Welcome to 2019

Let us out! Please! There were a couple of days of wet snow
and so they all got kept in, so they didn't get soaked before a
freeze.

Welcome to 2019. I must remember that as I have already managed to sign something with the date 2018. It was interesting to welcome in the New Year with friends this time. Quite often we have gone to bed before midnight. We decided to back out of the ramble beforehand, as we weren't quite sure what we would be getting ourselves into and it was quite a long time before the party, not easy on Ian who may have been outside most of the day anyway. I also realised that I didn't actually have the right kind of footwear for that kind of thing either. I have wellies for the land and I have hiking boots but not for cold and possibly damp conditions. Anyway, the party was good and the people friendly, so that worked well.

Please! Please! Let me out!

Brencis looking pretty dapper I think

At midnight we went outside and climbed a hill. It was surprisingly steep. I have no idea why I have never noticed this particular knoll in our village before. I guess it is mainly due to living on the other side and only really walking out by our land. We celebrated the New Year with a glass of champagne and a mixture of being wished "Laimīgu Jauno gadu" and a "Happy New Year" by fellow partygoers. The hill turned out to be an excellent spot to watch the fireworks before clambering down the hill, without managing to kill myself in the process (yes it was that steep) and rejoining the party in the old railway station.

Even old Lady V, is looking good

And of course Jakobs is just looking sweet

Later on in the week the friend who helped me with the felting workshop before Christmas came to help me make some slippers. We were both interested to see how it would work with alpaca. Due to the snowy conditions we had to collect her from her parent's farm where she is living at the moment. It turned out to be a very interesting journey there as the snow was quite thick out that way and we had only travelled that way for the first time in the dark the week before. The only way we found the road to her house, was to follow the sticks her father had put in to show where the road was. It was even more tricky on the way back as it had snowed some more during the day.

Finally time to run off some energy

Snow dunes in the garden

The slipper production went well. She worked on one slipper and I followed what she was doing on the other one. We even managed to get them to be about the same, which kind of surprised me. We made the slippers from Herkues fleece. As I mentioned last week, it is not the best for nice scarves, but worked well for the base for Ian's welly inserts last week and worked very well for the slippers this time, as it made a very solid finished product with a satisfying "thwock" sound. My friend left me some leather for the bases and waxed sewing thread. I was quite pleased with them, especially as they certainly kept my feet warm and toasty. Now we just have to see how hardwearing they are.

Sunrise in winter

The deer have been visiting the land. We weren't too
concerned as they don't dig up the land like the pigs, but
now they are starting to find our orchard and eat the trees
there. That we are not so happy about. They don't normally
come so close to the greenhouse area.

Most of the time has been spent doing academic work, so I decided to go out with Ian one day to help with giving Vitamin D injections to the girls, tablets for the boys and do some skiing. The skiing didn't happen. I went out to pick the Brussel sprouts I had grown, even though they were tiny, and on the way back my eyes were aching due to the northerly wind that was blowing. I decided that skiing was not a good activity for the day, so instead I sorted out our seed order for the year. This year we needed a lot of seeds to replace older ones and I haven't managed to do much in the way of seed saving anyway. I also want to ensure I have my seed order for the next few years due to Brexit when I may have to source my seeds from a mainland European country and not the UK. Latvian seeds don't always seem to be very good, although I might start looking around to see if there are other companies.

They maybe didn't get soaked but still a little dusting of snow
one day

Travelling up to Tartu by bus. This is Valka station

The following day I thought I had better stop in before heading up to Tartu and get my packing done. I thought I would finish off a piece of felting but then realised it was already felted enough and so started on a tunic instead - as you do! I didn't finish it and so ended up taking it with me to my friend's in Tartu. At least I got it as far as a stable enough fabric to move, even if it did mean I was weighed down with lots of bags to carry.

I then walk over the border into Estonia. The
little sentry box still stands to mark the border,
but of course there are no border checks here
nowadays. Over the border is Valga

Sofie, who is now on holiday

Our cat hasn't turned up to our greenhouse when Ian goes in the morning for a few days. We found out that she is on holiday at our neighbour's farm. I needed to order some milk from her and asked if she had seen her and she had. We were relieved she was up there, but we hadn't realised she was living the life of Reilly, as we say. Our neighbour's car had broken down and so her son rang us and asked for a lift home. Ian went to pick them up and as they got chatting he found out the life she is now leading. Apparently she is sitting next to the grain to eat the mice that come by, so at least she is earning her keep too. She is also being fed sausage and gets some milk, fresh from the cow, so not sure if she will ever want to come back home, maybe in Spring.

On the bus in Estonia

An old Soviet era train near the Valga train station

Recently I have been reading Wendell Berry's "Unsettling of America" in the mornings, one of a set of books some friends bought for me. His arguments are a little circuitous and hard to follow at times, but still there is much to ponder. I can appreciate the philosophical ponderings that overlap being on a farm and academia. He suffered the frustration of academic thought that gets locked in silos in the universities of his day- thank goodness that has moved on somewhat since his book was written, but it still exists to some extent and frustrates me at times too. Ideas and concepts can look good on paper but in the real messy world there are barriers to spreading the "pure" knowledge and rightly so. So my musings have centred on the issue of the distance between the cities and the countryside and the impact that has on society today.

George might be growing up, but he is still cuddly

Frosted hay

Cities seem to behave as if life in the countryside is unimportant. This is because those living in the cities have often lost the connection to the land and the food produced from it. They have also lost the connection to the concept of stewardship in the process, as land and people are consumed and not cared for. Food is consumed without thought of where it comes from and how it got there - until something goes wrong of course. Then it is the fault of the supplier or the farmer but not the supermarket or consumers for abdicating their responsibilities in the first place for sourcing their food in an ethical manner. Ethical to the people and the earth we live on.

Vanessa's crew's paddock surrounded by frosted trees

I love the look of these frosted oak leaves. Such potential for
some design work

The rise in veganism and the eat organic movement shows people want to care but not necessarily how to care. It is after all hard to do when the processes are so little understood. How can those in the cities understand the natural cycles on which their food supply relies unless they reconnect with the land in some way? How can this vast disconnected society be turned around? Who wants to work in the fields anyway? And yet maybe we should. We mock the totalitarian regimes that sends the workers into the fields - such a waste of talent we might think, such backwardness.

Someone else looks like she wants to get out.

I do not advocate enforcing people to go into the fields for planting, weeding and harvesting, but what happens if we re-value this kind of work? Physically getting our hands in the dirt as a communal activity once again? Many of the interviews that have been conducted in my research in Latvia and Estonia recall the times of communal activity that finished in a celebration, such as haymaking, potato harvesting and apple picking and processing. It was hard physical work, but done together, in connection with the land and the seasonal cycles that produces the food they need to nourish their bodies. Some still enjoy those activities with friends and family, but many also yearn to at least see some of that kind of activity again. Maybe it isn't such a bad idea after all.

Good times

Sunset at home

It's official it has been the hottest summer on record after the coldest winter in 100 years.  The only record that wasn't broken was the hottest single day recorded in Latvia which was 36.4C (97.5F) in 1943 in Daugavpils but as far as averages are concerned that was definitely broken with a full two months of hot weather - and boy don't I know it! The heat has meant changes to routines, perspiring from every possible pore on my body (I know you didn't really want to know it but these things happen!) and to boot I have lost 10 lbs in weight. Summer is definitely over though now as the leaves turn colour, the children go back to school and the autumn mists descend each night heralding the cooler days. We did have a few rather wet days but the sun has returned and we having some rather pleasant daytime temperatures but the nights are a little chilly and we only just hung on and put the first fire on in September. I guess we have got rather used to the heat.

One of the distant memories of summer spent shifting lots
of hay

The children of the village went back to school on the 1st September as they do every year in just about all ex-Soviet countries, they were dressed up smartly and all carrying bunches of flowers for the teacher. The day is characterised by lots of speeches and clapping and not much else as the true school day starts the following day. My course started today though along my job with an online school and so summer slips away to a distant memory and the storks fly ever further away (they were seen over Malta this week). We have learnt much over the summer though and done battle with the heat, the insects and the weeds. The insects this year have been awful, first it was the mosquitoes and the kamikaze daytime ones which didn't know that they were supposed to wait until the cooler evenings before appearing, followed by the numerous horseflies after the mosquitoes tailed off, which obviously enjoyed the heat and then the flies who revelled in the very hot temperatures. I had to wear sunglasses, not just because of the sun but to keep the flies out of my eyes while working and I heard of one lady who wore a bee suit to milk the cows because the flies were that bad. One of the nice things about the cooler autumn days is the lower numbers of the flying pests, unfortunately we seem to have the jumping pests which we must have picked up from somewhere and they have the itchiest bites of all.

One thing I was sad about was that Avon So Soft does not work to keep off the mosquitoes and horse flies, it does put them off a little but the need for my blood over rode any nasty taste they were left with from the oil spray. At least we did find a non-DEET spray but how much safer that is I am not sure but it was very necessary at times just to be able to get any work done in peace.

No sign of the errant beans at this point
and yet they managed to bring these
massive plants down once they got going

So what have we learnt? We learnt that growing sweetcorn with beans and squashes doesn't work with the varieties we grew, the beans pulled over the sweetcorn and the squashes never really got going. With hindsight we probably grew the wrong sort of beans with the wrong type of corn and the squashes were put in at the wrong time. A less vigorous bean with maize rather than sweetcorn and pumpkins rather than squashes would probably work far better as the maize and the pumpkins would be ready about the same time and the less vigourous bean wouldn't pull over the corn. Still the corn did grow tall and I wonder how much of that was due to the beans supplying nitrogen.

This melon grew so well but the nibbling from a certain
little fur pest ensured that the melon eventually rotted
leaving a stinking mess. So sad!

Melons can be grown in Latvia is one thing we proved but we were too late to really benefit from the heat to grow lots of melons. The late finishing of our polytunnel and my problems getting assignments done at the end of the last modules really set us back by at least a month, so to get the production we did was a bonus. We also learnt that the melons are better grown upright rather than sprawling on the floor round the cucumbers as we can't get to the cucumbers easily once the melons take off. We found out that ripe melons can explode and they stink when they do, a really sweet cloying smell that is hard to get rid of. We found out that tapping the branches of tomatoes and chillis improves fertilisation and aubergines are difficult to set even using a paintbrush to fertilise them. I think a bee hive near the polytunnel will be a good idea for next year. Straw mulches were a real blessing this year as they kept the weeds down in the critical early stages and the soil damp during the dry spells saving us much time and effort which was a good job as working in three separate plots was hard work in itself. Next year we really need to be more organised to keep on top of it all.

A summers day

Last week when our neighbours to the land joined us we found out the young lass of the family had got through to the finals of a national competition and needed to be in Riga on the 1st September but was worried as the family car was broken and not likely to be fixed in time. We offered to help out if needed and sure enough on Tuesday Ian got a call to ask if he could take the family into Riga and would he join them at the event as there was a spare guest ticket, the only requirement was to dress smartly. Getting Ian to dress smartly is a major achievement as his days of shirt and tie for work, even under a lab coat, are well and truly behind him, he is much happier in a pair of work trousers and warm tatty tops. The refrain of 'your not going into the bakery like that!' can often be heard, okay it's only a bakery but there are limits believe me! Unfortunately there was only one spare ticket so Ian went alone with the family. He had absolutely no idea what he was going to and due to a mishap along the way they arrived only just in time but could not sit together, so there was Ian at an event with no clue as to what was going on and no interpretation. At least most events are kind of self-explanatory by following the clues of those around, ie clap when they clap, smile at the camera (oh yes, didn't tell you that bit, it was being broadcast live on national state television), and look like your enjoying yourself, which fortunately he was. He is of course now quite happy to sign autographs following his moment of fame (or not as the case maybe as we have no idea if he really was on camera or not). He rolled into bed at 2am the next morning, a very late night but happy to have been able to help.

A rainy afternoon project

Our friends who we helped out the other week with the wood deliveries were also so sweet that they invited us for dinner to celebrate their youngsters 3rd birthday party. It is a looooong looooong time since I have been to a 3 year old's birthday party but we had good fun. I used the invite as an excuse to make a puppet one rainy afternoon for a present, not sure he was really that bothered with it as he is into tractors and grass cutters and I had made a dragon but the parents loved it. Nothing much was organised, there was food and the parents sat around chatting and eating whilst the children entertained themselves by playing nicely and so it was a great chance to hear a lot of spoken Latvian. One thing I have discovered whilst moving around is that I am not a great fan of simultaneous translations as it means I can't listen to the flow of the language, fine if you are not living there and only on a short visit but not good if you need to learn a language. The evening turned out to be perfect as most of the adults could speak English reasonably well and so they would stop every now and again and tell us what they were talking about and giving us enough space to be able to contribute if we had something to say and then carried on in Latvian, so they made us feel part of the group without reverting to talking in English all the time. Another invite for an evening meal the next day from friends returning to Latvia and all in all this week has been very heavy on the social calendar side which makes a big change from the summer when it was eat, sleep and work and not much else.

Someone enjoyed playing with the dragon, even if the
recipient wasn't really that bothered

Weddings have been very much on my mind just lately with two of our children getting married in the next four months and so it was funny to read the differences between wedding traditions in different countries. I think my children will be glad that they are not Russian where the groom is expected to carry the bride over seven bridges, I think here in Latvia is only over one and you can see many groups over the summer congregated around a bridge waiting for the groom to carry the bride. The Latvians also have a similar tradition to the Russians of shouting out at random times that leads to the bride and groom having to kiss - not sure exactly what it was they were shouting out at the wedding we attended but it was a bizarre experience to be sitting down eating and suddenly having this fairly raucous noise erupting from one side of the room and everyone waiting for the bride and groom to kiss in response at very random moments.

Grandad in practice?

Update on our barn building saga, wood has finally been located in the nearby large town and we have it on order to be cut this next week. I am not surprised there is finally some wood there as that town was struck by a powerful storm that wrecked many trees and roofs in the area fairly recently. Whilst on the way to get my haircut we passed many trees snapped like sticks and piles of already sorted out branches cleared up from trees already dealt with. It looks like they must have had a tornado as the damage was fairly localised in places and look like someone had gone through with an almighty machete clearing a path as they went. Glad that one didn't pay us a visit.