Been and gone

Someone has enjoyed rolling in the snow. Chanel is still
struggling with some skin issues though and it has flared up
again this week.

Winter has been back to visit again, but it can't quite make up its mind whether the season has finished for the year or not. The swans, the cranes and the geese seem to think that winter should have gone,, as they have been arriving back, but winter keeps checking back in. So some days it is white and sometimes it is that after winter brown, complete with mud. So in the spirit of the coming spring season we've been checking the websites for a new greenhouse.

I'm turning into my grandads, yes both of them! One used to
have an allotment and the other used to grow succulents and
cacti. These cups were too cute not to use and I thought they
made great places to grow something small, like these cacti.
I finally got them potted up this week

The view from the oak tree hill

Our large greenhouse needs some serious repairs, so we are looking to get a smaller one that we can work with this summer. I still have a backlog of tomatoes in jars and such like to see us through into next year, so shouldn't be too bad. It also means we can re-think the greenhouse space as a workshop cum events space. We will still have growing spaces, for that greenhouse ambiance, but the main part will be for ......... well whatever we decide to do.

I love the colours of spring starting to show through its
wintry dusting

The new smaller greenhouse will be put in the space where
the chickens were last year and extend past it. It will be
3x8m, so still a good size but not as big as the one we use now
which is 6x18m

The range of options for greenhouses though is mind-boggling. We decided on going for the maximum we can have without planning permission, which coincidentally fits well in a space we have. It means losing a couple of outside growing beds but they were only short beds anyway. It will also be well manured as it is where the chickens were last year. In addition to extra growing space while the greenhouse undergoes repairs we would need somewhere to store the feed for the alpacas but we have enough wood to build something, so that is a good start. That is as far as we got this week, as I'm still ploughing through the websites looking for the best option for us.

To keep the alpaca houses dry, Ian has put in a drain that he
empties. Unfortunately the water used to run into it, so Ian
made this elegant covering for it, l I jest, but it's functional at
least. The only problem is that now the water comes up from
underneath to fill the hole. The water table is so high.

Vanessa always looks toothy

On Thursday it will be the 12 anniversary of our arrival in Latvia. We won't be able to celebrate at the hotel where we first stayed for a week while our stuff was in transit from America, as it has suddenly closed. It has been struggling for a while and this lack of winter hasn't helped. Our area used to be a popular skiing destination, but it isn't possible to ski without snow and definitely not in this horrible wet stuff we have been getting this week. We had one week where it looked promising with a reasonable depth of the right kind of snow, but that was very early in the season and nothing much since then. As I mentioned before the lack of snow also meant the Schools Winter Olympics was cancelled and so that was another nail in the coffin for the hotel. Our problem of nowhere to celebrate is a minor inconvenience compared to the loss of another 32 jobs, in an area that has struggled with providing decent jobs anyway.

Meanwhile Silly Silla is sat outside in the rain and the snow.
Just why?

Oh is it snowing again?

The loss of the hotel has knock on effects for our village as it also means there are less and less opportunities for people to stay and something we have to consider for our felting course. Of course I now need to get on with the advertising for that, so people have a chance to book accommodation. It was something I was working on, but now it is a more urgent task. I don't think it will be possible to organise cabins before then, as that requires more cash than we have at the moment. Still it might figure in our reckoning on what we need in the future. We certainly cannot rely on there being a hotel for guests now.

When I saw the snow covered ice on the pond, it reminded me
of the painting, The Scream!

When Ian looks at it, he sees Australia.

Vanessa and Antonia are sensibly inside

Ian had some help at the weekend. One of our young neighbours wanted something to do, so Ian agreed to let him help on our land as long as he was up by 7:30am, as that is when Ian sets off. I was impressed, as he was up and ready. He helped Ian by shifting logs and branches so they are ready to pick up when the weather improves enough to drive a tractor on the land (which looks like it might be a while yet). He won't be helping with the animals though, at least not yet. He wasn't sure about the alpacas at all, in fact he was so unsure he was a few metres away from the fence, not even up close to the fence. It looks like he might need a bit of time to gain confidence around them. Oh well! At least he got done what needed to be done.

The sun is rising further round and the days lengthen. It will
soon be time to move out to the caravan again.

Mr. P. was the first to alarm us.

It isn't just the weather that has been on and off this week, my plans too have been on and off too. There is a seminar that I wanted to attend up in Tartu tomorrow morning, but it is only 90 minutes long and takes me a day to travel up and I could just would have just about been able get back after the seminar by bus and train. I was humming and hahhing over it, when two of our alpacas were sick on consecutive days. First Mr. P was ill. Ian rang me to ask if I was doing anything and if not would I come out and take a look at Mr. P. Typically of course, by the time I had got out there, he was improved, but still a concern.

Josefs is such a cutie, even if he does carry around a light
snack to keep him going

Herkules at his usual spot by the feeder. It is hard to believe
that he has lost so much weight over winter and yet he eats
well and normally is quite healthy looking these days, at
least for a nearly 16 year old alpaca.

On Saturday, Ian walked through the door and asked if tea was ready. Well it was, so we sat down to eat, but he explained that Herk was now sick and wouldn't get up to eat that evening. So as soon as we ate, we trekked back out to the land. This time there was no improvement. Herk was still sat on the floor and wouldn't get up when we tried to move him. Brencis then decided that something was wrong and maybe we needed protecting- oh that alpaca! I'm sure his heart is in the right place, but being so big he creates us real problems. Brencis tried to sit on Herk, which as you can imagine is not what we really wanted. We managed to get Brencis off and shunted him through to the other side of the alpaca house and shut the gate.

Josefs is very submissive to Brencis, but Brencis is not so
keen on the adulation

Turbjørn kept Herkules company in the night when he was
sick. Not that Turbjørn had any choice in the matter, but
at least we could trust him not to sit on Herkules

Now as you are probably aware, animals and children are never ill at convenient times, and that day was such a case. We tried to get hold of our vet, but she wasn't responding. We tried other options, but didn't get anywhere. Our vet eventually text us back, but she was in a theatre in Riga, so wasn't much help. Our neighbour also eventually got our messages and phoned back, they had been watching tv at the back of the house and so didn't hear me knocking. I went to pick our neighbour up and her son, she used to be a vet and works with cows and her son could translate. By the time we arrived, Herk was at least up and about and Ian had managed to swap Brencis and Herk around so that Herk was in a safer place, but still with Turbjørn for company.

Ilvija has been rolling in the snow like her mum

Mari looking happy with herself

After examining Herk, our neighbour decided he seemed cold compared to the others and his stomach seemed to be slow. He also seemed a bit gassy, so maybe that was part of the pain. We wondered if he and Mr. P. had found something in the hay that had given them some mild poisoning. It seemed to fit with the symptoms we could find in the alpaca book. She gave us some peppermint, wormwood and valerian drops, that is good for the stomach. Valerian is also a calming herb. Herk wasn't so sure about the drops on his food at first, but he ate it. We had to give him some more later and he seemed a bit more keen. The next morning he was very keen on the food. Phew! Emergency over. It is a good job we ate when Ian came back home as it was after 10pm before we got to our apartment that night.

Our winter wonderland.

The signs of spring are still there though

The following day I went out with Ian and we had a slow day pottering about and discussing greenhouses, as I mentioned earlier. We even opened the greenhouse door to enjoy the view outside, as the sun was out. It was still too cold to sit outside with a hot cup of coffee as there was a chill wind blowing, but Ian has managed a few times just lately - he's made of sterner stuff these days. It used to be him that felt the cold, now it is me.

A walk in the forest. Our forest will look
a bit different this next year as one of
our neighbours will be doing some more
cutting. Sigh!

A moody sky

Someone's sunbathing in the snow.

I don't believe it!

I mentioned in the comments last week that I might
introduce some of the characters we have on our farm,
particularly the alpacas. So here we have Veronica, also
known as Lady V and that kind of gives you a clue to her
character. She is too proud and probably too old now, to run
around with the youngsters. She is our oldest alpaca at 12
years old. She is also the most cautious and makes the
most fuss when I go up to see them, as she knows it usually
means something needs doing and someone isn't going to
like it. She is also the one we most have to watch
for kicking with her hind legs when she doesn't like
something. She gave birth to a cria last year, but it didn't
survive unfortunately, but hopefully is pregnant again this
year. She seems to have a very good and most productive
fleece of all of them. We don't know how fine it is, but it
handles nicely.

I can't believe I managed to let one of the most significant milestones of the year go by without mentioning it here on my blog last week. It is seven years since we moved to Latvia. We did go out for a meal to celebrate but just forgot to mention here. It is important because for the last seven years we have lived on savings and those savings are not going to last another seven years and so we have to transition into a new phase, whatever that phase is. It is still not looking clear yet, but we are ever hopeful, or at least I am. Seven years is a nice biblical number and I am often reminded of the story of Joseph, where Joseph interpreted the dream of Pharaoh about the period of seven good years, followed by the seven poor years that ate up all the produce from the seven good years. The last seven years haven't been poor ones for us, we have enjoyed them immensely and there is not much we would have done differently. They did just about eat all the savings of the previous seven years though. So we will be sowing seeds for the future now, both literally and spiritually and see where the next year will take us.

The little scamp

Trying their best to eat what little grass there is. They are
probably eating more moss than anything else. This is
why they are still not let out of the paddock yet. Not until
the grass is growing strongly.

There were also other significant milestones last week that I forgot about; the swans have been returning, heralds that the migrants are returning. They were followed by the geese, although some of them seemed a little confused as to which direction they were flying in, as Ian saw a flock heading south, but I am glad to say that most of them seem to have got the right idea. On Friday of last week we also saw two cranes flying in, or rather we heard them first and then saw them fly over. They are noisy birds. We are still waiting for the storks yet though. There are still patches of snow around, but they are few and far between and the weeds are starting to race away, getting a head start before the grass in our pasture areas. Still ground elder and nettle soup before long I think.

The moss is greening up lovely

The manure heap has been moved to the next plot where
our garden will be extended to next year. Ian has dragged
the spring-tine through it to start to break up the soil

I had a minor embarrassment, which wouldn't have happened if we had managed to learn Latvian in these last seven years. I misunderstood an email from a company. I thought they wanted the meter reading from last year and thought they had inadvertently put in this year's dates. Apparently they were trying to tell me they only want a yearly reading and they will do that themselves and not be sent monthly readings like many of the companies do here. Part of the confusion came from the dates which roughly corresponded to the dates when I transferred the name of the account over to me and not our friend who we bought the apartment off all those years ago. I know! It was rather a long time to get around to it, but we got there in the end. Part of the problem was using google translate which asked for a conversion reading. Google is far from perfect for the Latvian language, but usually I get by. Anyway it is all sorted now.

This area has been cleared of old logs, rubbish, some hay
bales and the solar dryer. The spring-tine has been put
through this too

Space for coffee time, out on the hill

I think for nearly as long as we have been here, we have had issues with the heating company that supplies heating to our apartment block and if it isn't the heating company it is with some of our neighbours over the heating. The issues have been many and varied, from not turning on heating promptly due to unpaid bills from other householders to incorrect charges, from sending cold water through the pipes and charging astronomical bills to homes being too hot. It would be nice to have our own system that we can decide when it goes on and when it goes off and how hot it runs in between, but it doesn't look like that will be settled any time soon. We are still arguing with the company over how much we owe for heating. The only change is that we now email and I actually get responses back within days. That's a bit of a novelty. These are some of the reasons we would love to sell or rent out our flat, but with heating bills like that, it makes me wonder who would want to.

Geese heading north

A little church, just outside of Rugaji

 This week we took a trip out to Rugaji, somewhere closer to the Russian border. I didn't see Putin at all, while I was there, but we did meet a very nice lady who is trying to help her community by helping them to apply for project money mainly from the EU. She loves the place and loves to help and yet the family still are not able to stay together, as her husband does not live with them. He is off driving trucks in another country to make ends meet. So many families here live separate lives with husbands or wives off in different countries, sometimes even leaving children with grandparents while they try to earn a living. For some it is an opportunity too good to be missed, for some it is a chance to get away from communities or governments they don't like and for some it is purely because they have to. There is so much land and forest here and yet it is more likely that the only jobs available are ones with small salaries, the majority of the money heading out to Swedish or Danish companies, who run forestry companies or agricultural enterprises raising rapeseed crops. It is a pity they haven't brought the more cooperative management style with them here to keep more of the money in the area.

A farmstead opposite the church. Rather different to our
hilly area, but more typical of rural Latvian landscapes

Ghostly looking Tellus and Turbjørn in the fog. Tellus is
looking remarkably white now the snow has gone.

The rest of the week was fairly mundane. I started some cabbage and onion seeds off and they are now racing away. We continue to treat Aggie and Herk's skin problems. Aggie gets a wound cleaner solution on her feet to keep them free from infection and they are healing nicely. Herk looks awful again, but this process always takes a while to get the hard crusty skin to soften up and come off, meanwhile he looks dirty and grubby with raw looking skin in places - although it isn't as raw as it looks because he doesn't flinch in the slightest when applying the oily cream. The good thing is that it does mean that these two are unlikely to be picking up new mite infections as both applications have mite deterrent herbs in them. This time of the year is the worst for mite infections as the numbers start to increase in the warmer days. The rest of the time has been spent on catching up with some odd jobs that I needed to do now the academic paper is out of the way, like actually doing some reading for information's sake and not for a paper and cleaning the apartment. Now I am preparing for the next paper that needs to be written and have a time scale for that to be done and prepare a presentation for next month. I have to get cracking on those before the spring sowing season really ramps up, which is close now that Ian has started preparing the ground for a new extension to the vegetable garden out on the land.

Enjoying the sunshine

Herk sitting and ruminating

Something I was pondering about this week was where do we get some ideas from? Often when listening to UK radio or reading a British newspaper, someone comments that Britain is such a small country. Not sure where we get that idea. It is an island true, but it isn't that small. It ranks 22nd (out of 249) in the world for population and 2nd or 3rd in the EU depending on which figures you look at. So Brits are fairly numerous. It is also about 80th by size in the world and 8th within the EU, so not huge land-wise but not small either. It does mean that Britain packs more people into the land area though (we always said it was way too busy). So why does it still happen that journalists etc. trumpet how small Britain is? Do they not check their facts? It is fairly easy to do after all with a little search through Google. Now if we were talking about somewhere like Denmark for punching above it's weight, so to speak, then you have somewhere that is small population wise i.e. 111th in the world and small size wise i.e. 133rd  (unless you include Greenland that is also part of the Kingdom of Denmark, which I'm not going to). Wonder what other facts we accept as truth that aren't really true?

Hopefully this works, but here is a video of Ian taking Aggie for a walk

It's official! Spring has arrived!

Last Monday

Friday - ground starting to appear

 

This Monday: I do believe I see grass!!!

The swans flew in this week, I heard them after Ian beckoned me outside the greenhouse to listen, he actually saw them flying. Heralds of spring! Stupid birds! They should have listened to the weather forecast first before flying in. The snow certainly has been melting quite fast and there are, or I should say were, definite patches of green appearing, unfortunately they have just all been covered up by some rather heavy snow showers this evening. The melting snow, however, means that the Spring time ritual has ensued of channeling water to where we don't mind it ending up and away from where it will create havoc. Our greenhouse is doing okay as the drainage system is now working properly, although Ian has had to use a mattock and spade to chip away the ice as the ground is still frozen but at least it is all flowing in the right direction. The question we ask though is, where is it all flowing to? The channel of water runs neatly to our top pond from which we draw water for the greenhouse in the warmer months, but ....... it isn't building up in that pond, it is building up in the pond below it and we don't know how. Sometimes we have had a structural failure on the side of the top pond, but that would mean the water runs straight down to the bottom where it makes a quagmire, not so this time - well not at the weekend anyway. Somehow the water is going straight through into the second pond and so there must be a different breach of our defences. Ian tried to relieve the pressure on the top pond by breaking through the ice so the water has somewhere to flow and preferably not through any holes created by animals earlier on in the year. After breaking through a spades depth of ice i.e. about 20cm there was still no build up of water in the top pond, now all we can do is wait for the ice to melt and try to see where the breach is.

The new attachment for the two wheeled tractor

You know why Spring has arrived though don't you? It is because Ian got a new toy, a snow blower!!!! So of course the snow started melting. Having said that it has still been useful as Ian cut a path down past our orchard which means we can get in there quicker when it all goes, he also cut channels down hills to give the snow melt somewhere to run rather than where we don't want it to go. It has also been useful to get rid of the snow from the side of the barn to try and reduce the water seepage, unfortunately that hasn't worked. We or rather Ian has managed to keep the area relatively clear of snow, but still the water is pooling badly in the barn and so that means we (or do I mean Ian?) will have a big job later on in the year digging major drain works down the side of the barn to prevent a reoccurrence next year. The snow blower was bought mainly because we know that next year it will be a lot harder to clear the amount of snow we will need to for the alpacas, to allow them plenty of opportunity to be outside. It will be a lot easier to take the snow blower than using the brute force of the tractor again, useful though that is. Ian has been happier though that the preparation he put into last year making sure that surfaces were as flat and clear of logs, stones etc. as possible has paid off as clearing snow this year has been a far easier job - well that and the fact there hasn't been as much. We have felt a lot more prepared though this year and I am sure that if we can get the barn drainage sorted then we will have an even better chance of keeping on top of winter and early spring duties next season.

  

A path to encourage water to move past
the barn and into the forest. 

Path past the orchard

A path down to the pond. That looks like a lot of fun

Something else I have been working on, is a memory quilt
for my parents. I am not sure who did the background but
 the pieces added are all from pieces of cloth and embroidery
that came from  my grandparents or pieces I did when I was
younger. The crinoline lady was a very typical piece of
embroidery and I am fairly sure both my grandmothers
sewed some. I have added the grass at the bottom with
 the dandelions and the blue sky to anchor it to the cloth.
The lace is a piece of tatting that my granny did many pieces of. .

I have spent the whole week working on my thesis for my project and it has been flowing along nicely, until today that is. My inspiration has got up and gone after taking the weekend off, but by the afternoon it was starting to come back. I am really pleased with the questionnaire I sent out, to date I have 207 back, which out of a population of 3486 for the whole district is not bad at all. Although it is around 6% of the population it is skewed to mainly the village I live in and not the rest of the district, also to the younger end of the population - not that that is a bad thing in itself. Knowing what the most active members of the community think is perhaps more important for the type of questionnaire I had as I wanted to know if people broadly speaking supported the farmers in their battle with the wild boar, and if they were supportive of hunting to do that and it is was fairly clear that people do. To date 74% or people don't think the wild boar should be allowed to dig up the farmers' fields and 70% agree with hunting the boar. Now before any of you get upset with me about advocating hunting, there are a few facts that maybe you should know. The first is that populations around here could be around 2-3 times higher than the point where academic papers say wild boar feeding should stop because numbers are too high. The second is that studies have shown that capturing animals and relocating them is likely to end up in either their death or them moving back, it also disrupts social family groups, hunting is actually kinder because it is quicker, with the result of possibly more ethically raised meat than in your local supermarket. Thirdly, fences don't keep out the wild boar and makes travelling around difficult for other animals. Lastly and not least before I boar you all to death, the ecosystem maybe suffering because of the high numbers of wild boar, with some farmers talking of reduced ground nesting birds, even the absence of ants and so they are not good for biodiversity at all - although that does need more research of course because I am not an ecologist, botanist or a zoologist.

The flowery piece top left is a piece I started many years
ago and never finished and so that is one of two pieces to
adorn this quilt. The triangular piece has lots of french knots
underneath, some of my favourite stitches. The white flower
is crocheted - hard to believe some of the fine crocheting that
my granny in particular did. The piece in the corner is some
cutwork, again both my grandmothers did many pieces of
cutwork so not sure who is responsible for it, but it was
never finished as it still has the blue outlines from the pattern.

Talking of ethical meat there was a report in the press this week and would you believe it they find that red meat is harmful, surprise, surprise! Is that really news at all? That statistic has been bandied around for ages. The one thing I do find is sadly missing is the details from differently raised kinds of meat. Is the meat from corn/soya fed cattle as detrimental as meat from those allowed to range freely on good quality grass? Feed animals well and they will feed you well! And it seems that the Soil Association were listening to me as they posted a report too later on in the week stating that most meat in the UK is grass fed beef and that is different to the report from an American university. Well that's a relief, but it means that vigilance is still required, as companies try to introduce, so called efficient forms of producing meat and milk. But do tell me, how is it more efficient to have someone feeding animals and tending to them because they get sick when they are all cooped up together, when they could be out in the fresh air, gathering their own feed? Saves tractor time too in cutting all that hay etc. when they can gather their own feed. Anyway when we get some eggs and hence chickens I shall be eating a lot more chicken, as I don't really fancy raising a cow just yet and although they will not be free range, they will be allowed good access to the outside in their movable ark, hopefully safe from predators.