Where did summer go?

One of our neighbour's cat on another neighbour's quad bike

It was summer on Friday, autumn on Saturday. The weather has broken and the temperatures have dropped. We still haven't had much rain, but quite a few short showers over the weekend. Just prior to that we had the warmest days on record for September in Latvia. I felt sorry for the rather large group that came on Saturday. A group from the same village came earlier on in the month when the weather was gorgeous. Saturday's group were not so lucky and were rained on earlier on in the day, so they got quite cold.  At least we were able to make space in the greenhouse to fit all 42 people in so they didn't have to stand outside. They really loved seeing the alpacas and eating some of our grapes though and weren't in a hurry to go, despite the weather. It was nice to have such an appreciative group. The daughter of our friend who translated for us last week helped us with translation this week, she was brilliant. Very fluent.

The damper weather has brought
out the mushrooms. We will not
be eating these

Nor these, but mainly because I don't know what they are

We managed to get our drivers licences sorted but we had to make a decision. Did we want to keep our ability to drive 7 tonne trucks along with everything else for five years, or did we want to lose a few categories and keep our licence for 10 years? We decided on the latter because at least we can still drive a horse box and trailer and a minibus with up to nine seats. Apparently if we wanted to we could go and exchange our current licence for one with more categories, but of course that will cost more. So our days of driving 7 tonne trucks is obviously over. I think I have only once driven something remotely that big many years ago, when I hired a box van to move house and that was when our first two children were very small - about the same age as some of our youngest grandchildren now.

Not this one either

Nope! Not on the list. There have been some though and they
are in the dryer as I write, but we forgot to take photos of
those one of course.

On Tuesday morning there was the great unveiling of the fabric we had steamed with leaves the day before. There were some lovely pieces, such as the silk with a dye blanket and one with an iron blanket. Sorry you will have to wait for photos though. The cotton pieces were a bit hit and miss. The fresh flowers and spritzed onion skins worked well, but the autumn leaves did not. I think it needed some moisture, so I will have to try again. The linen was very disappointing. The iron worked better, but I think it needed the leaves to be soaked in iron too and even then I am not sure whether it is worth it or not.

Sunnier days. Brencis eating with Turbjørn looking on

What better way for Ian to spend his birthday than playing,
errr I mean using the back hoe on his tractor to shift soil
ready to cover the root cellar. 

We got the root cellar covered in polystyrene, a layer of plastic, a layer of earth, then landscape fabric and a thin layer of earth over the top of that with hours to spare before the rain. We had to actually finish it by the light of the tractor headlights to get it done. It still needs a second door, but we are thinking that we should wait over winter to see what happens to the construction and to allow the soil to settle. Once we know what kind of movement it might experience then we can decide how to put the front door on. At least it will be a cool spot to keep veg and food in over summer when we seem to run out of space in the hotter months.

It is beginning to look like a hobbit house. 

More cranes heading south again this week, along with some
swans. Each time we hear a flock of birds flying we wonder
if it is the geese. That will tell us that winter is definitely on
the way. They are a pretty good indicator that snow will be
with us shortly. Fortunately I don't think we've seen any yet.

It has been a bit frustrating this week as I got news that the article I thought had been finished was not finished and they wanted me to make some very minor changes. I had been cracking on with my thesis up to that point, in between harvesting, sorting out the freezer and the greenhouse that is. The plan was to get those things done to be prepared for the arrival of the new alpacas next week and sorted for winter before I go away to the UK. Instead I have been emailing my supervisor to get comments on pieces I have written. I'm getting there but it is taking time. The only good thing is that my supervisor enjoys reading my work and so it hasn't been such a chore for him. I can get quite lyrical when the words flow.

More sunbathing while they can.

George hasn't quite known how to behave when people come.
He is interested but he hasn't got the hang of feeding from
visitors like Freddie has. Instead he seems to get excited and
then jump on Freddie or another alpaca that then reacts.
Hopefully he will get the idea soon.

I have felt like I was in an alternative reality this week. I was quite shocked that some people felt that Mrs. May was disrespected at the summit with EU leaders. I suppose I shouldn't be shocked by now, but I couldn't understand why she felt disrespected. I still cannot get my head around the attitude of the British Government regarding leaving the EU. It is the British Government who decided to leave, not the EU leaders. I wonder if during the negotiations the EU negotiators felt that if they waited long enough the whole thing would turn around and Britain would stay in, especially if they realised how difficult it would be to extricate themselves. The British Government have hardly come up with any clear steps forward though that isn't cherry picking at any point in the negotiations. Most of the time they don't seem to know what they want and yet they blame the EU. You cannot decide to leave a club and then still expect all the benefits for nothing, which is what it appears to me that the British Government are asking for. It is disconcerting that nothing has been sorted and there is now less than six months to go. We still don't know for sure what our status will be here in Latvia. Not helpful at all! All I seem to get is spammed by the British Government with emails about what happens to this that and the other in the case of a no deal Brexit. As if they really know! I don't think so!

Good chums

Some of our chickens. It won't be long before they are in the
greenhouse. They will have to be in before I go to the UK.

Spinning tales

The sun looks glorious through the
frosted trees

Well we have some good news this week, Eyre the kitten has recovered. She did have a trip to the vets and was given a drip and a course of probiotics, apparently she had gastroenteritis, but this morning she was bouncing out of the greenhouse to greet us as we arrived in her normal bouncy way. Such a relief, because at one point she wasn't even interested in drinking, just sleeping on the radiator.

These are the chickens that were free range and we brought
inside. They have settled in well and apart from one flying
out at night because I put them away in the wrong order, they
have stayed put in their enclosure.

We did however, lose another chicken. This one was regularly picked on by the four older ones in the same ark and never really fitted in. Again the prolonged cold spell we have had, must have been hard on it. Fortunately or unfortunately as the case maybe it is starting to warm up, with temperatures forecast to be above freezing this next week. So we are either going to have a dumping of wet slushy snow or wet soggy fields and we are not quite sure which is worse, especially when I shall be on snow clearing duties at our apartment block this week if necessary. I'm glad I got a bit of skiing in this last week while the snow was good. I found out that the tractor trails up to where we buried Snowdrop were ideal for skiing in because they had a light covering of snow, the ones that were fresh in the morning were too slippery for me and my cross-country skis as I'm not a confident or competent skier.

Such a cheery face. Mari is really getting quite bold now and
coming up to say hello. We think she will make such a lovely 
therapy animal with her gentle nature

We both attended another Soil Science seminar this week and it has given us a lot to think about in terms of how we manage our land to protect the soil. I have known for a while that too much digging damages the soil, but how to manage land in a practical way to produce food was not covered in those kinds of academic circles, just the worry over the loss of microbial life and soil structure from conventional farming techniques. The seminars we attended this week were more practical in nature with remedial action that can be taken to correct problems and suggestions as to how to limit the damage. Now we just have to work out how to practically incorporate the details into our own set up.

Chanel is shyer but still such a smiley face

We have been out and about a lot this week it seems as today we took a trip to our friends at Raksi camelid centre. We haven't seen them in a while and we wanted to pass on the new information we have on the situation in Estonia and the opportunities for greater collaboration and training that we have. It was a good time to share our knowledge as they have looked at using alpacas as therapy animals but it didn't really fit with their operation, so they abandoned that idea. It could work for us though and so they will pass on what they know. We also had a good time looking around their place. They have new camels and they are very gentle animals and like some attention and a good nose scratch. Shame we forgot to take our camera. It looks like Ian might have another shearing job though in the early summer, providing of course he recovers well from his operation next month. He will have to be on best behaviour to make sure he does.

One of the dyed t-shirts

The rest of my week was spent preparing for my evaluation for my PhD which happens next week (sometimes in the car on the way somewhere, thanks to a mobile internet) and dyeing wool hanks and t-shirts. The t-shirts were all getting a bit yellow with age and so I threw them in with the wool hanks I was dyeing to give them a new lease of life. Ian's week has mainly consisted of looking after the animals of course, spinning wool and trying to mend my mixer. A slightly eclectic life we lead! Ian seems to be getting quite good at the spinning, he looks so relaxed as he either cards the wool to prepare it for spinning and then just gently peddling away as he spins the wool. I knew he would be good at it, at least he isn't tapping his leg all night making an irritating noise now, he is being productive in the process. The yarn is also getting better and more even as he practices.

Two of the dyed hanks of wool

A while ago I mentioned that I was testing my blood sugar because it seemed to be going to high at times, well after about four months of testing and adjusting my diet to the findings I have lost about 8lbs (about 3.5kg) in weight. I am nearly at the same weight that I got down to about 13 years ago when I had gall stones and had to monitor my fat intake religiously or suffer dire consequences - you could wave chocolate under my nose and I was not interested, unheard of for me and of course didn't last once I had surgery. I spent one week or so doing regular tests throughout the day to see what it was that was sending my blood sugar up and then used that information to adjust my diet and now just test in the mornings to make sure the diet is working. Scientists are beginning to see how individual our responses are to foods and it certainly showed in the differences between Ian and me. I have found that I cannot eat more than a small potato at night, or a small portion of carbohydrate rich food, but potatoes are the worst, whereas they didn't seem to affect Ian that much and he needs more calories than I do.

Our sheep have responded to the cold by putting on a lot of
fleece. They must be well insulated as that snow doesn't
melt off their backs

Timing is also important I can eat two of my own home-made breadrolls for lunch but not in the evening. I found that out this week after a rather high reading one morning. It makes sense when we remember that our bodies have a diurnal rhythm (daily rhythm). I take my time making bread and so it is more of a sourdough recipe, which also helps, I did find out though that shop bought white bread is only for emergencies, as the blood sugar rise is quite alarming. It is annoying though that if we run out I have to spend so much time reading the labels on bread to see which does not have added sugar - a good job I have new glasses and can see all the small print now and a good job that Latvians like a sour-rye bread and so easily available, even if I do have to hunt for it.

Yes we still have our Christmas tree up, but
it will be coming down at the end of the 
week. It is now starting to drop needles but 
it has been such a lovely addition to our 
lounge that it seemed a shame to throw 
it away too early

Paradoxically fruit is great and desserts are okay as long as they have protein in it, so small piece of cake (and I mean small) and custard - no problem. Ice-cream - fine! Once in the hotel I asked for just ice-cream and they gave me the ice-cream with baked banana in caramel sauce and nuts and the next day my blood sugar was not too bad and certainly not as bad as I had been expecting. If it had been two potatoes, that would have been a different story. Of course the initial rise may have been high - I didn't test that, but it did come down again by the next morning.

Our chain harrow disappearing beneath the snow.

I can also eat porridge in the morning, which not every person struggling with blood sugar can, but I do wonder if that is something to do with making a big batch of 4 or 5 grain porridge. If pasta is better cooled and then re-heated for blood sugar control, then maybe the carbohydrate structure in porridge also undergoes a similar transformation. I have found the same effect with both milk porridge and porridge made with fruit juice or fruit purée (we have a lot of berries in the freezer). I eat my porridge with apple sauce and kefirs and only add honey to the fruit porridge. That all worked out fine without any dire blood sugar spikes. One morning I made the porridge and ate it that same morning and my blood sugar rocketed up.

We don't like leaving these out, but not much choice unless we
build barn number two

One of the advantages of the revised diet is that it has pushed me into using some of the grains we have grown such as quinoa and amaranth. These are actually classed as seeds or pseudo-grains rather than actually grains (grains being the seeds of grass plants) and so higher in protein than the traditional grains. The quinoa is the easiest to process but harder to grow successfully, so we haven't as much of that. Amaranth is very easy to grow but far more fiddly to process because the seed is so tiny.  Quinoa makes a great substitute for rice and is quite tasty. I made a nice mix of the quinoa with fried carrot, peas, sesame seeds, linseed, apple, blackcurrant and gooseberry. The fruit was just warmed through but not enough to disintegrate. It was nice cold later on too. I think we will definitely have to work on upping the production of that this next year.

The girls have a new hay feeder, a special long one so more can
eat at the same time

The amaranth though is more difficult to use and needs to be treated more like polenta. I am also going to see if it works as a porridge for the morning, as this will reduce the total amount of starch I eat. I made flour from the amaranth to use in a crumble for a savoury squash dish and that worked okay and I will have to find out how much I can use amaranth as a substitute for flour. I already use a commercial pea flour to substitute a quarter of the flour in bread sometimes, so I can work on playing with that recipe.

A corner feeder too. Obviously well appreciated

The reality though is that overall the one strategy that has kept the weight coming off more than any others is portion control. I use the same plates I have always used, but instead of filling it, I use the circle that edges the pattern on the plate as my guide. My evening meal has to fit within the circle. A very simple technique. The next part of the portion control is that instead of half being carbohydrate, now it is a third or less. It is easy to visualise and keeps me on track for blood sugar control. After that I eat exactly the same as Ian does. Despite the fun of playing about with new recipes, I do find it hard sometimes. What I really miss though is toast when I feel like a snack, so I can relate to this video of a song from my childhood (forgive the overdone specimens of toast in this clip though, link here). Hopefully over time though my body will recover from its insulin resistance and I won't have to be quite so careful, as long as I keep the belly fat off.

I cannot get enough of the stunning
colours of frosty wintry landscapes

To finish off with, we have just realised that I missed an anniversary last week. It was 8 years ago on the 18th January that I wrote my first blog. We were still in Colorado then and just preparing for our move to Latvia. We didn't know what we were setting off to and certainly had no idea that eight years later we would be caring for alpacas and working out how to process alpaca fleece, along with managing 13ha of land. I had no idea then that I would be studying towards a PhD either. Amazing what you can do when you set off prepared to take the adventures that come your way.

Glutton for punishment

Our buckwheat field is flowering. That is going to be a lot
of buckwheat seed. Help!

We are definitely heading into the season of gluts. One day I am dealing with the blueberries which we were kindly given, next it was half a bucket of blackcurrants - which might not seem much of a glut until you realise that you cannot eat a half bucket of blackcurrants before they go off and so they have to be dealt with. At least they could just be washed and frozen so that wasn't too much hassle. Our next glut was gooseberries. As the currant bushes haven't been so prolific this year we didn't expect much from our gooseberry bushes ...... until we went to start picking them that is. We picked a full bucket of gooseberries from two gooseberry bushes and thought we had finished, but on standing up we spotted another bush of gooseberries also loaded with the little hairy fruits (they had to wait as we only had one bucket with us). You can tell we are not sure what we have yet can't you! We have three separate plots that we manage and we kind of forget from time to time what is where. We also had the lurking courgette, the one that kind of blends into the background until is of monster proportions. Happens every year but fortunately so far they haven't been that prolific and so wasn't too much of a hassle... give them another week or two and it will be courgette this and courgette that even with just three plants.

Theatre at the outdoor stage at our annual celebrations

I am beginning to get the hang of what to do with fruits though, especially of the berry kind. De-stalking or topping and tailing is as you can imagine, if you haven't done it before, is really boring and very tedious and so any form of mechanical processing is a major time saver (for the uninitiated who haven't a clue what I am going on about, de-stalking means taking all the stalks off the berries as they get stuck in your teeth otherwise and topping and tailing is taking the flower remains off one end of a gooseberry and the stalk off the other - which is the top and which is the tail is for you to decide). For half the berries I have used a gadget that goes on my Kitchen Aid mixer and separates the pulp from leaves, stalks, skins and seeds and saves a lot of time sorting it all out, I froze that in ice-cube trays for ease of use later. The other half complete with stray leaves and stalks I have steamed using a natty device that allows you to collect the steamed juice, and from that bottled two 1 litre jars of juice and three jars of jam from the remains which were then put through the strainer. Have to say that the juice is a little sharp so not quite sure what we will do with it - may have to mix it with something else later or let Ian drink it all as he can take sharp tastes including rhubarb without sugar (Bleh!). I also found a recipe for gooseberry vinegar so giving that a go - might just end up with a mouldy mess though.

A dyeing workshop

Time seems to fly by and I am left wondering at times what exactly have I done. I seem to spend a lot of time processing food, so that we have plenty for over the winter. I also spend some time in the garden weeding, but perhaps not as much as I should judging by the amount of taming I had to do today. I gave quite a few plants a hair cut to tidy them up but decided to leave the marjoram that is lying about all over the place as there are rather too many bees on them to start wading in there. If I am not processing food I am processing plants for their seeds, as we are trying to learn the art of saving seeds for growing the following year, sometimes it is easy and sometimes it is not. Trying to stop seeds going mouldy can be quite hard. I did manage to finish reading all my academic papers about wild boar or conflicts between wildlife and people, so at least I can start the process of writing up a proposal for my thesis. I even came up with a title which I am going to run past my tutor, "Wild boar: Friend or Foe?" I have also spent a lot of time chatting with our youngest on Skype, in fact once I had to given him a big hint that even if he is finished for the summer hols and is getting bored, I haven't and I was struggling with interruptions, (so son, if you are reading this, I have finished reading the papers now) just typical that he hasn't been on for days, obviously found something else to do. I have also finally managed to finish some knitting for my nephew and niece, what's the bet that by the time they get it my little nephew will have grown to big for his cardi? (No pictures yet until they have seen them first though)

Wild boar numbers in Latvia. As you can see they have
increased rather rapidly in the last 15 years

Going back to the wild boar, the numbers have finally been released by the Latvian Statistics Office and it is estimated that the numbers decreased this last winter, which is only to be expected really, as there was a lot of snow - not that they decreased much mind as you can see from the graph. After the severe winter the numbers fell by 300 ie from about 67,200 to 66,900. How accurate these numbers are is difficult to say as the statistics have to rely on information from hunters, as the forestry personnel cannot collate all the information necessary. The smaller numbers will not be of particular encouragement to farmers though when their land is dug up. We are pleased that so far the damage has not been in any new areas and in out of the way places on the whole. We do not want to spend lots of time filling in pig holes or ploughing up areas to level them.


The referendum took place this Saturday to decide whether to dissolve the Saeima (Latvian Parliament) and the result was overwhelming, 95% of those who voted decided to oust the current government. If that doesn't give a hearty signal that the Latvian people are fed up with corrupt politicians I don't know what will. A friend of mine though did voice the quandary that it was all well and good to vote this time to say "enough is enough" but in the election to elect a new government will anything change? Will there be enough untainted politicians to vote for? Will the parliamentarians act with integrity once they are elected? Time will tell, but the Latvian people have spoken very loudly and very clearly - they don't like corruption. 

All natural dyes and the labels are all written on pieces of
birch

The referendum was not the only event in our village this weekend, there was also the annual celebrations. As is normal in Latvia, most things happen around an outdoor stage and involves lots of singing, dancing and acting. It was quite amazing to see a guy from the local garage acting, one of our neighbours, a man in his early 20s, dancing, and the local owner of a joinery company singing in the choir. In the UK it is not often you come across young men who do folk dancing and to be honest they would often be laughed at by their mates, but here in Latvia it is not unusual and nothing to be ashamed of and rightly so too. Good for the Latvians I say. There was a troop of older ladies dancing too, the only complaint was not the fact they were dancing and at least keeping fit and enjoying themselves, but the youngsters who followed them were getting rather cold waiting for their turn. I would show you a video but of course I turned the phone on its side and was too far away to get a good picture, another time perhaps! This year the event highlighted the local businesses in the area, a local tv personality interviewed the business owners to find out what they do and so one of our friends explained about the company she had set up exporting firewood and another of our friends talked about making goats cheese and the rabbits she raises, she even sold out of all the cheese she had made. So many folks were surprised to hear of the local businesses and took business cards away, let's hope that is the start of a robust local economy. 

Can you spot the blueberry dyed wool?

There was also a workshop on natural dyeing at the celebrations and it showed what wonderful colours can be generated from local weeds. Fat hen gives a gorgeous clear green and is a frequent weed in our garden, the blueberries give a stunning purple and dyer's chamomile can give an intense yellow or orange. The amount of skills in the area in terms of dyeing, weaving and spinning is astounding and certainly bodes well when we get the alpacas. I am looking forward to seeing what products we can make between us. Latvians can be so creative and have not lost many of what we could consider old skills, the knowledge is actively used and so people really know what they are doing, which also means there is great scope for holidays learning about these old skills in some lovely Latvian countryside. 

Translation: Wood colours

Unfortunately while we were enjoying the celebrations others were not having a good time; this weekend has had its fair share of shocking news. The young talented Amy Whitehouse succumbs to her addictions, such a waste of a life, such a lack of hope. The news from Norway was shocking not just from the sheer scale of the atrocity but the unexpectedness of it. It kind of feels like there is nowhere safe today, even when things are bad elsewhere there is a hope that there are places that are not accustomed to such horrors, but this illusion was shattered over the weekend. I have to admire the response though from the Norwegians where the voice of reason arose strong and clear, that they will not give in to fear, that they will refuse to be a hostage to it, but will continue to live their lives with openness and transparency. I do pray that they can indeed live up to that call. And then there is Somalia, people dying once again due to famine. This is not just about a lack of water causing a drought, this has to do with how the powers who control the areas deal with the issue. Famines need not happen these days, bad weather, yes, food shortages, yes, but famines no! It is the lack of political will and power mongering that causes famines. I at least learnt that on my development management course.