Winter arrived

Winter is here, but these are from a few days
ago. You will have to wait for daylight for
snowy pictures

As I write the snow is coming down quite thickly now. We've had snow before already this autumn/winter but it didn't last long and something we expect at this time of the year. This snowfall may last a while though as the temperatures are set to plummet. I managed to dig up the carrots, leeks and parsnips at the weekend. Hopefully I found them all under the light blanket of snow. This morning I harvested the kale and savoy cabbage as there is no guarantee I will find them once we have a thick blanket down on the ground. 

A frost covered savoy cabbage

Frosted mallow plants

I haven't had the chance of getting my flower and herb beds protected with spruce coverings but maybe I can do that at the weekend. The plants won't need the protection from the cold at this time of the year as the snow will do that but they may need it in the spring as the snow melts and they may need protection from being eaten by deer.  

The deer nearly ate my water lily one year, but this
year they would have difficulty getting to it.
I love the abstract effect of the autumnal colours
frozen under the water.

How can one little cat cause such a fuss?

At least the fences have all been taken in, as it is difficult to taken in an electric fence once it snows and it could be broken by the weight of the snow, as well as a tripping hazard once the snow gets really deep and we forget where it is. The boys was taken in after their little escapades and they haven't been allowed out of the paddock since. They moan from time to time but I think they mainly realised that it's that time of the year anyway and if not, they will now. They don't like to go far in the snow. The girls' fence was taken in yesterday due to the forecast of up to 20cm of snow. 

An alpaca eye, Jakobs

Lolly is quite tall and getting very fluffy. She
will need all that fleece next week to keep warm.

Despite the on and off bits of snow we've had, the weather has been quite warm in between at least most of the time and so we've not had the urgency of moving out of the caravan yet. We will this week as it is getting too difficult to prepare an evening meal with the cold and dark. Some warm water on tap sounds wonderful right now. I don't ask for much do I? One of the reasons for not being in a hurry is that Lolly also still needs feeding and she is still getting a late night feed. However, this evening she challenged Chanel for a tray of food and so this will help to fill her over the night, along with the hay of course. She is one of the earliest to start eating the granular feed and will just about manage that from Ian's hand now. 

Josefs is Lolly's half brother and he's quite tall too

Ilvija can be quite timid, but definitely seems to
have learnt how to avoid being handled from her
mother

This morning Ian managed to get Chanel and Ilvija separated. Chanel is still very protective of Ilvija and that makes it very difficult to trim Ilvija's toe nails and do anything else that needs doing. This morning Ian wanted to check her front teeth and there certainly seems to be a problem with them. It is as if they are rotting away and yet just a month ago they were perfectly fine. We now have to try and work out what the problem is or whether she has been kicked and we hadn't noticed. At least in a white alpaca if there is any injury it is easy to see, but not so easy with a dark alpaca. We also did take the advantage of trimming her toe nails but she was a very squirmy one - probably because she doesn't get used to being handled due to her protective mum. 

Her mother can be sweet too, but we are oh so
wary in case she gets upset and starts spitting.

Raspberry leaves

Antonia sunbathing! In the frosty morning!

I saw a house sparrow here on our land for the first time recently. Ian has seen them before but not often. So what! It does mean that the bird diversity is increasing here, which is good. Sparrows are not that common on our land and I've seen more eagles and buzzards than sparrows in the rural areas. At the moment the most common bird is the coal tit but there was a surprise one morning when I looked out of the caravan window and saw a crested tit land on the grapevine. It was more of a shock because the caravan is in our greenhouse and the doors were shut. Not sure how it got in. We had to leave the doors open for it to escape before our cats found it. 

Frosted pine needles

There's a scary cat over there says George.
George is a bit of a wimp when it comes to the 
mud. Before they were locked in their paddock,
for bad behaviour, they would have to go through
a gate with a muddy puddle in the middle. He 
would delicately pick his way around the 
puddle. 

Our internet is back up and working properly now that the lockdown has finished. I guess a lot of folks went home, or maybe it doesn't take a lot of people to slow down our internet. I don't know. What I do know is that we now regularly get 4 or 5 Mbps but we get even more in the morning, around 10-20Mbps. I went back to our apartment for a meeting the other day as it wasn't appropriate to do that in the caravan and I got a whopping 54Mbps - bearing in mind this is a mobile internet we are using and not a fixed line one. Shame it couldn't be like that all the time, it would make some of the work I do a lot faster. 

I think this is the horehound.

Mr. P contrasts nicely with the 

frosty grass

.

This will be put in the barn for some tender 
loving care over the winter, but first we need it
to get plywood to fix it and to take stuff back
to the apartment - providing there isn't too much
snow.

Ian's been busy too. He's been fixing broken feeders, putting a rubber skirt on the barn door -made from the divider that was in the horse box- to stop snow and wind from blowing underneath, helping other alpaca owners with their alpacas, recovering the haystack with a breathable synthetic felt cover to replace the brittle plastic (I also helped with that) and last but not least trying to order a summer house, which will be a step up from the caravan and mean we can work on constructing a kitchen that I don't have to worry about the cats getting into. The only problem is that we haven't heard back as we decided to try and go for the self-build option as the built option was just outside of our price range. I would need to do quite a bit more proofreading to pay for that. 

A close up of George

Our caravan is in there!

Having the caravan spare though means we can have people to stay, particularly those who will help us with the alpacas. Now that will be good - not sure if it will work or not but at least the option is there. Ian did get a surprise message from two French students studying some veterinary related course but he's not heard back from them. Probably put them off with the rather basic accommodation, even if there will be a caravan.

Frosted marigold

A very cold day

Karla and her mum

A close up of Lolly's fleece.

Mari doing her warm up exercises.

Grass ice-cream

The grass will have disappeared under a blanket
of snow by tomorrow morning

A warm spot on top of the caravan

Cattails

Ian taking a photo and Lolly checking him out, 
or rather their shadows!

Karla

At least someone is using the outside loo. 
Good for you Valeria

Vanessa warming up in the sun

Hello Lolly!

Freddie with Josefs in the background

Turbjørn soaking up some sun

Oooh the excitement!

The train station in Tartu. I have spent many a Tuesday
morning here. The toilets are good! Actually the station
itself has been beautifully done out and retained many
old wooden beams.

Forgot to mention that last week one of my neighbours was on the bus too and we haven't actually seen each other for a while, explains a lot when she is off to Riga all the time and I'm off to Estonia. Anyway we had a lovely chat for a few hours. This week the bus was really quiet, I wondered if the storm yesterday had scared them all off, it certainly wasn't as full as last week, when there was numerous people having to stand. I even managed to get off at the right stop this time, by telling the driver which stop it was I wanted and adding "ludzu," instead of just asking for the next stop like last time (it was in Latvian though, honest!). Despite the storm in the night, the day dawned bright and clear. Unfortunately the bit of snow we had yesterday made for treacherous pathways, but so far I haven't taken a tumble. It was an interesting morning this morning, as I had a slightly frantic phone call from one of my travelling companions whilst I was waiting for them to appear in their car for the second leg of the trip. Something was wrong and our driver was not where he should be! Oh!Oh! Someone else was sent to pick me up, so I wasn't left out in the cold. I was taken to where my travelling companions work - which turned out to be quite nearby and we waited. It turned out that our driver was appearing in a publicity film for the company and even though it was scheduled for the next day, the film crew turned up this morning instead. Fortunately we set off in enough time and we arrived with 15 minutes to spare.

A little bit of freedom, the chicks have
been let out into the greenhouse, from
their arks

The hospital. Ian has added gates onto the pen we built
last year, as it has its first resident. One of our sheep
has not thrived and was laid down on its side last week.
It was quite weak and Ian had to carry it up to the
greenhouse. Our friend, who has raised many sheep
came to give it an injection of vitamins and it will
be wormed next week. Although it has recovered, I'm not
sure if it will be kept all winter, we need them for breeding
and since it hasn't grown well, it might not be good to keep.

That wasn't the only excitement this week, the Prime Minister of Latvia has gone. A man who took on the premiership at the beginning of the economic crisis back in 2009 and was re-elected despite the austerity he and his government imposed. He resigned to take political responsibility for the collapse of the supermarket, since his Government were responsible for cutting jobs in the department for oversight of constructions and, despite the fact that many consider he is generally a man of integrity, corruption still occurs in government departments and hasn't been wiped out under his long - by Latvian standards - tenure. Interesting times indeed, but that wasn't the end of it. I had been surprised by the lack of comments coming out about those who headed the corporations involved, such as the supermarket, developers and construction company and finally Gintaras Jasinskas, chairman of Maxima Latvia (the supermarket), sparked anger by saying: "It is those who feel guilty who resign," commenting on the Prime Ministers resignation, this was swiftly followed by the shareholders of the Lithuanian owned company sacking him for his insensitive comments. 

Behind bars in the hospital

Icy roads

To add to the excitement I took my first lectures at a university this week. In the first I was talking about impressions from different countries we had lived in and at one stage I talked about England of course. I asked the students for their own impressions and one student said we had weird food and when asked what weird food in particular, he said "fish and chips." How is fish and chips weird? Sigh! Overall the lecture didn't go to badly, but I got really tired towards the end and had to cut the last section short or risk repeating myself or getting lost in what I was trying to say. My fiercest critic, my hubby even said I did quite well, that was a relief. One problem though was that I thought it was a two hour lecture, but at the last minute I was told it was actually 3 hours - too short a time to organise some activities to spin it out. I must admit though I did not want it to go on much longer as the roads were pretty icy on the way in, even if I wasn't driving since my dear hubby did, I still didn't fancy a late icy trip back home. Happily the roads had improved on the way back, as the temperatures went up enough and I think they put some grit down.

Ian chopping sticks to start a fire

The second lecture was for the course I am on, where I am learning about higher education teaching. The lecture was not exactly accessed for a mark, but it was necessary to complete in order to pass the course. By contrast this was a mini-lecture of 15 minutes and was supposed to give a flavour of what we would do in a teaching situation and get some feedback from our fellow students. I used an activity where all the students had to hold hands in a circle and then tie themselves up in a knot, I then had three volunteer "experts" come and unravel them. I timed this at 1 minute and 22 seconds. The next task was to do the same exercise without the experts and the task took 15 seconds. This was an activity one of the speakers organised at the summer school in Peyresq (France) and I felt it sent a powerful message to the young experts attending the course, that local knowledge is sometimes more effective. The students that I taught the exercise to also noted that the people were not waiting around for the experts to get them out of the mess, they cooperated with each other to solve the problem. My point was not that experts were irrelevant and no one fortunately took it that way, but they did understand very well that a motivated group of people can be quite adept at sorting out their own problems. I went on to talk about how experts and locals can work together and in an ideal situation is how participatory development works - and that neatly encapsulated what I would teach on. I got some very positive feedback and one or two helpful suggestions for improvements and things to look out for when or if I do ever get to teach again. The students enjoyed the activity that much, that they even suggested that it would be okay to do earlier in a course and not wait until everyone knew each other - must admit I would have been uncomfortable with that. I was uncomfortable with doing the activity myself in Peyresq after a few days of getting to know the other students, but felt it was worth it because it made the point so well.

Freedom might not be all its cracked up
to be though. These are our excess chicks
who have joined the bigger ones out in
the field, where they can free range.

Ian wants a camel and a llama now. To think he was a bit
unsure about having animals at all, apart from cats a
couple of years ago. Now he is developing quite an
affinity with them.

Oh yes! And there's more! What more excitement can there be in one week? Besides the will it, won't it appear comet? It is now declared dead, by the way, in case you missed that piece of information, although it did briefly reappear. No that isn't the news I was going to tell you about, it is the news about the Latvian Camels and Camelid Association. Last year we took my parents on a visit to a camelid farm, partly because we wanted to visit the farm ourselves, as they had alpacas too (alpacas, llamas, camels, vicunas and guanacos are all camelids, just in case you are wondering). In our defence, at least my parents did get a day out and about and not just to the camelid farm. We had been going to phone the farm to visit and talk alpacas, but Ian's had a cold and we were waiting for that to clear, when I got an email from them. What I didn't realise at the time was the trouble they took to get our email address.

One of the ladies who runs the camelid farm (Rakši) remembered our visit last year, but all she could remember was where we lived and we had alpacas. She was talking to a friend of hers who has moved out to our village and she asked if she knew of us, she didn't, but she said, "I will ask my friend." That friend happened to be one of our neighbours who knows we have alpacas and has our email address. The lady from Rakši said it was as if our email address dropped down from heaven - that made us smile. So thanks to a wonderful load of coincidences, we were sat in the first meeting of the Latvian Camels and Camelid Association. As far as the Association is concerned there are only four places in the whole of Latvia that keeps alpacas, ours being one of them, one is quite huge though with over 60, but the others are not so huge. So for the whole afternoon, we talked camelids and ate some great food and then talked some more, all made possible by the fact a friend of ours was also willing to put our animals away for us, allowing us to stay for a good long chat.

The various animals are all concentrating on a dog that is
chasing a stick in the enclosure. This was an exercise to
show how a herd of camelids will react and chase him off.
Not quite sure how ours would react. Sometimes wonder if
they would just keep on eating

Outside the train station in Riga

And just to finish off, we have another snippet of information. While we were away at the association meeting we had a visit to our land to assess if we can get the internet there and it appears we can. Of course it will cost to put up a dish, but at least it is possible. Now what to do about the home line? Hmmm!

Will someone tell this sheep it is not an mountain goat.
They do like to climb though!

Easting the hay stack

Frost on the wire

We're not going out in that!