All change

Well here I am here in Jelgava, Latvia, sat in a café with Wifi, whiling away the time before I head for some doctoral seminars on methodology. Sound riveting? Stick an "ology" on the end and some folks switch off, but all this means is looking at different methods that I could use and others use, to do our work, in this case research. Always good to throw ideas around so that people can comment and hopefully we can then each improve our research methods and produce better results that have real benefit to the communities we serve, or improve the areas of research we are involved in. As my doctoral colleagues are in landscape architecture, that means it is important for the aesthetics of the place where people live, work and have their recreation, if our research methods are good and connect well with the world, then we can all be part of designing a better place or at least recognising what is important to keep intact. At least I have got over the first hurdle and found my way to a new city in Latvia by bus. It was just rather an early start, as the bus left my home village to Riga at 6:40am.

Pops and grandson having a great time!

It isn't just a change of scenery I have at the moment but a change of guests too. This last Wednesday we spent in Riga, as we took our youngest son and his family to the airport and collected our other son and his family much later on in the day. It did mean getting our neighbours to put our alpacas away for us, which they did quite happily, and it also meant I could arrange a couple of meetings with someone in the agricultural ministry and with someone who is instrumental in trying to get some green initiatives going in Latvia. Both were were such an encouragement to meet, knowing that there are people in this land, who are not out to serve themselves but to serve others and to make a difference, makes me more determined to try and help the best I can with my research.

Our son and his family took us out for a meal on their last day to say thank you, which was lovely and it was good to finish on such a high note when it was the first time they had all taken a holiday with us. Holidays with prospective parents-in-laws can always be fraught, so it was nice that we were able to relax and enjoy each others company. The high point of the meal was when I remarked that our little guest was surely going to become a scientist of a philosopher with her procession of logical thinking only for her to immediately retort, "When I grow up I'm going to be a princess!" Well that was me told!

Oh remember the saga of the shears,well eventually we got them by picking them up from the courier at the airport and lo and behold when we got them home they were not working. The company who sold them too us are being very helpful and have even allowed Ian to take the motor housing apart to see if there was a something stuck in the motor or a loose wire - which normally would invalidate the guarantee. In the many years that the company have been selling these machines, none have failed. They are going to send out a replacement immediately (via a different route we hope) and they will wait for our son to get back to the UK to take the broken shears back and they will even collect it from where he lives. It reminded Ian of the saga we had with an AEG drill that he bought and that had a fault with the chuck and it kept spewing out the chuck with the drill part in it, not terribly useful and when he took it back the salesman was also there and said that in his 20 years of working with AEG, he had never seen that fault before. Meanwhile two of our poor alpacas are still unshorn, but at least the temperatures are cooler this week.

I wrote the title earlier on in the week after my son arrived (trying to get some of the blog done beforehand so I can remember what has happened this week and fit it in so it is out on time) but last night as I thought about today, I did sense a change and the sweeter air this morning both filled me with hope and a sense of a new season. There are just days when we can know that something is about to change, maybe not in any obvious earth shattering way, but sometimes just a shift that leads down a path we haven't been before. Somehow, I feel that this week will open up paths for the days ahead, I guess I will just have to wait and see what happens, but it is nice to go into a meeting with that sense of the future whirling around my head. Maybe I'm just a dreamer.

One more thing before I wrap this blog up I passed my statistics course. I am so pleased to get that out of the way. Some of my future courses may look a bit tedious, but I feel that I should be able to get my head around them anyway, for instance copyright laws and that type of thing. It has to be done and should be fairly straightforward - at least I hope so.

(Just a note to say I will update the blog with photos tomorrow, they are on our other camera and I haven't got them with me.)

Help needed!

Oh yes! That's me in shorts and my
Australian hat. I didn't buy the hat in
Australia, I bought it in Colorado. As
for the shorts, they won't be appearing
much for a while, not because we are
expecting cool weather, but the
mosquitoes have decided it is summer too

Well if anyone fancies a week or two doing lots of exercise, we have a few jobs that you can help with. We are well into the busy period now, so many things have been done and still a lot more to do. Once all the seeds are planted, small plants planted up, then it is just weeding ........ continuously until the end of the season. Actually there is usually a bit of a lull before the harvesting starts and then there is quite a bit of time spent preparing vegetables for storage, but that is still to come. This week we saw high temperatures, more akin to summer than late spring, 25C - 30C (77F-86F). It is a bit of a shock after such a long winter and, as I mentioned last week, everything seems to be hurrying along to summer, including the weather. We've had several thunderstorms already, accompanied by our electric going off for up to several hours. Not what we really want when we have eggs in the incubator. At least the storms have brought some needed rain and so the grass is starting to grow quite quickly now - good news for our alpacas. The trees have also continued in their race towards summer, in only approximately two weeks the trees have gone from virtually bare sticks to full leaf, the change has been quite staggering.

How about that for a lawn then! 

It is not just grass that is growing of course, the ground elder and dandelions too. The dandelions look so pretty as they colour up the landscape with swathes of yellow, but not exactly what we want to see when we are trying to improve the grassland. Ian has been doing mega lawn cutting marathon to try and keep the yellow peril down and I have tried making dandelion honey with the flowers, since we don't have any bee honey at the moment. I thought if this works like the internet article said it would then it would be cheaper than buying any. As it turned out, it made a passable syrup anyway, I needed to boil it a bit more obviously, but I haven't really been at home enough to do that. I found the idea for the dandelion honey when I was confronted with a meal that was decorated with dandelion flowers and I wanted to know if they really were edible or just for decoration. I know the leaves and the roots are fine, but wasn't sure about the flowers. Fortunately the cafe I was in had Wifi and I had my computer with me and so I did a quick search before eating.

Herkules had decided to sit down on
the job, so most of the shearing was
done on the floor.

Keeping the grass cut is not just for improving the grassland to get rid of ground elder, dandelions, wild raspberries and nettles but also to keep the fly population down that bother our alpacas so much. This is especially important as we shear them. Some friends of ours came around from the nearby camp to help us today and lend us their shears, so we had some idea of what to do. Mind you, our helper has only sheared one sheep before, but at least he knew more than we did. Between him and Ian they did a pretty good job and Herkules, our first victim... errr volunteer didn't look as bad as some people's first attempts at shearing, judging from the stories. I think we worked quite well as a team (I said we needed help), there was a young guy who is really strong and he made sure Herkules was pinned down and Ian and our friend took turns in the shearing, mainly our friend, but Ian did have a go. He also got his nails clipped while he was down on the ground. I sorted the fleece out into two sorts, the really good fleece and the rest. It should be sorted out into more than that, but I wasn't sure the cutting would be quite good enough this time around to make a second quality cut. It will probably have plenty of other uses, either as a stuffing for toys or duvets or something like that. Herkules isn't our best quality animal and so it will be interesting to see what the fleece is like off our other two animals.

Here what are you doing in there?
And can we come in, it's raining

In preparation for the shearing we had to clean out the alpaca hut. We use the deep bed system, which basically means that hay is continually piled up on top of hay and only cleaned out once a year. It is nowhere near as bad as it sounds as straw or hay is quite absorbent and as long as there is plenty of fresh hay on the top it doesn't smell bad either. It is also more hygienic than you might think. Ian has reduced the poop pile in the middle from time to time so they aren't standing on a mound, but apart from that this is the first time we have cleaned them out properly since they came back in July. It was a job we were dreading, but in the end it wasn't as bad as we had feared and we had got the job done by the end of the morning. Mind you, the alpacas were hovering, partly because they are always very curious about what we are doing and have to stand have a good gawp and because of the heat, they wanted to be in the cool of the shelter. Who said that alpacas like to be outside all the time? They haven't met ours, they go into the shelter if it rains, if it is too sunny and if it is too cold. Sensible creatures really.

Finishing off

Like I said, it is our busy period and so Ian has sown the buckwheat crop, as it doesn't look like we will have a frost in the foreseeable future and I have sown broad beans, lettuce, radish, squashes, more pepper plants, apple, pear, ash tree, plum and some sweetcorn. The tree seeds are just to see what comes, we love to experiment. The sweetcorn I have planted both under cover and out in the open, since the temperatures have risen so much, but I have planted them quite deep. I have risked putting some squashes outside as the forecast is not for particularly cold nights and I have put them under fleece anyway to protect them from the fierce heat. Even our chickens are busy at the moment as they are regularly laying 6 eggs a day between them, we even think our broiler hen, who we have nicknamed big bird as she is even bigger than the cockerel is laying too. I did wonder if she was getting to fat, but that doesn't appear to be the case.

Now who's a pretty boy then!

Don't you dare laugh! 

On my journey home on the bus. A small taste of Estonia

As I mentioned last week I was in Tartu for my studies. Monday I did a presentation, that I thought went well and the fact later on in the week I was asked to lecture to some MSc students seemed to confirm that. Unfortunately there was no way I could really go up just for one lecture this week, but  I mentioned that I will not have any problems in the autumn semester and the lecturer who asked me was happy with that. I had a meeting with my supervisors on the Tuesday and finally managed to clarify what I'm doing now, so the study plan should be finished this week, rather late but since I don't seem to be doing anything normally then that is fine. Wednesday, I took THE exam! Statistics! I made some really stupid mistakes on the exam, but fortunately did enough to get through. I also finished the statistics assignment and I'm just waiting to see if that was enough to pass or not. To cap the week for my studies, I managed to book on for a conference in Italy and I booked the flights too. It all seems a bit surreal, one moment I'm planting seeds, helping with sorting wool from alpacas and the next planning to jet of to Italy for a conference.

Another view from the bus. It was a glorious day

I sent off my passport this week to be renewed. It isn't due until December, but this is the time I will be doing least travelling and so needed to do it now. I was rather disgruntled though to find that even though it costs £72.50 in the UK, I have to pay £126 and a courier fee of £19.86. I am not sure why being outside the country should make a difference as it still has to go back to the UK to be processed. I can understand the extra courier fee but not the extra £53.50. I wonder how they manage to justify the extra expense? I kind of understood when it was processed abroad, but not now it is all sent to the UK anyway, it just seems very wrong.

On our way home from the land

I was quite relieved to hear this week that the EU can make sensible proposals if they want to. There was some concern that all seeds, regardless of origin would have to be subject to stringent standards. This could have affected small companies that sells seeds, the local seed swap or the larger seed swap organisations that aim to improve the availability of heritage seeds or open pollinated varieties. I realise that biosecurity is an issue, both from the harm that can happen when doling out diseased seed but also to unwanted additions to DNA. The fact is that it is not often that small swaps of seeds are going to lead to big problems with disease or large escapes of resistant crops, it is big business where that happens most often. In fact is is the small seed swappers who keep heirloom varieties or landrace varieties (plants specific to an area and well adapted to that area) alive, these are the sort of seeds that are dropped by large scale commercial growers. If we lose these small varieties we have an even bigger biosecurity problem because it reduces the gene pool we have access to whenever a disease threatens to wipe out certain types of plants or trees.

More help needed. Can anyone identify these flowers for
us. It is a vine with lemony scented leaves.

The Spring flood!

Spring has sprung. The alpacas in the distance (the white
specks on the opposite side) have been let out of their
paddock to feed on green grass. Unfortunately we still have
bare earth from the winter damage too.

Whoosh and now it's spring! Well that's what it feels like. We left Latvia with a half metre of snow, or thereabouts and temperatures of -18C and when we return the snow is gone, although there are the odd spots where snow has been heaped up in shadowy areas and they still linger, but that is all. It was quite disorientating, all the landmarks we were used to over the winter had disappeared, all the high banks at the side of the road had melted away and there was even a blush of green around the fields. We've had lovely weather since we arrived back, but it is still cool due to a cool wind, but it has meant we can get on with some of the many jobs we need to do to be able to feed ourselves and the animals over the next year.

The voles were busy over winter too. Those
channels through our little blackcurrant
bush cuttings are the remnants of the vole
runs. Hopefully our cats have been doing
their job, as I haven't seen many of the little
critters around.

We said we would hit the ground running and we have, fortunately our flood is more the flood of work that needs doing and not the real floods that parts of Latvia have suffered due to the rapid Spring thaw. On the first day after our return we headed out to the land and stayed out there until about 8pm, so we took all our meals with us. I also took my computer, as I still have my statistics to revise for and an assignment to finish. So in between revising, I planted onions and peas, unwrapped the young trees in the orchard from their winter plastic coats, sorted out the herb bed and flattened molehills of which there were many in the orchard plot. That was the first day.

A combination of damage from clearing snow, trying to
drive on muddy roadways and laying the cable at the
end of last year. Hopefully by the time Ian has graded this
lot and a spot of rain on it at the weekend, we will have a
green and pleasant land once again and not a muddy mess

I am so grateful for spending time making the beds from rotted wood chippings two years ago as they are so easy to deal with - no digging over at all, just remove the weeds and rake over a bit. I did add some alpaca manure at the end of last year to the beds as wood chippings alone are not enough to feed the plants, but apart from that I haven't put a lot of work into them. It does mean I managed to sow onions, parsnips, peas, carrots, beetroot, spinach and salad leaves outside with no bother this week. It is a good job that the beds don't need digging over much anyway as my arm still aches, although it is much better than it was. It aches because I am doing more and more with it, and it protests. My guts are still not right either after that course of antibiotics I had a few weeks ago and I had to resort to the medicine cabinet yet again this week (not that you really wanted to know that, but that's my life at the moment).

First area ploughed

Ian's been busy too and he has two areas ploughed with the two wheeled tractor - much better on slightly wet soil than getting the big tractor out. They are ready now, one for buckwheat and one for an oat clover mix. The oats didn't do well in the wet last year and lodged (fell over) and got a disease called rust (because it looks like rust spots on it) but the clover is still there and some will be turned in and some allowed to continue growing. We are going to plough strips into the clover, as we don't need the whole field for peas, beans, squash and marigolds. Just in case you are wondering, the marigolds are for the chickens to give nice golden yolks and can be used in food for us as well. Ian has also borrowed a grader from a friend, to level the damage done by the wild boar in the autumn of last year. Normally he would use a chain harrow on the fields after winter to level small damage and molehills, but the damage this year was too extensive and needs a more robust piece of equipment.

We managed to fit in a quick visit to the local Spring market this week, so we got some lovely local cheese and two sacks of seed potatoes. One lot of our potatoes we don't want to use again for seed due to the possibility of blight, so starting with a fresh batch seemed the best move. The other batch are full of small potatoes that have sprouted and we will chuck them on the ground and cover with straw, if they come they come, if they don't they don't. Well that's the theory anyway.

One of the difficulties we have of living here is not speaking the language, but it is not always a problem and we are not the only ones that struggle. I saw a local I knew and stopped for a chat, he's actually German and doesn't speak much Latvian, so our conversation was conducted in German and English, but somehow we managed to understand each other. Shows how communication can happen despite the barriers. He now knows we were in the UK and Australia visiting grandchildren and I now know he saw our neighbour driving our car around.

The mess we call the greenhouse, before we
took out the caravan and chicken arks. All
the fleece hanging down is because of the
cats, who have treated the fleece as a
challenge, to see how far they can walk
across it before falling through it. That was
up there to give a bit of shade in the summer
and prevent a little heat loss in the winter!

The post holiday blues, caught me out though and I was feeling a little overwhelmed on our return. The statistics still looms large and I have still to fix a date to take the exam. I have got as far as fixing the week, but not the actual day. The gardening jobs are also stacking up, and we needed to move the caravan and chickens out of the greenhouse, so that is available for planting up with tomato plants which are busy taking over our living room. It took a walk and a song to get me set right again, or at least the title of a song. Adele's song "I set fire to the rain" seemed to shake the lethargy. It is such a ridiculous concept really, but I have felt in someways that we've done that before, done things against the odds and things have turned out okay. If we've done it before, then we can do it again. We feel God has given us this path to walk and if he has, then he doesn't do that without providing the skills and the wherewithal to do it. And if we stray from the path? Well I also trust God to let us know.

Ian backing up to the greenhouse

Caravan on its way out after nearly 7 months of being cooped
up inside

Summer position

Sometimes we expect life to be conducted at 100mph and sometimes it just feels like that is what it is doing, whether we like it or not. But life isn't like that all the time, or it shouldn't be. Life is full of ebbs and flows, season of activity and seasons of dormancy where nothing seems to be actively growing, something that Mark Pixley in his blog talks about. Living life at full pelt will lead to burnout and that is something I'm very conscious of, I've seen it happen far too many times for my liking. Some people can hack it, but from my observations they can only do that by screening out other things and in so doing don't absorb the stress. I wonder if they miss out on other things though, well that's not for me to know. I think one of the antidotes to living life at full pelt is to have a garden, especially a vegetable garden. It is in the garden that you can begin to appreciate the ebb and flow of the seasons. It is in tending the garden that you can see the point of removing some of the good things in life to let other things grow and develop better and at the end of the year, when the frosts come, there is not much to do apart from tidy up and dream of next years crops and pour over seed magazines, the ebbing of the year. I'm not the only one who thinks it is good to reconnect with a garden, as Nancy Sleeth says

"Oh, if every church and school had a garden, how different this world might be! Caring for a garden provides something that cannot be purchased at the grocery store: the satisfaction of eating food planted, tended, and harvested with our own hands. A garden cultivates gratitude, reminding us that every ounce of food that passes our lips ultimately comes from God. And as any experienced gardener will attest, a garden keeps us humble — constantly aware that the enemy, entropy, is very much alive."

Seems like as good a reason as any!

Chilled out in Oz

Yay! Oh little granddaughter, already growing up fast

Our little granddaughter is gorgeous, but then you would expect me to say that wouldn't you? In just the nearly two weeks we have been here, there are many changes going on, she is starting to take notice and you would almost think she really is smiling at you and it isn't just wind. We haven't got up to much whilst here, having a baby around with frequent feeds, does tend to curtail outdoor activities. My health hasn't helped either. I was back to the dentists for a second prescription of antibiotics after the first lot didn't agree with my system. Fortunately with the second prescription and the recommended probiotics I actually felt human for the first time in weeks and I am finally off the painkillers.

We did manage a short walk and were rewarded with the
sight of some wallabies

So much of our time here in Perth has been hanging around at home, taking trips out to the shops, taking the baby out for a walk to let Mum sleep and in the process testing out the waterproofness of the new pram - fortunately it passed, and a barbecue. We have been looking at the photo updates from back home in Latvia and the snow has now almost gone, with quite a rapid thaw in the last few days and so barbecue weather may have arrived or be about to arrive in Latvia, whereas here it was just about the last of the season with temperatures finally cooling, much to the relief of our daughter and son-in-law. It has been an unpleasantly humid summer for them here.

Not the most glamourous of photos, but showed I did get a
look in, in the cuddles stakes. Grandad is still the best at
getting little ones off to sleep

My daughter surprised me at the barbecue by putting candles into the cupcakes she had made and getting everyone to sing happy birthday to me. I hadn't realised that was what she intended to do with the cupcakes and nearly spoilt the surprise by tucking into one, as she was busy feeding the baby during the barbecue. Fortunately no one else decided to follow my lead. My birthday is not actually until today and so the celebrations have continued on this our last day of our visit to Oz. I have been thoroughly spoilt, first by my son-in-law going out first thing to get us croissants for breakfast, then out for a quick trip to the shops to find some elusive sandals (haven't been able to find many - well it's autumn here isn't it), next for lunch out. We let my daughter and son-in-law out and about for a few hours on there own too, while we babysat - a treat in itself, as it has meant lots of cuddles with baby

Australian scerey

The problem with not feeling quite so human is that I haven't been able to get on with my studies which was kind of worrying with assignment deadlines looming. I managed one assignment on the plane on the way here and checked it when I arrived, while I still felt reasonably human, but the statistics defeated me. Many of my notes weren't written up after the lectures due to not feeling well and when I look back at the work I did it isn't making a great deal of sense, partly because not all the information is translated from Estonian, which slows me down a lot. Fortunately my lecturer has proved very understanding and given me extra time to get the work done and a book recommendation. It would have been nice to get this finished off, but such is life!

Snow has nearly gone back home

I bet these guys are pleased to see the back of the snow too!

Skipping along. Not!

Blue skies of winter

Another milestone week this week, it is ten years since we left England. It's hard to believe it is that long, as time has flown by and we seem to have done so much in that time. We lived in Denmark, I learnt a little Danish, loved the transportation system in Copenhagen and liked our Danish house, if only it had another floor it would have been perfect. One of the ideas I would like to take from that house into our new one, if possible, is to have a utility room as soon as you come in the door, so that all those mucky boots, coats and vegetables have somewhere to go before being traipsed through the house. New Years in Denmark was always something to remember too, it was almost like being in the blitz, but an awesome experience. Colorado was inspiring too, all those mountains. Ian still misses the blue skies, but I missed the clouds when I was there. I also began to see how and why Americans think the way they do, it is different to a European mindset, not necessarily better and maybe not worse either, just different. Whilst in America I also got the chance to go to Brazil three times, which was quite an experience.

Freezing cold outside but lovely and
warm in the greenhouse. A chance for
feet up and a James Herriot book

It is also five years since we came to live in Latvia and in that time we have done out two apartments, had a barn and two greenhouses built (if you remember one fell down in a bad winter), got animals and just thoroughly enjoyed our time here. I have also got a Masters degree and now embarking on a PhD, something I would never have envisaged when we set off on my travels. In all that time we have met some remarkable people along the way, not many of them would think they are remarkable, but they are and whilst sadly it hasn't been possible to keep in touch with everyone for one reason or another, we are still the richer for having known them.

Ian's been busy again. He made this trailer for the tractor.
I love the little details like the stand for the trailer, just
like on the real thing and the wooden thingymajigs on
the wheels which he made on his lathe

Talking about my course I am taking statistics as one of the compulsory courses I have to do, it is not a subject I'm particularly fond of, but our statistics lecturer loves his subject, however 2 1/2 hours is perhaps getting a bit long for a lecture. I actually leave early (well on time actually but he is still talking when I leave) as I have a bus to catch. If I miss it then I am stuck in Tartu for an extra day, nice though it is, it is also nice to get home. I nearly managed to miss the bus this last time, as there were lots of people at the bus stop and they all had tickets. I found out today that I have to be down there 15mins before the bus leaves to be able to buy a ticket at the office, this is going to be a challenge on Wednesday with the paths being so icy. I shall have to put on a bit of speed where the paths are not so bad. This March seems to be turning out to be colder than February, with sunny days to melt the ice and intensely cold nights to freeze it rock solid again.

Icy here too. That snow bank is also snow from the
greenhouse, it wasn't that deep really. 

The icy paths are not doing my nerves any good, two falls in recent weeks has not improved my confidence on the ice, I feel such a twit when folks just stride on past and there am I with my ice grips on my shoes, shuffling along. Still I would rather shuffle along than hurt my arm again. The first arm I hurt is fine now, if anything it is tired because I hurt the other one and it has do more work and being my left arm it is protesting (that conjures up some funny visions). My right arm that I hurt last week is getting better, but it still hurts a lot and I haven't got full mobility back in it. I keep stretching it bit by bit to try and get it moving yet I still feel rather pathetic when I wince putting my coat on. Mind you that is an improvement from last week, the reason it hurts putting my coat on is the weight of the coat, at least I can put it on easier now, last week putting on a blouse hurt. I must say I was really grateful for all the sympathy I got last week on the blog, thank you for taking the time to comment, it was greatly appreciated.

More seed boxes made too, ready for when we get back off
our hols

The weeks do tend to fly by just lately and if we are going to see some of our neighbours and friends we have to try and make a point of seeing them when I am not in Tartu, otherwise the weeks would pass and we wouldn't really talk to anyone much. We didn't get off to a good start with one of our neighbours, but we have made amends this week. Ian went to move the car so one of our neighbours could clear the snow away from the roadway with his tractor, which I mentioned that last week. While he was down there, he got chatting with the young man that we hadn't seen eye to eye with and found out he really wanted to see development in our village, Ian suggested to him that he could do with talking to me, since that is my field of study. One evening we decided to call around and see if he wanted to chat some more, we were welcomed in and spent hours chatting, later on relatives arrived too and we were invited to a small party with cakes and more jasmine tea - how could we refuse, especially since we knew the relatives reasonably well and I had taught the mother-in-law English a while back. The occasion was International Women's Day, not a big thing in England but celebrated here for sure. Still one excuse is as good as another to eat cake! Even after we left the home, we met another neighbour outside who was having a smoke, we knew him as a child from kids camps but he isn't often in a talkative mood, he was that night though, and surprised us by the fact he remembered our boys from those times in camp. We perhaps could have chatted longer but it was far too cold to be stood outside for very long.

Definitely a grumpy looking cat and a bit of a scar on the
side. She isn't that grumpy though, really

One of our children has managed to get flights booked to come and see us in June, bringing with him his wife and baby son. It will be the little ones first visit to Latvia and they are already teaching him a little song about tractors, which he loves. At around six months old, the little one will probably love seeing our alpacas - or at least I hope he will. Mind you, as much as I am looking forward to them coming, I wasn't so ecstatic at the time I got a text regarding what flights to get. At just gone midnight I got a text with the query and a few seconds later a second one apologising - oh yes! Someone had forgotten what time it was in Latvia. I suppose it shows that kids can still wake you up in the night, even if they are over 25 from time to time. I'm sure I will get over the fact he managed to wake me up the night before a 2 1/2 hour statistics lecture - no wonder I was having trouble staying awake.

Our chicken that was sick last week is on the mend. So far
all bits are where they should be and she is eating well now.
Same can't be said for the cockerel on the left. As he was
the most immature of cockerels he is no good for breeding
and only kept as long as he has been to add his body heat to
the ark over the winter. Now he has gone to the great freezer in the sky, well actually the freezer in our dump room and I
have the scratches to prove it. No he wasn't unduly treated
badly, it is just chickens flap around a bit after being
dispatched and I didn't have hold of him properly.

They've talking about us (Hercules and Tellus)

We have been wondering what to do about the alpacas. We would like to buy some more and we are looking at options for buying. The ones in Sweden are more expensive as they were the last time, but we know how to get them sent across now. We are thinking of talking to someone locally but not sure about the genetic quality of the animals. They maybe okay with our male as he might have some good genes to pass on - he had a very good fleece as a youngster but never tried as a stud male. Our options are more limited with trying to get a house built this year too. We had wondered about seeing if people would like to sponsor an alpaca, after all they are rather cute. It has been done by other farms too and usually involves sending cards, pictures and updates a few times a year. Sounds like a bit of fun, I mean what would we write about the alpacas in a quarterly newsletter? I am sure there must be some more ideas out there though and wonder what people would think is great for a bit of fun and what some people would just think is silly. So all ideas gratefully received and if you want to sponsor one, then you can always send me an email (just click on the icon on the left-hand side).

Pick me! (Hercules)

Happy chap! Blue skies, what more could he ask for?

Ian and I were chatting this week (yes we do sometimes actually talk to one another) as we had both seen an article about an accident between a motorcyclist and a bison. You don't often see a bison on the road there, believe me, we lived there for 15 years, but the occasional cows and sheep we have seen. The tight twisty roads don't help either and you always had to drive as if you expected there to be something around the corner, without getting to paranoid about it. Apparently the farmer checked the field every day, but says there is little he can do when cars and walkers damage stone walls and fencing and I agree. Even if the farmer is very diligent it is still possible for animals to get out, okay some farmers are not quite so diligent as others but even with the best will in the world, those critters will escape. Some are more likely to escape than others, like Hercules our alapca. If any of them were out it was usually him. Eventually we got the better of him and managed to stop him escaping, but it took time to find out the best method of keeping him in. As far as cows are concerned, usually one strand of electric fencing will keep them in, but not all of them and not all the time. Putting up and taking down the fences is hard work and farmers have got other things to do with their day and so country dwellers  and visitors do need to take care on the roads and not expect them to be clear.

Turbjörn

Evidence of a visitor, but what animal?

We did get onto more philosophical fences too and wondered if some fences were meant to be broken. Some of the fences are their for our own good and sometimes they are there to keep us out of places we would rather be or are even better for us. So should you be breaking out of a fence today? Or should you stay where you are? Always worth a ponder or two.

Not this one for sure.

Tellus supporting the "Enough Food If Campaign"

Not again!

Oh yes! More snow, just when it had been
melting away nicely. What a way to greet
the new month

Oh yes! I have managed to damage my other arm this week, just as my left arm heals up nicely I went for a slide on the ice outside our apartment block. There was no thought, "this is going to hurt,"this week, it was instant pain. Ian is not often one to give much sympathy, would hate that anyway, but when he worries then it is a tad serious. He had to help me up off the floor and by the time I got to the apartment I was a little pale. It is a bit of a problem considering I'm right handed and it is another study week, but at least it is getting better than when I first hit the floor. Fortunately I can manage quite a few tasks with my left hand, but it's not easy. At least my injury got me a ride right to the door of my accommodation in Tartu, instead of being dropped off at the bottom of the hill and walking up. I also got a lovely bowl of sweet and sour veg and mini meatballs and a little later in the evening, whilst working on this blog in my garrett bedroom, I got an email that said lemon cookies freshly baked in the kitchen if you would like some with another cup of tea, how could I refuse?

We have had some nice weather too. This is a view from
a friend's farm

The studies are going okay, I'm coping with the statistics and getting used to the Estonian version of English, but there is one thing that is guaranteed to make me feel stupid! Plonk me in a foreign country where I don't know the language and try to interact with a machine. Bleh! Last week it was the cupless cocoa until I discovered where the cups were (underneath the machine of course, doesn't everyone know that? Well everyone except me, probably). The next was trying to extract a twix bar from a snack machine. Failed! And somehow there is a 20c coin in a slot that wasn't designed for 20c coins. Oh oh! I think the machine still works though. At least I now know the words for greeting someone, tea, coffee, thank you, please, pasta and beef stroganoff in Estonian. What more do I need? As long as I can politely get myself a drink and some food, that's fine for me.

The snow piling up in the local petrol station. I had to take
this photo from inside the car, because on my side the water
was pouring off the roof and down the door. If I had got out
I would have been soaked

As I said I am coping better with the stats, but guess who was the last to leave by far for the practical! Yup you guessed it, me! Some of the young whippersnappers left after an hour. Now had they finished? Can they whizz through their work faster than me? Had they conflicting timetables? Who knows, but I slogged on until the end, fighting with the computer to get the work done. The software we are using is open sourced, but it doesn't like Macs, as much as PCs and it is acting a bit peculiar on my computer - either that I am doing something wrong, which is equally probable. I will get there in the end though.

A grand looking fella

On the whole I am finding that the Estonians are very polite. People always seem to greet the bus driver as they get on the bus, they all seem to say thank you as they get off and I have never had the door opened for me so often in such a long time. Mind you I think I realised that it was mainly young gentlemen holding the door open for the older lady - so I'm feeling old now! Mind you the manners of one Estonian driver could do with some improvement, or more likely their observational skills! I have to watch the path whilst walking, as it is quite icy and so I don't take much notice of the road, the problem is that there are quite a few puddles too as the temperature has been hovering above zero during the day. Well you can work out what happened! I got absolutely covered by icy water, right over the top of my hat too. It is not good to get covered in muddy water whilst wearing a blue coat and so you can imagine that I blessed the driver mightily, especially as it took two attempts to wash the coat and it still has muddy spots on it. Not a good idea to have a light blue coat I guess.

Taking care of his ladies

Travel is getting better, I feel much more comfortable taking the trains and buses now. I even learnt something about knitting on one train journey. I have tried knitting on the round needles a few times, but not been terribly successful and resorted to the double pointed needles. The problem I had was that the number of stitches was too few to knit on a round needle and I couldn't work out how to knit say a hat using the needles I had. On the train I saw a lady knitting a small round something, not sure what it was, maybe a sleeve, and she had the spare wire from the knitting needles poking out from the knitting. The stitches, therefore were not evenly spread around the wire, as I thought they should be. Not sure if that makes a great deal of sense, to anyone except and expert knitter, but it just goes to show what you can pick up by being observant of others.

We still have snowy roads

I know God provides and he has certainly done that in the past and the money we have had has lasted a ridiculously long time since we've been here, but it is getting to the time where we need to make some choices, as building a house is going to whittle away at our finances. I want to be sure it is in God's plan and not just a wild idea, if it is part of God's plan then he will provide the means. I was asking for some surety on this and I felt him say that we will find the finances, but in some expected ways. Just to make sure I wasn't making it up, I asked for confirmation - always a wise move I find, before moving forward. The first unexpected surprise was to find out that I have overpaid our electric bill - not sure how that happened, but it means we don't have to pay for about 5 months, which is rather nice. A few days later we were treated to a box of chocolates. Not that surprising if it was a friend visiting but it was someone coming to do a job for us of finishing off the wardrobe. We still hadn't had the baskets put in, even though it was a year ago that the wardrobe was put in, just not got around to it, but we hadn't expected him to bring chocolates too. It would be nice if God dumped a whole wad of cash into our laps, but I don't expect that, I do expect him to just keep us going and see where that leads.

"Tell me! When will this white stuff go away?"

Ian's towing ministry has been a little quiet of late, despite all the icy weather. In fact he hadn't been able to serve the community of Latvia in that way for quite a long time. That did change at the weekend. We had rather a large dump of snow, over the weekend, in fact we got caught in blizzard conditions on the way home from a meeting on the Saturday night, not pleasant. The next day one of neighbours who has a little tractor was trying out his new snow plough attachment and helping by clearing the road way at the back of our apartment, unfortunately he went too far into the deep snow whilst trying to move the snow off the road and got his tractor stuck. Ian had gone down anyway as he needed to move the car to allow him to clear the roadway and so was on hand to pull him out.

The path to the right of the picture was
obliterated over the weekend and Ian
had to get the snow blower out once again

It wasn't the only tow of the week though, he had to pull himself out using our own tractor on our land today as he was trying to come home to take me to catch my lift up to Tartu. Our roadway has got quite nicely packed down over the winter, but just to the sides is some soft snow and with the new layer it was more difficult to ensure that he got into the right track and managed to slide off. It hadn't been a great day, as snow clearing was not what he really wanted to do today with the short amount of time he had to work and to cap it all, one of our chickens had a prolapsed vent (google it if you want the full gory details), but basically the poor chicken had difficulty laying an egg and ended up with bits hanging out that shouldn't be hanging out. The chicken has been given a chance to see if she recovers by bathing the area and pushing the bits back into place, if she recovers she can go back to the ark, if she doesn't, it will be soup I'm afraid.

The subject of a facebook enquiry. Amazing
what you can find out by asking a few
friends. This mysterious object is a pickle
container. The white handled bit can be
pulled out and the pickles are ready drained

During my trawl of the internet I came across a surprising discovery. I always thought the secret ballot was crucial to democracy, but now I find that perhaps that is not always the case. The secret ballot was used to stop people being bullied whilst voting in general elections, but a secret ballot is not so good when the voting should be open and transparent. Local councillors, members of Parliament etc. should all be accountable for the decisions they make and so in these cases secret ballots are not the way forward. In the CITES conference (a conference to decide on world trading rules for endangered species) has a secret ballot format, but people are suspected of saying they are going to vote one way but instead vote another. There needs to be more transparency in this case, that would allow people from the countries represented by the voters to call these people to account for their decisions. One intriguing aspect of whether a secret ballot enables or hinders democracy is in the event of cheating. What happens if those who find filling in ballot papers difficult have to rely on someone doing it for them? What happens if the person filling in the ballot paper on their behalf puts down a different candidate to the one stated? Would the results be different if everyone knew who had voted for who? Interesting and depends on the possibility of bullying or vote buying. Getting democratic processes right is more difficult than just getting a secret ballot obviously.