Getting things done!

Our sheep are climbing again!

I managed to finish my homework after the blog last week, but boy was it late for me - 11:30pm. Talking with some of the other students in class, it appeared I wasn't the only one. Typical student I suppose, only I hadn't left it to the last minute to do the work, it was just that it was a difficult topic to do and I had other priorities first, much like a lot of my fellow classmates. You don't usually do a PhD course just for the fun of it, although doing something you enjoy or are passionate about is fun, but because you are very interested in learning and are quite committed about it, just the compulsory courses are not always high on our agendas.

Who? Sweet innocent us?

At least my classmates from Latvia were heading back after the lecture and so I got a lift back to Valmeira and treated to lunch. I had had a sandwich on the way down, so decided just soup would do. The soup of the day was lamb soup, which is not common in Latvia and so I decided to go with that, only it turned out to be more like a stew than a light soup. Tasty though and the lamb was very tender. The trip back also involved two buses and meant a longish wait again in Cesis, but the discovery of the cafe in the supermarket near the train station and even better I discovered it has internet access and that makes the wait just fine. A cup of tea is also just 50c, so not bad! After two cups I was feeling human again after my late night and even better I got to get home one day sooner.

One of our balls of fluff. No wonder they didn't want to
come home to a centrally heated flat, they were roasting
in these coats. Only problem is that they are not the
most practical for barn cats and need a little disentangling
at times.

We went to the big town again this week to take the paperwork for our greenhouse. Amazingly the paperwork was fine this time! I was ready for a fight if it wasn't. Our translator did say that the lady did get a bit worried last time when I asked her to write down the things she was asking for. She refused to do that and insisted that we write down what she said, obviously she had no wish to go down on record. I wished I had remembered that I had my audio recorder in my bag, that would have worried her even more I think. At least the process has begun again and they will leave it until nearly the last day, before sending out someone to survey the greenhouse. What a performance for a plastic covered greenhouse! It even costs us more than the barn, because it covers a larger area.

The new Estonian trains on the right at Valga station. The
old Latvian trains on the left. 

We had a house meeting this week. It wasn't a pleasant affair, as it was a meeting to remove our house manager. We are now in the stupid situation, where there is no house manager to take responsibility for the household dealings. We do have a treasurer who will take the money and she should be receiving all the paperwork, which really makes her the de facto house manager, but she doesn't want that job and who would when people can be quite nasty with their bickering? Fortunately one older man, spoke up and although the majority vote was to remove the house manager, he did say that we need to be kinder to each other and take more responsibility for the house, instead of leaving it to one person. He even volunteered to take on the responsibility of making sure the heating is regulated properly and since he is an engineer, he should be able to handle that okay.

Sitting in the sun waiting for the bus

I went out to the land twice this week. Now it has warmed up a bit and feels more like April than February, it means that it is warm enough to work in the caravan, which also means I can go and help Ian for a few minutes. He needed help giving one of our alpacas an injection, as he has an infected eye, probably the result of bumping into something or banging heads with one of the other boys. He had managed the day before, but an extra pair of hands is always useful for these kinds of tasks. The following day I didn't do any studying, as it was supposed to be a nice day. I say supposed to, it was a foggy start and the sun didn't put in an appearance until late in the afternoon - unlike today which has been glorious of course and I was travelling. All the alpacas needed their toe nails cutting and that is not a job for one person. We decided to halter each alpaca up and tie them up to a hook to make it easier for me to hold them, while Ian trimmed their nails. It is a tough job, as those nails are hard. I half wonder whether they should have a gravel path to walk on to wear their toe nails down, but wonder if this might in turn damage the soft pads on their feet. The alpacas are much better now since Ian has been reading up on how to train alpacas. A lot of it seems to be working, at least most of the time, but like the book says, sometimes you just have to manually restrain the animal to get things done, not everything can be done by coaxing the animal to cooperate and cutting toe nails is one of those jobs. Maybe in months to come, even that job might become easier, but for now there is a certain amount of resistance from time to time and so a little alpaca wrestling was in order, when they started bucking a bit.

The gouges left in the field as Ian pulled the horse box.
At least he got the horse box off, which is more than he
thought he would do at one point. At least we know the
ground will heal, it usually looks worse than this after
winter

As I said, it feels more like April than February and so our snow has disappeared and the land is thawing out, which means mud! Our winter barley looks like most of it did not make it through the winter without its protective coat of snow and parts of the fields are full of moss - not good. Ian has been manuring the fields with alpaca poo by hand and that should help and this year along with the sheep that poo everywhere anyway. He is also going to try rotating the animals faster through the fields, so that the grass has a longer chance to recover in between being munched and he will also let the grass grow longer - which possibly means more fly problems, but some you win, some you lose. We'll see how it goes. Ian has been busy trimming trees in our fields over the last couple of weeks, he doesn't like removing them all, 1) that would lead to erosion and 2) it provides shelter and feed for the animals. He has also helped move one of our neighbours calves for them. Calf? This was no mere youngster though, it was a strapping 18 month old calf. The roads were also muddy and Ian was worried about getting stuck or sliding off the road a few times, but he managed and the neighbours were happy.

Trimmed tree and trimmings ready for shredding. The sheep
will be put down here as soon as the grass is growing properly
then it can be manured and weeds held back in check - well
hopefully, that is the plan. By putting the sheep on early in
the season, we also hope to set the cutting season back a bit
on this section. It is north facing so takes longer to mature
anyway and with an early munch the time to having to cut it
will be longer. Again that is the plan, to make it easier for Ian

The newly refurbished Valga train
and bus station

Today (Monday) is Estonian Independence day which is why I have only travelled up to Tartu today, as there was no GIS training this week. I wasn't sure what would be open and what would be shut. I also thought the buses maybe quieter than usual - not likely. It was busier in Latvia because it was not a public holiday and it was busier in Estonia as people were returning to the city after a weekend away, and students were returning to universities and colleges. The roads were especially bumpy on the first leg of the journey because they are not tarmac roads and that makes annotating pdf files very tricky and made me sleepy into the bargain. The other legs were either too short or too cramped for working on a lap top, so not much work got done today. Still I got some done and that's better than nothing.

Cry freedom!

Oh yes! Raspberry glut begins

Sorry once again for being late, but yesterday we only finished eating rather late after baling hay since early afternoon. Ian finished at 8:30pm but I finished earlier to go to a house meeting. So all in all, there wasn’t enough hours or energy in the day to write a blog. Anyway onto the events of the week. 

Feeding the alpacas

I enjoyed having a helper this week, who was up for any job I could throw at her. As I mentioned before she picked and sorted strawberries, which meant I got quite a few frozen and bottled up. She helped me pick peas, put sawdust down to create new paths, picked weeds, strawed up potatoes that I had weeded and plenty of other jobs too. She just made jobs go twice as fast, but there was still plenty for us both to do. She also got to live a few crazy ideas, such as swimming in a river and hanging out with the alpacas looking very Peruvian in her Peruvian poncho. Obviously we had a blast and had numerous crazy and serious chats whilst working. 

Caption competition here! Any offers? No prizes, just some fun

Haymaking art

Once our helper left we got on with haymaking. Ian actually started cutting with the two wheeled tractor the afternoon before, which didn’t take him quite as long as it usually takes me. He then cut the rest with the bigger tractor. He is definitely getting faster, but it still took him about 7 hours. We had a panic though as it rained quite heavily while he was cutting. The weather forecasters had been promising rain all week on Friday and so we had decided we were going to cut this week, then they changed their minds on the Thursday and forecast rain midweek. We decided to start earlier rather than risk the rain, except they changed their minds back again sometime on the Friday. We either have to get better at forecasting our own weather or we just resign ourselves to the weathermen getting it wrong from time to time. The problem is that the one thing that is crucial is the hay, that will feed not just our three alpacas this year, but another four female alpacas, two of who will be pregnant and possibly some sheep. Fortunately the weather has been that dry that it didn't seem to be too disastrous and the hay dried well. 

No hay bale photos yet! We've only just finished. Instead
a hay field flower, Scabious. I always wanted to grow these
in a flower bed, but obviously it prefers the freedom of the
open field and they grow quite happily there

Our activities are more or less governed by the weather, but we still try to have at least a day a week where we take things very easy, only it is not always Sunday. This week it was Saturday, as the hay needed time to dry and so it was cut on Friday and due to the rain turned on Sunday. In fact we took Saturday so easy we slept for two hours in the afternoon. Now in the summer it is not unusual for us to have a kip midday, as we can start early and finish late, but the heat of the afternoon can be unbearable, but that is usually for an hour, not two. I guess we needed it though as we both slept well again that night. It's nice though to have the freedom to choose when to do things, well weather permitting. At least the weather has held up till now and all the hay is baled. It would be good if it didn't rain until we collect them in, but we have left them out for the time being to cure a little, in case they are slightly damp. They cannot stop out long though, unlike the big bales as they can get wet. That's a job for tomorrow.

Finishing off the hutch

It is not just us enjoying the freedom of the countryside, so are our chickens - the older ones that is. As we will need the arks for our new chicks we decided to re-home our older ones in a new hutch set in the alpaca paddock. Last week's photos showed the half finished hutch, but Ian got it finished just in time before haymaking time and we both transferred the chickens one evening to their new abode, except for poor Charlie. He was earmarked for the pot, because he wouldn't go in at night and didn't seem to look after his ladies terribly well, unlike James. However, he has got a reprieve as he is not an aggressive chicken, he has the chance at a new home to replace another chicken who is turning aggressive, we are just waiting for him to be collected. Our James has also been getting a bit aggressive, but hopefully we have put him in his place and is getting the idea that humans are higher up the pecking order than chickens. He seems to place alpacas at the top and us at the bottom - or tried to.

The freedom of the open field

Our chickens have certainly taken to their freedom, they strut around with tails up and wander far too far. We hope they are not going to become a meal for Mr. Fox, as they were supposed to stay in close proximity to the alpacas, but they have other ideas. They do go into the alpaca house on a daily basis to have a good old rummage around - hopefully finding lots of juicy fly larvae in the process, they like a bunch of cleaners marching in, quite funny to watch. The alpacas don't seem unduly concerned about this and after the initial curiosity they now seem to ignore them totally. One of the problems with their wanderings is that they now are wandering around my new cranberry bed. So far the cranberries seem safe, but that is probably because they are green. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to protect them from the chickens though, they were looking ever so nice too. Oh well, back to the planning board on that one.

Poor Charlie, he lost his women and he's now waiting for
his new home

I mentioned earlier that we had a house meeting. From time to time all the folks who live in the apartment block are invited to a house meeting, where we decide on what is going to happen about the heating, what is going to happen with the house in general, the heating, what needs repairing, the heating, and any other problems. Yes I know I've mentioned the heating more than once, it comes up every single time and we still haven't resolved the issue. Some folks are just willing to continue to pay stupid sums of money for inadequate heating, rather than tackle the issue together or get a new form of heating. We have another meeting later on in the week to try and resolve that one, yet again. The other issue that gets recycled is the issue of non-payment. Some people were refusing to pay because of - well lots of reasons. It is not a great deal of money each month and it goes towards paying electric bills and various other costs, but it is not enough to do major work, because not everyone is paying and because it is not getting done they won't pay and so it goes on and on. It looks like it is heading towards being sorted though, with the worse culprits being given ultimatums, pay up by a certain time or agree a payment plan or court. Drastic, but possibly necessary.

These little fellas look quite odd as they are still waiting for
the feathers on their heads. These are our first batch of
chicks this year waiting to be moved up to the bigger ark soon

In an effort not to waste anything, I have been getting more experimental and trying different foods. We cooked bulrushes tonight with our tea. From three bulrushes when we first dug the pond, we are now getting lots of them popping up all over and they are in danger of taking over our pond. I read somewhere though that a lot of the bulrush plant is edible and so we gave the base of the stems a try today. Apparently bulrushes can pick up all sorts of nasty chemicals and that's why they are good for cleaning water, but since our ponds are not contaminated they should be fine. We found out that it is only really the inner core that is properly edible, or the very young shoots, the rest is a bit fibrous, but they do taste good. At least when we clear the ponds out, we have no need to throw away all the plants. Just going to see what to do with the roots and I know baskets can be made from the leaves but I will leave that for another time.

Our water situation is okay, but that brown ring shows how
much water has been lost. We think there must be a spring
because even though the water table is dropping, this still
fills, but slowly

The other challenge we had was lots of small fish we were given. They taste good but the bones are a nightmare. I was determined to find a way to cook them that would have the same effect on the bones as tinned fish and I have found it - the pressure cooker. I marinated the little bream in oil, vinegar, onion and herbs and then pressure cooked them for about half an hour. Result! The bones are a bit like the bones in tinned salmon, a bit brittle but edible and the meat of the fish was fine. I would now like to see if I can do a batch job in jars and then we can eat them out in the caravan for a quick meal.

Black hollyhocks. Well that is what they are
supposed to be, but in reality they are a very
deep maroon colour

We had a surprise visitor tonight, just as we were about to leave, a black and tan dog turned up. It was the friendliest of creatures, didn't go silly with the cats, seemed quite affectionate without being overly fussy, didn't jump up and most certainly did not look like a stray. I managed to get hold of one of our neighbours, as I remembered that she said she might get a new dog sometime as their old guard dog was getting very, very old. Sure enough it turned out to be theirs. It had been a stray and when their dog died they gave it a home. Glad my hunch turned out to be right. Their dog was very happy to hang around while we waited for them to turn up to collect it though. Ian is not a dog lover, but that one was okay in his books.

I will try and upload a couple of videos of the chickens and the alpacas, as soon as I have worked it out that is. I will not be winning any awards for my filming but they are fun.