Round Two

Ribwort flowers, also known as English plantain

The second phase of hay cutting has begun today. The weather forecast just lately kept promising rain and mainly it still passed us by, until last night that is. We had a very powerful storm, resembling one of those tropical cyclones, that bent over trees and even snapped a willow. It also dumped a fair bit of water on us in a very short space of time, which was good. Fortunately it didn't cause too much damage in the process but it made sure everything got a good soaking. At least by early afternoon it had dried up due to a gentler breeze than yesterday and apart from the fact we are melting in the humidity, it seemed good to go for haymaking. There was a point when we had a short, sharp shower of rain, right in the middle of Ian doing the cutting but hopefully that was it and the bit of rain forecast for Wednesday, either will not materialise or we get the hay in beforehand. Whichever doesn't matter to me.

The boys have been play fighting a lot just lately

Who us? Fighting? 

We had a few visitors over the weekend. The first group was by someone who had been before and she brought two friends with her. They hadn't decided what to do but in the end they decided that coming to us was better than going to the beach. This is the second time the lady has taken the alpacas for a walk too. They took Brencis and Mr. P. for a walk and Ian went with them with Freddie. They all did very well walking the track that Ian keeps regularly mowed. I had to make a quick keyring with Aggie's fleece, as that was the one the lady wanted and I hadn't made any with her fleece yet.

Unfortunately for Mr. P. the play fighting with Brencis got a
little more serious. Put it this way, Brencis will be having
his fighting teeth removed very soon.

The large horseflies have been bothering Mr. P and so has
the humid hot weather we have been having. We are not
sure if he is starting the fights or not due to this.

Brencis is such a placid, easy going sort normally. Here he is
investigating the chickens who are close to the paddock at
the moment. They have been moved further away tonight, so
they are on fresh grass in the morning. One of our nightly
routines.

Our other visitor was also a return visitor and was a bit more of a social call, so we sat and chatted. We also drank Rosebay Willowherb tea, which she made herself and ate cakes from the local bakery, which all sounds like a scene from Wind in the Willows on a lovely summer's day. She also brought tins of moose (or just for my supervisor, more correctly Eurasian Elk) and a contract for a local hunting organisation. We did have a contract with an organisation but apparently it is now invalid due to the rules in Latvia.

The three young swallows are close to flying now. There isn't
much room in that nest

Lady V is still plodding along

Each hunting organisation has to own land or have a contract with landowners in order to hunt. There is also a minimum amount of land in order to get the relevant licenses and the amount depends on the animals hunted, so around 1000 ha for wild boar (unless it has changed lately) and the areas must all be joined together (otherwise it is difficult to have a hunting strategy). To hunt on your own land or to invite hunters on, you must be part of the hunting organisation too. From time to time landowners change the organisations that they sign up with and for some reason some neighbouring landowners who border our land and belonged to the original hunting organisation must have signed up with someone else. That left us with the choice of either no hunting organisation allowed on our land or sign with another one. Whilst we haven't had to call on the hunters this last year as so many of the wild boar have been culled or died due to African Swine Fever, it may only be a short time before they reappear in sufficient numbers to tear up our land again. We try to live with wildlife damage but we have to draw a line somewhere.

I love the curls on Chanel's face

The view from the old ski hill. If you look
carefully around the middle electric pole you
can see a fairy ring of dark grass. Our visitor's
land is over the hill in the distance on the right.

Our visitor has a property nearby and around 17 wild horses, well when I say wild they are allowed to roam a wide area and are not used for anything else except maintaining the land. They are descended from the Polish Konik horses. She took us to see them and the horses seemed friendly enough. They came galloping over the hill when she called and then ate slices of bread from our hands, they took them very gently too. It was funny seeing the other side of the hill. It is not an area we go to very often and it has a much more open vista than our side of the hill. Our little piece of land is quite enclosed, although there is more of a view from what used to be the ski hill of course, but we don't go up there often.

No lump there now. All stitched up and covered with blue
spray to deter the flies as well as being an antiseptic.

The vet came out to look at Herk and we decided on surgery to remove the lump. Even if it was nothing to worry about exactly, the flies were bothering him so much as it was oozing a little, that it was decided it was best to remove it. The whole thing was done in the alpaca house with Herk pinned down as we do for shearing time. He was just given an local anaesthetic and the lump was removed without a problem. We allowed the trainee vet to stitch it up, after all she has got to practice sometime and we are quite keen for vets to become used to working on alpacas. If our girls need help to deliver their babies when our regular vet goes on holiday, she will be the one we call on anyway. Of course we hope it doesn't come to that this year. We are still waiting though and Mari at least seems to be showing signs of possibly going into labour sooner rather than later - how soon, no idea!

He's doing fine and doesn't seem that bothered about it. He
was a bit stiff straight afterwards but not even a limp now.

The rather distressed little squirrel. It's a good
job Ian was wearing the gloves to handle it,
he or she did try to bite a few times when it
was examined, whist trying to work out what
was wrong with it.

Our cat, Eyre, turned up with something large in her mouth this week. When we went to investigate we found it was a squirrel. We don't see many squirrels around here, probably too many predators, not just our cats but also lynx and foxes at least. We found out it was still alive and so managed to get the poor traumatised thing in a box to rest. When we tried to release it and encourage it to go up a tree out of harms way a few hours later, we realised that something wasn't quite right. We decided to put it in the hamster cage that we normally use for our chicks. Eventually we worked out that there was something wrong with its neck, not surprising as the cat was carrying it by its neck. We gave it food and water, since it still seemed quite active and decided to let it rest and check on it every now and again. Unfortunately it didn't survive. It was such a sweet little thing and died curled up as if it was asleep.

A rather large mushroom we found in our greenhouse. They
have been popping up in the straw. They are tasty.

Aggie has still been slumped about, but she doesn't like the
heat or pregnancy

I am still in a bit of a fug with my faith. It still seems rather distant. I struggle at times with wanting a house, somewhere to call home on our land, but we aren't any nearer to working out how to do that. I've travelled about a bit and lived in three countries now and until recently, my faith was always my home wherever I went. So this struggle with home is unsettling. Really it's a first world problem. I have a home, two in fact, a caravan for summer and a flat for winter. That is more than many people have. It is also so ironic to be unsettled with the concept of home while studying a sense of place in Estonia and Latvia. So why the fug? "So Lord! How do I make progress and move on from where I am?" was my cry and the phrase that keeps coming back to me, "Is start with what you have!" It reminds me of the story of the widow who asked Elijah for help and he replied "What do you have?" and she told him only a little oil. He told her to start with that and the oil kept pouring from the jar until the bottles she had got from her neighbours were full. We shall see where that leads us then!

All finished?

The last of the bales stacked for winter. A bit wetter than they
should be, but they will be used first

Well haymaking is finished, that is for sure. We finished collecting and stacking the last of the hay bales from our neighbours land. Ian still had grass cutting to do but he was not baling it, as it was full of weeds that rot too easily. Now we can concentrate on other jobs to do. It is easier for me because it is computer work and it has been raining quite a bit. For Ian that is harder as much of what he needs to do now still depends on dry days, such as fixing the boys' leaking roof or putting the boards on the new alpaca house. Even preparation requires some dry days as he needs dry wood to prepare the pieces for the new roof or dry boards to nail onto a dry framework. A dryish autumn would be good for us.

One of the jobs to do before the rain was to empty the well
so that we could let it flush through to see if it improved the
flow rate. Well that was the plan. We got a container so we did
not waste the water, but after about half an hour of a trickle of
water, the water was all stirred up by the pump and instead of
a well full of clear water, we had a muddy mess. We now need
to let the well settle again and try with another pump. It also
started raining - not too good with electrics cables outside 

This is one of our chicks that has a punk hair do. It is also a
complet dipstick and is often stood there while the others are
chasing about after some tasty morsel with a look on its
face of complete bewilderment.

The school year has already started in some parts of the world and so some of my students on the online school where I teach Sociology and Development Studies have started sending in assignments for me to mark. Most only start back in September though. They have been told that they cannot expect work to be marked in a timely manner as I do not officially start back yet, but since it was raining I managed to do it anyway. I also managed to write an abstract for a conference that I had said I would attend and will take place in Riga. I was not going to send in an abstract but I was talking to one of keynote speakers at the conference last month and he suggested that I should do a presentation on some work he knew I had done. I thought it was not sufficiently complete and needed more responses, but he said it would be fine as it is. I had missed the deadline but the organisers were happy for me to send one in late. I had hoped to complete it a little earlier but life has been too hectic and I forgot about it.

Our cats appreciated the new places to sleep, well when it
isn't raining

This is supposed to be a path over the ditch
with a wooden bridge in the middle.

This week we have seen rain like we have never seen before. We have known some pretty torrential downpours here in Latvia, but never have we seen a storm where the rain has meant the visibility was practically down to zero. Our ditches all overflowed and even the wooden bridges across them were under water. It rained a bit into the caravan because we had left one of the skylight vents open and the seal had gone on the other one . The rain and wind also dislodged the plastic on the hay bales meaning rain got in and it also blew the plastic off a bag of sawdust, which we use for our composting toilet. At least we have had some dry spells too and so Ian took off both the skylights on the caravan and repaired the seals and cleaned them.

Old fashioned long stemmed barley. I'm amazed this is still
standing

My poor Marshmallows took a hammering in the wind and
rain though

This time the storm didn't wreck the greenhouse as much as a previous storm did. I forgot to mention that during one particular thunderstorm, there was quite a crack as the wind whipped up and we thought it was a tree brought down. Later on in the evening I needed to nip to our outdoor loo and found a window from the greenhouse on the floor. It was one of the high windows and I thought they were all shut, obviously not. That was another job for Ian to fix the next day.

After all the other jobs, the wind and the rain, my garden
looks a little worse for wear. The bees are enjoying the
flowering marjoram 

Aggie in friendly mood

Mating has continued this week, although we are now fairly sure that Chanel and Mari are pregnant. Chanel was compliant at first and now she spits and kicks Mr. P if he comes anywhere near, which is alpacaspeak for "I'm really not interested!" Mari is a little more laid back and just runs away in a more determined fashion than before. Ian will take Mr. P. to them again in a couple of week's time to make sure they are pregnant. Meanwhile he has started mating Mr. P. with Aggie. It seems such a shame in some ways, as she has been so nice and incredibly friendly again and we know that as soon as she gets pregnant she will be more aloof, but we also need our alpacas to be productive. If she is successful this next year in getting pregnant then she will get a year off, so we can assess her offspring. The other's might get a year off too, as it depends on when they give birth. If it is too late in the year, we will need to wait to reset mating time to earlier in the year.

The rowan berries have been amazing this year, we should
get a good harvest from these and plenty of sharp, tangy
rowan jam

This apple tree in our orchard is finally beginning to bear
more than two or three apples. Not exactly a bumper crop
yet but progress anyway

Our grapes are beginning to turn quite fast now

We have spent a few hours away from the farm this week. Firstly we went to the farm of our young helper who has been with us over the summer to practice her English. She was still a little shy and would only take Ian for a look around the farm and not me. We did get to meet her grandma who was a very interesting lady. Our interpreter who is an English, German and French teacher had not realised that our young friend, who is one of his pupils, was the granddaughter of a Professor who had written a methodological book for teaching German. He explained that he had been taught using her methodology and he thought it was a good way to learn. I think it explains why a farm girl seems to be so good at sorting out practical problems.

Not all my squashes are doing well, but this one is certainly
happy in its position on old hay bales under an old oak tree

It is even starting to produce squashes. 

Preparing our evening meal

Although our young helper denies it, she is very clever and a creative problem solver, which fits with her grandma's ability to teach a methodical approach to learning a language. It is the same logical approach to different problems. We also came away from the farm with biezpiena (a type of curd cheese), 3 litres of raw milk, a jar of honey and two cockerels to improve our chicken flock in exchange for a jar of home made English style chutney.

Kale seed for another year

Our onion harvest drying. A rainy day job will be to string
these up so they can continue to hang and dry

We also went to our friend's open farm day. There weren't as many people this year, but then again the forecast for the day was not good. In the end the rain held off and the afternoon was very warm and sunny. It also held off until well after everyone had gone and just enough time to get everything in, except the tent, which unfortunately collapsed. We met a German couple and their family there, who had family links to Latvia and were holidaying in the area. Of course we invited them to our farm, so maybe they will pay a visit.

Our tall bush blueberries are also starting to produce fruit now.

The herb garden I created last year out of rotten wood is also
doing okay. I lost a variegated sage plant and only one
lavender survived the winter, but all the other plants are
starting to take off now

Now the chicks are unable to escape. It is nice to have free
range hens, but Mr. Fox also likes free range, as do the hawks
and other birds of prey of which we have plenty 

We had planned on getting the cockerels later on in the week, but our translator friend was heading off to Germany so it had to be earlier. We weren't quite sure where to put the cockerels at first as we needed to do a change around with the chickens in the arks. We needed to get the chicks in one ark, as they were getting far too adventurous and escaping far too frequently from their hutch, but to do that we needed to cull some chickens. We had planned on doing that before getting the cockerels but couldn't. In the end it worked out fine, because we put the cockerels in the old chicken shed that now houses windows and door and that meant the cockerels could be quarantined for a few days - one of them seemed a bit snuffly and we needed to know it wasn't something more serious. Eventually we did the cull of some older hens who were often difficult to put away in winter and were past their best egg laying days and a cockerel that was too inter-related with the other chickens. That might seem a bit harsh, but in reality they had had a longer life and better quality of life than your average supermarket chicken and they are tastier too.

Did I say it had been wet?

The echinacea is a glow of sunshine in the garden though
on a dull day

Well who could resist when they are as cute as George

We have had more visitors to the farm this week and we have had another family who were interested in owning alpacas. This is the third group within two weeks who are serious about having alpacas. I am beginning to wonder if we should have an introductory course on alpaca handling and husbandry. Nothing complicated, just a getting to know the alpaca type and a chance to find out about the routine jobs that need doing. Too many ideas maybe....

Still making hay, while the sun shines! Sort of!

Little tractor in a big field. This is our neighbours field
and it is actually steeper than it looked

 The weather is still proving unpredictable, an absolute nightmare for farmers. Once the hay harvest is in, it will be time to relax, as that means winter feed and bedding is sorted. I didn't realise before embarking on this lark, how stressful bringing in the hay could be. It is not so bad if everyone else has managed to get some hay in and we are the only ones not to, then there would be the possibility to buy some, but when it was looking fairly uncertain prior to this week that anyone will get some hay then you know the price is going to be high. Silage was possible, but alpacas don't eat silage and we haven't got the facilities for wrapping the bales for it anyway. I have been reading up though, that it is possible to just put silage material in ordinary plastic bin bags, the sort for garden waste and then squeeze as much air out of it as possible. That would give us feed for the sheep and chickens, but I don't like the idea of lots of plastic bags to deal with. We are going to experiment this year with a spare plastic bin as a possible recyclable container. The idea is we jam in the chopped up grass from the mulcher and then weight it down. If that works then a we can buy bins to keep the silage in and store them in the forest or at least at the forest edge, until winter when they can then be transferred to the greenhouse. If it reduces the winter feed costs for the chickens then we will be onto a winner, as silage we can make anytime. We don't really want to invest in the costs for a wrapping attachment, not just because we don't want plastic wrapping material to deal with, but because our main focus is the alpacas and we just don't need to wrap the bales for them, just under some sort of cover.

The poppies are pretty and I haven't even planted these seeds

Weeds can be so pretty. Not sure if my
neighbouring gardener is as
appreciative though

Anyway this week round two of the haymaking harvest was completed. It was hard work, but we are
so grateful for good neighbours. Our neighbours daughter helped us again and we loaded up one load at a reasonably leisurely pace, unloaded it and stacked it into our neighbours barn then had a cup of tea to rest. When we went down to start loading the next thirty bales we noticed unexpected dark clouds bubbling up and so started a race against time, no rests till we finished now. The third load of the day was loaded onto the trailer when our neighbour and her son arrived back home and our neighbour realised we might need help to get the bales in before the rain and so put on her gloves, cajouled her son and marched into the barn to help us off-load the bales. They then came down with us to get the last load. We got it all in and stacked with just a few spots of rain, but a couple of hours later and the heavens opened. All I could think is that at least all those bales were well and truly under cover. Our neighbour had been up since around 2am that morning baking for the Saturday market, where she sells her produce every week, but being a farmer she knew what needed doing and dug deep to help.

The bees are busy in one of the neighbours garden. A riot
of colour of marigolds and these borage plants

The storm!

This weekend saw two of the gulley making storms. It was incredible seeing the volume of water pouring down out of the sky. At times there wasn't a clear view across the field it was that heavy and we ended up with a cascade running down the road again. There needs to be some re-modelling done to prevent the water from washing the roadway down to the barn away again. There are hardly any woodchips left to wash away. Ian spent part of today fixing the damage to the road way and sorting out the alpaca houses. The rain poured down the bank straight into the boys alpaca house and so Ian cleared the bedding out and put in some more drains. The girls bedding is wet too and so Ian has piled more dry stuff on the top, clearing out that alpaca house would have taken him too long to sort out, so a thicker layer on the top will help. He then started round three of the hay cutting saga.

It was running underneath the caravan

We had white water rapids down the road

In between helping Ian with the baling, I have been doing some weeding, some work on the paper I have to write and being a guest author on a blog for farmers. The blog is called Farming futures and aims to bring the latest developments to farmers with the aim of helping farmers meet the future challenges, such as climate change. I sent in a comment to one blog and was asked if I would consider writing a blog post about my comments. As I was writing, another idea came to mind and so both got published. I was even asked to contribute again, if I had any further ideas. If you want to read them they are here and here.

And this is why, the water was too much
for the little drain

Ian out digging channels after checking on the
animals

I had a walk around our village today, I had got errands to do to, but it was nice just to be out and about and I took a few little detours and even ate an ice-cream on the way around. It was hot! It was nice just to tootle too, buying plastic freezer bags ready for the new batch of produce, posting a letter and then a long walk to take a letter to my local heating and water company to complain about the charges they have put on the bill that are totally random and with no explanation as to what they are for. I think they just put them in there and hope people won't notice, as they are kind of just slotted in and varying in amounts. There does not seem to be any rhyme or reason to them.

The water filled the ditch and
over flowed into the greenhouse

Flooding in the middle of the
greenhouse

It flowed into the barn too

I read a blog this last week that really resonated with me, it was entitled "Lost?? Or just not sure where I am." I'm not lost, but I sure do feel like I am not quite sure of where I am or where I'm heading. It's a strange feeling, but it does go along with one of the stories that gets resurrected every now and again between Ian and I. We were on our first trip abroad together and were driving through France when Ian said "Where exactly are we?" That was the wrong question. I could have fobbed him off with something vague, but that isn't quite my style. He had asked a direct question and so I felt it needed a direct answer. The problem was that I didn't know exactly where we were, just approximately and so my response was "I'm not quite sure, I'm a little perplexed. Just give me a few minutes and I will know." My navigation skills are pretty good and I knew we were heading in the right kind of direction, but where that was in relation to the map was just a little unclear as not all the roads were on the map. Give me a nice Ordnance Survey map any day. It wasn't much further on and I was able to say with confidence that I knew exactly where we were now and all was fine, but it was a little unsettling at the time. This is kind of the position I'm in at the moment. I know we are heading in the right direction, but things are just not certain and I'm not sure all the roads ahead are marked. What I do know though, is that we got through that and with God's help we'll get through similar challenges again.

So Ian had to pump it out

The overflow pool

Oh the stuff that goes on in my head. I wonder if I have too much to think about or maybe I just think too much. Not quite sure which. Folks often make the comment that they wonder how I fit everything in and the truth is I don't. My house is a tip - well it is a bit better today, I did a quick clean around and we won't mention the weeds. I meant to take some photos, but I forgot. So yes, I get stuff done after some procrastination but much doesn't that I would like to get done. I do procrastinate rather a lot, but I think that is part of my brain just trying to process something and not quite knowing where to start. Once I get on a roll things don't take me too much time.

Part of the field where the sheep were was flooded. Don't
worry their feet were dry, they were sheltering under a tree
that stands on a bit of a rise. Perhaps not the safest of places in
a thunderstorm, but they don't know that.

The storm passing over

There has been a lot in the news about Gaza and the Malaysian airplane disaster, shocking horrible stuff, but there is a disaster looming of far greater proportions than either of those and yet it seems to be going unreported. A rather wordy article published by UNHCR, the UN's refugee council are considering cutting refugee rations in camps by 60%. That looks mind boggling enough but what that actually works out to is a diet consisting of 850 calories a day. This means malnutrition and all the assorted illnesses that go along with that. Finding the Malaysian airplane that was lost somewhere in the Indian Ocean and carrying 239 people on board has already cost the Australian government US$39million and the UNHCR to feed 800,000 people requires US$39million for nutrition support and US$186million to restore full rations. I do wonder why we can't find the necessary money just to feed people who are alive, when we can find money for those who unfortunately died.

The field flooded again. I think this flood
was the last straw (no pun intended) for the
barley. It looks like it may have rust now

Our own black and brown river. The brown
is from the road, as the run off goes down
a drain under our land

I said it was a gulley washing storm