Home!

A choir of celebration, in training for advent

I've actually been at home a whole week now and I'm not going away again for a few more weeks. Gosh! Home is still the caravan surprisingly. The nights are long and it makes cooking an interesting experience. Sometimes in the cold greenhouse lit by the outdoor light or inside the caravan with our new acquisition, Robbie Mark 2. Robbie is a halogen oven, we nicknamed our first one Robbie for some reason. We missed the convenience of it so much we got another one. We kept Robbie Mark 1 going for as long as possible but eventually the plastic disintegrated. It didn't help that it's been in the greenhouse for much of its life and the plastic is obviously not UV resistant. We'll not make that mistake again. The halogen oven is good for Ian through the winter as it means it is easy to heat up a pie or bake some potatoes.

Tellus hitting those high notes and Freddie smiling benignly

There's nothing like a bit of snow and sunshine to show
how grubby our alpacas are. These are supposed to be white

At least Vanessa is close-ish to white that we get.

Baking in the caravan at least adds extra warmth, not that we are cold. A single oil-filled radiator on one bar is mostly sufficient with the occasional boost from a fan heater on the chillier days (the one bar is for safety reasons as we've had too many switches cook when switched to two). We are not particularly hardy and it is warmer than our old apartment used to be when the heating company blessed us with a rather cool but constant 16C. We'll be heading back to the apartment soon though but at least this apartment is warm as we heat it ourselves.

Cheek! I don't think Valeria cares what colour she is.

It has been a bit cold. This is the ice out of the water troughs.
Ian has been using the well water for the animals, which is
filling up again nicely. Along as it doesn't get too high and
freeze, we are okay.

We might be toasty here in our caravan but our older barn cat, Sofie  has decided to up sticks again and move up to our neighbour to live amongst her cows. Our other cat misses her company or maybe just the heat. They tolerate each other during the summer months, but in the winter they are best buddies. It is a dilemma, because, Sofie also hates the heat of the apartment and we are not the type to share our bedroom with animals, it disturbs me too much. I guess we might have to create a cat cave or I make one from our alpaca fleece - only that takes time and just at the moment I'm really busy with deadlines to meet. It will probably have to be a cardboard box and hay then.

Perched on top of the kettle after we had made our morning
coffee.

Aggie enjoying the sunshine

Ilvija growing up fast. She wasn't very sure about the snow
though. Not lke Josefs and Jakobs who used to love it.

Although I'm home I still have a lot of work to do. I have been writing, writing, writing and errrr... writing. I've now got the first draft done of my PhD thesis, so now my supervisors need to read it and give me some feedback. Once that was done and I had sorted out some admin type things with work I then started on another academic article. Technically the deadline was December 1st but my priority was to get my thesis finished and they did say that a short extension was allowable for the article. I hope to have that done in the next day or two. My supervisor is going to love me as there will be so much to read.

Show off! 

Such a look of innocence. Even when he's not cooperating
he kind of looks sweet. He just won't let us do what we need
to get done.

So apart from loads of writing there has also been the usual stuff, like laundry. Now when we live in our apartment that isn't a particularly onerous task, but when we are in the caravan it means a trip into the village to spend a day there. At this time of the year it means we can heat the apartment through, so we don't have burst pipes and I can also check the post, do some shopping and bring meat from the freezer. Well I can't waste time now. The alpacas also all got their Vitamin D injections this week, except Brencis who wouldn't cooperate as usual. We used to struggle with his uncle, Turbjørn, but even he is relatively well behaved these days. At least Turbjørn is smaller and I can hold him down, Brencis is just too tall for both of us. Ian cannot lean over him even, which helps to keep them under control.

And this is Brencis' uncle, Tubjørn

Here he is being his usual grumpy self.

That according to the ancient texts, is the sun!

Outside it is Christmas card white. We had a proper dumping of snow/a dusting/some snow - depending on your perspective and your expectations of weather at this time of the year. Since I have friends from Finland to Spain, perspective matters. It's not likely to last though and it is due to disappear by the weekend. It did look pretty for the first Sunday in advent and we even got to see the sun. I think it might have been October when Ian last saw it and I only saw some because of visiting friends in Spain - at least when I was on the east coast of Spain that is.

A dusting of snow

A day later! It was a bit more than we were expecting. 

I forgot to mention a bit of excitement last week. One of my Tartu friends asked if I was going up to the university before Christmas and I told her that I probably wasn't. She asked for my address, which I gave her and then mentioned I was actually passing through Tartu on the train. We agreed to meet there. I say meet, I mean in the few minutes the train was at the station. The train pulled in and there were two of my friends waving at me. That was a surprise. I nipped off the train, but only briefly as I didn't want it to go without me and all my bags were still on the train. I also didn't want to lose my seat as people were piling on. There was enough time though for my friends to hand over some presents and give me a quick hug. That was kind of special!

Another one enjoying the sun

And the snow

Magical frost on the snow

Lady V had her vitamin D injection before the rest. We were
waiting for an order for some more to give the rest there's

What's that stuff? We are not coming out!

Well maybe we will come out but we are not going down
there in that white stuff. We need to get them in the
greenhouse like the other ones, but only just got the other
ark out of the field. It's been too wet to get it and it needs
repairs before it's habitable.

Jakobs out for a stroll in the snow

Our Christmas tree has been decorated by nature

We went for a walk in our magical forest

Beautiful. It never ceases to amaze me that we actually own
a forest.

It never ceases to amaze me how much the wild boar can dig.
The ground is not frozen and so they can still turn it over. This
one has obviously not succumbed to the African Swine Fever.

The view on the way back from picking up my milk from my
neighbour this morning.

Broken!

A wet soggy Turbjørn. Our alpacas seem to have their heads
down most of the time eating while they can still get to the
grass

Just recently we seem to have a catalogue of things breaking or going kaput. Some of them are silly little things but many are things we have been relying on and will need fixing or replacing and it is getting rather annoying. Maybe it is being out in the cold that is doing it and sudden changes in temperature. I suppose that won't help, but not the case for all of them. So here is the catalogue of broken things

Even formation eating. 

The newer greenhouse - some of the poles have got bent or snapped. It doesn't seem to be lasting as long as the other one we bought a few years ago, but then again we anchored that one down into the ground and this new one is not in a permanent place yet.

Sometimes our animals stay inside when it is wet

Halogen oven, aka Robbie - that went a while ago and Ian thought it was probably the bulb and so ordered two when we went to England, but now it looks like it might actually be the thermostat and we still need to locate a replacement for that.

Slow cooker - I cracked the bowl. I think this might have been a temperature thing and so annoying.

Lady V sporting the newest curly look

Transformers - we have had a variety of small transformers and this week one of the bigger ones went kaput on us and that brings the total to four that have gone this year. Ian really needs one of these for the tooth cutting machine and I need one for my sewing machine that are both from the US. Fortunately for the sewing machine we have a large transformer but it is not exactly portable and so no good for Ian. We are now trying to source a new one of those.

Cleaning a bucket in the pond

Pipe for soot collector - this went today whilst trying to clean out the wood-fired oven before the winter heating season. Nothing major just annoying and made worse by the fact we don't seem to be able to get any decent duct tape to repair it with.

It has rained a lot this week and so the ponds have filled to
overflowing. The ground water has also leaked into the well.
It added 330 litres of water in one day where had been filling
up by about 20 litres a day just before as it had slowed down
from the 40 litres a day we were getting.This is no big deal
from a contamination point of view, there is nothing nearby to
contaminate it except sediment, so the water is now cloudy.
The problem is that the ground around the well has still not
settled yet and Ian had to pack it down a bit more. It slowed to
70 litres the day after and 30 litres today (yes Ian does like
to keep records)

Coffee press - that was this week too during washing up. Fortunately we have a spare that our friends bought for their use whilst they were here in Latvia. So we at least have one we can borrow.

Kettles - the one at our apartment went kaput but fortunately our friends who were there at the time bought us a new one. The one out on the land also started to leak but fortunately Ian fixed that with some super glue.

One foaming cat. Of all our cats, Sofie is the best at not taking
tablets. She has perfected the technique of foaming the tablet
rather than swallowing it. Here I am making sure she doesn't
work the tablet out of her mouth. It still had to be put back in
about three times. I wouldn't mind, but normally I don't have
a problem, she is the only cat to have ever beaten me.This was
the worming tablet, fortunately her antibiotic tablets she will
just eat with her food- well most of the time anyway.  

Even the cat, Sofie, is broken. We have no idea what happened but she disappeared for a day - nothing unusual in that, she often disappears for a little while although these little trips have been getting fewer - but when she turned up she was not putting one of her rear legs on the floor. Somehow she had dislocated her hip joint and so that entailed a trip to the big town to get an x-ray and then an operation to put a pin in. At least a specialist was in town that day for his weekly visit. She is now quarantined to the caravan for three weeks to stop her jumping around so much. She still climbs but nothing major and after nearly five days I think she is beginning to accept or enjoy being confined. At least she is in the warm caravan during the day.

Oh yes! Winter struck

The timing of Sofie's accident was not great as winter decided to have a bit of a blast this last week. We had about 5cm of wet slushy snow and so the roads were rather nasty on the way to the big town. We haven't got the winter tyres on yet, instead we have all weather tyres which are legal even in winter, but they are past their best. We got new winter tyres last year, but in the spring we put the old tyres back on to save wear and tear and we haven't swapped back over yet. The wintery weather lasted for about three days before disappearing, but the forecast for the week ahead is not looking too great.

A light blanket of snow as described by the English version
of the Latvian news

We had to take two trips to the big town as we had a meeting with a rural business consultant. She is helping us with getting the rural support for our land and looking out for project money that might help us with the farm and our alpaca tourism. We hadn't gone down the route of EU money before because, to be honest, we weren't sure what we were going to do and had only vague plans, which are not helpful when trying to access project money or the rural support money. We now have a clearer idea of which areas we are willing to manage according to the rules to get the money and which parts we are not for the time being. This year has helped us to crystallise out some of our plans for the future and helped us to work out what we need help with, although this is still a work in progress of course.

Agnese has been trying to show she is boss to me this week.
I have ignored her stand offs and yesterday she ran off instead,
so I think that is progress. She was being standoffish with Ian
but is now back to being more friendly, so hopefully she has
got over the early pregnancy and feeling more like her old self

The snow this last week of course concentrates our mind on what needs to be sorted before winter proper starts. Some of our plants need protection and we notice people have started wrapping up their trees with fleece or plastic, so that will be on the list of to-dos. Whilst Ian was sweeping out the oven earlier on today I got out and picked the last of the beets. I was surprised though that the rows of beans were still okay.

We did see some sunshine and it always makes Chanel's coat
glow

I was annoyed I haven't had the chance to pick them earlier and fully expected them all to have rotted away by now, but they weren't. The pods were soft but not rotten and there were lots of them. I decided to save them and managed to pick the lot before some sleety rain came down. It was fairly easy to separate the beans from the mushy pods and they were rinsed and put on the electric dryer and we had to finish the job by the light from the caravan, but at least it was done. There are still parsnips, jerusalem artichokes and carrots to dig up before they get frozen into the ground and then that really will be the end of the season.

A damp and shaggy looking Mr. P.

We are still out in the caravan, because despite the snow, it hasn't actually been that cold. It was colder overnight earlier on this month. We have though started the process of moving back to our apartment and plan to do that when I get back after a trip up to Estonia. It is easier for Ian to stay in the caravan when he is on his own. I have taken my clothes back and anything else that is not needed over the next week or so.

Lady V in the sunshine too. She is looking really good and
so having some time off from pregnancies has helped her a
lot, although occasionally we do wonder if she did get
pregnant after all in the five minutes she was left alone.

Also despite the weather we have still had visitors, but not the ones that booked earlier on. We were meant to have a group of fifteen but they decided the weather was too bad and let us know they weren't coming. We are pleased that they let us know anyway and to be fair it was pretty miserable over the weekend, so can't say I really blame them. We had two sets of visitors on the Saturday and both hit lucky with the weather as we were in the greenhouse giving the talk about what we do and how we came to be in Latvia when it rained and they managed to see the alpacas when it was dry. The first set were very generous, they bought a ball of hand spun wool, paid for the trip and gave us a donation too. We felt very appreciated. They also told us that neighbours around here are very pleased with what we are doing and the fact we haven't sold the land to some large Swedish company, as many do, which is good to know.

Herkules also looking a little damp

Our second group were two ladies helping at the camp nearby. One of them has her own small farm with a llama amongst other things. She also tries to grow her own food and so was interested in what we were doing. We decided on a cup of tea before going to see the alpacas since it was tipping it down with rain and just chatted about farms, spinning and handicrafts.

Confession time

Yes this is Robbie the halogen cooker, cooking pie, chips
and sweetcorn. Still need to fiddle about with the timings
but at least it didn't burn the bottom of the pie like my
ordinary oven - mind you it didn't cook the bottom very well
at all. The top was cooked. I am sure I will get used
to it though.

Okay I have a confession to make, we bought another kitchen gadget. Have we got room for yet another kitchen gadget? No! Do we need another kitchen gadget? Errrr! Welllllll! Yes! Honestly we have a very good reason or two for buying our recent addition to the paraphernalia we have in our kitchen and in our dump room (I said we don't have room). You see, it's like this, all this week our heating has not been sufficient to heat our apartment to sensible temperatures ie it has been between 13C to 15C, as the heating company hasn't been sending warm enough water around our communal heating system. We have resorted to our wood stove rather earlier in the year than we would like, our wood stove is really for when the communal heating is turned off, which is usually before we would turn it off; anyway I think that maybe our neighbour downstairs has probably had to turn his heating up to compensate for all the cold apartments around him as he runs his heating off gas and not the communal heating like most of us, and I wonder if all of us have been turning on the ovens more than usual to provide hot nourishing meals and warm our apartments up in the process, in short our apartment block ran out of gas. Not sure who is responsible for making sure there is enough gas in the apartment gas tanks or if there is a set delivery date but yesterday we went to fry up some fish fingers for fish finger sandwiches (cor more confessions) or should I say gently saute (is that healthier?) and lo and behold there was no gas, in fact there was no gas all day. We had been humming and hahhing over getting a halogen oven, partly so we wouldn't have to buy a cooker for the other apartment and yet folks still be able to cook and also to use ourselves the rest of the time, we had seen one in our local Aladdin's cave shop but decided against it, but when the gas went off and having to rely on a kettle, slow cooker and an ancient microwave we decided that maybe it would be a good investment after all. So please welcome Robbie our new gadget, I don't normally name our gadgets but this one looks so like a robot from the 60s it has to have a name.

The cleared roadway

As is usual for this time of the year our week has been dominated by the snow and clearing it away. Since the fiasco with our tractor window last week our tractor went up to our neighbours so that Ian could do a temporary fix to it before using it to clear an access road to get onto the land to start work on the other fiasco, our collapsed polytunnel. With the piece of plastic from the polytunnel and good old duck tape the hole was sealed and the tractor serviceable again. As a thank you to our neighbours and while he was up there anyway, Ian cleared away the snow from their yard to make it easier for them, something they didn't feel should go unrewarded either and so Ian was treated to a meat feast of a dinner (lunch), three slices of karbonade (for all you who have not visited Latvia it is battered pork in an egg and flour batter and fried -sorry sauteed), and a couple of thick slices of smoked bacon, and I was at home wondering what he had taken to eat!

Not as much as last year but still a lot of snow.

The next job was to try and find the road. Ian had tracked our road and various things on our land, like the polytunnel, barn, orchard and bushes, last year with a hand held GPS (yes I know another gadget) and this meant he was able to roughly retrace his route and mark out a path with his snowshoes which he could then follow with the tractor. Next year I think we mark out the track before it snows with sticks to make things easier as a GPS is only accurate down to about 3-5m which could land us in a hole unless we fill it in, or we could end up running over stones that are on the edge of the road. There is not as much snow as last year but it is much heavier with a distinct layer of ice from an ice storm. Once the road way was cleared it meant we could then get on with the job of clearing snow from the polytunnel. The first clear day was rather chilly at -21C in the morning but it was a beautiful day and a joy to be outside working, well it was for most of the day. Ian used the tractor to clear around the polytunnel and I freed up various parts of the structure with a good old fashioned shovel. The problem is at that temperature it is really important not to stop moving or you freeze. I had on leggings, ski pants and waterproof trousers, a t-shirt, a base layer, thin fleece, outer fleece and my coat but had to take that off when working as I was getting too warm; it is also really important not to sweat or you get into a lot of trouble when that freezes. So I worked steadily and slowly all day, apart from huddling around the fire to have some fried egg sandwiches for lunch, and that worked well, but towards the end of the day I was getting very tired but I didn't dare stop as the temperatures were dipping low again. I was so glad when we decided to call it a day. Fortunately the following day was not as cold so less danger of freezing to death, literally, but it took two days to dig away the snow. Snow and wind stopped any further work until today when we started to dismantle the collapsed pieces to try and salvage what we can. It would appear that the OSB (composite board) joints failed in most places but there were also some solid pieces of timber that had cracked. There won't be any OSB joints when we rebuild that is for sure!

After one windy day this end piece
needed stabilising. 

If you follow this blog you will know that we have been away over Christmas in Australia and our daughter cooked us a lovely Christmas dinner but it didn't feel like Christmas at all as it was 40C outside and not cold like Christmas should be, well at least for a Northern Hemisphere lass. Fortunately our friends saved us a turkey they had reared and they brought it around this week and we decided to have another Christmas dinner complete with fairy lights and a few other decorations. We couldn't have Christmas dinner alone of course and so we invited our friends around too for a traditional English roast and I even bought them some little presents just for the fun of it. It was a great time, even if it still didn't really feel like Christmas - after all they had finished with all the Christmas songs on the radio.

Somewhere under there are current bushes

It has been a topsy turvey time for many of us thanks to the banking crisis of a couple of years ago. We have had a house on the market for over a year and this last week we arranged for another estate agent to have a go at selling it. So if anyone wants a house in Sheffield, England here is the link, the original estate agent is completely flummoxed as to why it has not sold, it is not as if there is anything wrong with it, it is actually quite a nice house. It is incredible to think though that it would seem that the bankers have learnt nothing from the debacle they helped to create. It seems that the bankers just sighed with relief that the worse is over and now carry on as before, they seem to think that's it, nothing else to worry about, but I am afraid they didn't heed the call. The foundations are rotten and I believe there will be more revelations of where their money comes from and the harm it does. I really wished they had changed their greedy ways, they had the perfect opportunity but decided that greed was the better option. How wrong they are!

There was a track there once down to our workshop

It is not just high street banks that are the problem though, it is the whole financial set up from the IMF, who the Latvian Prime Minister describes as the unpredictable partner, to those who lend microloans to the poor. I had my doubts about microloans, and I wrote about them in October 2008, as the interest rates are so high. It would seem that the Institute of Development Studies have reservations too pointing out that loans have a habit of encouraging more debt and loans do nothing to address the imbalance of power that keeps the poor poor. What is even more incredible is they point out that the World Bank endorse microloans as a means of helping the poor out of poverty and yet have not done any follow up research to see if this is really the case. Is this more evidence of the rotten core of the financial powers? The core that puts ideology before the real needs of the poor?

More snow! 

The rotten core of the financial markets have now also turned their eyes to the food markets leading to volatile prices of food, even when there is no cause for it. Speculation hinders proper pricing of foods. So who else thought that the hike in price of wheat was due to Russian wheat shortages? The fact is there is enough wheat in store to ride out a year or even two years of shortages but big grain companies and derivative speculators made a killing from the fear of shortage. There was no shortage of wheat in the grand scheme of things. So what is the answer? One answer is to enable small farmers to move beyond subsistence farming into the marketplace and ending the power of large agro-companies. It is not the large agro-companies that feed the world, small farmers are much better at it than we are lead to believe. And if you believe speculators should be regulated in the food markets then check this link out and maybe sign the e-petition. 

I love the contrast of our neighbours truck with the
white snowy world. A bit of snow doesn't stop him
from getting on with his job.