Spit happens

I gather it was a week of sunshine and showers for Ian, but
maybe more showers.

Well as you may have gathered, the last couple of weeks have been a bit hectic. Trying to work in academia and do farm tasks can get a bit tricky trying to balance the various tasks involved for both. They get done though. It is no wonder there were times last week in the conference I attended where I had a gentle dig at comments made by academics when it came to issues affecting farmers. One comment in particular from one young academic was about the apparent need for farmers to diversify. That particular comment is like a red rag to a bull. Of course farmers would like to improve their income but the costs to body, mind and soul can be enormous. It's like telling a nurse that actually if she could take on a bed and breakfast establishment as well as work shifts then her income will be fine. Hello! I don't know many lazy farmers who get lots of time off. Yes arable farmers may be able to take off on holiday while the crop grows but really do they not deserve a holiday? For livestock farmers the issue is even harder. I'd better stop there!

I think all the alpacas have been having a party while I've
been away. Aggie looks like she's been on the razzle

It's hard to believe but two weeks ago, I had just returned from a trip to Finland, this time it is from Hannover in Germany. So just like two weeks ago there was a bit of email catching up to do and sorting out for work. Supposedly I'm on holiday but there is a deadline to make and besides I get a few days off next week, in between more travelling, so I have to be a bit flexible. At least that is one advantage of remote working and everyone seems happy enough with the work I do put in, so all is good.

I'm glad she picked up later. She looks much better now

Even Herk looks like he's had a drink too many

Before I set off to Germany there were a few things that needed sorting on the farm that Ian wouldn't be able to do on his own. We didn't get them all done but we did get the most important ones done. One of the main tasks is the bimonthly trimming of toe nails. We got 16 done in one day and three the next - or to be honest two and a half. Half an alpaca? Yes! Brencis! Our gentle giant is not that gentle when it comes to rear toe nail cutting. Not sure why but he does kick up a fuss but he's too big for me to deal with and hold still when he doesn't want to cooperate. I guess we will have to sort that out this week, one way or another.

Apparently there were still leaves on trees. The gusty weather
over the weekend meant there were none left by the time I
got back

Dear, sweet Chanel. Pity she is just a little excitable.

The alpaca owner's refrain is "Spit happens!" and it sure did during toe nail cutting. Chanel always kicks up a fuss, but she wasn't too bad, we coped and avoided the spit. I wasn't quite so lucky when it came to cutting the toe nails of her baby. I got a face full. Fortunately not full on but I still had to go back and wash it off my face in case it burnt before carrying on. I do hope little Ilvija isn't as bad as her mum when she gets older, I don't think she will be. The only issue will be how long will Chanel be possessive if Ilvija stays with her? I guess we will find out.

Little Ilvija glows like her Mum. She was out for a stroll
this evening though

See! I said they''ve all been having a
party

We had hoped to move the chicken arks and caravan into the greenhouse but decided against it as the ground was still soft and we were running out of time. Ian is regretting that decision as over the weekend it rained, and rained and rained and so the ground is saturated. At least the well is filling up very rapidly despite being pumped out several times to help flush it through, so that's an improvement on last year. We soldl one of the cockerels and then culled the rest to free up an ark so that repairs can be made later. I spent a while explaining to one lady, who I think was vegetarian why it is necessary to cull the excess cockerels. They were beginning to fight and if there are too many cockerels to hens then the hens get harassed. One of our hens has only just got her feathers back after being harassed by one cockerel in particular. It is just mean to keep them for too long unless they have a role of mating for fertile eggs to keep the flock going. Even if we let them go, they would fight or be eaten by foxes so not much of life either way.

I'm not sure Amanda was joining in the party though. Maybe
she is pregnant then. I guess we will find out soon.

Mari looks like she's been dancing all night

With those jobs out of the way, it was time to catch the bus to Riga in time for the overnight bus to Berlin. I would like to catch a train as there is more room to move around, but it is not that convenient from the Baltic States yet. The bus though is convenient, as I can get the international bus from the same station that my village bus goes to. I wouldn't say the seat was that comfy but at least there is enough room to recline without the seat going into the face of the person behind. It also reclines more than an airplane seat and I found I could sleep. I think it is the practice I've had of travelling. The neck pillow I took though was helpful.

I think Jakobs looks like he was dancing like his Mum

The pond is very full now

One of the nice things about travelling to conferences is that I get to meet lots of people from all over the place, as well as make friends with people who they know. It was a friend of a friend who I organised to meet up with in Berlin. I'm not particularly fond of cities and so no burning ambition to go sightseeing, but if I can stop for a chat with someone then I'm happy. There wasn't much around the bus station apart from mainly fast food eating places. There was a restaurant with a view over Berlin but my new friend was not particularly fond of heights and this restaurant was 55m up a tower.  I wasn't keen of the staircase and wasn't sure if there was a lift so I wasn't keen either, not with my suitcase in tow (if you fancy a visit, here's the link). We decided that the American diner worked the best for us and it didn't turn out too bad if you ignored the rather rude or laidback service, depending on your point of view.

With the leaves gone off the trees it's
easier to see across the road to the
other section of our land. I love the
misty look in this photo

At least Freddie looks like he would
never be out partying

So after a lovely lunch with good company it was off to Hannover. I did have one heart stopping moment as the bus pulls away - where was my handbag? It had slid behind under the seat, but fortunately for me the kind lady behind found it. I arrived in Hannover mid-evening and found where I was staying easily enough, but then realised that I hadn't got the details to get in. I think it was my fault but with a quick hunt through my emails on my phone and a text to the owner I was let into a lovely apartment with a nice clean room and comfy bed. It was a nice place to stay and the lady even bought me some black tea because there weren't many black tea teabags left. She taped one teabag onto the handle of the door for when I got back after my first day at the conference, so I would know they were in the drawer where the teabags are kept, which was very sweet of her.

Leibniz University where the
first day of conference was held.
We moved to the Hannover
Conference after that.

The conference week had some long days and early starts so that comfy bed was very welcome. I think that is probably why I don't feel so worn out. I also didn't have to do any cooking all week, which made a nice change. I hadn't been to one of these kinds of meetings before and they had been going for 10 years, so I was surprised to meet quite a few of the people from my summer school in Peyresq, France from about 5 years ago. One of the keynote speakers was also a fellow student on that course and we had gelled as two older ladies. I was surprised she remembered me as she is a busy kind of lady. I managed to embarrass myself when a young lady walked past who I recognised and she recognised me, but I couldn't remember where from. It wouldn't be so bad but it was only the week before in Helsinki. I guess I had the excuse I had been on an overnight bus the day before. It must have addled my brain more than I thought. She was very gracious though and I found out she would be joining us for an evening dinner.

Mr. Cool. I don't think being at a party would ruffle George

One aspect of the conference made me realise what a rich life we lead. The conference dinner was rather pricey. It was great that I got to chat with a lady who does work with communicating research to people on the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Finland who would be affected by climate change.Many traditional activities would be affected with the knock on effects on tourism and a whole way of life if, as they expect, sea ice does not build up in winter. No cross country skiing across the ice, no ice fishing, no driving on the iced up areas and so on. Life would be very different!

But don't be beguiled by his sweet looks. He's the naughty
one who eats through fences, just like his Mum

Anyway the meal itself was nice, but felt rather ordinary. It was all locally produced and ecological. Errr! Yes! It tasted nice. I had guinea fowl with green beans, broad beans, pine nuts, salad and pesto sauce. It just did not feel very special when we kind of eat like that anyway. Okay not the pine nuts and much pesto sauce, but we quite often have wild mushroom sauce instead - it's no big deal when you have a forest. All our vegetables are locally sourced, either from our own garden or gifts from others. I haven't had guinea fowl in a while but grass-fed lamb, grass-fed chicken, elk, wild boar, beaver sausage once, organic goat and so on. All locally sourced. We eat like kings.

I love the balustrade on this house. This
was on my walk to the conference. I always
try to make sure I get to walk from where
I stay to the conference centre. 

Of course it was interesting getting to know some of the research going on, but it was more interesting meeting new people and reconnecting with others. I did manage to recognise one name, a fellow PhD student who used to take me in his car from Latvia to Tartu for some of the courses we did together in the same year. I hadn't seen him for a few years, but it was good to hear what was going on in forestry in Latvia, whilst on the field trip to the lovely Lüneburg Heath. There were other people who I did not know but were at the same university that I work for, but they knew me. The head of department had been telling them about me and the fact I had alpacas. One of the guys and I had quite a long conversation on alpaca care to see how they might work for conservation purposes on some of the sensitive heathlands. Not sure if it would work but it might be something worth investigating and I was able to point him in the direction of the Estonian Alpaca Association, which he hadn't realised existed and also to say that he would be better talking to my husband too. So maybe we could organise a university field trip to alpaca farms - now that would be intriguing.

It's hard to believe that much of Hannover is actually
reconstructed as it was decimated during the second world
war.

The week flew by and my waistline may have suffered again, although I was fairly good and didn't snack often. I wasn't happy though on my last night in Hannover to be woken at 3:00am by a text from the company I had booked a train to Berlin with to say they had booked me onto the later train. It would be a bit tight to get from the train station to the bus station. I looked to see if there were any other trains but to re-book on those would have cost a fortune. I had to leave it till the morning. I woke early and looked at the train times again and then the bus times. It was possible to book on the bus an hour earlier than the train time and I still had time to make it to but had to rush to make it. I had told the hosts I would be getting the 10am train and so had to leave a note to say I had to leave earlier and hope all was okay. I gather it was as I got a nice review on the AirBnB site, as a quiet hardworking guest.

Slept in?

Fortunately I made the bus and it didn't cost me much more - although I shall complain about that, it shouldn't have cost me extra at all. It would have been helpful to have had more of a choice in timing.  At least I didn't have to work out how to cross Berlin, it just meant an extra hour sitting on a bus. I went back to the diner for lunch where the service had improved since the last time I was there, which was a good job as I didn't have as much time for them to mess around to eventually serve me. In fact the older lady was very pleasant. I had more space on the bus to Warsaw as the adjacent seat was empty and I had the chance to spread out. Unfortunately that wasn't the case for the nighttime but I still slept. With plenty of coffee, tea and lunch in Riga before my bus home to the village, I was fine, but it was still nice to see Ian turning up in the wind and the rain that greeted me on arrival in Latvia.

Munching away. There isn't much grass so they've been
eating more hay. It's probably good for them as it is easy for
them to get too fat.

I was back to work this morning and learning to work in the coolish caravan. It can be warmed up quickly enough, so not too bad at night, but during the day we try to be economical. It was a bit of a chilly afternoon though as our local vet came around. She wants to learn how to make blood slides so she can check the blood of the animals she cares for. Ian was showing her what to look for. A step back in time for him as it would be over 30 years since he learnt the techniques. It was amusing for him to think about the guy who taught him, as I guess he wouldn't have thought how useful that skill is on an alpaca farm in the middle of rural Latvia.

Normality restored

Winter wonderland

Just kidding! Normality! What's that? Having said that, it has been a quieter week. There was a trip to pick up some roofing sheets to get ready for putting the caravan outside but under permanent shelters as soon as the weather improves - although that will not be any time soon by the look of it, but it could be when I go away, so it is best to be prepared. Another reason for the trip was also because the horse box needed to go for it's technical (trailers also need to have roadworthiness tests here), so it was just a matter of going from the testing station to the builder's merchant close by. It therefore saved a journey another day.

Lots of paths need to be kept clear by Ian. I don't get out so
often as writing on the computer in temperatures of just above
zero is not too much fun. 

I love the laciness of the trees 

Having said that, some like to sit outside in it. 

We were a bit worried about the brakes on the horse box because they have been freezing up. We now leave the horse box parked without the brakes on, to stop them freezing onto the wheels - a problem we had last year. This time though we were worried that they would freeze in the off position and not stop the box during the test. We were relieved that it wasn't a problem at the test station and it passed all the tests. The problem was when we got to the builder's merchant. As we got out of the car there was a strong smell of rubber and the wheel was quite hot. In doing the test on the brakes, they had frozen on. Fortunately the heat unfroze them and on the way back it wasn't a problem. Mind you Ian stopped several times to check.

Our wood pile and hay stack are disappearing in the snow

Narnia?

You can see the sore patch under Aggie's chin that needs the
magic cream. At least the lump now seems to have
disappeared from last year's issue with the tooth abscess

I've had to go out to the land twice this week to apply the magic cream to the girls. The milder weather seems to have resulted in an early onset of the mite issues that we get plagued with from time to time. The magic cream is just comfrey and plantain infused olive oil with a few essential oils in it and that seems to do the trick. The girls loved it on the first day as the cream was still warm from having beeswax added that morning. You could almost hear them go "Hmmmmmm! Arrrrrhhhh!" I think they may have been a bit disappointed the next time it was applied, as it was much colder.

Freddie smiling

We had blue skies and sunshine too, just not on the day that
I was out on the land of course

Ieva Prane's workshop

My next trip was to our Latvian felter on the outskirts of Riga to discuss a project for the next felting course in June. It is exciting to see what she is planning and we discussed how she can best use her skills to encourage people to develop their design work. We didn't manage to finish the article but at least we got a feel for the project and the potential it has, so I am looking forward to seeing the finished product and to see what it looks like on. On the way back to pick Ian up from the caravan where I had left him at lunchtime I saw a racoon dog and a deer on the road not far from our land.

Our project with an alpaca fleece fringe

I love the colour of this little oak tree that has clung to its
leaves all

It is a good job the snow isn't as high as it was about 8 years
ago, our sign would have disappeared too

Much of the week I have continued with my writing. I actually feel like I am seeing the end of the tunnel and it shouldn't take much more to actually get them finished, which is a rather nice feeling. I am still waiting for a reply to the last one I submitted and will probably hear in the next week or two. My supervisor and I have even started to discuss when I defend my PhD, although I do have to get some sort of conclusion to these papers first though. Preliminarily though we are talking about a pre-defence in September. This is the time when the glitches in the thesis should be ironed out and is the hardest part. Then it goes in for a period of a re-write and hopefully defended in November. If all goes well on the day I get my doctorate. Well that's the plan! Let's see first how things progress - as the Seto people in Estonia say.

There's a pond in there somewhere 

Eyre out and about in the snow

Brencis spent sometime reflecting on his own this week. He
must have had a fight with Tellus before Ian arrived to let
them out.

One of the nice things about our life at the moment is the access to good food. We know where the majority of our food comes from, since we have watched it grow. I have even started off onions and peppers to get a head start in the spring. The onions should be fairly hardy but the pepper just seem to take too long to come to maturity and so starting them early might help and we will keep them inside for as long as possible. We did try overwintering some but not sure if they have enjoyed the cool conditions in our other apartment.

Preparation for next year's tasty Latvian potatoes. I am
always so sad as I pile the potatoes onto Ian's plate and
then put a small amount on mine. I do love Latvian potatoes

One day our evening meal consisted of our own lamb, dried rhubarb, dried tomatoes, dried chanterelles, herbs, beans, peas, onions in a nice rich stew, all from our land. You might wonder at the dried rhubarb but it adds a tang a bit like adding lemon to a meal and cheaper as it means we don't have to buy lemons. Another day we had a go with Rocky Mountain Oysters - I will let you google that one, but suffice to say they were surprisingly tasty. I have also started making our own chocolate bars. In essence they are really more like a very rich cocoa butter icing I suppose, but it hits the spot, is cheaper than a bar of dark chocolate and we don't have as much problems getting the ingredients as we do trying to get dark chocolate in our village.

Mr. P is much easier to photograph these days

 Low fat, low calorie Ice-cream! Yum

I suppose I should add that all this good food has not done me so much good over the last year and some of my weight has crept back on. To be fair it tends to leap on when I go away and not drop off afterwards so readily, especially in the winter months when I am much less active - fear of ice does curtail activity to some extent. It has now got to the stage where it seems to be interfering with blood sugar levels again, so the weight has to come off and I need to sort out those things that affect the levels the most and cut down on them. Heh ho! Still at least I have more idea than I did when I first started measuring the sugar levels, what does and doesn't affect them. Dark chocolate is still okay - in moderation of course, okay in a loooot of moderation!

A bit of a wobbly start to the first skiing session of the
season

That's better on a roll now

You may have heard of slow food! Or slow fashion maybe!
Well this is slow skiing aka Nordic skiing with Grandma Oh Oh!

Got a handle on this?

Updated link that wasn't working

The door handle! Are you impressed?

Before I start I have to set something straight, I inadvertently forgot to mention a momentous event that happened last week in our home. Ian ..... wait for it!!!!!!! put a handle on the inside door. Why is this momentous? Because it has taken him nearly four years to get around to doing it. For the past four years our inner door was opened by sticking our finger into a hole and pulling, not too bad when you know that and not too bad until winter time when gloved hands get a bit too big and then it gets awkward. So I'm glad I put that straight and now I shall get around to the news from this week.

The stuff of life! It is in this temperature.

This week hasn't been as cold as the week before, still low at around -25C (-13F) at night and up to even -6C (21F) one day in the sun. This was certainly an improvement on sub -30's (-22F) the week before and lucky if we saw it below -20C (-4F) for most of the day. Our apartment heating, however, did not improve much this week, it has been up and down all week, no consistency at all. I was even surprised that there wasn't a huge improvement during the Latvian Schools Winter Olympics that is held every year here. I wonder how much of that was to do with a much scaled down event this time, it had finished by mid-day on Saturday and so no fireworks. It is sad when the countries economic woes hit events like these, but I guess there is the added expense of the Olympic games in London this year for the Latvian Olympic committee to fund. We had another meeting this week with the mayor and the director of the heating company together and at least it helps us to understand what is going on and how we get our heat and the issues involved. The next step is to carry out some experiments to see what effect the recirculation pump has on the heat we get - gosh somethings are never straightforward, but Ian is in his element helping to devise experiments and looking forward to analysing results.

All in the cause of research of course! It's a
hard life, but here is the hot chocolate
pudding, a bit too runny this time.

We have eaten well this week, part of the reason was that we had invited a young friend of ours so that our translator, who has been helping me to interview local farmers and hunters, could have someone to connect with, who was more his own age and possibly some similar interests. To facilitate that we dug out the free range turkey, we were given by some other friends and laid on a lavish feast. Well any excuse really for a good nosh up. So we had roast turkey, roast spuds, a rice mixture (okay I forgot to check how many spuds we had and we didn't have enough for mash as well; wouldn't mind but we have sackfuls of them but up at the other apartment), some other roast veg and of course Yorkshire puddings, all followed by a red and blackcurrant sponge with Ian's home-made ice-cream. It was rather nice, if I do say so myself! Later on in the week we went to the hotel and had to carry out an experiment - in the interests of science of course! We had to test the chocolate puddings as sometimes they are runny in the centre, which they are supposed to be, and sometimes they are completely set but still make a yummy pudding. I explained this to some students in the student cafe I monitor and one of them asked me how often did they came out right? I guessed that 75% of the time they came out just right but of course I wasn't entirely sure, cue excuse for an experiment. Ian, ever the scientist, said that we had to carry out the experiment at least 20 times to be sure and so we have started on the challenge. Mind you I don't think we really are going to carry out the experiment for 20 times, it will take far too long to get the results and it is the most expensive dessert on the menu (If you want to make it yourself then here is a recipe if you missed it in a previous blog link).

We are not the only ones with wood stores, here are just a
few. 

To top off the week of good eating we finished off with a jar of venison and wild boar which had been produced by one of the ladies who used to attend my English class. Her husband is a hunter and I got to interview him this week for my course and he came with his good lady wife and laden with three jars of a meat product. I say meat product because I can see it has a bay leaf in it and meat, but apart from that I have no idea of the rest of the contents. It was tasty and in some ways reminiscent of a tin of corned beef, but with chunks of meat instead and I guess none of the fillers and nitrates that normal corned beef has. Ian was elated to have found something like corned beef and I have a feeling that the next jar will be reappearing as a meat and potato pie or more likely something resembling a corned beef hash pie. Although we do love the taste of corned beef, the last time we actually had some, we both ended up with sore mouths, as the preservatives used in those kinds of products causes some sort of an adverse reaction now we are not used to foods with chemicals in it - well if you discount salt, fat, oil, vinegar, citric acid and those sort of chemicals which I add to bottled foods.

You can see a wild boar track quite clearly on this picture.
How can we tell it is a wild boar? Wild boar are heavy and
have short legs and hence they leave a wide trail in this
depth of snow. Last year the metre high snow made it
difficult for wild boar to even get around.

The interviews, for my course project, are going well again this week and I have interviewed another farmer who gave us the telephone number for someone else, a local State Forest Service senior forest ranger who is responsible for hunting at the local level and another hunter who is trying to get local hunting organisations to work together and to improve how they work by the creation of a new hunting association. In the last interview of the week I got to see a wild boar face to face but fortunately for me, not the wild boar of course, it was hanging from a ceiling in the process of being butchered. The interview with the hunting association organiser was at a facility which included a place where the hunters can go to butcher the meat they have shot, hence the gruesome scene. I have to say it was a grim satisfactionto see it up there, knowing all the damage they can create in just one night, although it was kind of sad too. After all the wild boar are opportunists and well fed ones at that, and that is why their numbers are increasing - man's fault really. Apparently wild boar won't eat all potatoes though, you can get a spray that will stop them eating them - question is would you eat potatoes that have been sprayed with something that wild boar with their sensitive noses refuse to eat?

Our greenhouse is still up! Yeh! The internal supports
though, no longer rest on their plinths but are about a
centimetre above due to the outside ones rising in
the frozen ground as the ice expands.

So as I said we have eaten well this week, meat with no artificial preservatives, and certainly free range. You can't get much more free range than an animal shot in the wild. Our feasts usually don't cost that much, due to generous friends, but what would happen if we were to buy it? Would it cost a lot? In some ways it should due to the effort gone into obtaining the meat. Even our veg that we have eaten this week has all been won from the land by the sweat of our brows. Good food, however, only appears expensive if it is bought, because we don't see the hidden costs of the cheap food. Tax payers money is often channeled into producing factory farmed meat, that is no good for us or the animal, but since no one actually pays that at the till it makes the food seem cheap. This is a big problem with the system we have, that penalises the small producers for producing good quality products and encourages damaging industrial processes (see here for an article that goes into more depth on the issues).

Cold weather often brings some glorious
sunsets.

I have been a bit bewildered just lately by the differing comments that are all supposed to have emanated from the IMF. On the one hand Latvia is supposed to have emerged stronger than ever from the crisis, not sure how many Latvians would agree with that analysis though. On the other hand the Latvians might agree with the emergence of the fact that the Latvian crisis has exacerbated poverty and fuelled the rise of inequality. So the IMF thinks that Latvia has emerged stronger when inequality has increased and yet according to many reports inequality fuels instability, the more equal a society is the more stable it is - surely the strength of a nation should therefore be measured by its equality? The IMF has also stated the safety net was important to the recovery - what safety net? The one that guarantees a minimum of 40 Lats a month when our heating bill was 40 Lats this last month? Or is it the one that guarantees 40 Lats a month when the minimum amount to live on is 164 Lvls (or is it higher now)? These sort of conflicting reports do not really help nations to move on from a crisis. The measurements of what is a success and what isn't should really rest with the nations inhabitants who have to live with the issues and the consequences and not some dependence on a discredited financial system that has not aided many people to find a satisfying lifestyle, that meets their needs.

There's a river there somewhere! The
continuing cold weather has meant that
most rivers have now frozen over.

Over the duration of my course I have been looking at issues such as resilience and so one article on why some people don't get depressed caught my eye. The article was looking at what makes an individual resilient? But I think that perhaps is the wrong question? It should be what makes a community resilient? Communities are the backbone of life, separated off, isolated individuals with everyone in their place does not breed resilience. A mix of people, the cranky, the friendly, interacting makes a community and breeds resilience. You learn how to deal with people and you can learn from people how to deal with life, people need robust resilient communities to become resilient and to pass on resilience to others.