Time flies again!

Yes! Some of our grandkids visited
us in Latvia. This is our youngest on 
our trip to Riga, with the travel bear.
a Latvian flag that she wanted to buy
and Riga in the background.

Oh my goodness, time flies. Life has just got so busy and then our son and his family came to stay too. It was wonderful having the youngsters around and showing them different things on the land and a bit of Latvia. They learnt about new life, death and foraging and of course about alpacas. I've been pretty busy after the family left too, trying to sort out a report and mark students' work but I can see a hazy light at the end of the tunnel, as students finish off for the academic year.

Watching chicks hatch, but also finding the ones
that didn't make it. It did give us the opportunity
though to find out how a chick fits into an egg. A
marvel of packaging. Unfortunately, the hatch rate
was not so great but wonder if some of the eggs 
got a bit too cold when collecting them at a time
when they would be ready to hatch when the kids
arrived.

This caravan has an awning which is useful as a
conference room and a bit brighter than the
80s orange background of the curtains
in our original caravan.

 I forgot to mention in the last blog that the caravan had come out of the greenhouse, where we store it over winter. However, now we have two caravans as our son drove their caravan over on an epic journey with his family so we can use it. It was really exciting watching the journey as they ticked off countries, France Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Poland and Lithuania - if I remember correctly. No "Lost in France without a telephone" these days and I was even able to talk with the grandkids while they were on the move from time to time. Anyway, we now have one caravan as our office and living space and one to sleep in. It saves having to set the bed up every night and Ian can get up as early as he likes (or not like). I get to sleep in or procrastinate until about 7am or maybe a bit later. Eventually they will be used for visitors or one for an office and the other for visitors - we have to decide yet and I'm sure it will be a process as we get the cabin built.

So the demised chicks had to be named
and properly buried of course!

Karla one of our younger alpacas will not back
down. A feisty madame methinks

We are behind on so many tasks as the weather has been so cold, It is like spring couldn't seem to quite get going properly. We were still having frosts (just) and the geese were still flying over until fairly recently. Everything just feels really weird at the moment and the weather seems to be taking its cue from world events. At least the swallows have returned now, as well as the cuckoo and the golden biscuit errrr I mean the golden oriole. So all migrants back and checked in, albeit rather late. Now we are just waiting to see if the swallows are actually going to take up residence in any of the alpaca houses, although they seem more interested in the barn at the moment.

What more do you need to play with than a few
bits of wood and some space?

The grapes are late getting going this year too

The cold weather has been playing havoc with the shearing schedule. Ian has to do the shearing by himself these days with help from the alpaca owners. I generally don't have time to help him out, unless they are more local and even so someone needs to be at home to look after the alpacas anyway. If we had help, either they could go with Ian or stay here and I would work in the car. I used to enjoy helping Ian out, but I can't be everywhere at once amazingly. There is a chance we might get someone to help over the summer, so watch this space.

Of course there was a walk with the alpacas

A sun halo

We haven't had many requests for visits and to be honest that suits us at the moment. It's hard enough trying to fit in the shearing schedule and my visits to Estonia for work.... never mind the garden jobs and taking care of the animals. We did have a large group though from the regional tourist office and Ian was even on regional telly and in the regional papers. We had two groups this Saturday, one group Ian gave a free tour as they had Ukrainian guests. It's a little bit we can do. Once we get sorted with the cabin and such, then maybe we can think about doing more advertising, but for now we will just keep a bit of a low profile. 

Our road maintenance crew on the job.

The boys have been fighting again

At least we got started on our shearing schedule and we got the two pregnant ones sheared and Chanel, our spitty, awkward, highly protective mother of an alpaca. She's sweet really but we have always to be prepared. She doesn't like being separated from her daughter, so shearing is a bit of nightmare and she can spit over the gate at us while we shear. We got around this by constructing a small enclosure just outside the door. At least we could shear Ilvija in peace. Poor Chanel is a complete mess and we have now started the process of dealing with her skin issues. In the temperatures we get over winter, it is not possible to wash the dry, crusty skin or put cream on. It would freeze. So now she's sheared it was a good opportunity to start by using some medicated shampoo on her. It will be a process (photos probably next time of the sheared ones).

A visit to our friend's goat farm, in the rain but 
the cheese tasting was a hit. The kids do like their 
cheese 

Rocket Ron on the prowl. Mind you, it took him
a week to not run off every time the youngsters
appeared. Rocket Ron was an appropriate name
under the circumstances

Out here in rural Latvia we don't see much disturbance from the war in Ukraine, but we do notice it in odd ways such as the lack of planes that fly over, it is only Chinese ones now that fly East/West, whereas before we were on a major flight path. There are still those flying North/South of course and we also see a lot more military aircraft on exercise. On my way up to the university in Estonia in my car recently, I passed quite a few military trucks and even saw a tank on my way back. We've seen whole exercises before but not so often.

At least we did have some sunshine! Just helping!

Just chilling! And it has been. There wasn't much
rain, until the kids arrived but oh those winds were
lazy! Straight through not around you.

Another odd things is there is a lack of radar on the weather maps, as they no longer access the Russian and Belarus ones. We can see rain arriving from all directions except the East. Fortunately there are also the satellite cloud maps and most rain comes from the West anyway, so not too bad - just weird. 

A ride in the tractor.

At least the grass is now starting to grow faster
and we are not so worried about the alpacas 
overgrazing it. 

I think the weirdness of the current situation in Ukraine and being busy with work are a couple of the reasons I don't blog so often. It's hard to write about ordinary life when you know that some are having their lives destroyed in situations that don't seem so far away, where housing looks vaguely familiar. It is also hard because the actions of the Russian army is so reminiscent of aggressive acts during the Soviet era. How on earth they ever thought that the Ukraine people would welcome them with flowers I will never know. 

Pops (Grandad) with one of his 4 boxes of broken
biscuits. A box of surprises and a loooot of biscuits

Lolly has got very fluffy

Russia, like too many imperialist nations (including the UK worryingly), seem to have an amnesia about the hardships they have already inflicted on countries they once occupied and that includes the hardships on the Ukraine people within living memory. It is shocking to hear of people dying in old people's homes who have survived the holocaust or holdomor (the starvation of the Ukrainian people during the collectivisation era under Stalin). It is also shocking to hear of the filtration camps that are so reminiscent of the deportations to Siberia during the 1940s. The reason there are so many of Russian origins in such countries like Ukraine and Latvia where I live is the Russification during the Soviet era, people brought in sometimes to replace deported families. History is complicated and there are no straight lines but much of this I had thought would stay in history, not be revisited.

Too soon it was time to set off. We arranged to meet
someone who wanted to thank our grandson for his
super fundraising initiative for Ukrainian refugees at
a cafe for breakfast. After this our world, once more
returned to quiet, without the cheery chatter of little
ones, or the knock on the door in the early morning
as our grandson came in for breakfast before going
to help Pops with clearing out the alpacas.

Well these guys are staying in for a change.

I know early on we were asked if we would stay or go if Russia got more expansionist ideas in our direction. Although there have been murmurings, they seem pretty tied up in Ukraine right now and it is why the Baltic States are so keen to support the Ukraines. They do know if they do fall then they could be next in line. It is hard but for now we feel as safe as anywhere, so not the uppermost in our minds. Instead we kind of carry on in our own little bubble, much as we did during Covid times, much as many probably did in times before the internet and such hyper-connectivity. 

Finally spring is here, should be summer by now,
but better than more winter.

My peonies took a while to appear and now almost 
ready for flowering. I'm sure there will be an update
on that

These took their time to appear too but the first 
rhubarb meal we had was in a savoury meal. I now 
need to get some frozen or jarred up for later in 
the year.

A water container set up ready for watering
the greenhouse, but my tomatoes are still so
small they are not planted in the ground of 
the greenhouse yet and the chickens have only
just been moved out of there.

GT was much happier to be around the grandkids,
than Rocket Ron, which is surprising as he's often shy.

Silla looking silly in the wet and very dirty

Marie and Karla also looking rather damp

Such hippy style their Josefs

Karla looking fluffy again

A bee on a dandelion. We have a lot of dandelions
but not so many bees - where have they all gone?

I said we had a lot of dandelions. Fortunately the
alpacas like this nutritious spring-time feast

Blackbird nest

Platystomos albinus - apparently!

Clouded border moth

Common or dwarf milkwort, not sure
which.

Wild strawberries

A very large Roman snail, aka escargot

Part 2: The ups and the downs of farm life.

Karla is growing up fast. She started losing fleece on her
face due to the flies but now it's growing back well

When I said I would write part 2 later, I wasn't intending to take so long. A couple of rainy afternoons though has given me a bit of time to catch up, as do the earlier nights. So these are the highlights in brief or lowlights as the case maybe, but still probably long enough to grab a cup of coffee and put your feet up, or just look at the pictures. 

Karla feeding

You can see a faint blue tinge on her fleece from antiseptic
spray we had to put on after op.

I was applying insect repellent to Karla's head one day to keep the flies away from her nose and eyes with Ian holding her when he realised that she had a rather large lump under her belly. After a closer inspection he realised it was an umbilical hernia. Maybe if it had been caught earlier it could have been strapped up but this looked large. It doesn't help that Karla's fleece is growing remarkably quickly and hid the bump rather well. In the end it meant a trip to the vets for an operation. She was heavily sedated but not put under a general as alpacas do not do well with general anaesthesia. With the help of vet, two trainee vets and Ian, her hernia was repaired. Ian was holding Karla and also trying to find a vein for a drip. I even helped at one point in holding the fluid bottle. It got a bit crowded around the table. The good news is that she seems to have recovered well and is bounding around the fields now and even getting a bit bossy.

Chanel and Ilvija are rarely apart. A misty day after the heat
was a welcome change for the alpacas.

Cloudy sky

Unfortunately the next incident did not have such a happy ending. Silla finally went into labour but her baby was stillborn. It was almost as if she was waiting for some respite in the weather to give birth, as she delivered one evening in a the alpaca house with a thunderstorm rolling in overhead. Ian assisted as the baby seemed to be a bit stuck, an unhappy task indeed as it was already dead. Silla then seemed to be in shock and so I went to get our neighbour to check her over. The rain was pouring down and there were flashes of lightening as I drove onto our land. I drove as close as I could get but I nearly forgot about the electric fence being in the way, fortunately I spotted it in good time. It just meant that we had a bit longer to walk in the pouring rain than I had hoped. By the time I got back to the alpaca house with our neighbour, Silla seemed to have recovered a bit and was up and about. 

Spot the swallow on the door. They are raising
their second brood of the year

Military planes have been making regular flights over us. 
Can't be too secret as they are trackable on FlightRadar24

Silla didn't seem unduly concerned about the baby and we are not sure if that was because she knew it was dead or a trait in her family (more of that later). Hopefully we will find out next year as she has been mated to George. Yes! George! He finally realised what he was supposed to do. We put Tellus his dad on one side to mate with Valeria and George on the other side with Silla. Something clicked. We suspected that Silla might be helpful as she is extremely compliant and just sits down when male alpacas come in - that's also how we knew she was ready to be mated. Female alpacas can be mated two weeks after giving birth. We also tried George with Ilvija again and this time he knew what to do. Phew!

My waterlily is really growing. It's a pity it's in the pond
furtherest away from where we spend most of our hours

According to a scan in November, Mari was pregnant, but
she hasn't given birth and certainly does not look pregnant.
She also seems pretty grumpy these days, so Ian would like
another scan to see what is going on. We decided to try
mating her in April next year, along with any others that are
not pregnant and not retired.

So far we think that Silla might be pregnant now, she certainly seems far more resistant to George, Valeria may be pregnant to Tellus and we are almost certain that Amanda is pregnant as she is normally very compliant but turned on Brencis and spat in his face, despite their difference in size. Ilvija we don't think is pregnant yet. 

We've had a mixed year with the trees on
our land this year. Some have rocketed
away, like this Gingko that has been in 
years and grown little by little, but this year
has taken off. Some trees have died though,
like one of our cherry trees.

I'm pleased with my dahlias that were grown from seed

Aggie was also late and struggling with the heat. Ian was of course really concerned and our vet gave him some medication to induce her. Ian was in a real dilemma. He couldn't find much on alpaca induction and so was concerned that this wasn't regular practice. There are plenty of accounts of alpacas going way overdue but of course after Silla's stillborn he was very anxious. We did find out later that older alpacas with first time pregnancies do run an higher risk of stillborns. Hopefully that will not be the case with the second. Anyway, back to Aggie. Ian went back to his charts and it dawned on him that he'd got the dates wrong, she wasn't as far on as he thought she was. He decided not to induce her. 

These are quite dramatic Safflower. I have grown it
to make a dye. Not tried it yet though.

Aggie and Lolly

Aggie finally gave birth a week later. You can imagine how Ian was feeling, his favourite kept him waiting and waiting. The day of her giving birth did not go particularly smoothly though. She seemed to get so far but didn't seem to be pushing. I went to get our neighbour again and she helped deliver the baby. Her and her son hung around to watch the little one get on her feet. It was funny. We named her Lolly after Ian's mum. Our daughter pointed out that she was also born on what would have been Ian's Mum's birthday. I'd completely lost track of the dates just lately.

These two are always first in to see what's going on when it
comes to new births

Aggie interacting with Lolly, talking to her and nuzzling her

At first Aggie was attentive, just like she was with Josefs, but she didn't seem to encourage Lolly to feed. We waited until we couldn't wait any longer and instead milked Aggie and gave the little one a bottle of her Mum's colostrum. A little later we tried to get Lolly to latch on. Aggie meanwhile got more and more agitated. We remembered how aggressive she got with Josefs and so didn't persist with it. We thought that maybe like with Josefs she would get over it and bond. No! Despite several attempts to get the baby to suckle she wouldn't. She had got used to the bottle and Aggie was getting more and more difficult to milk. We tried to milk Aggie as often as we could and then topped up with cow's milk but after a week we stopped, as Aggie was drying up. Lessons learnt! Lesson one Aggie will not be having any more babies, although she delivers cute babies she is not a good Mum. Lesson two, really persist in getting the baby to latch on in the first 24 hours, even if the mother is aggressive. At least when hornmones calm down she may bond later and baby will know what to do.

Aggie would stand still but not long enough for Lolly to work
out what to do.

The rest of the herd coming to find out who the new one
is

Sometimes Lolly does sit with Aggie, which is unusual for Aggie as she is not usually very tolerant of little ones. So there is some sort of bond, but not a strong one. Lolly though is just as likely to be sat with one of the other alpacas or just in between them, not with anyone in particular. Her and Karla have formed a bond and we now have Amanda (Karla's Mum) up in the same alpaca house so they can be together. Although Aggie can be a bit of a grump with the other alpacas, especially with other baby alpacas, she is good with the visitors and will tolerate a lot of stroking as long as she gets food. The reason we are worried about Silla though is that Silla's grandmother is Aggie's mother, so we are worried that the lack of motherliness could run in the family. Aggie's mother was attentive enough, just a bit hyper and a bit spitty in her excitement. She wasn't able to feed Aggie very well as she didn't have enough milk and so we had to bottle feed Aggie too when she was younger. That might be part of Aggie's problems as she may have attachment issues. 

Early days

Karla meeting Lolly

The weekend that Lolly was born was also the weekend the chicks hatched. How on earth we still managed to hatch 14 chicks that weekend I will never know. Firstly we forgot to check the dates for the eggs in the incubator and suddenly realised they should be taken off the rocker and the humidity increased. As I said to Ian when I got back from doing that task, the little chick said, "Thanks for checking but could you have done that the day before?" Fortunately it was none the worse for rocking slowly backwards and forwards. Later that morning I went to do some washing and defrost a freezer at our apartment in the village and got a message from the electric company that our electric was off on the land and wouldn't be back on until 2pm. 

The chicks with their "guard". Actually
GT is just taking advantage of the soft
sleeping place with the added advantage
of warmth coming from the chick heater
that makes sure they don't get cold and 
is a stand in for mum. 

2pm came and went and I got back to our land and checked in on the eggs. Yikes it was heading towards 5pm and they were still in the barn and it was rather cool. No other chicks had hatched and that one was looking a bit cold. I took the whole unit up to our caravan that was now in the sun, opened the curtains because we usually keep them closed during the day to shade the interior from the heat. The poor little thing huddled up to the warm side of the incubator. I took it out of the incubator for a bit and warmed it in my hands. After putting it back in the incubator with the eggs, I covered the shaded side with a towel and let the sun do the rest. It was just before 9pm before the electric came back on. Over the next two days the chicks hatched and so far they seem a healthy bunch. Phew!

The weather did finally break and we are not seeing such high temperatures now. It is generally far more pleasant. We are also getting some rain now, although we still seem to be missing the majority of it, so the ground is still bone dry. As I continue to write there is an enormous thunderstorm to the East of us and we've been on the edge of it for well over an hour. The plants are soaking up what little rain we've had and are therefore still green, but it was close to having to either water or let some things die off. 

A bee on beebalm

Aggie and is it Chanel or Ilvija? They are so hard to tell apart

We could still do with a week of dry weather to get the rest of the hay in from an area where we claim subsidies. The date for that is August 15th so rather close. They might extend it, but I'm guessing it might be unlikely as there was plenty of time earlier on. The reason we didn't get the all the hay in was that our tractor was not working so well. The tractor guy finally came to repair the aircon, which was essential in the 30+ degree heat and we had enough time to get the ski hill hay in before the rain - just! There was a brief shower as we were stacking it but it was onto such dry hay we probably got away with it. At least the bales were that dry they were incredibly light and so it didn't feel such hard work as it normally does. Still hard though, all the collecting and stacking of over 250 small round bales around 25kg each.

Normally I don't have to try and catch Lolly to feed her. She 
comes running when I call her. Tonight though, Karla 
came running too. She's become very interested in what
Lolly is doing. In fact I've had to call Ian twice now to help
so that I can feed Lolly without Karla distracting her and
trying to play with her. 

My days now revolve around feeding Lolly. She is fed every two hours more or less during the day and every four hours through the night. Better than every two hours day and night when she was first born anyway. Also I'm feeding her and not Ian because she could become too attached to Ian as the main carer which could present problems later on. Sometimes we wonder if this is part of Aggie's issues after bottle feeding her. Maybe, maybe not! She comes from an odd line of alpacas as I mentioned earlier. I just feed Lolly and then go, which feels a bit heartless at times but it is for the best and she's mixing with the others, so not too bad. All the jobs I have been doing have to fit in around this routine. I never thought I would be so tied to feeding a baby again at my age. Oh well! 

Feeding Lolly like this means she stands still and
I can make sure her head is in the right position to
feed.

Head up and warm milk are essential for making sure the
milk goes into the third stomach

One of the issues this did cause us is that we still had not been able to shear alpacas in Estonia. Fortunately the owner with the most alpacas managed to get a sheep farmer into help. One of the other owners did some investigations but couldn't really find someone and so Ian went up on his own to shear two groups on separate days. They all managed fine, after all he's been shearing for them for a number of years now and so everyone knows the routine. There are still three here in Latvia that need shearing and so hopefully they will done this week.  

I keep trying to feed her with the bottle in front of me, but 
she is such a fidget. I won't want to be feeding her like this
in a few months time.

I think she's full. Look at that hair
though! I was so pleased to get to the
hairdresser today. Milk feed was a bit
late but she was fine. At least she can
eat grass already.

When I've not been busy with Lolly, I've been busy in the garden and greenhouse and still busy with some meetings for an expert group that are only taking a break now. I also had an academic paper that had a submission date of the 6th August. I thought I was going to get a nice long break but that didn't turn out to be the case. I'm having an extra week off though to make up for it. Everyone else seems to be off at the moment anyway.

Very pleased that Lolly still goes and spends her time with 
the other alpacas and seems to be well enough accepted.

Despite the work done on the garden, it is rather
untidy. The wind and rain haven't helped lately.

I finally tied up the tomatoes in the greenhouse and got lots done in the garden. I've pulled up the peas, before the maggots ate the lot, pulled up the chick peas as they had gone over and Ian and I picked blackcurrants and I've bottled them. I've also been replanting the empty beds where I harvested onions or peas earlier with some autumn veg and managed to get some seeds in before the rain. I sowed carrots, peas, broad beans, turnips and beetroot. There was no point in putting seeds in before unless I was committed to watering them since the soil is so dry. The courgettes have been hanging on in there even without the rain, probably the alpaca poo has helped. It holds the moisture well. At least they have started producing more and I'm now getting to the stage where I have to work out what else I can make with them. I will bottle some up for the winter in the same way I usually bottle cucumbers, since I don't have many of those planted up. Hopefully it will work. Otherwise I will have to take the courgettes back to the apartment and freeze them.

Mallow grown from seed. This always reminds me of our
friend in Cyprus as it was there we found out the leaves were
edible.

You're a bit close!!!

Talking of freezers, we had a disaster with our fridge-freezer. I'm not sure what happened exactly but it failed or I failed. I defrosted the freezer section and transferred all the meat into it. Yes! All the meat we had! Those lovely hams and pork joints along with other bits of meat we had in the larger ones in the basement. Away I went and about a week and a half later Ian went back to the apartment and the place reeked. The door wasn't closing properly and all the meat had gone off. It wasn't pleasant. Fortunately as we have a truck, the boot is separate to the main cabin of the car and Ian could bring all the meat out to be disposed of without gagging on the way. We thought the freezer itself might have packed up, but that at least wasn't the case, It still seems to be working - the plug was only half in. Maybe I unplugged it and forgot to plug it in, but that doesn't explain the issue with the door. Sigh! 

Karla now has someone to run around with.

And they sure do like to run

Along with all that, we've also been getting a steady trickle of visitors. Two groups came from a camp catering for those with special needs. The children and carers had a look around and fed the alpacas, then had a picnic on the bank overlooking the boys field. Occasionally the alpacas would come up to see what was happening and ran up when one young boy started to cry loudly, but generally they just ignored everyone and carried on eating grass peacefully. It was very soothing. The group were lucky with the weather too as it was often raining either just before or just after. 

So tiny! She's much bigger now and growing fast. The 
milk from our neighbour's cows is obviously suiting her - 
after I've skimmed the cream off first though. We found she
was starting to refuse it and then I realised the milk had a lot 
of cream in it, so now I take that off first and then give it
to her. There will still be plenty of fat in it as my neighbour's 
cows have very rich milk.

Karla does look like her dad at that age.

Ian did start to build a new haystore but didn't get very far before events or weather overtook that project. We also managed to get Mr. P's teeth cut and Mr.P's and Josefs' toe nails trimmed. Everyone else will also need their toe nails doing soon, so that will be an ongoing project for next week possibly. So as you can see, it's been a rather busy time and not much time to blog. I still keep going with the blog though as it is a good record for us of what we've done and something we can look back on. So I'm not going to promise to blog regularly for the time being, but at least I won't suddenly disappear from the blogosphere, I will be back.