At last!

Taking hay to put in the chicken arks for bedding

At last we had a few days sunshine in a row without rain. This has meant a lot of feverish activity as farmers were out in the fields cutting hay while they could. We have hung back to let the ground dry as we are not in a backlog of folks relying on others to cut and bale, we have our own equipment. It is forecast to rain tomorrow and then after that it should be dry again for a longer period of time. Instead we have got other jobs done that are on the list of to-do when it is dry enough.

The finished new herb bed. So far it has garden mint, hyssop
winter savory, thyme, golden thyme, chocolate mint, garlic
chives, sage, tarragon, variegated sage and some
lavender cuttings. 

Ian wanted to get the old wood chippings up off the road, as they have been down a few years now and starting to rot, which means it gets wet rather than giving us a good road to drive on. The aim is to add a new deep layer of chippings since it has worked so well up until recently, but before we did that the old chippings had to go somewhere. Since they are well rotted now, it was decided to use them for a herb bed and cranberry bed that I intended to make, which in turn meant I needed old logs to construct them with. The logs had got covered with bracken and other vegetation and so Ian had to strim the areas, find the logs and then move them with the tractor - now that the ground was dry enough. Some smaller rotten logs were also cut with a chainsaw to provide the main base of the herb bed and give the herb bed some water retaining content that should rot down over time. I was rather pleased with the result and it now means the herbs which are not so vigorous don't get swamped by the marjoram or the autumn raspberries that are now taking over the old herb plot.

The cranberry bed is on the other side of the pond, by the
forest. It is in a raised bed just to keep the weeds at bay, so
we hope it won't dry out too much for them. At least the
wood should hold quite a bit of moisture.

The rain has caused us a lot of problems, as I mentioned before. Our friends from America have not been able to help around the place, as much as they would like. They have cooked us meals and frozen lots of berries, which is really helpful and time consuming but many of the jobs we had anticipated doing, have just not got done. They did manage to get some posts in for our fencing this last week, so all we need to do is put the wire on when we get the chance, but that was all they managed to get done one day before the rain set in again.

I think this is a damselfly rather than a dragonfly. A pretty
colour anyway

We have still been busy of course, picking mushrooms (I really must take the camera with me sometime, as there are so many different sorts this year and unusual ones I haven't seen before), weeding the garden, mowing grass and running for cover from the rain. Yesterday was a lovely day and so we uncovered some sawdust in bags that were a bit damp and needed to dry out for our composting toilet. There was no forecast of rain and so we left them uncovered overnight. During the night though I heard the rain starting and so I quickly got up and ran outside, barefoot over the grass. It was a good job the rain was warm and we live in the heart of the countryside.

This is my favourite part of the bed. I managed to divide the
golden thyme into three and planted it with the chocolate
mint. I think they look great together or will do when they
grow a little more

Ian made table for helping with the cleaning of the wool. It is a wire mesh on a wooden frame, so it can be used for laying out the fleece and getting rid of particularly dirty bits - that is for the sheep fleece mainly though as they have much dirtier fleeces and is called a skirting table. Sounds a silly name really but refers to the outer bits of the fleece, which is where the dirtiest bits are and comes from the same word we get outskirts from. Being a mesh means we can also lay out wet fleeces that have been through a cleaning process to dry. Now we can start to process some of the fleeces for dyeing more easily. Little by little we are making progress.

The amaranth in the greenhouse is growing really well. We
were worried at first that they would shade out the chillis,
peppers and tomatoes, but the tomatoes don't seem to
mind and the chillis and peppers seem to be even thriving in
the shade, which surprised us.

Our chicks this week have been proving adept at becoming escape artists. Chicken wire is expensive and so we only use it to make a small enclosure for the chickens rather than use it to fence the whole garden. I tried to extend the area for them since there are now seven of them in a small area but didn't have any more chicken wire and so I attached net bags to the outer fence. They can just walk through the outer fence as the holes are too big to keep chickens in and only to keep sheep in and wild boar out. At first I found out they were getting out by walking up the corner support post and then just jumping out, so I put net bags over that to stop them walking out. They had had their wings clipped or rather half of one wing, to stop them flying over the fence, but they have been flapping and clawing their way up the net bags so I re-clipped their wings to see if that would help and found it isn't. I feel like the farmer in Chicken Run, those chickens are up to something.

A close up of the cranberry bed

Ian has been able to get on with flail mowing in between the showers. Normally it is just to keep the grass down in areas where we live at the moment, so around the caravan and greenhouse and part of the field. This keeps the insects down to a more manageable level. Ian also occasionally flail mows areas where the animals will be moved do, as they don't eat long grass. If we had cattle, they would be put on first and then followed by the sheep or alpacas to eat the grass down before resting the area. He also mows after the animals have been on it to cut down the type of weeds they don't eat, such as ground elder and docks, so they don't dominate the grass afterwards. We aim for animals to eat in the same area around twice in one year, to give the grass plenty of time to recover.

Having a bad hair day

This week though Ian managed to clip the boys paddock fence with the mower and broke some fence posts. They were already on the list of jobs to do because they were ready for replacing fortunately. He also flail mowed the oats and clover. The clover was planned as it is being used as a cover crop at the moment, but the oats were because they had been flattened in the rain and there was no point in collecting them. So we have plenty of mulch, just nothing much in the way of grain crops and something we need to re-evaluate in the years ahead.

A nearly full moon

Normally at weekends we make sure we are on site to welcome visitors but this week we went to our friend's celebration on her farm. It is such a privilege to see how far she has come, as we knew her before she had even bought the farm and watched the first few painful years as she adjusted to the life there. She had helped run a sheep farm and camp before, but her farm is now more isolated in winter and the first few winters had a lot of snow which proved a headache. Slowly though she built up a flock of goats from a few - I think - donated ones to the point she now has about 70 including kids. She has also built up a reputation for her cheese and people come from all over to buy some and visit the farm. It made a nice change to be part of the party wishing her success in the future.

Lady V getting comfortable in the shade

We had a test drill for a well just before the rains started but not seen anything of the guy recently, so we asked a friend to make some enquiries to see what was happening and finally he turned up this weekend with another guy who speaks English and helped us with our electric supply a few years ago. They did another test drill to check out the exact layering of the area where they think there's a good water supply and it was looking good. Apparently we have soil first, then a layer of clay, then a layer of water bearing sand, followed by clay again. They are going to start to dig the well on Saturday so hopefully that is another step forward for us.

You have to look hard but the specks in the distance are the
storks flying way up high, just before they went

It was a bit sad today as we said good bye to our American friends as they set off home after their two month stay. They have been in our apartment most of the time and we have only been back to do the washing and have showers, so it will seem a bit odd now for them not to be there, when we go. We don't intend to move back yet though, we will stay out on the land until it is too cold for us in the caravan. The signs that winter is approaching are all around though, from the occasional tree turning autumnal to the storks gathering and leaving. It is an odd feeling when the storks do that. They start gathering a few weeks or days before and then one day you may see a whole flock of them circling higher and higher, then the next thing you see is they suddenly veer off and they are gone. The swallows are still around, but one day they will just disappear off too and we won't see them until they return in the spring.

Four hung around just a few minutes more

Our boys

As we were in our village to say goodbye to our friends we decided to eat at the bakery for lunch, as we haven't done that in ages. We used to go for a walk every Sunday and have a pastry at the bakery, but now we are out on our land doing tasks or welcoming visitors. Things have changed such a lot for our friend, but also for us over the last few years. None of us really envisaged doing what we are doing now about ten years ago. Maybe we dreamt of doing something similar but not exactly and certainly for us, we never imagined it would be possible to be farming alpacas, in fact we wouldn't have even been sure what an alpaca looked like exactly and we would have been like most of our visitors who get mixed up between alpacas and llamas.

Still dry!

All shut up for the night

It has been a busy old week again, but for now we have finished doing shearing for others. We are just waiting for one of our alpacas to give birth and then we will shear our girls and that will be it for the year - at least we think it will be. We have had other jobs too that needed doing anyway, such as topping the cow parsley so that it doesn't go to seed. The animals do not like it and they won't eat it so it is taking over, which means we need to get it under control. The girls have not even been bothering to go into the field with the cow parsley as it is taking too much effort to sort through in the heat. Now the flowering stems of the cow parsley have been removed they have been out in the field to eat the grass. It does mean hours of walking up and down with the flail mower for Ian though. I can't handle that machine as it is far too heavy and besides I was inside for much of the day assessing a Masters thesis on urban allotments - a very interesting read.

Such a pretty flower for an
invasive plant

I did get out and do little jobs during the day like planting beans that have been soaking for a couple of days. There is no point in planting any seed unless it has been soaked because we haven't had any rain for over two weeks, it might even be three weeks now - we lose track. It is also my job to feed the chickens since we have gone across to using flour to feed them. I add crushed egg shells, mineral powder and some dried herbs - depending on what I have, then mix it altogether with some water to make a mush. The flour is organic and a mix of different types of grain, buckwheat and I think it has a bean flour in it too. I have even used it with white flour to make bread, after sifting it for some of the hulls that are still in it. Cheaper than buying organic flour from the shops by a long way.

Enjoying the cooler evenings and the shadier spot. They look
huge and I keep teasing Ian that they have triplets. Most likely
they will have twins and by the end of the year we will only
keep four females altogether. 

Ian moved the sheep this week while I finished off planting tomatoes and a friend of ours weeded our strawberry bed - a mammoth task in itself. The sheep have been moved nearer as they are due to give birth too any day soon and we wanted them nearer to us, where we can see them and they will have less of an issue with foxes. I would hope the ram will be useful in protecting the mothers though. Normally we take down some mobile orange netting fencing to pen them in while removing their fencing and then setting up the next stage. This time we decided to buy extra wire and posts and set up the second fence first. Moving them is easy, Ian just rattles the feed trays and they follow him as good as gold. Wish they were that well behaved when we want to do anything with them though.

This was where the boys and the chickens were last year,
the grass is recovering well now

The shearing this last week was a lot less stressful than it has been because Ian has felt more at ease knowing it wasn't the way he was shearing that was the problem, but an issue with dirty fleeces. Some alpacas attract the dirt and it is a particular problem when the ground is gritty and alpacas love to roll. The large alpaca farm has clay and possibly denser fleece animals and so there were fewer problems shearing their animals. Ian has ordered the sharpener now, so hopefully we can avoid many of the problems in the future.

Oak leaves

Again we were fed well and could have spent longer at some places. One place we went to they had a friend around to translate and after one animal we had a break for coffee, well coffee, cakes, some pies made with a bread dough and open sandwiches then we sat and chatted for quite a while about alpacas. The gentleman who was translating was a beekeeper and he had to go and take care of his bees. We only had two more alpacas to shear so didn't take a huge amount of time and at the end we were offered coffee again. Only this time the coffee came with sausages, potato salad and a tomato and cucumber salad. We were stuffed. We got to the next place and set up and again offered coffee only we asked if we could have tea as we were coffee-d out. This also came with bread, cheese, salami and tomatoes. It is a good job I am now in the habit of having to watch what I eat otherwise I think we would have rolled home.

Sunset behind one of our many oak trees.
This was taken at 9:52 and it will stay
light until way after midnight

We had a bit of an adventure on the way to the next place. Twice we have had to brake sharply for wild boar on the road when travelling to places for shearing and several times had to avoid other animals or birds, such as a stork who sauntered across the road, ducks who refused to move and of course there were a few deer from time to time. Our luck ran out though this time and we hit a deer. We stopped of course and we tried to look for the animal but couldn't see it at all, our car didn't look too bad but then we realised that the grill was slightly bent and the fog light was not in good shape. The corner of the car also suffered some damage - not bad but enough to need a small repair. The fog light also needs replacing. Oh well! The hazards of country life.

Buttercups look so pretty but they are not very welcome on
our land too as they are definitely not edible for our animals.
Fortunately I think the clover is gradually driving it out

The last shearing job we did, we got on reasonably well but we didn't finish again. We had set aside two days but the people running the farm were getting busier and busier as more groups booked to tour the farm for the second day. We were already having to take breaks because groups were visiting on the first day and the owner wanted to see the condition of the animals being sheared, rather than just let us do all the work - which we totally understand. It is helpful to see the animal while it is restrained so that the overall condition can be assessed.

Rather light for so early in the morning

In the end it was decided that they would shear the remaining eight animals gradually over time on days off. It was also easier for them for us to set off that evening and so we started off home at 10:30pm. We stopped for a short while to snooze but it was a chillier night that night, in fact there was a touch of frost, so the snooze wasn't quite as long as we would like - or at least it felt that way. We rolled onto our land as the sky was getting light at 4am. We had a few hours sleep because we wanted to be up in the morning just in case our alpaca decided to give birth, which she didn't of course and we caught up with some sleep later on in the day instead.

The boys all shut up for the night too. Their paddock grass is
ever so short but they still like to eat the grass in there. When
it cools down they will be shut out of the paddock for a few
hours so the grass gets a chance to recover a bit, but when it
is so hot, they need the shelter.

We have had a school group in this week as well. We were a little surprised when the coach pulled onto our land - normally they stop at the bottom and people walk on. Fortunately the ground is solid at the moment due to the lack of rain and it was only a 3/4 size coach and not the full sized one. There were about 20 children and they were quite engaged with what Ian had to say and followed along quite well considering that they were Latvians listening to English. I am not so sure that I could have followed along in a different language at their age. The talk Ian gives on alpacas from shearing to product seems to work quite well now and we then take them to see the boys, who are more aloof. The girls, however, are much more willing to come for carrots and apples which the children brought with them and we sliced up so the animals do not choke.

Our pond is receding again due to the lack of rain

Agnese amazed us though. Ian called her over as she is the most friendly of the girls and he took hold of her so that they could feel her fleece. She never bothered at all. At one point Ian let go and she sat down with lots of children around her taking photos and stroking her. She just sat there. She stayed sitting down until the children left. Apparently some of them got some really nice photos where she looks like she is giving a big grin. Some of the children tried to feed the other alpacas and those who were quieter and more patient were rewarded with the animals eating from their hands. Many were just a little too impatient, but some learnt and with a bit of coaxing managed to feed at least one animal.

Help needed!

Oh yes! That's me in shorts and my
Australian hat. I didn't buy the hat in
Australia, I bought it in Colorado. As
for the shorts, they won't be appearing
much for a while, not because we are
expecting cool weather, but the
mosquitoes have decided it is summer too

Well if anyone fancies a week or two doing lots of exercise, we have a few jobs that you can help with. We are well into the busy period now, so many things have been done and still a lot more to do. Once all the seeds are planted, small plants planted up, then it is just weeding ........ continuously until the end of the season. Actually there is usually a bit of a lull before the harvesting starts and then there is quite a bit of time spent preparing vegetables for storage, but that is still to come. This week we saw high temperatures, more akin to summer than late spring, 25C - 30C (77F-86F). It is a bit of a shock after such a long winter and, as I mentioned last week, everything seems to be hurrying along to summer, including the weather. We've had several thunderstorms already, accompanied by our electric going off for up to several hours. Not what we really want when we have eggs in the incubator. At least the storms have brought some needed rain and so the grass is starting to grow quite quickly now - good news for our alpacas. The trees have also continued in their race towards summer, in only approximately two weeks the trees have gone from virtually bare sticks to full leaf, the change has been quite staggering.

How about that for a lawn then! 

It is not just grass that is growing of course, the ground elder and dandelions too. The dandelions look so pretty as they colour up the landscape with swathes of yellow, but not exactly what we want to see when we are trying to improve the grassland. Ian has been doing mega lawn cutting marathon to try and keep the yellow peril down and I have tried making dandelion honey with the flowers, since we don't have any bee honey at the moment. I thought if this works like the internet article said it would then it would be cheaper than buying any. As it turned out, it made a passable syrup anyway, I needed to boil it a bit more obviously, but I haven't really been at home enough to do that. I found the idea for the dandelion honey when I was confronted with a meal that was decorated with dandelion flowers and I wanted to know if they really were edible or just for decoration. I know the leaves and the roots are fine, but wasn't sure about the flowers. Fortunately the cafe I was in had Wifi and I had my computer with me and so I did a quick search before eating.

Herkules had decided to sit down on
the job, so most of the shearing was
done on the floor.

Keeping the grass cut is not just for improving the grassland to get rid of ground elder, dandelions, wild raspberries and nettles but also to keep the fly population down that bother our alpacas so much. This is especially important as we shear them. Some friends of ours came around from the nearby camp to help us today and lend us their shears, so we had some idea of what to do. Mind you, our helper has only sheared one sheep before, but at least he knew more than we did. Between him and Ian they did a pretty good job and Herkules, our first victim... errr volunteer didn't look as bad as some people's first attempts at shearing, judging from the stories. I think we worked quite well as a team (I said we needed help), there was a young guy who is really strong and he made sure Herkules was pinned down and Ian and our friend took turns in the shearing, mainly our friend, but Ian did have a go. He also got his nails clipped while he was down on the ground. I sorted the fleece out into two sorts, the really good fleece and the rest. It should be sorted out into more than that, but I wasn't sure the cutting would be quite good enough this time around to make a second quality cut. It will probably have plenty of other uses, either as a stuffing for toys or duvets or something like that. Herkules isn't our best quality animal and so it will be interesting to see what the fleece is like off our other two animals.

Here what are you doing in there?
And can we come in, it's raining

In preparation for the shearing we had to clean out the alpaca hut. We use the deep bed system, which basically means that hay is continually piled up on top of hay and only cleaned out once a year. It is nowhere near as bad as it sounds as straw or hay is quite absorbent and as long as there is plenty of fresh hay on the top it doesn't smell bad either. It is also more hygienic than you might think. Ian has reduced the poop pile in the middle from time to time so they aren't standing on a mound, but apart from that this is the first time we have cleaned them out properly since they came back in July. It was a job we were dreading, but in the end it wasn't as bad as we had feared and we had got the job done by the end of the morning. Mind you, the alpacas were hovering, partly because they are always very curious about what we are doing and have to stand have a good gawp and because of the heat, they wanted to be in the cool of the shelter. Who said that alpacas like to be outside all the time? They haven't met ours, they go into the shelter if it rains, if it is too sunny and if it is too cold. Sensible creatures really.

Finishing off

Like I said, it is our busy period and so Ian has sown the buckwheat crop, as it doesn't look like we will have a frost in the foreseeable future and I have sown broad beans, lettuce, radish, squashes, more pepper plants, apple, pear, ash tree, plum and some sweetcorn. The tree seeds are just to see what comes, we love to experiment. The sweetcorn I have planted both under cover and out in the open, since the temperatures have risen so much, but I have planted them quite deep. I have risked putting some squashes outside as the forecast is not for particularly cold nights and I have put them under fleece anyway to protect them from the fierce heat. Even our chickens are busy at the moment as they are regularly laying 6 eggs a day between them, we even think our broiler hen, who we have nicknamed big bird as she is even bigger than the cockerel is laying too. I did wonder if she was getting to fat, but that doesn't appear to be the case.

Now who's a pretty boy then!

Don't you dare laugh! 

On my journey home on the bus. A small taste of Estonia

As I mentioned last week I was in Tartu for my studies. Monday I did a presentation, that I thought went well and the fact later on in the week I was asked to lecture to some MSc students seemed to confirm that. Unfortunately there was no way I could really go up just for one lecture this week, but  I mentioned that I will not have any problems in the autumn semester and the lecturer who asked me was happy with that. I had a meeting with my supervisors on the Tuesday and finally managed to clarify what I'm doing now, so the study plan should be finished this week, rather late but since I don't seem to be doing anything normally then that is fine. Wednesday, I took THE exam! Statistics! I made some really stupid mistakes on the exam, but fortunately did enough to get through. I also finished the statistics assignment and I'm just waiting to see if that was enough to pass or not. To cap the week for my studies, I managed to book on for a conference in Italy and I booked the flights too. It all seems a bit surreal, one moment I'm planting seeds, helping with sorting wool from alpacas and the next planning to jet of to Italy for a conference.

Another view from the bus. It was a glorious day

I sent off my passport this week to be renewed. It isn't due until December, but this is the time I will be doing least travelling and so needed to do it now. I was rather disgruntled though to find that even though it costs £72.50 in the UK, I have to pay £126 and a courier fee of £19.86. I am not sure why being outside the country should make a difference as it still has to go back to the UK to be processed. I can understand the extra courier fee but not the extra £53.50. I wonder how they manage to justify the extra expense? I kind of understood when it was processed abroad, but not now it is all sent to the UK anyway, it just seems very wrong.

On our way home from the land

I was quite relieved to hear this week that the EU can make sensible proposals if they want to. There was some concern that all seeds, regardless of origin would have to be subject to stringent standards. This could have affected small companies that sells seeds, the local seed swap or the larger seed swap organisations that aim to improve the availability of heritage seeds or open pollinated varieties. I realise that biosecurity is an issue, both from the harm that can happen when doling out diseased seed but also to unwanted additions to DNA. The fact is that it is not often that small swaps of seeds are going to lead to big problems with disease or large escapes of resistant crops, it is big business where that happens most often. In fact is is the small seed swappers who keep heirloom varieties or landrace varieties (plants specific to an area and well adapted to that area) alive, these are the sort of seeds that are dropped by large scale commercial growers. If we lose these small varieties we have an even bigger biosecurity problem because it reduces the gene pool we have access to whenever a disease threatens to wipe out certain types of plants or trees.

More help needed. Can anyone identify these flowers for
us. It is a vine with lemony scented leaves.