Escape

The sky tonight was amazing

So what about this week then? Well it has been quite different to the normal routine, I have even escaped the house from time to time and away from the computer. Unfortunately the dratted paper was returned with yet more modifications needed, but at least they are happier with it and I think it is mostly structural issues now, so that is progress. The other papers plod on, but I'm hopefully getting there with those too.

Our computer savvy cat, Sofie

Ian has built a mini fence around the blueberries to deter
the wild boar. It wouldn't stop them getting in but we hope
it would just encourage them to go around and not dig in
between the blueberry bushes

The infected eye certainly caused me some difficulties. It is not easy to get work done with one eye not working properly and I had to make some progress. Fortunately though with salty herbal washes I managed to avoid having to get antibiotics. The problem is that there are a few antibiotics I am allergic to and so the less I use them the better; otherwise when I really need them I am not going to find any that work that I don't react to. I did find out though that oat poultices are no good for me also. They did make a really nice soothing poultice for my eye, but then it made my skin itchy. I know I am allergic to nickel and that is in high quantities in oats. I can eat some oats, just not a huge quantity, so I have a mixed grain porridge in the morning and not just an oat porridge. I wouldn't mind, I'm not a particularly finicky sort of person, it is just some things do react and it annoys me no end. I am quite pleased though that none of the meetings I tried to arrange worked out, otherwise I would have had to cancel them all anyway.

The trenches are working to help drain
the land slowly

Our gifts from school. The handmade dandelion was
made by the deputy head. I have never seen one
like it before. I have been trying to work out how
the bit just below the pompom top was made. 

This week we went to do a presentation in an English class, as it was language week at the school we had previously been to just before Christmas. I was so pleased that my eye was not as bruised looking as it had been the day before - goodness only knows what anyone would have thought otherwise. We had a lovely time and the kids were all paying attention and asking questions at the end. For our troubles we were provided with lunch and the teacher who invited us managed to sort out a problem I had with getting permission to use some photos. I needed someone who could understand what I needed and could then translate that. I also needed that permission by the end of the following day and so it was a bit tight timing-wise.

The wood anemones are out now

My new veg patch and the two wheel tractor with its new
attachment. The veg patch is twice as big as last year and
the plan is that it will be even bigger the following year.
Eventually there will be four plots for rotation, with one
plot fallow with chickens in it to manure the ground.

The following day we went to the outskirts of Riga to get a new rotavator that goes on the two wheel tractor. The one we have is difficult to use at times, the belts that are needed for it are not easily available and it cuts out at certain angles on slopes. All in all it is not a good machine for us. It is fine if you want to work a small garden on the flat but not for the amount we have to do. Using our little big tractor (you would know what I mean if you saw it, bigger than a two wheel tractor but quite small as far as farm tractors go) we can plough large areas, but often we don't want to do a large area and sometimes we have to wait too long for the ground to dry out to use the big tractor. At the moment the ground is still too damp for the big tractor to be used much without risk of churning up the ground, but it has been dry enough for Ian to get out and play with his new toy. He is so pleased with it, as it is so much less work than the other rotavator. So now we have areas rotavated for the new veg garden and areas prepared for manuring and green manure seed to be sown. We will wait two weeks to allow weed seeds to germinate and then hoe or turn those in before planting the veg seeds or seedlings.

An old strawberry bed has been rotavated.
Saves a little back work

It is easier to follow the contours of the land now with this
rotavator and so hopefully the water will not run straight
off down the land when it pours

We took a circuitous route back from Riga so that we can call into a small factory to get some more work trousers for Ian. We have been so pleased with the trousers from that small unit because they last so long and they are not so expensive either. Ian prefers side pockets part way down the leg for putting his mobile in, as he hates putting things in pockets situated higher up and so the styling of them is just right too. He also bought a winter coats as his other one is disintegrating badly now, unfortunately he managed to put a small tear in it already when he caught the coat on the fence today. Heh ho! The joys of working the land. The grand total for three pairs of trousers and his winter jacket was €93, a true bargain in every sense of the word. A true bargain is when both customer and producer benefit and since we were dealing directly with the producers then there is no middleman or six to factor in. Even better they took up the trousers for free there and then. Saved me a job.

These are the plots so far that have been either ploughed or
rotavated on our crop field

As you see, we are still getting snow showers or in this case
hail and the ponds are still quite high

Saturday we had visitors to see the alpacas. One of my fellow students at Tartu had wanted to see our alpacas for quite a while, she would love some herself and finally she was close enough to pay a visit along with my supervisor who makes regular visits to see us, err I mean the alpacas.  I had also arranged to meet up with someone about a conference that I will be helping out at in June, she happened to be in our village over the weekend and we had been going to try and meet together for quite a while so this worked out perfectly. She also wanted to see the alpacas. So Saturday saw me walking up to the hotel to meet up with the lady from Riga, travelling out to our land, showing her around, then going back to our village and being dropped off at our apartment. I then waited a few minutes and our next guests arrived and I travelled back out to the land with them. We had lunch with the left overs from a meeting they had been at and then they took me back home. I made our evening meal in time for Ian to arrive home and then straight after that I went back out for a proper meeting with the lady from Riga. It felt quite weird going backwards and forwards all day. I haven't done that in a long time.

This was the spot the sheep have been on all winter. The top
of this pile is nice and dry but the bed of hay they have
been on was about 20cm deep at least and well and truly
compacted. Ian had to use the big tractor to move it to make
way for the veg bed. Should be nicely manured there, but
must remember not to plant carrots in that spot.

They enjoyed the new grass for the first few hours and then
they realised that there isn't actually that much grass. It is
mainly weeds in this section and we are likely to plough it
to reseed it, but just in case we don't get around to it, we hope
they might eat the weeds down first to stop them flowering
or at least delay it. The grass is still not high enough to risk
putting them anywhere where we know we get decent grass.
Don't worry though, they won't starve, they can still eat hay.
At least they get more chance to move around now though

What a week it's been

A Latvian tradition at weddings to place a lock on a bridge

I mentioned two weeks ago our car failed its technical inspection (MOT for the Brits), the wheel bearing was bust on our two year old vehicle. Fortunately it was fixed under guarantee with no questions asked at the garage; we did wonder if they would quibble with it. We had a sneaking suspicion the failure was due to an underlying problem exacerbated greatly by the violent shaking that the inspector put our car through to test the suspension. I guess we should be grateful to him, if that was the case, as it saved it breaking whilst we were driving into Riga a two and half hour journey away. What we didn't want, however, was another repeat of the violent shaking on the re-test so we took it to a different vehicle inspection garage and they were much more gentle with the car. I think we will be there next year as well, as the guy who did the test actually spoke pretty good English - always a bonus but I guess also continues to make us lazy with the language.

Ruin at Aizkraukle

I know that learning the language is important and I am still picking up words. Just as in Denmark I often find that I know the Latvian for words that my friends do not know the English for. Nouns I am fine with, linking them together into a conversation is another matter entirely. It did strike me though that you can know a language fluently and still not be able to communicate. I feel we have been able to communicate to our neighbours our love and care for this place by gardening and making sure we take our turn on the cleaning rota (roster) and occasionally going the extra mile, like clearing ice in winter or brushing up the stairs when it is not our turn when we know it is our boots that have carried a lot of mud in. We also make sure we shop locally and these things are noticed. I am not being vain in the least, when you are a foreigner in a small place with few foreigners there is no hiding and you live life in a goldfish bowl. All these actions do communicate though, in many ways much more than words can and I think that is why we feel very accepted by our neighbours - maybe not all of them but enough to feel welcome to stay.

View of the Daugava river from Aizkraukle

On the subject of gardening, one of the decisions we made this year was to buy a rotavator. Ian has served his apprenticeship over the last two years and dug the allotment plot by hand, getting rid of many of the weeds. This year though he hasn't got the time to do that. The tractor drinks far too much diesel to warrant bringing it all the way from the land to plough the allotment and for medium sized areas a rotavator is needed really. This means we can also dig over the allotment at the other flat too, as well as small areas on our land and in the polytunnel. It does feel a bit like cheating but we do have to be practical too. We went to the diy store to have a look at them and they managed to find someone to help us in making a decision who spoke English, well kind of. He actually spoke English with a heavy Irish accent. There were times that I could hardly understand him and I had a dickens of a job trying not to laugh when he used distinctly Irish phrases. It just seemed so bizarre to be stood in Latvia, speaking to a Latvian with this pronounced Irish accent including the mannerisms of the Irish and to top it all he even seemed to have picked up the Irish blarney - the way of speaking none stop to make a sale. At least he managed to convince us that the cheaper rotavator was the way to go as it was less likely to be costly if it hit a stone. The more expensive one though would perhaps have been easier to manoeuvre, plusses on minuses on both sides. Ian couldn't wait to use the rotavator so off he went when he got home to try it out on one of our allotments, and the following morning he did the one outside the apartment where we live, the one that took two years to dig over! Now that is saving time!

Aizkraukle ruin

Well as if we haven't got enough to do we also helping some friends of ours to realise a dream and buy a farm for them. This one is 10.5 ha (26 acres) of arable and 26 ha (64 acres) of forest. The property is also right next to a lake but that means there is a drawback with the forest as it can only be selectively cut and never clear felled - which is fine by us as I don't like the idea of clear-felling anyway - it devastates eco-systems and of course doesn't look pretty for quite a while. The intention was that we were going to own half of it (well 49%) but we can't even own half of agricultural or forest land until next year when the laws, hopefully, change. It doesn't stop us building up a business with our friends though, we hope to grow vegetables and they will be raising animals and we can supply the feed for that too. Between the two forests we can also develop some commercial enterprises from them - not quite sure yet what but we have a few ideas floating around like charcoal, mushrooms and willow structures. So if you have any ideas then do let me know.

Yes, our poly tunnel actually now has plastic on it!!!

The big news this week has obviously been the ash from the Icelandic volcano. Once again the fallout from Iceland brings severe disruption to Northern Europe, only it isn't the banks this time. Interesting how such a sparsely populated out of the way place can bring about so much chaos. Riga airport has been shut too and a team from England who flew over to help out in a local camp were due to fly back today (Monday April 19th) and have now been told they can't get back before the 1st May, fortunately that is a hardship they can take. Another friend was due to fly out to Latvia from England last week and won't be making it out until the summer I guess now. How inconvenient I now have to wait for my special delivery of face flannels to arrive (I just can't get what I consider normal sized face flannels here in Latvia). I am sure I will get over it though. And just in case you don't know me that well, I am joking. For some people though they can get so wrapped up in their own little worlds that something like that can be a major annoyance but for many people this whole episode is more than inconvenience I know.The strange thing is though, that just as scientists predict that things would be hotting up and causing us all sorts of problems God seems to send us something to cool things down a little and show that there is more ways to travel than by air. It has been quite interesting how inventive people have become over their attempts to get home and some have enjoyed the challenge. It has also caused others to wonder what a world would be like without planes. These kinds of things get me excited as it means people are being forced to think outside the box, and that makes life less predictable but more exhilarating and rewarding.

I love this view out of the polytunnel.

Of course there has also been no end of moans about the costs to the airlines, but what about the positives? I guess those going on holiday or wanting to get somewhere aren't happy but the hotels close to airports will be as are the ferry and train operators. Are those gains taken into account? What about the gains from staycations? Or people saving money instead of spending it on holiday tack? Surely there are some winners as well as losers? Maybe some farmers who normally export will suddenly find there is an internal market after all and not need to export their goods by plane. There are those of course who chose to make a fast buck by driving people somewhere at extortionate prices which was not a very positive thing to do, or the raising of prices by hotels near airports but a lot of good will have come out of it. For some the extended holiday (vacation) means extra time spent with their children, it has meant being resourceful, it has meant that people actually begin to wonder what would happen in a world without planes.

By the way I found out this week I am not going completely mad, the captions for the photos are only available on the Blogger draft and not the regular blogger and so I wasn't able to add captions at all before anyway.