Meet the biomowers

The biomowers, enjoying the shad. The one in front is the
boss!

As you know, Ian has spent a lot of time mowing the grass to try and keep the ground elder at bay and the fly numbers down. It's been hard work for him, so when a friend of ours asked if we wanted any sheep we said "yes." We have been talking for a while about getting some, just to keep the grass down, particularly in the harder to reach areas that are more difficult to cut, like between trees and on steep banks. Sheep are easier to get hold of than alpacas and maybe only a stop gap until we have enough alpacas to keep the grass down anyway, although there is one advantage of sheep over alpacas. Alpacas are relatively tidy animals who have a poo pile, but that is not good for randomly distributing manure around the grassland to improve it, so it might work to have a mix of animals, maybe sheep with good fleeces that can be mixed with the alpaca fleece. A while ago I was talking with a weaver who wove with alpaca wool and said a mix of 25% sheep wool and 75% alpaca wool meant that the wool garment would hold its shape better. Something to bear in mind!

Inside the hutch. They've been seeing rather a lot of that
hutch just lately. Oh yes! They are still in bad books.

Our introduction to the sheep was not endearing to Ian. I got the look that said "And whose stupid idea was this and there had better be some improvement fast." We did quite well .... for the first five minutes. We picked them up from our friend's place, took them back to ours. Lined up the trailer with the gate, I stood on one side to stop them escaping and the gate was used on the other side to stop them going the other way. Ian got into the trailer and directed them out and off they charged, straight into the paddock. Result! They even went running off a bit and then stopped to start eating. It was at this point we made the fatal mistake, we went to see how they were doing. Even though we had quite a powerful electric fence on, the fear of us was enough to make one bolt through the fence and then quickly followed by the other two. For the next half hour, we vainly tried to get them back but all we succeeded in doing was herding them into a spot where they were content to graze and could keep them contained but not secure. I have to add at this point I was meant to be resting and so I need to back track a little before carrying on the saga.

Thee little fellas though are getting much better behaved.
They have really learnt when it is time to put themselves
away now.

Earlier on in the day I went to the dentist, if you follow my blog then you will be familiar with the description of a big Russian speaking guy with tattoos up his arms. I also found out, due to the type of white coat he had on this particular day, he was tattooed across his chest too. Not the kind of guy you would want to bump into on a dark night, only really he's a big softy at heart. I had gone to get my tooth sorted that had been temporarily filled before I went to Florence, but half way through he suddenly stopped and started chatting to the assistant. I could tell at this point something was not right and they told me to phone my friend. Out comes the trusty translator, my mobile phone and I phoned through. Apparently I had managed to crack the tooth vertically and the only option was to extract it, was that okay. Ooerrr! Yup! Not much choice really. It was at this point I was really glad that he was kind of this big scary looking guy and not some wee slip of a lass like the last time I had a tooth extracted. The last instruction though from my translator was that I needed to rest afterwards. Right! Well out came the tooth and the dentist patted me on the shoulder reassuringly, I think it was more to reassure himself than me though, so I patted him on his hand reassuringly back and laughed. He even showed me the tooth - good job I'm not squeamish.

Ooh! Ooh! What are those woolly scary things?

So back to the sheep. I didn't chase the sheep around the field, I just walked, honest! We phoned our friend and asked her to come over, as we thought they might respond to her better, and she was rather more clued in about them than we were. She might be but the youngsters were not and they were not going to cooperate with anybody. Eventually, however, we managed to get them into the alpaca paddock, as that was easier and shut them in. That was where they stopped overnight. The next day we let the alpacas out and they were not happy. Our three big brave lads, hared around the paddock a bit and when they ran, the sheep took the cue and ran with them - well that's what herd animals do isn't it! Eventually they settled down a bit, but the three brave fellas spent the day crowded together at the top of the field in the corner in the blazing heat of a very hot day and if the sheep - who by now couldn't care less and were more interested in just eating grass - came anywhere near, they started off haring around the field again, first of all followed by the sheep. After awhile the sheep gave up the game and either concentrated on eating or sat in the shade of the chicken hutch. We were beginning to wonder at this stage who had the most brains, the alpacas or the sheep, after all the sheep were only lambs really, born this year, in other words three very young females as opposed to our alpacas who are at least five years old and above.

Hmmm! Clover

The next day, they were left in the paddock and each night when Ian fastened up the other animals he fed the sheep too and they soon forgot their fear. Sheep concentrate is far more interesting after all. The day before I went out to the land, Ian fixed a long corridor to the sheep paddock and before we let the alpacas out, the idea was that he would entice the sheep up to the place where they should be and I follow quietly with the mobile gate that we had had to use to block a potential bolt hole in the alpaca paddock - one that the alpacas never bother to try and get through, but we felt sure the sheep would and they are smaller too. Well that was the idea! When we got there one of the sheep was out of the paddock, there was by this time too little grass to keep them interested and one had pushed through the fence. Eventually after a bit of a song and a dance we got her back in the paddock and managed to electrify one of the strands and that concentrated their minds somewhat. We let the alpacas out and let everyone settle down a bit. We hadn't bothered electrifying the fence, as that one is rusty and needs replacing and the alpacas never bother to try and get through it. Needless to say, it will be sorted before next year when we have young cria.

Phew! Glad they've gone now

After a while we decided that they had settled down enough to do something with them, so we fastened up the alpacas and the chickens - who will cooperate reasonably well with bribery and proceeded to entice the sheep towards their enclosure. It worked and this time we decided to let them settle down before going to see how they were doing. I'm glad to say that they seem to have quite taken to their new enclosure, although we still half expect to see at least one of them running around where they shouldn't be - at least we have warned the neighbours that we have some sheep now. We were a little worried though that the low shelter that Ian had made for them to protect them from the elements seemed to be an enticement for them to jump on, they are still lambs after all and boy can they jump high - I've never seen sheep of that size jump and I've been around sheep a lot. We were surrounded by fields of them back in Derbyshire where we used to live. Maybe their a special breed of woolly jumpers (okay I won't give up the day job!) They also like the trees to shelter under and spend quite a bit of time  under them. We did wonder if they would only eat the very green grass around the edge that had been cut, but they have started to make in roads into the long grass too, so it appears they are doing the job we wanted them too. Phew!

Some buckwheat hanging to dry, ready for threshing. The
rest was baled as an experiment, but once again we are not
sure if it was dry enough, like the oats we tried earlier.
Still the chickens will get some of it anyway and if the
experiment works it is a fast way of preparing buckwheat
for the winter and the chickens can thresh it for themselves.

As for the rest of the week, it has been a time of harvesting tomatoes, onions, tomatoes, beans, tomatoes, buckwheat and did I mention tomatoes. Oh yes! The tomato glut has begun. Apart from eating tomatoes till they come out of our ears I have been mainly just bunging them in the slow cooker and making sauce for the freezer. I will do other things with it later like make our own jars of baked beans, but for now it will do to just get them cooked down and frozen. Yesterday I had tomatoes in one large slow cooker, some yellow ones in a small slow cooker, a large metal tray and a large glass dish full of tomatoes in the oven. Our house as you can imagine smells of a very rich tomato sauce.

The buckwheat all harvested now

We also had a visit from friends, one of them a fellow academic, so it was time to unwind and retell the conference to someone who could relate to it around a barbecue fire. We baked, we did and not just the food, as it was another glorious summer's day. They were a little disappointed that we hadn't got the new alpacas yet, but our boys did put on a display of rolling around the field to compensate, as it was before they were perturbed by the sheep. I also had some feedback from one of the keynote speakers at the conference. I hadn't had time to talk to him as there were some others I really needed to speak to and he had a long queue of folks waiting to speak to him anyway, so I emailed him to tell him how much I appreciated the work he was doing and thought it would have some value for my own work too, as he was re-evaluating the value of allotment gardening as not just a reactionary move governed by poverty but a lifestyle choice of people who valued tasty, organic food, no matter how much they earned. When I am examining the lives of rural inhabitants it will be great to have such a positive piece of work to reference. Anyway, as I said I emailed him and today I had a reply, apparently he had sat in on my presentation and thought I had done some good research and presented the work well. This is brilliant, as it is the first proper piece of feedback I've had about my presentation and I wondered how I had come across. I was satisfied that I had done okay, I had my work done to time and didn't go over, despite the tight time frame and so I was happy enough, so to have confirmation that it went well was quite a relief.

Exciting times ahead!

An atmospheric shot of the local fountain.
It is a shame you can't see all the colours of
the trees as they turn orange and red. Must
get a new camera that goes in my handbag.

I have another announcement to make this week. In July I mentioned that I was going to become a grandma for the first time, well now I get to be a grandma twice over. My daughter is expecting her first child at the end of March. So next year is looking to be a very exciting year, with grandchildren on the way and our youngest due to graduate from university.

Our poorly pussy cat spent all week nearly in this spot.

Not so exciting news is the fact that Sofie was very sick this week. She was a bit off on the Monday night and I spent Tuesday in to see how she got on. Towards the end of the evening she was starting to hide in dark corners and so we knew something was very wrong. The next morning she was no better and so we took her to the vets. The examination by the vet caused her to throw up, which was strange as she hadn't actually eaten anything for over 24 hours. She had a very sore throat and a high temperature and had become dehydrated so she was given a saline drip and injected with vitamins and antibiotics. I had had to dribble water down her throat using a teaspoon prior to that, because she wouldn't drink. When she got home she must have been very sore on one side as she seemed to get stuck somehow, it is really hard to explain, but she was in a very strange pose and meowing away at me. I placed her on her side with the side uppermost where all the fluid from the drip had accumulated and she promptly fell asleep. She spent most of the week asleep and had one more saline drip before she started to really recover and even then it was very slow and the vet was quite worried about her. I had to give her injections as she is hopeless to get tablets down and I worked out this was far easier on her and me than trying to get the wretched tablets down her. We think she disappeared on us once because she got so freaked out by the trauma of trying to get tablets down her. The good news is that today she was much better and running around out on the land once more and the problem? Not sure really as the vet was not convinced that she should have been so sick from a sore throat and a bit of a fever and wondered if she had also eaten something poisonous. I guess we will never know.

The remodelled river after the installation of the new mini
hydro-electric station

Last week we got a lamb that I had had to cut it up into meal sized pieces and I managed to make a better job of it than the last one we had, but it still looks rather rough. The things you learn! I mentioned this on facebook and also mentioned that actually if I had a choice I would now rather have goat to eat as it is like lamb but less fat (although the one we had wasn't particularly fatty this time, they must have been running it around getting it in training). My friend who has supplied us with goat meat in the past said they were planning a meal of goat soon and would I like to come. Now would I pass up the chance of a meal cooked by someone else? You bet I wouldn't! There was only one small detail, the piece of meat was actually still running around the field and since I don't like my meat to leave the plate whilst eating we had to wait until it was no longer running around the field and taken up residence in the fridge/freezer. The meal was absolutely worth the wait though and we even got sent home with a rabbit for the freezer and a leg of the goat.

No longer running wild around the field - well have you ever
seen squash plants grow when they are starting to really take
off or rather take over! These squash plants are from the left
Uchiki Kuri, Black Futsu and Thelma Sanders Sweet Potato
(and they really do taste like sweet potato with the same
texture). Don't you just love some of the weird names
they have?

On the one hand it seems a shame that something that was running around in the field or ark is providing us with food. Ian was really sad to say goodbye to two more of his feathered friends today - you should never make friends with your food so they say - but the problem is that if we want eggs, then we will have excess males to deal with and it would be rather expensive to keep feeding the unproductive ones and too many males to females means that the females suffer from too much unwanted attention. Likewise male goats are an unwanted by-product of goats milk and hence goats cheese so to speak. Without young goats being born you don't get milk and too many smelly billy goats is not pleasant, one is enough on our friend's farm. We also like meat, but we prefer our meat to come from animals who have had some sort of quality of life. Our friend's goats get to go out onto the grass as long as the grass is growing, they have clean living areas and plenty of hay to eat. The lamb that we got was also grass fed all summer - which is one of the plus points of lamb, I am not sure there is a factory farm unit set up for lamb yet!!! Our chickens had been brought up on lots of goodies from the garden, from caterpillars and snails to fat hen weeds and fresh buckwheat, consequently the last chicken we had had the skin the colour of a corn fed chicken. Not sure about this time they still need de-feathering as I write (quick update - they are yellow too). It's not pleasant killing an animal but we do know that their point from life to death is short and relatively stress free, they haven't stood around at the abattoir for ages for a start, which is stressful in itself. It also gives us a better respect for the meat that we do eat and we also happy to eat meals without meat too.

Our carrots with an ordinary table knife for comparison

Our harvesting continues this week, and Ian has started to collect the buckwheat and hang it in bunches in the greenhouse to dry off before threshing. I have also harvested some carrots and beetroot to store in sawdust for over the winter. Not all of the carrots are particularly big and that is why I didn't harvest them all, but some of them are ginormous. We have not always been very successful with carrots, but this year we did exceptionally well as you can see from the picture (cauliflowers are another crop we are yet to master, only got it right once and was absolutely inundated when they all matured at once - all 30 something of them!) . Our aim more than anything this year, due to the bad weather, is to try and make sure that we have plenty of seeds saved for next year, at least then we will get to try again then without too much extra costs. It seems like we have at least got one of every type of squash we planted, but not over run with the things, which is what we hoped so we could use them to feed the chickens. There is enough anyway to feed us and there are more to come and so if the frosts hold off, we may be okay and get over run, otherwise I shall be using the little ones like courgettes (zucchini)

The new hydro-electric station. The old one is having work
done, but I'm not sure if it will be de-comissioned or
renovated yet.

It was nice to have someone new comment on my blog last week and if you want to check out Petra's blog you will see some rather nice pictures of the Czech republic, but I must admit to being confused with another comment that also came through to my email account about the same time. It was an odd email and for a change it had no links, the links being a clue to it not being kosher, but it still didn't ring true. I looked it up on the internet and word for word it is posted all over the place and I wonder what purpose it serves - well  in this case it was marked as spam and not published. I welcome comments from anyone even if they choose to be anonymous, but I try to avoid spam. Especially the sneaky ones that say what a lovely blog you have and very complimentary and yet when you check them out, they actually represent some lottery company or something worse.

Our special visitor

Well there has been lots of landscaping going on. Ian's been landscaping around our barn

Starting the process (Picture by Mavis)

Nice and level by the side of the greenhouse in preparation
for the snow in winter

Levelling off the ground by the barn

and the wild boar have been errrr hindering

Not helpful! Right between our raspberries and
currant bushes.

The wild boar have not just been digging up our land, they have been having a good go at the neighbouring properties too.

I know I am small but the photo gives you some idea of the
depth of some of the wild boar digging. If they would just
take off the top layer it would just be annoying but big holes
like this are dangerous for tractors. This hole area was one of
several about the same size.

I started my project this week of monitoring the pig activity and I first need to walk the perimeter of the farms and then log all the activity that looks new, so that I can record any done over the next few weeks or so. The problem is that it is a mammoth task, firstly walking all the way around as they are quite large some of them and then logging the damage, they have been so active just this last week that it is going to take me ages just to log the work they have already done, never mind what they will do over the coming weeks. Never mind! I shall be as fit as a fiddle by Christmas doing this, after the pumpkin weight training programme and the tomato challenge of carrying umpteen kilos up several flights of stairs in recent weeks.

Here we all are at the local hotel. Mavis is in the middle.

Last week, however did get off to a reasonably relaxed start, as we had our special visitor from England. It was quite wet most of the week but that was good in some ways as it just gave us lots of time to chat, and eat and chat and errr eat and chat some more. Mavis has been reading my blog now for over three years and has been such an encouragement, although we have never met in person, and so it was a thrill when she mentioned she would love to come and visit to see what we are doing. You can read Mavis' perspective on the trip on her blog. Besides chatting we also took her to visit our friends on their farms and one of them treated us to home-made pizzas using ingredients from out of the garden and cheese from her own goats, followed by honey cake and I suspect that was home-made too, using honey from our friend's bees. The other friend gave us a guided tour of the barn with all the animals in it and even gave us a milking demonstration, which she does by hand. It was very funny watching the calves being fed the milk afterwards and after they had finished the milk in their buckets they licked each others faces as they were not wasting a single drop of the precious liquid. It looked like they were kissing. Mavis has now got to see our land for real as well as the flats we have renovated over the few years we have been here. She has seen and heard firsthand some of the challenges and seen the joys of living here and hopefully taken away a real flavour of the place. Just a shame that it rained all day on the Friday she flew back and so Riga was more like a flying bus type tour - on your right you will see..... and to your left is ....... - in between mall hopping that is, where we ate and chatted some more, at least we stayed dry. The other shame is that Mavis missed the first tow of the season, as the very next day one of our young neighbours had managed to get stuck at the bottom of the allotments - not really sure what he would be doing there, but he was going nowhere fast if we hadn't helped.

Kissing calves (Photo by Mavis)

This weekend I started stripping the buckwheat seed of the plant, while Ian was busy landscaping. I got half a bucket, but it took me all afternoon, I hope the rest goes a bit quicker. We need some animals then we could just beat the living daylights out of the plants and then let the animals pick over any seeds left, but using the flail does seem to leave a lot of seed on the plants. Or we need one of those engineering types that love tinkering about developing little one off machines, anyone up to the job? At least harvesting the buckwheat will provide a rainy day project, as we can harvest the buckwheat in the greenhouse, even if I can't get out studying wild boar damage and Ian landscaping and digging drains.

The turkeys at our other friends farm (Photo by Mavis).

Looking ahead I finally got our plane tickets sorted for our Christmas trip to the UK, as they had special offers on for the days we were interested in travelling, the problem is that the next day airbaltic decided to announce cuts to staff and flights. It would appear though that the announcements are to do with a spat between the head of the airline and the Latvian Government. Hopefully they will sort it out very soon, instead of being yet one more casuality of brinkmanship between a powerful guy and the Latvian government. The Latvian government are actually the majority shareholder of the airline, but do not have a say in how the airline is run, and want to buy out the minority shareholder who runs the company. Not sure how that happened but doesn't seem to make sense really. The CEO is now back in Germany as he fears being arrested in Latvia for fraud charges. Not sure if the charges are real or trumped up either, but shows some of the challenges Latvians face.

I will just finish off with an excellent article on the effects of austerity on Latvia. The two authors are spot on about the reason for the drop in unemployment here in Latvia, it is mainly down to many people moving away looking for work rather than due to an improvement in the economy. We really need to generate a new economy now, one that does not penalise the poorest for the mistakes of the bankers - they maybe back in profit but the people are hurting.