Weird and wonderful things

Ian has been busy stacking wood to make walls around the
stove. Half way there now

It has been quite weird this week how things have worked out. Not always good and not always bad either. Firstly it is November - how did that happen? Okay I know that you know it is November and it comes around every year, but it doesn't seem that long ago since we were waiting for the snows to clear to get in the garden. It seems such a lot has happened this year, so much so it has really raced away. Anyway onto the subject of happenings this week

Estelle and her hopefully wobbly remaining tooth

If you follow the blog, you may remember that we have been worried about the teeth of one of our alpacas, Estelle, as they have grown so long they needed cutting. Ian phoned our friend last week to help, but he was just setting off on holiday the following day and so we were supposed to phone another guy, but stuff got in the way, as it does. This turned out to be a blessing. One day Ian was looking at Estelle and noticed her tooth was more twisted than ever, she bent down to eat, looked up and her tooth was straight. Ian by now was beginning to doubt his eyesight. This happened a few more times and so in the evening, at lock up time, he got hold of her and took a look at her mouth. Her tooth was wobbly! Of course the questions then arise. Have we left it too long? Is there something wrong with her? Or........, she couldn't be ......... losing her baby teeth could she? Do alpacas have baby teeth? Well apparently they do and they don't lose them until they are about 2 1/2 years old, Estelle's age, which seems rather old to us, we would have thought about a year. There are other teeth further back that they lose later, up to 6 years old. So I guess, we now wait for the other tooth to drop out, rather than put her through the trauma of trying to cut it. Phew!

A view along the river at Jekabpils

Our car went in for a service this week, as a rubber boot on the front drive shaft had split and the last thing we want on the numerous dirt roads around here is for grit to get into that. Ian does all the regular routine stuff, but for something more complicated we take it into a garage at Jekabpils. We had to be there for 9am and so it meant an early start. The day turned out to be rather nice and much warmer than the previous week so we wandered around a little and Ian bought a new mega thermal neckwarmer and we found a new café, deep in the bowels of a row of shops. We were obviously the first customers of the day, as they vacated their chairs where they had been drinking their morning coffee to serve us. After wandering around some more we went for fish and chips at our usual place then did a little boot shopping for me (yes more boots but this time the sort that go on feet and these are for out on the land when it gets too cold for my wellies and three pairs of socks) lastly we went for a walk by the river. It is so long since we just mooched around anywhere and took in the sights. It almost felt like we were on holiday. It has been awhile! In fact it was when the grandchildren were born and we took a visit to the UK and Australia to see them and so about 18 months ago.

Such a glorious day

Along the path and looking towards the bridge

We then headed back to the garage and waited a little while for them to finish on the car. They would have worked on it some more, as some glow-plugs were not functioning properly, which is what Ian suspected and had asked them to check, but we had to get back to put our animals away - one of the downsides of this time of year is the early hour we need to be back. Ian also asked about the timing belt on the car and how often that should be changed. It turns out every 100,000 km and it costs around €450 (that does include other jobs done at the same time though, like changing the water pump). Yikes! Was it necessary? Oh yes! You should have seen the colour drain from the face of the guy when Ian said we had done over 120,000 so far. It's booked in again for this coming Friday. I won't be going though, I need to get out on the land and spend some time there and I can't go if I keep taking days off.

Mr. Herk are you eating through the fence again?

As I said Ian usually does the routine maintainance and so when we were at the garage he ordered an air filter, oil filter and a fuel filter for him to fit. Ian tried to change the fuel filter, something he was doing as a precaution due to the possibility of dirty fuel here and also just as a precaution before winter when we can end up with wax coming out of the fuel on especially cold days and it is good to have a clean fuel filter before that happens. Or something like that anyway (she says not being particularly mechanically minded when I don't feel like it). Anyway, as I was saying, Ian tried to change the oil filter and the emphasis here is on the "tried". The one that the garage gave him, didn't fit and so fortunately he was able to carefully put the old oil filter back on and order another one. A day later he got a phone call from a friend who has just bought a similar car and it started dying on him on the way back from a holiday after the car had been stood in the airport car park for a week. Although, as I have already said, the weather is warmer this week, it was bitter last week and the fuel has not been changed to winter fuel yet and so there is a possibility that the waxes in the diesel may have come out and started to clog the fuel filter - we sound so knowledgeable but it only has to happen once for us to be ultra cautious about it happening again. Well it just so happens we have a spare fuel filter as we haven't had the chance to return it to the garage yet and since it was supposed to fit an L200, maybe it would fit his! And it did! Weird. So we spent Halloween around at their place while Ian helped to fit the fuel filter, thereby avoiding any kids who come knocking at the door to extract sweets from us that we don't have. There seems to be more and more of them every year.

The look that says "It wasn't me!"

Veronica looks quite the stately dame

Well apart from doing some more work on that blessed paper I have been trying to write all year (at least it feels like that) and visiting the garage, we took a visit to a mini zoo at a place called Rezekne to have a look at their alpacas. We had hoped to meet the owner, but it didn't work out quite the way we had planned. Ian had phoned to talk to the lady, but apparently she didn't speak English, she did, however, get her daughter to ring back later. Ian spoke very carefully and arranged a visit for Sunday 2nd November. All well and good. The problem is that Rezekne is a two hour drive from us and he wasn't convinced that the arrangements would work out. Still a day out.

... but does she look pregnant yet? We think they might be
beginning to show, but then again it could just be their
fleece growing

Snowdrop! Is she or isn't she?

As expected when we got there, no owner and the lady who was there, couldn't speak English. The daughter, who spoke English, who Ian thought he had arranged to meet was also not there. The lady we talked to when she realised that my understanding of her Latvian was not keeping up phoned for someone to interpret. A nice young man on the phone then informed us that the alpaca male was €2000. Whoops! We think there was a misunderstanding then. We are not in the market for a male alpaca at the moment. We will need one in about three years time when it comes to mating with any females born this next year, but not before. We would also like to know the pedigree of the animal, as we are anxious to maintain fleece quality of our stock and we weren't given any of that information. Oh well! After 15 mins we headed home. On the way home we visited a supermarket to stock up and tried to go to a restaurant we had visited before, but that was shut and to cap the day off, a stone hit the windscreen and cracked it. Not a particularly good day out then!

Ian has also been busy building a small enclosure inside
the girls paddock area for a training area. He hopes to train
our dear little bundle of mischief to walk with a halter.
We'll see!

As always a slightly different note to finish on, but one that is rumbling on due to the politics in the UK. Why should the politics in the UK affect me here in Latvia? Most of it doesn't, but one issue does and that is the one of immigration. It was slightly chilling to read that Angela Merkel of Germany would accept the withdrawal of the UK rather than change the policy of free movement within the EU. Well good for her in one way, but the thought of that happening is not pleasant. If the UK clamps down on immigration from the EU this will almost certainly have repercussions for those UK citizens who are living in Europe now. It probably won't affect those already in a job, but no job and that could change things.

Diamond moments

A close up of our old girl, Alicia.

You'll be glad to know that I didn't have a meltdown this week. Thank you for so many kind words and words of care and concern for me, I do appreciate them and they certainly helped. Fortunately I bounce! Not that I'm up and down all the time, but I don't tend to stay down for long, I'm too much of an optimist/daydreamer for that. Having a meltdown though, did send up some red flags to me, that I needed to get a little balance in my life and so I have been looking for the little diamonds that make me smile and there seemed to be a few of those this week. One moment was sitting in a chocolate shop between meetings and eating a lovely dark rich chocolate cake and drinking a pot of tea, with the wafts of very chocolately smells enveloping me, a heavenly moment for sure. The moment was brightened all the more when a slightly portly chap, with a distinctly white bushy beard and red checked shirt walked past the window - Father Christmas! Well that was the thought that came to me. The next amusing moment was when a young chap strode into the place with a resonant "labdien" (good day in Latvian) to the ladies at the counter, out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed a handlebar moustache on a strikingly tall young man. I had a job not to snigger into my tea. He definitely seemed a theatrical sort and maybe he was, as we were just across the road from the opera. I did my best not to stare as he turned around to face me and sat down. I suppose I might incur the wrath of other handlebar moustache wearers for my response, but it isn't every day you see a young chap with such a distinctive moustache - although, maybe he was wearing it for Movember, hadn't thought of that.

The boys looking grubby this week in the rain

It was nice to get an assignment finished on the Monday and the teacher happy with my work, that is another course done and dusted. There was also no homework for this week as we had a guest lecturer from America in. He was a nice enough chap, but I did have the feeling that the stuff we learnt could have been said in the first hour. I also cringed a bit at being told to stand up and take a breath every now and again, to keep us awake, as well as cringing at the comedy show excerpt from something called "The Big Bang" but then again I have never been a big fan of American comedy shows anyway. I expect others found it more entertaining than I did.

The alpacas have been attacking the hay this week. We are
wondering if we will have enough, or whether to buy some
now while it is cheaper. The jury is still out on that one.
At least we haven't had any chicken losses this week.

I said I had two meetings this last week and they were good, well worth trailing back into Riga for. One was a young chap who is looking at the results of participatory development meetings and we chatted over the things he had found. It confirmed many things I knew about and suspected, I was also able to add some insights of my own. I am hoping that he does keep in touch and I can see for myself some alternative ways of doing the meetings that might have a more productive outcome. Currently the meetings are just really stone throwing matches, with no real dialogue and certainly not the point of participatory meetings. The clue is in the title, people are meant to participate in a meaningful way and it just ain't happening. The second meeting was more a getting to know each other meeting and the outcome was I have now been invited back to do a guest lecture towards the end of the month. Very exciting! 

They turned the section that Ian had
recently dug for electric cable into a
mud bath with deep footprints in it.

Unfortunately it was Ian's turn to flip out at me. He had had a bad day, first of all he was greeted by the sight of a small herd of cows out on our land, they made rather a mess of the place in some areas. They are definitely harder on the land than our alpacas and sheep are. At least they left us some manure in places, but also some rather deep holes from their hoofprints. It's bad enough with the wild boar, without some neighbours cows joining in. Ian had to take a trip up to the neighbour to see if she could ring round and find out whose animals they were and later on a couple turned up to collect them. Ian said the cows were quite tame and even came up to him in a timid sort of way, just at the point though where he was trying to drive them away from our greenhouse, the owner turned up and called to them, as well as rattling a bucket and off they ran to him. They obviously knew who fed them.

Put huge footprints through our new blackcurrant plot

Dislodged old hay bales

Ian then had to go around to check on any problems they had caused. He found they had dislodged a hay bale from our hay stack that then got soaked in the rain. He couldn't put it back on the stack and so decided to chuck it over the fence into the alpaca paddock so he could put it out of the rain in the overhanging area we have. In doing that he caught the fence and managed to not just snap one fence post, but four. Fortunately he had some spares from making APH2 paddock, but it was a job he wasn't really wanting to do that day. To absolutely cap his day we had a miscommunication. I went into Riga with some friends and after eating we were coming back together that evening, Ian though had asked me that morning if I was coming back on the bus and apparently I answered "yes!" I obviously misheard what he said (I really need a hearing aid) and only found out when a slightly irate - no, a very irate husband rang to say "where are you?" My reply of I'm on my way back with our friends did not go down too well. We have made up since though and I am forgiven.

At least they left us some useful manure, just not always in
useful places. This is in the middle of a tractor track and
not actually on the field where we would want it.

The rain means our stream is beginning
to flow again

There were other diamonds to glimpse this week. I travelled up by bus again this week to Tartu, so that meant a 2 1/2 hour wait on yet another fairly grey day in Cesis. I bought my ticket for the bus and then set off for a trip around and an explore of parts I haven't actually seen before. It was still a fairly dead place to be on a Sunday morning, but I did go back to another chocolate shop that I went to last week, where there are no drunk people asleep and had a black coffee and a piece of cake. I would prefer tea, but I am okay with a cup of coffee in peace than tea with a group of loud drunks first thing in the morning. On my way back there was a lady at an ATM, just as she was finishing up getting her cash a cat walked up to her meaowing away. You could almost imagine it saying "Got any money for a bag of cat food, love? I'm rather hungry this morning. Not many mice last night to be had." On one of the four buses I took that morning I spotted a lovely woodpecker pecking away at an apple on a tree and the rather grey day at one point broke and I had a glimpse of blue sky. The sunset was also gorgeous, with the sun setting bright orange in an early wintry way behind a house and tree. Even two of the bus drivers were very pleasant guys. All of these moments I drank in and let them water my soul. 

The light wasn't good but the red topped sticks mark the
channel. The last one in the row marks the site for the
proposed well. Convenient for the animals anyway,
but means a channel scarring the land up to the house for
water pipe and electric cable for the pump.

We had one of those dodgy guys out to our land to tell us where water is flowing. Not quite sure what to make of it all, but around here the water diviners are even used by companies to detect water and electric cables. You will of course be pleased to know that our proposed house site meets with his approval and is not sited in an area of bad energy. He also says our land drainage must be blocked as it isn't flowing, not surprised really it could well be blocked, but also there hasn't been much rain over this last year and so even the drains we know are not blocked have not been showing signs of water until this week. He said we have got somewhere where there is water and it starts from an area where we have our tractor trailer and Lada parked, but at that point it is about 15-20m down, it then runs along the hill in the direction of our ponds and is about 3-6m down at that point. Well we won't know until next year when we start digging, but Ian has mapped out the channel of water that he pointed out. Half of us is sceptical and it's all hocus pocus, but the other half does wonder. After all how many of us are really attuned to the electrical fields around us? Water running has an electrical charge, can someone be sensitive enough to feel it? As I said, we'll find out next year when we start digging.

Hay feeder constructed in APH2 for the
girls. It means they should have plenty
of access to hay no matter what time of
day or even if it is raining. We need to
keep the two pregnant girls in good
shape

I can't finish without mentioning something that I read on the BBC website about some Afghan troops working in one area and the General said

"When the US forces were here, they used to nickname the Pech Valley as the Valley of Death, now we are calling it the Valley of Peace."But one has to fight and work hard for peace, it does not come cheap."

What a positive declaration that is. How easy it is to nickname something in a negative way that can then influence how you perceive a place or even influence others. In the Bible, names of places could carry very strong messages and this sounds the same. I also agree with the sentiment about the need to work hard for peace. I am reading a book by a Latvian MEP, Sandra Kalniete, called "Song to Kill a Giant" and it details the time of transition of Latvia from the Soviet system to independence. It makes me sad to realise how much dignity and restraint was exercised in making the transition, they fought with words, with singing and holding hands, not violence and bloodshed and yet the transition afterwards has been fraught with mistrust. There is much discord between people as the distrust they held for others before the transition from the Soviet times, resurfaces in many ways, making it difficult for people to work together, one example being our apartment block, as the rumbling issues continued this week. If only they could work together in the same way they sing together. That would be worth fighting for.

Ian has put shelters over the hay for the girls on the outside too

Salt and water in safe places