latvia and of course alpacas. We just had time to grab some lunch when we had a phone call from a Latvian couple who wanted to visit. I let Ian get on with it this time, as I had the garden to deal with and I had heard it all before already that day.

Out enjoying the sunshine and the breeze

I went to get my haircut this week. My hairdresser had just got back from Georgia and she gave me a gift of Georgian Svanetian salt. It was rather nice on some potatoes. Apparently it is produced up in the mountains and has eight hand ground ingredients in it, including marigold, which gives it a lovely golden colour. Very different anyway and a lovely gift.

Just trying to get that itch!

Ian often does a search for our farm on the internet to see if anything has been published recently and was rather bemused to see my article from Dispatches Europe translated into Russian. Unfortunately it was on a rather dubious news site, which I know has a rather loose connection to truthful reporting. So while it is nice to get free advertising, I would rather that be on a more reputable news outlet, but as I was told, that's the way the internet works.

It came, it went

A magical Narnia like scene once again

I guess it has been that kind of a coming and going week in more ways than one. The Brexit deadline came and went and the UK is still in the EU for now. March came and went. The snow came and went. It is frightening how fast this year seems to be speeding by. We even moved out of the apartment and into the caravan for the summer on Sunday. Although it snowed last week, the days since have been sunny, which makes staying in the caravan okay. It is still in the greenhouse protected from the wind and therefore has some insulation of sorts and soon heats up with an electric radiator.

The snow then headed to the land and this is Ian's photo
just as it was arriving

The day after was a glorious but cold day

I do feel a bit responsible for the snow. I did say in last weeks blog that it would snow because I had planted some seeds outside, so lo and behold it did. It didn't last long though and now the snow is only lingering in the shadiest of places like the forest. The grass is beginning to show some small signs of recovery and the weeds are racing to get ahead. It meant I was able to forage enough leafy stuff to add to a meat soup. It makes a change from squash and onions anyway.

Dear, sweet little Freddie. He had his splint taken off
on Friday and so far he is doing well and his leg looks
good.

The young men of the group. Soon to be joined by two
little ones

Talking of Brexit, I got an email from the Estonian authorities outlining what will happen as a British citizen in Estonia after Brexit either with a deal or without. It was reassuring on the basis that they will issue British Nationals with the relevant ID and there will be no hurry. They will also allow me to return to the country, which is a relief. There is so much unknown, especially with the MPs in the UK Parliamentarians still discussing the issue at this time in the process. As the MEP Guy Verhofstadt said, please can the Parliamentarians vote "for" something and not just vote "no" all the time.  Such a shambles!

Oh Mr. P. You do need your teeth cutting.
Couldn't you have waited until shearing
time?

A stork visiting our pond

Anyway leaving politics aside for now, we've also had some comings and goings on the farm. The storks have come back from their long jaunt and visitors have been arriving to see us and the alpacas. The first group consisted of one of our local friends from the nearby sheep farm and camp and a guy from England who manages a large walled garden. I remember many years ago watching the Victorian Kitchen Garden that was set in a derelict walled garden and I always loved the idea of having a sun soaking walled garden. I did use to do some gardening for a friend at one time in the old walled garden on her farm, but that wasn't quite so grand as our visitors' 4 acre plot. We had a good time though talking about some of the ideas we use here on our farm and thinking how we could incorporate a no-till garden into the set up at the sheep farm with a demonstration plot too. This will be Ian's part-time job to develop over time with probably a bit of input and moral support from me.

Up close!

Brencis looking very stately and calm here. He's lovely
really and will come up and allow you to stroke his
neck - well most of the time and if you have food.

We also had another three groups who had come to see the alpacas. One group arrived as we were walking Josefs and so they were thrilled to see us walking across with him on a lead, but I don't think Josefs was that thrilled as were were just on our way back to his mum when we spotted the group. He was fine though and we soon wandered over to take him back. The next group were an international group, a Dutch guy with his Russian wife and two children now living in Riga. They came for the tour and then walked two of our alpacas. We took Tellus, who is a steady plodding sort of alpaca and Mr. P because Brencis is getting a little more unpredictable. He is just coming into full adulthood and I am sure he will calm down a bit later, but he's too big for young children to take for a walk. We hold on too while youngsters walk the alpacas but we still need the alpacas to be calm and sensible all the time.

George and Freddie, sill best buddies

You could even call them drinking buddies

The last group were an interesting group. They had come from the north of Latgale (East Latvia) and so north east of where we are. They have lots of animals, ostriches, emus, horses, goats and so on. They are another mini-zoo and had bought three alpacas last year from Lithuania. They had a good tour around and fortunately organised for a young woman to come and translate for them, so they could find out a lot of information. They also went away with some of the special alpaca food, lots of advice and we also got another booking for shearing. In addition to all that going on we got our first enquiry online for the felting course we will be having in August. All in all it definitely feels like we are heading into summer.

Turbjørn

Tellus looking like a wise old sage

What are you guys looking at?

Oh so that's who you've seen. Some female red deer

They stayed around long enough for Ian to run back to
get me and then back again to get his camera with the
long lens on. Not the best photos but as you can see from
the photo of the boys' the sun was going down. It's sights
like these that makes putting up with the cramped and
sometimes cold conditions of living in a caravan all
worth while.

Crazy times

The lilac bushes outside our other apartment

Okay so we are crazy but you love us anyway heh? Can't believe some of the things we get up to. We finally got around to starting to deal with the buckwheat seeds that we harvested over the summer. Of course it was nice and snowy outside so once we had worked out the best setting on my kitchen aid flour grinder just to crack the hulls, we then had to separate them. Now normally a nice breezy day outside would be perfect, but inside? Arrh! So our hallway was transformed, cleared of boots and shoes and rigged up with fan at one end to separate the husks from the seed. Mind you we found out at the end the the easiest way to get buckwheat flour is to grind it to crack the hulls and then grind it again to get flour and the hulls can then be sieved off, with just some ground into the flour to make the more traditional black buckwheat flour. We also found out that it was probably best sieved right at the start to get rid of the grit out of the husks and seeds. Oh well! We'll try again next week.

We have a Father Christmas car again

Talking of harvesting, the deer left a note saying "Thank you very much for the tasty kale, same again next year?" Yep you guessed it we are left with stalks and the swiss chard that was covered with pine branches to deter the deer from eating them so we have spring greens to grow back next year, were also disturbed. Will be interesting to see if we have got any come back up next year. All is not lost though and we can still have tasty kale crisps which we have got rather fond of, because we have some more growing in the greenhouse, so unless the deer work out how to unlatch the door or go through the plastic which is unlikely, then they will be safe, especially now we seem to be on top of the mice problem. We caught six mice altogether in the traps and the poison bait is no longer being removed, so they won't be tucking into kale either.

A winter wonderland

The snow finally came this week and the colder temperatures followed it. We cleared around our greenhouse, which is still up thankfully this year, so that the ground had a chance to freeze. We found last year that a large amount of snow on top of soft ground is really difficult to shift and ends up making a big mess of the ground when digging away the snow. We haven't got as much snow as last year, but it is enough to give everything a good covering and the ski season has started. Our cross country ski run even has floodlights now so that people can ski in the evenings, which we did this evening. We were a bit worried about the floodlights at first as they were on all night, not good for light pollution, but they seem to have sorted out some timing on them now and they went off at 9pm tonight. Still we got a good chance to ski and even some lessons from one of our neighbours, who showed us some of the techniques.

Not a star but the new floodlights to light
our cross country ski run

The cleaning fairy has been in operation most of this week, Ian tidied the office and discovered lots of space that seemed to just appear - not a lot went out so no idea where it all evaporated to, although there were many cardboard boxes taken out. Maybe the wall post on facebook that someone posted is true after all "Cleaning is just putting stuff in less obvious places" (not quite sure who is responsible for that witticism). Along the way a bunch of photos were discovered that we appear to have inherited from the church we used to go to in America, it seems to be a bunch of pictures of a Sunday School trip. Another find was a CD given to us after we had seen the mayor of the village which contained some presentation pictures of activities in the village - nice to be able to recognise some of the folks now and actually put a name to a few (hopeless with names anyway, so just being able to recognise the people and where from is an achievement). It is amazing how much brighter and more space we feel we have now that room is cleared - next week the dump room, weather permitting ie lots of snow to keep him indoors. Our flat appeared to get worse since we started the gardening work in earnest, which has kept us busy, the polytunnel collapsing last winter and the weddings, plus my course work, all conspired to keep us on our toes even through what would normally be the quiet times. I'm still doing my course work but Ian has more time this year. We do struggle to throw things out though as we do re-use lots of things. Old clothes get morphed into bags, quilts etc. Our bedroom curtains are curtains from our Danish house, our office curtain was a shower curtain in a previous life, Ian's jacket was repaired yet agin this week with binding I have inherited from goodness knows where and last year his over trousers, which he managed to burn a hole in, were repaired with fabric that I had in a box. So you see we don't waste a lot. The cardboard boxes will end up as weed barriers, and the polystyrene packaging will reappear somewhere else - not sure about that yet but we can always do with insulating things. You can also guarantee the minute we throw something out will be about five minutes before we discover we did needed it after all.

Bell with her natty purple apron

Our cats were not happy this week as we sent them to be neutered. There are plenty of lovely looking kittens in this village without our cats adding to the number and I am sure the local bird population would agree. Of course our cats were pretty groggy when we got them back and we were highly amused by their attempts to walk, unfortunately Sofie also likes to lick and we ended up having to put an apron on her that the vet had given us to prevent her licking the wound. Bella's was put on at night before we went to bed since she is not so compulsive at keeping clean like Sofie. They did look silly in them, and I think Sofie agreed, because the next morning she was not in it. How she managed to get out of the apron with the strings still tied and in the confined space behind our settee we have absolutely no idea. Could just have understood it if it had been a normal day, but right after her operation, how could she move her limbs enough to slip out of the apron? Houdini cat I suppose.

Sofie with her lovely white apron. Now you tell me
how she got out of that in a confined space?

Latvia to the right. Definitely very Northern, but where is
Eastern? Finland could also be classed as Eastern European.

I have a question for you, so where are you? Our geography doesn't always match up to our feelings. The Brits for instance, if you live in England you are less likely to feel European than if you live in Scotland but that belies the fact that Britain is in Europe, it is sits on the European plate whether we like it or not. Now take Latvia! I hesitated last week at adding the thought about Eastern Europeans and how many in far flung countries are separated from loved ones because I was effectively lumping all those coming from ex-Soviet countries as Eastern Europeans and one of my friends mentioned that Latvians do not always like to be called Eastern Europeans. But take a look at the map! Where is Eastern Europe? Who are the mythical Eastern Europeans? How far west do they come? The Latvians actually now prefer to be thought of as Northern Europeans because that is what they are, not as northerly as their northern neighbours Estonia and then Finland but still way up there. They are, however, not the only ones separated from loved ones, doing the jobs many in Britain do not want to do, the cleaners, the toilet attendants, the potato pickers, the maids and the list goes on and so does the list of countries that contribute valuable services to Britain, the Latvians, Lithuanians, the Poles, the Filipinos, the Indonesians, the Sri Lankans etc. etc. etc. sending back valuable finances to their homeland, targeted aid supporting education, nutrition and goodness knows what else. And if you want to see the effect of these emigrating populations on towns and villages around Latvia, have a look at this video from the BBC about a town called Cesis

Clearing the snow from the roadways to encourage them to
freeze this week to make any subsequent snow clearing easier

I mentioned about two weeks ago that Swedish agricultural companies were starting up Latvian companies to buy farmland expanding the Swedish financial empire. Seems the Swedes haven't bought everything up yet, as this week a Swedish company bought the Latvia's national commercial TV channel. It would not be too bad if the Latvians benefitted from all this "investment" but I am not sure they do, hugely. In my research and the internet stories I read, it states that home grown enterprises are far more likely to add value and jobs to an area than outside massive investment. The problem with the big investments is that profits leave the country, whereas home grown enterprises are more likely to reinvest into the area. They are more likely to support local causes and seek to bring about improvements in their area because they have a big investment in that area, namely their families. Big is not necessarily better, even economies of scale are not always what they seem. Sure a big company can create a lot of stuff and cheaper, but at what cost to the environment and what expense to its workforce? Cheaper loses some of its lustre when it binds people to a life of drudgery because they cannot afford to live well. Swedish companies do not always do much better outside their own nation, in the same ways the Brits are not exactly likely to promote welfare and good practices once outside of the nations control. We are often aware of it at a long distance as in India, China or elsewhere but not so aware when it is within Europe. One rule within  a nation, but outside of it? Having said that I have got to give praise where praise is due, Swedbank have written down some of Latvia's debts as a goodwill gesture. Not sure what that means in practice but I think it is a positive move and at least sends out the right kinds of signals. It isn't the first bank to do so though, SEB (another Scandinavian bank) was first and at a lot earlier a stage.

Icicles hanging from the barn roof

An interesting week

The week started off by a visit from immigration officers. One of the not so nice outcomes from the open borders agreement in much of Europe is that now the immigration officers need to check up to make sure people really have left after visas expire, or to make sure that people are up to date on their registration documents and so entails periodic home visits from the dear folk. The last visit I had there were four guys who all looked pretty intimidating, but fortunately the one who spoke English was a nice enough bloke who was very courteous. This time it was a visit by a man and a woman but they still looked intimidating with their official cards and huge jackets with immigration written on them, oh yes and don't forget their pistols, however they were really nice and checked our passports and asked some questions about a friend of ours who has left the country. The only question I do have, is how come they always wait until Ian is out of the house before visiting? Hmmm!

This week I also discovered a squeamish side of me I didn't know existed and if you are of a delicate disposition, then please skip this paragraph. We decided to buy some of the local carp as I had the great idea that the lake that keeps appearing could be developed into a fish pond, well there is not much point in developing a fish pond if you don't like the type of fish that grows well in it so it was important to try it out. Well the fish was fresh, some of it was still flapping in the buckets but the one we bought didn't flap, well not until I started to gut it. Gutting fish I can cope with fine, but not when fin moves, even more so when it opens its mouth. It kind of freaked me out a little and I made Ian come and do the manly thing and dispatch it properly before I continued, he wasn't particularly happy about doing it either but he managed. So the lesson learnt? Make sure you know how to dispatch fish properly before starting to prepare it for cooking. Now I know some of you would be thinking at this point that really the lesson learnt is to buy a nice little pre-packaged thingummy jig at the local supermarket - problem solved! Well here in Latvia they keep the carp in tanks so it would still be flapping when they give it to you, and besides I think we do need to reconnect where our meat and fish comes from and not be quite so squeamish. I am going to learn how to make sure the jobs done properly though in future.

Been a good week for feasting and sitting round a dinner table chatting, which is my idea of a perfect time. Earlier on in the week was the American Thanksgiving, sorry to be absolutely correct United States of America Thanksgiving as the Canadian Thanksgiving is a month earlier, and Canadians are American too so it was pointed out to me that evening (well yes I kind of knew that). Amazingly we had a huge turkey, which is not all that common here in Latvia, both the turkey and huge; normally if you can find a turkey at all they are of the scrawny variety and not the well fattened sort. America exports many things including ideas and celebrations but not Thanksgiving, which I think is a shame. I am all for a celebration that revolves around eating (notice a pattern here) and being grateful for the past year with friends and family and, as one person said whilst I was in America, no pressure to buy presents. Mind you with hindsight I wonder if his wife thought the same way about it?

The other feast was a wedding. We were invited to the wedding of one of the camp leaders we met in the first year of camps we did in Latvia back in the year 2000. She is a bubbly, passionate kind of girl and looks like she has found someone who is equally passionate about his relationship with God and I think they will suit each other well. The wedding was a little of an English-Latvian fusion because there were many guests from England, including the "best couple" who were good friends of ours from our church back in England - in fact the couple who were responsible for getting us interested in going out to Latvia all those years ago. Latvians love flowers and use any occasion to give them and so instead of flowers being arranged by the couple, every family brings along flowers to give to the bride and groom. There were lots of vases around so I think that the huge number of flowers given were actually distributed around the church building where they got married to decorate it rather than be wasted. Other differences to the UK traditions I noticed was no bridesmaids and once the father walked the bride down the aisle he immediately handed her over to the bridegroom instead of an elaborate handover ceremony. At the reception the bride and grooms family did not sit on the top table, it was the two supporting couples. There were songs sung by the bride's brother and friends, which is not surprising in Latvia as they do like to sing even if they don't go to church, there was a game where the winners got to take the young couple out over the coming year, for instance one couple will take them to the cinema one month, one will organise a romantic meal another month and so on, not sure how normal that is for Latvians but seemed an interesting enough idea. One thing I understand is common is the regular banging on glasses with cutlery and the shouting of "kiss, kiss" in Latvian of course and then the couple were expected to kiss, a real headache inducing tradition.

On the way to the wedding in the morning we came to an area where it was unexpectedly misty and I couldn't quite work out why until we came round a corner to see a very sad sight, a hotel that was on fire and by the time we were passing the spot was a mere shell with the outside walls still standing but no roof and only the chimney stacks still visible; by the time we went home the whole thing had collapsed. It was a great shame as it had only just been spruced up since we arrived in Latvia, in the bright yellow colour that the Latvians love (as you can see from the picture)

On our late night trips back home we usually see plenty of wild life and this time was no exception. If you see one deer on the road you can usually expect more so Ian is always careful to slow down. This time there were three deer stood in the road who were looking in the opposite direction to our car, we expected them to at least scatter when we approached, but no they didn't even turn around to look at us. You would think that a car at night with headlights on would warrant some attention but it wasn't until we were within metres of them did they seem to realise we were there and run off. We decided at this point that wolves have got it all wrong, they don't need to go around in sheep's clothing to confuse the deer, they just need to take up driving, the bigger the car the better, they would be sure to be able to sneak up on the deer then.

It has still been rather wet here this week so it was quite a surprise when the sun actually put in an appearance today and so the dark night took a little longer before it really took hold, well perhaps 10 minutes more daylight than normal often it is pretty dark by 4pm, and we have even needed the light on for much of the day sometimes. Makes you realise why the Northern Europeans like candles in winter time. Talking of winter Father Christmas was spotted today having a walk around our village, he does seem to have lost quite a bit of weight though in preparation for the annual stuffing of eating all those mince pies and shots of sherry at the UK addresses. Which reminds me, I guess that must mean Christmas is fairly close! Oh! Crumbs! Well never mind the kids aren't actually going to be coming out this year on Christmas itself so I should be safe. First one arrives two days later, next one two months and errr the other one?????? Whenever!