First glut of the year

A glorious daisy plant that I haven't even planted myself

It didn't take long but we now have a strawberry glut. We have had strawberries in salads, strawberries for dessert, strawberries in ice cream, strawberry sauce, strawberry and gooseberry jam (using up some of last years gooseberries before the next lot arrive), as well as eating them straight from the plant; we are now kind of strawberried out but at least they freeze and we have tried drying some too to see how well they last. Other plants are beginning to get there at last and we have had the first sugar snap peas, swiss chard and some thinnings from our kale. Everything is still rather slow though due to our late start with the greenhouse, my studies and the dry weather. The wetter weather has certainly been welcomed for bringing the plants on, but not always so appreciated by everybody in our house (hehehe).

Okay I know you have to look hard
but you can see our prayer flags out
there in the field, waving away keeping
the hoover birds off our buckwheat! 

We were so excited to see that our buckwheat has germinated and growing well despite the attack of the hoover pigeons last week. They did seem to look like little vacuum cleaners as they strutted along and, as I said last week, it was so disheartening to watch them, especially when they didn't really seem that bothered by our presence at times. I had read that shiny things waving about is supposed to scare them off and so I thought foil strips would work but I wasn't so sure that they would last very long, as the foil we can get seems to tear so easily. In the end I made foil ribbons by sandwiching foil in cling film and then ironing the strips - at least that felt less likely to tear. We also noticed that wearing red and waving madly seemed to scare them off eventually and since I have loads of red ribbon we decided to try some of that too. Ian then tied the foil strips and the red ribbons to long sticks and placed them around the field and it seems to have worked. Ian watched one day as a group of them flew in the direction of the field, and seemed to be heading downwards before suddenly back tracking and flying off. Result!!!! Now our field just looks like it is surrounded by prayer flags fluttering around in the wind.

There they are, tiny buckwheat plants

This week we have been for a look around a friend's new factory unit, well when I say new, it is new to them but really it is a relic of Soviet history - it was fascinating. Old tins with Russian language labels, cart wheels, and many other fascinating things littered the place, Ian was in heaven pulling out items to show me. Our friends thought that Ian would love to help clean up and so spend time spurching (a good Northumbrian word for a rummaging through stuff) through all the paraphernalia but Ian looked a little apprehensive at the thought, we both had visions of our car becoming filled with all sorts of interesting looking items that might come in useful and goodness only knows where it would all go, we would need another apartment just to hold it all, or another barn built. So is anyone interested in a genuine bit of Soviet history? An empty tin that once contained tuna, empty bottles of smuggled alcohol, genuine 80s Soviet phone made in Latvia, cart wheels etc. and that is just some of the weird mix of things there.

Glorious sunset on Ligo evening. The day after seeing
our third longest day in 12 months, since we spent
midsummer down under at Christmas time.

This week the Latvians celebrated Ligo which is their midsummer festival held on the 22nd June and we were invited to join some of our neighbours by the pond with the obligatory bonfire and barbeque, drinking beer in Ian's case and pear juice in my case. It was an idyllic evening of chatting and eating, with just enough wind to keep the wee biting beasties at bay and yet just warm enough to sit outside, especially welcome as we had had a lot of rain this last week. None of us were up to waiting for the sun to come up around 4am and so at 1:30am we headed back to our apartment with the stars glinting faintly in the still just light sky, full with food and friendship. I was chatting with our friend today about the festival and she was saying that for most festivals in different countries people organise parties where they invite people to come, but Ligo is different as parties just happen, the whole day is about parties, with people coming together in an organic kind of gathering and not a formal organised event. That sounds like the way God would organise something, with people coming together to sing, to talk, to just hang out around a bonfire and then move onto another gathering to sing some more, to talk some more, to eat some food, enjoying each others company and appreciating the good things that God has given in the beauty of his nature.

Ian mowing the "lawn" wearing his funky headgear. Actually
it is my anti-mosquito net that we bought in Oz
earlier this year. 

We have been here over three years now and we have found in that time that things take time to happen here, whether it is really getting to know the neighbours because it takes time to nurture and deepen the relationships, or time spent just getting something built, or the time taken to pull a project together. Of course somethings can happen quicker and it is not just things working in Latvian time, sometimes it is because I will sit on something rather than push something through. I get the feeling though that it is not good to push things through all the time, either that I am getting too distracted with other things. It is good to try something in a small way first, sit back a bit and see what is the next move, a bit like our land really. Sometimes we have some definite idea of what we want to do and work towards that, but as we work at it and occasionally take a step back we can see we need to adjust our focus, change direction or re-plan what we want to do, for instance we were going to have two greenhouses built but the only place for a second one would be nearer to the trees and that means more shade, to put it somewhere else will mean tearing up more land and we are more and more loathe to do that. We are growing to love the variety that marks out the land, the patches of wild strawberries amongst the taller grasses, the orchids nestling amongst the shadier areas, the sheer variety of grasses on one piece of land is quite staggering. Whenever we try and identify a plant we can't just look it up under the grassland section we have to look it up in all the sections as we have patches of dry grassland, rich meadowland plants, woodland plants, you name it we have that habitat somewhere on the land.

Weird looking caterpillar

Another thing we have discovered over time is the costs incurred for honesty. Doing things properly costs money and, in Latvian terms, lots of money. Our greenhouse project will cost a lot in architect fees, fees for putting it on the map and goodness knows what other fees and they add up. Our chimney installation for our wood burning stove cost quite a bit for such a small project too. Setting up contracts with notaries also costs lots of money with money getting paid to the state in fees for this that and the other. All in all, honesty costs a lot of money and is absolutely no incentive for doing things the right way at all. I can understand that the state needs to levy charges for some things but some of it seems unnecessary and some of it seems to be there to put people off instead of encouraging an honest approach to business, or making alterations or whatever the project. To move forward and bring more businesses out of the grey economy I believe that the costs of honesty are going to have to fall and people need to see some benefits to working everything above board. Sticks are all very well but a few carrots may help too.

Our miracle pool is a rather odd colour at the moment
as the rain has washed a lot of silt into it making it a sort
of beer colour.

It is easy to tut tut at such disincentives and roll our eyes at such vagaries of the Latvian system, but it is not the only system that is broken and needs fixing. Latvia at least has the excuse that it will only be celebrating 20 years of freedom from the Soviet system this year, not a long history at all and much of the Soviet system lives on in peoples minds making progress slower than some would like. So what excuse do countries  for discouraging honest dealing that have had a far longer history of independence? A Peruvian economist, Hernando de Soto, has written a rather interesting article regarding the way that facts regarding who owns what has been quietly destroyed to the point where no one knows who owns what leading to the debacle we have recently seen with sub-prime mortgage scandal. One thing for sure is that they are facts Jim, but not as we know it. It is scandalous really, allowing those in positions of wealth to exploit the system, instead of governments doing what they can to control the greed.   This system of destroying facts certainly provides no incentive to newly developing countries to get things right. Reforming the Latvian system seems like childs play compared to the reform needed in the financial world of more advanced economies. Time for a change methinks!

Our bottom pond recovering after the drought with the
addition of some grass seed to hide the scars 

St.John's wort

Sweet blessed rain!

Rain clouds gathering, and most welcome they were

Well our drought is over finally and our ponds are filling up nicely. It was worrying to see them slowly disappear along with the forecasted rain that never arrived. The bottom pond dried up so much that Ian could get the tractor in and so he put the back hoe back on and started digging it a bit deeper, to see if there was water further down. After digging through a peaty layer he found two drains - Bingo! The water was still slowly pouring out of the drains and so he had found another source of water that hadn't dried up with the lack of rain and we also have a lot of peat for compost for next year. Our drought ended firstly with a couple of good soaking rains, for which we are grateful, as we had planted seeds in anticipation of the rain and didn't want them all washed away. A deluge after a drought just means the water will run off and not really wet the soil which is not what we wanted. The deluge did arrive later though and in fifteen minutes of rain our first pond rose about 20cm to the overflow pipe, our second pond had a puddle that didn't last long and our bottom pond rose up past the deep hole that Ian had dug and into the basin of our original pond. Much better.

I think this must be a butterfly that has just emerged from
its chrysalis, waiting for its winds to unfurl

I mentioned last week that we were having trouble finding buckwheat to plant in our ploughed field and I had our scouts out trying to find some, well one came back with a successful report, a farming friend had just sold a load of seed, but he did manage to scrape together enough from his barn for us to seed our field with. The grand total of 19 kg of seed was 5 LVLs ($10, £6) but an hour and half drive to get it. Our friend has a hunting ground for people to practice and so we got to look around, as well as venture across a rope bridge. I managed it, but wasn't too good at scrambling across and Ian couldn't help me across as having more than one on the bridge at once only made it worse. At least I managed to avoid a plunge into the river below. We were also presented with some beaver sausage and just in case anyone is wondering what a beaver sausage is, it is a sausage made with beaver meat. Don't want anyone getting confused now!

The grass has grown so tall this year, about this time last
year it was only just above knee height, this year
it is taller than me and nearly as tall as Ian.

Ian managed to get the buckwheat sown in the field using the old-fashioned broadcasting method and then turned it in slightly with a chain harrow (a bit like a giant rake) and, with perfect timing, the rain arrived later in the day to water it in. It was a bit disheartening though a few days later to arrive out on our land to see a flock of pigeons busily grazing the field, feeding their fat little bodies with our buckwheat that we had tried so hard to get. Ian shouted at them which startled them and as they were about to land I waved at them madly, as I was wearing a bright red sweatshirt it seemed enough to see them off. The following day though they were back as expected, but I discovered that whacking a pair of trainers together makes an excellent pigeon scaring noise. Kept me busy in between the rain showers, weeding vegetable plots, planting seedlings and cleaning the caravan.

More unwelcome visitors, the pigs are back, not so helpfully
digging up a grond elder patch that Ian had cut.

This month so far our outgoings have been really low but we have still managed to eat well despite that. Our garden is just starting to produce some leafy salad type things and our strawberries are beginning to turn too and they are delicious. We were also given 3 litres of goats milk the other day and I managed to make goats cheese using nettle juice and some kefirs to form the curds. It turned out very well, just like a traditional goats cheese and all the whey that was produced is being slowly used up to make loaves of bread as the whey makes a lovely moist soft loaf. So you can see that we are certainly eating fine foods on a limited budget, which reminds me of what I felt God say not so long ago "Wait and see what the Lord will do!" He is certainly providing for us in some amazing ways.

A present Ian made for me, isn't he kind? 

We received an invite to a name day celebration this week for one of the youngsters in our apartment block. Name days in Latvia are big occasions and they are listed on calendars that you can buy, so that you can know when all your friends will be celebrating their name day. It is traditional to take a small gift to friends celebrating their name days, but doesn't always involve a party The idea for this one though was that a few of us would get together to build a tree house for the children, which would be a bit safer than them trying to build one for themselves. Well that is the theory anyway as one poor youngster managed to step on a nail and he ended up going back to his mum who happened to be a doctor on call that night. Apart from that incident the rest of the night went quite well, I even gained a new best buddy. One of our neighbours has a young son who is often shy of us due the fact we don't speak Latvian, but for some reason on this particular night he decided we were friends and we played badminton, or rather as much as you can with a three year old, and shared crisps. The next morning though we were back to normal and he seemed to be shy again. Oh well! It was nice while it lasted.

Look carefully and you can see bees. These bees have
made a home for themselves in our straw pile

I have definitely finished my post graduate diploma in Managing Sustainable Rural Development now, as I got my mark for the last module this week. I am not sure of the final mark exactly as it all has to be verified but it is looking good and I am very pleased. It means I can move onto the next bit now and get started on the Masters thesis. This should take me 8 months and so hopefully I might actually be finished early and get into the sowing season a bit earlier next year. Well that is the theory, and this is Latvia so it may take me a little longer, especially if it takes me a long time to organise interviews with farmers.

A gorgeous looking beetle

One of the questions we get asked a lot here in Latvia is, what are we doing here? Good question really and we sometimes wonder ourselves. We definitely can't be said to be farming properly, as we are still in the learning process and we are not sure if we ever could make a real go of it at times. We do try and move forward without damaging the lovely piece of land we are privileged to be working on though. We often get caught up in the beauty of what is around us and we have no wish to disturb some of the equilibrium. We are also trying to work some things into the natural lay of the land, for instance planting woodland bushes such as blackberries, tay berries and blueberries close to groups of trees or only digging up areas that have become covered in invasive weeds such as ground elder. We certainly wouldn't want to dig up the whole meadow as to do that we would lose some of the gorgeous orchids and other wild flowers that are abundant. The problem is though that although it puts food on our table, it doesn't put cash in our hands to pay internet and electric bills. We still have plenty of savings but it won't last a lifetime and so we still have some way to go to answer that question but I do feel that God gave me some of our purpose for being here as I read Acts this week in the Message.

Acts 3:22 For the time being he [Jesus] must remain out of sight in heaven until everything is restored to order again just the way God, through the preaching of his holy prophets of old, said it would be.

Another pretty little butterfly. There were so many pictures
I could have put up this week of the insect life on our land

I feel part of that restoration is restoring a garden to what it should be, namely a productive pleasant place to be. I also feel we are helping to restore some trust as we help where we can, and I feel we are also restoring hope to some people too. How does that provide us with an income in the future? No idea! But I do know God provides in some creative ways and so I am not too worried about that. In some ways I feel that what we are doing is similar to what a prison warden in Hawaii is doing in providing a healing environment for prisoners. Latvians often feel imprisoned in a hopeless place, they love their country and want to make a go of a business or farm but the circumstances of their life or the economic environment traps them into a feeling of hopelessness. I do hope that our garden/land will become a healing place and what we do provides healing. The prison warden in Hawaii is certainly providing proof that there is a way out of hopelessness and despair and it needn't trap people forever, now that sounds like restoring God's order to me!

This is the marjoram I harvested this week for drying

These incredible eggs were on a marjoram leaf. They are solid
little balls arranged so perfectly

The re-re modelled pond. The pool in the middle is from the
digging that Ian did this week where he managed to dig down
to the drains

A marsh orchid (I think), there was a whole glade
of these pretty orchids