Lovely week

One at a time please! I think they are pretty eager to get out

Beginning to feel that I sound like I have bipolar disorder with my up and down weeks just lately, but I don't think that really describes me somehow, just that lately the highs have been high and the lows low. Well this week has been a truly lovely week and not just because Sofie our cat returned to us as I posted earlier. Our young friend who was visiting this week has been a joy to have, she was chatty, inquisitive, funny, and very thoughtful. We have had many a laugh with the running joke of the week "no smirking" or "you must not smirk within 10m of the door" etc. (just substitute smoking for smirking and you might get the idea). Absolutely barmy the lot of us I know, but it kept us giggling. She loved to see the frogs in the garden, with no freaking out when they started jumping. She has tackled the most boring of jobs with no murmurs and in fact enjoyed them. She has enjoyed getting mud behind her nails and trying various plants and berries straight from the garden. Okay the strawberries weren't as enthusiastically welcomed as they were at the beginning of the week but then again she did pick quite a lot of them. It was strange teaching her how to use a hoe and a spade, especially as I grew up using them, but if you don't have a garden and live in an apartment most of the time then of course you wouldn't know how to use them. How many teenagers in many countries know how to do that sort of thing these days anyway?

Buckwheat or Griki in Latvian. We have
rather a lot of it in the greenhouse, but
it is now going to seed and then I shall
feed it to the chickens

We had some great chats too about missionaries and missions as she is a missionary kid. I love that she is questioning the way missions are done and yet respectful of what has gone on before. She has not become anti-missionary as some do, but wants to know how to do things better or at least trying to think if there are better ways of still following Jesus and yet having a heart to go to other nations to teach others about Jesus. It is refreshing that she is exploring these ideas rather than either rebelling against the whole concept or accepting the whole package - that gives me a lot of hope for the future. One problem that missionaries often face is what they write back to their supporters and I have a great admiration for her and her family for checking up on each other to make sure that the truth is not stretched, while this might mean that support is not as good as it could be, at least they are being true to themselves. The way that support has to be raised and what kinds of stories that garner support is also an issue and one that we touched on, the problem is that missionaries have to have exciting stories to write back to supporters and yet it might be that actually they are called to just be a part of the picture and not the missing jigsaw piece that completes the picture - that's the exciting, part but the other pieces are just as vital, although not as newsworthy.

St. John's Wort. It is good and bad to
find this in the fields. Good for its
medicinal properties but not good for
animals in too large a dose and we have
a fair bit of it in places.

We are having great fun with the local kids, they are all saying "hi" as we arrive home and waving to us. We feel like celebrities at times. I may have mentioned that their smiles really light up our days but we will be sad when they get older and maybe less likely to wave and smile, or even not playing out so much, so we won't see them around, they are such a joy to see. Not many adults take the time to smile and wave to kids and really we are only doing the same as we do to adults i.e. acknowledging their presence, but they have really responded enthusiastically to that. We joined in with a honey party as well this week. A honey party? We wondered at first too. The invitation was written out in English as well as Latvian and posted on the noticeboard and so we had to go. The children got in first and had gone off to play by the time the party was supposed to start, but the adults were still around chatting. One of the neighbours had gone to her country house (many Latvians have country homes, that doesn't mean they are rich, just obtained their ancestral homes after the collapse of the Soviet system and it often is just a run down property on a piece of land) and while she was there she collected the first honey of the season and wanted to share it with the neighbours, particularly the children. We had to take a cup and bread, milk and honey were provided. Truly a country flowing with milk and honey - oh yes and strawberries as mentioned earlier. It was lovely chatting with neighbours and one of them speaks quite good English and so translated for us.

The jungle

Wish the countryside was always so idyllic with milk, honey and strawberries flowing, but of course it isn't. I have mentioned that Latvia has a diverse range of species before, especially the flying biting kind. The anti-horsefly gadget Ian erected hasn't been quite as effective as we had hoped, but then again it is situated outside the greenhouse and loads of the darn things are situated inside the greenhouse. As you can imagine tackling greenhouse tasks is not easy whilst trying to swat horseflies. This last few days have also been rather hot and humid and so I was a complete drip in the greenhouse and not enjoying the process of taming what had become a jungle as the tomatoes lap up the heat. We are contemplating relocating the anti-horsefly gadget into the greenhouse but there isn't a huge amount of room for it. The solar drier still needs some work doing on it too, at least for strawberries. It isn't quite fast enough for them and I am wondering whether the air flow may need improving, or more metal is needed to heat up the air better. The other solution maybe trying to use a preservative to give the fruit a little more time to dry without going off. Mind you it has meant less time using the electric dryer so some success.

Ripe red gooseberries

I mentioned earlier that strawberries are flowing and so this week marked the beginning of the jam making season. Four jars of strawberry jam and eight of strawberry and blackcurrant, using last years blackcurrants to get a better set. It won't be long before it is gooseberry jam as the red ones are ready (just realised I forgot to pick them today as I was busy doing other jobs, hope the birds leave us with some then) and jam from this years blackcurrants too as they are nearly ready. The tomatoes are also just beginning to turn - well all three of them! My taming of the tomato jungle though showed that we have lots of tomatoes that have set, but still need a few more days or a week before we start on a tomato glut. At least this year I shall be prepared as I want many more jars of tomato sauce base and tomato passata, they were such a blessing over the winter and easy to store.

Started off well

Other farm news (hehe I like that! Farm news! Well we are a proper registered farm now); Ian's tractor passed it's technical and the air con is working again, well briefly. He had the service engineer out to fix it and something was rather mucky, not exactly sure what, but unfortunately the whole thing packed up again not long after he left. New fuse and it is working again but for how long we don't know. It is rather nice to have air con when it is this hot and humid though. Ian also feels like a proper farmer now as he has cut, raked and baled some hay. I use hay in the loosest of terms as he was baling up the rubbish that he cut earlier to experiment on the set up. He has been keeping ground elder down all year to try and keep it in check and it was the remains of this that he baled. These bales will only be fit for composting but at least collecting it is a whole lot easier than doing it by hand as we have done in the past. Clearing it means that the grass has a chance to fight back and grow. It also means that when we get around to the actual good grass we don't have to worry about trying to sort out the good bales from the bad bales. Hopefully the weather will remain fine enough for us to get started on the ski hill.

Whoops! Well maybe that wasn't the way to do it!

Arrhh! Finally got the hang of it, well after one bale
without string, one bale that bust a shear bolt and
probably lots of rude words which I fortunately didn't hear.
After that plain sailing, well almost but we noticed that other
balers aren't 100% perfect either

The little bales, not huge monstrosities that take two people
to shift. 

Also some more good news, the alpacas are also now provisionally booked to arrive at 9am 21st July at Ventspils!!!!!! Not Riga!!!!! which is two hours away, but Ventspils which is 4 1/2 hours drive away. At least it is Latvia and less than 8 hours and progress for us in getting them but an early morning methinks.

So what are we doing here?

A beautiful rainbow, taken by Ian. I love rainbows!

A story on the BBC about how politicians embellish the truth and a chat with several friends had me wondering about the difference between what we are expected to say about being here in Latvia and what we tell people. We do believe that God sent us here, but for what purpose? To live here! That's it! It would be so easy to embellish the truth, especially as people so often ask why we are here in Latvia. Many know we are Christian and expect us to have plans and projects to "save" the community, and yes we would love people to know Jesus and have a relationship with God - the kindest person I know - but that is not our focus, it's up to God to do the saving (One digs the ground, one plants, one waters, but it is God who makes the plants grow - okay I know it doesn't quite say that in the bible but I get the impression that Paul wasn't a gardener and the digging needs to be done first, but see 1 Corinthinans 3:5 to see where I'm coming from). We love being here, we enjoy what we are doing, we long to see love and hope flourish in the community, but that does not mean giving a three point plan on how to be saved, setting up a meeting on a Sunday or even more radical on a Thursday/Wednesday/Monday (no I don't believe that is radical really) and generally ending in a holy huddle that doesn't really impact the community at all. I long to see transformation of the community as a whole, but not into yet another Westernised community full of greed and self-interest, but into something distinctly Latvian, with Latvian values rediscovered, or for people to find out what being Latvian truly is. To find their destiny and uniqueness and be comfortable expressing that. We love the people and yes we sometimes find them infuriating when they don't do things our way, but more often than not we are relaxed about them doing things differently. It's their country after all!

Wild boar damage can be annoying but you have to admire
their ability to dig up tasty roots and delicately eat them
off whilst leaving the leaves behind, without the use of a
spade, and fingers to help.

It is not just politicians that embellish the truth, so do charities, aid agencies, missionaries etc. We expect them to have a far bigger impact than they do, in a short period of time and therefore they have to write reports that are not exactly lies (or at least I hope not), but carefully worded smokescreens, to hide the fact that making a difference in societies is hard work and long term and doesn't often go the way they would like. Sometimes it is just a cover for when things are not working and they have to justify still being in the place they are, doing the things they are doing. Aid agencies have had to rethink many of their strategies when it finally dawned on them that many of their programmes were not working and in some cases just exacerbating the problems as they did not tackle the underlying power relations in an area that kept the poor, poor. Honesty about the way things really are is crucial in many ways, but it is also crucial for people donating money to realise there are no quick fixes, that things may not work and that situations change. That does not mean that people have wasted the money, it just means that the time was not right, the right people were not in place, it requires a much longer period for something significant to happen or someone got it wrong! And we shouldn't condemn people for getting it wrong, not learning from it yes, but not for just getting it wrong.

So how can anything this cute make such
smells??????

A friend of mine posted a blog on snickelling - going around the city of York using the passageways and alley ways to see York from a different perspective. I think in some ways that might describe our path through life, through Latvia, choosing the less obvious ways to get around and in the process seeing more of life, more of Latvia and more of Latvian life than we would otherwise. So where has our snickelling taken us this week? (At this point while writing my blog you have to picture me with my polo neck pulled up over my nose and making a mental note not to buy the cheap kitten food again as it does not agree with Sofie's digestive system because it results in smelly wind - Eughhh!) Anyway where was I? Oh yes, snickelling! Well actually not much has happened this week, we have just tootled along through this week, part of which was rather wet, making work difficult on the land and in the garden. I dug up some of the hamburg parsley, which is the last crop to get in before the winter for storage, started packing wood chips around plants to snuggle them up for winter and working on my written proposal and presentation for my course. Ian has been busy sorting out the barn again, he's finished off the drainage inside and levelled off the floor now, so it is ready for the equipment to be stored - only it needs to dry out a bit before he can take the stuff down to the barn without causing a mudbath. Next year we need to sort out the road to the barn so we don't have the problem again at this time of the year. Besides taking the kittens to the vets for their jabs and the usual processing food, shopping and fitting in a visit to the bakery that is about it! Just regular life for us here in Latvia! Now! How could I embellish that to make it sound more exciting? Hmmmm!

Our strange visitor

Oh I know the strange incident! One day we were out on the land when in wandered a dog. It wasn't aggressive or anything, but just wandered around a bit and then sat down, as if making itself at home. For a time it sat down with its front paws crossed quite contentedly, but then, for no reason that we could see, it threw its head back and started howling. It sat there howling for a good five minutes before wandering towards the road and howling some more, after that.....? It just took off and we haven't seen it again. No idea where it had come from or where it went. We have had other dog visitors too, one was from the hunt that went through our forest the other day. They aren't supposed to go through our forest as they don't have permission and one guy was even close enough that he said "Sveiki" (greetings), which felt a little bizarre. We could hear the guys whooping and shouting in the forest as they attempted to drive animals towards hunters and it was a bit worrying at times, as I half expected wild boar to come rushing out towards me, in fact we saw a deer making its escape far up the field. On the one hand we are pleased that the hunters are working the land, as it will mean less pig damage, but we would rather they respected boundaries too and we would rather know who they were. So there you have it, the unembellished truth!