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!

Puddles and squashes

Autumn begins

I forgot to mention last week, the storks have gone! We saw some circling around on a Sunday a couple of weeks ago and then we saw just a few after that - the stragglers. Definitely all gone now though (well that's what we thought until we saw one very lonesome looking stork on the way into Riga). With the exit of the storks, the trees have taken their cue and decided it's autumn and autumn colours are beginning to tinge the countryside. We even had our first proper rainfall in a few weeks, enough to actually wet the ground. We badly, badly need the rain as our ponds are almost down to a puddle. I have never seen them so low, even in the last hot dry summer three years ago, which is bad news as we still have the greenhouse to water and now have to think about bringing in water for the animals as there hasn't been enough rainwater collected off our caravan and the pond water is too low to give them that. At least the cooler days means they don't need quite so much water and there is lots of moisture on the grass first thing in the morning. That is something that has really surprised us this year, that despite the lack of rain, there is so much dew that the grass is actually growing quite well.

One of our pond puddles

We managed to collect the most important crop of the year in this week, our potatoes. As usual the potatoes were grown on two separate crops, one had a good amount of potatoes but a lot of blighted ones too, one had lots of small potatoes but some of the plants were still green too. We decided to only lift half of those and see if leaving it till later would mean a bigger crop. Not sure if maybe the different variety we bought in this year was just a later maturing crop or it was due to the place they were planted and the type of year we've had. Oh well! As a gardener you are always living and learning and there is always next year. At least this year we have more potatoes than last year, that's a blessing as we are not planning lots of trips away, well Ian isn't.

Well I'm okay now! 

Another surprising thing this year, we saw a  squirrel. A very skinny looking brown/red squirrel. We didn't get a good look at it as it was while we were driving along and it very nearly ran out in front of us. Now that would have been just typical if the first time we see a squirrel in this country we ran over it, but fortunately it took a double take and decided to scamper back into the woods. We feel sure it has heard there are hazelnuts on our land. That's another first too, we haven't seen those around our place, hazels yes but none with the nuts on. I have some sad news too this week. We lost six chicks in all, to whatever ailed them last week. Not exactly very good at all, but at least the rest have perked up and looking pretty good now. Even the big chickens are looking much better after their bout of illness, not related to the chicks, but some mould in the buckwheat made them wheezy. Just one hen is still causing us some concern, but they are starting to roam around again and it probably won't be long before they are all being a nuisance again.

Gaining trust!

I have been rushing to get some work done this week for my paid employment before the start of the new university semester. I have taken a step back in my job and I will no longer moderate the student cafe that I have been doing for the last 9 years, a younger lass is taking that bit on. It means I don't have to be online all the time, which makes it easier when I am jetting off here there and everywhere. I also felt I was getting too old for chit chat with teenagers all the time. I love talking to teenagers, but not for a job any more. I'm still around for trouble shooting and I have some bible studies to do. There is still some details to work out as to what else I do, but it will be nice to make a change.

Morning mist

There has been frustrations galore this week. I had to redo a proposal for a doctoral seminar. Basically it means writing a piece that they think is acceptable to be discussed amongst my peers, well I made a complete hash of it. I hadn't been able to get hold of my supervisors (holiday time) until this week to get it amended and so I had to redo it all before Friday. I got something together anyway that was acceptable, but it was just a hassle I could do without. Deep joy! I wouldn't mind but I made some terribly basic mistakes, the sort of mistake that had my kids done it when doing home-ed I would have asked them if they had actually read what they were meant to do. I think my mind is still too distracted and I need to de-clutter it sometime. At least I don't feel so tired as I did about three weeks ago, the iron tablets seem to be having an effect. Going up and down the stairs doesn't seem such a hassle either now.

Horsetails looking bejewelled in the dew. Pity we don't
actually want horsetails in our field but they look pretty

At least I managed to get a poster printed on time. I have to take that with me to a course I am attending in France this week. I was so pleased that they were able to do it and have it delivered to the apartment by Friday. I was even more pleased when I saw the van roll up outside the house, I could have kissed the guy, but I don't think he would have appreciated it. I even have business cards now, the poster and cards are all designed by my youngest son. He can do the work a lot faster with the software that he has than I can. The problem with the poster though is that firstly it didn't come in a cardboard tube, just thin card surround it and bubble wrap and secondly it will only go in one of our large cases and not wrapped in the card or bubble wrap. I have wrapped the poster around certain items of underwear and put a large towel on top of my clothes and under the poster. The bubble wrap was then put across the top of it. Hopefully that will stop it from getting crushed and I just hope I don't get stopped to open my case.

Another beautiful summer's day in the nearest big town to
us.

We have made some progress on the house. We now have our address and we went to the notary to sort out a contract with the owner of the land, to get a lease. Only the owner of the land is in Canada and we have power of attorney for her. This meant that one of us represented the owner and one of us represented us. So Ian is leasing the land from me in effect and he has to pay me 10 Lats (£12) a year (I won't spend it all at once, honest). We had an issue at first as the notary would not handle the writing of the contract, as we don't speak Latvian, but she said we could write out a contract between us ourselves using an online template and she could notarise it (legalise it), as long as we had a translator present. Off we went to the architects office and the architect wrote out the contract, she also managed to get a translator - an English teacher from one of the local schools. A very nice fellow indeed. Needless to say we now have his number in case we need his services again and I'm sure we will. He nearly didn't take any payment either as he said the architect had done most of the work, we still gave him a token payment anyway.

Nice and clean and don't the squashes look nice on the
windowsill

I spent Sunday cleaning though. We have visitors today and our apartments needed floors washing. The problem with summer is there is not that much time to do it and so it needed to be done. It wasn't just the floors though, there were squashes that needed a wash and laying out, onions needed outer skins taking off and soil removing before putting neatly into some baskets. All jobs that have sat there for a couple of weeks. We have over 100 squashes now, to last us through to next year. They are not just for us but also the animals. I like squash because you just plant them, they may take a bit of time to really get into their stride but then they just sprawl over the place and take care of themselves by smothering everything in their path. The squash just then need cutting off the plant, curing the outer skins so they are nice and hard and then leaving until winter time. Some squash last just up to Christmas, some into the new year and some we have this year, should last through until this time next year if we wanted to. They are great winter food and when they do start to go off they can be made into preserves or frozen at a time of the year when there isn't that much to do and it isn't that much of a problem to have the oven/cooker/fire on all day. Easy! This year it will be even easier as the animals will be getting the majority of them. Even if we are a fan of the squashes we grow, we can't really eat that many of them.

Close up on the bedroom windowsill

Bedroom 2

Kitchen windowsill

Living room windowsill. Do you think anyone will notice
that we use this apartment as a storage place too?

See you hardly notice them

Not so sure where these will go though! 

It's a hard life

There is definitely no blog next week. As I said I am swanning off to the South of France, ten days up in the mountains. Life's tough heh!