On our farm we try to apply certain principles such as, being kind to the land, to grow our own food with the minimum of external inputs and not using chemicals. We are not perfect and our roadway shows it is not always possible to be kind to the land, especially in wet weather. We just try to minimise our impact in thoughtful ways when it is unavoidable. These principles are also echoed in permaculture where the idea is to view the land and the life attached to it as a whole, one to take care of and enhance as much as possible for the sake of the future. The principles outlined below are taken from the Permaculture Principles site and I like the part where it talks about adopting the ethics to help us to transition from being dependent consumers to responsible producers, which is what we are trying to do, little by little.
The downsides of wet weather and animals. Mind you, this would have been a lot worse with cows
A picture from the girl's paddock with the long winter shadows.
Permaculture is a creative design process based on whole-systems thinking informed by ethics and design principles.
This approach guides us to mimic the patterns and relationships we can find in nature and can be applied to all aspects of human habitation, from agriculture to ecological building, from appropriate technology to education and even economics.
I see the moles are working hard aerating the land. Hard to be grateful sometimes though because if the humps are not flattened then the soil gets into the hay
By adopting the ethics and applying these principles in our daily life we can make the transition from being dependent consumers to becoming responsible producers. This journey builds skills and resilience at home and in our local communities that will help us prepare for an uncertain future with less available energy.
The techniques and strategies used to apply these principles vary widely depending on the location, climatic conditions and resources that are available. The methods may differ, but the foundations to this wholistic approach remain constant. By learning these principles you can acquire valuable thinking tools that help you become more resilient in an era of change.
The road that runs past our land until they graded it later
Prepping a new feeder for the sheep. The old one is in pieces in the background
I think these kinds of ethics fit with God's idea of how we should work the land that he gave us. So in our efforts to try and work with our land and not against it we arranged to see some people connected to a permaculture organisation here in Latvia (link). We would love to join them on their workshops but we are usually busy on our own farm at the same time that they hold their workshops. Mind you it was nice to be able to just sit and chat in relative peace, which is probably not possible on a workshop day with all the other folks milling around. We especially went to see their grey water system to see how it works. A grey water system takes all the household water, except the toilet. We don't need one so much at the moment as we just throw the washing up water over the grass and let the grassland do its work. One day though we may need to find a different system and so it is nice to know how to go about dealing with water from a house that leads to clean water in the end. We also sat around drinking tea and eating Latvian garlic bread snacks whilst discussing life in general, I'm hoping they found it as relaxing as we did.
Ian has been fettling again. He has made an Idle Irene, or is it a Slothful Susan, no it's a Lazy Kate (front left). It is for plying wool, he has also made a bobbin winder or rather shortened something he had made before to fit the purpose.
Ian does all our spinning and here he is winding the wool he spun to make a skein for washing.
Veronica just having a natter with Chanel
Back to her prim and proper self now
Did I mention that Ian had just brought in some fresh hay? So of course on a nice bright day, the girls spent all day inside eating
I have been doing a lot of writing just lately and even got started on my PhD thesis proper so it is nice to have a day off every now and again. Mind you my days off involve things like, digging carrots, parsnips and beetroot, cleaning out chickens, sorting out vegetable beds to put manure on over winter, cutting back the asparagus and putting them and the herbs to bed for the winter with a nice cozy spruce coat. Of course I had to go and cut a few weed spruce trees down for the purpose. Keeps me out of mischief anyway. If we had a house out on our land, I would probably do more of that during the day like I do in the summer, but now I spend more time at our apartment. Sigh! One day!
Sofie asleep on a bag of chicken food. Obviously keeping it safe from the mice, which is a good job because Eyre keeps bringing them in
The leeks obviously enjoyed the wet summer we had this year
George in contemplative mood
As I mentioned last week in an attempt to try and move to living out on the land more we are continuing to sort out our apartment that we live in, so it is ready to sell next year. The current project is sorting out our dump room. I have disassembled all the IKEA shelving now that has travelled around the world with us and we took those up to our other apartment. I also cleared out the other dump room in that apartment so that we can put all the shelving into one room and then I have to re-stack everything in there. I also said last week that I dread turning into one of those hoarders who keep so much stuff you cannot move and at the moment it kind of looks like that.
One of the spring lambs. Not so little any more
Cabbages are finally hearting up, at least the leaves are still edible anyway
Texel greens. We had these a couple of sprigs of broccoli, the cabbage, and some Brussel Sprout leaves for a leafy stir fry this week.
Still some colour around from the Viburnum berries
It didn't help that we didn't manage to reassemble the shelving. Ian made some new shelves to add to the ones we already have, but somehow we didn't manage to get them sitting square on the uprights. We had spent the first part of the morning cleaning the chimney ready for the new heating season (it starts later in that apartment as we only really heat it to stop the pipes freezing for now) and so by the time we got around to sorting out the shelves it was getting late and we were hungry. We got one set sorted, but gave up with the other and left it for another rainy day. It looks like we will get a chance later on in the week as the forecast is still not looking good. I thought we did well though, the weather has not been the sort to encourage a positive, happy atmosphere and yet we didn't fall out at all.
The deer made a return visit
A Michaelmas Daisy still hanging on in there
Brencis is turning into a fine young chap.
Facebook is one of those things that does consume too much time, but it also provides us with plenty of opportunities too. One was getting to know the folks at the permaculture organisation and setting up the meeting this week. Another one is getting to know new people and this week I have been connected with more alpaca owners, who we will hope to see next year. They live too far away to go and see them and be able to get back to put our own animals away, so we need longer days before embarking on that trip.
They are supposed to be white!
I erected this stone monument so that I wouldn't lose the stones and get into trouble when Ian cut the grass. They are still there
A nice photo of Mr. P. He is hard to photograph at times
I also had an interesting discussion about rural Latvia and education this week on Facebook, with someone I haven't chatted to before. I like to hear other's perspectives and test out my own theories. It sharpens my own thinking for a start and keeps me looking for alternatives to the way things work in Latvia now. It was out of that discussion that we found out about a couple who have recently moved to Latvia to start farming relatively near to us, one is Latvian and the other English. I made contact and so hopefully they will come over to see us and our alpacas weather permitting, so we are looking forward to that.
The pond freezing over again
I love the rays of sunshine shining through the forest
The sunset after a very dreary day. A big difference to summer when the sun sets much further to the right and I don't have to practically hang out of the window to take a picture. At least I didn't drop my phone as I was worried that I would
So on these wet dreary days besides writing I have also been trying to sort out arrangements for going to another conference, this time on the bioeconomy. There is a drive by the EU to build the bioeconomy and increase sustainability in the process. Of course this affects rural areas and so it will be interesting to see where they are going with this. I am particularly interested to see where their focus is and how they build up the rural areas to take advantage of these initiatives. It usually only benefits incomers who have an understanding of business and doesn't always address the issues of rural infrastructure to make sure it can continue. Too many initiatives start and then fizzle out and I am keen that this does not happen this time around, so sorry Mr, Ambassador I cannot make it to the British Embassy event again this year, maybe another time.
These amazing creations do not appear every year, but fascinating when they do. They are called Frost flowers
I won these gorgeous buttons from a lady who does some
beautiful embroidery calle Karen and you can find her
blog here. She does some amazing work and mainly in
white - if I used white it would be multicoloured by the
time I finished.
It has felt a busy week once again. Trips into Riga were timed with visits to the tractor shop - I'm beginning to wonder if that is all part of the experience of visiting us that we have to at least try and go to the tractor shop. We went to pick up a new cutter bar on the way home, which we had reserved on the first trip after collecting our son from the airport. They had a special offer on one that is good for rough ground, with pointy things on the front to stop the cutter bar coming into contact with stones. It was really funny as the sales guy was trying to explain why there was a difference between the cutter bar they had in stock and the one we have and none of us could come up with anything more technical than pointy things. We don't need a new cutter bar, well not yet, but we have come to rely on this piece of equipment for keeping our land in check and to tackle the ground elder through regular cutting - much faster than using a strimmer - which means that if it was to ever break we would be stuck, hence the decision to buy the new one, especially since it cost less than our original one.
Our son driving the big little tractor
Our trips into Riga are a bit of a nightmare at the moment as they are constructing new tarmac roads on just about every route into Riga from our place. It is lovely when they are done and we have some nice level tarmac roads to travel on instead of the dirt roads, but for some reason they do not do a stretch and then move to the next point. Oh no! They have to work on it at several points at once and leave gaps in between where nothing is done - it is very bizarre and means you have no idea at which point you will come into contact with the road works.
Our missing bale of hay. This bale
rolled down the hill onto our neighbours
land and wedged itself in some branches
which saved it a trip into a ditch. Not quite
sure how we are going to get it out yet. We
can't roll it out as it is much too heavy and
there is a steep bank to roll it up to the field.
I still had some studying to do and so it meant that father and son could spend a bit of time together. Our son was very willing to help out when it came to operating machines and so the orchard got mowed with a lawnmower, the area around our currant bushes was mowed with the two-wheel tractor and he even got to do a bit of grass cutting with the big-little tractor. Our cellar is also now virtually clear of wood, not sure if our cellar just got damp through the damp wood being put down there or because there is some water coming in, so we need to give it a bit of time to assess the situation. When the cellar hopefully dries out a bit, we will stack it up with some more dry wood ready for winter. We did take our son out for meals as promised, one to our local hotel for some of their famous chocolate pudding - cake on the outside and it should be runny on the inside but this time it wasn't, still nice though. We also went to Ķirsona Muiža which we have nicknamed the Disney palace and was built by the same company that built the Lido in Riga, which all Brits that I know have to visit when they go to Riga, just to sample a range of Latvian food.
Our monster tomatoes
We also took time to visit our friends and show our son around the farm, looking at lots and errr lots and errr lots of cute baby bunnies. It is hard to look at them and think food but that is what they are being grown for, as the meat is healthy due to being low in fat and of course they breed like rabbits and so that means a lot of meat in a short space of time. We had quite a laugh as our friend's daughter has a knack of getting animals to follow her, usually it is the goats but this time it was chicks and it was hilarious watching the chickens chasing after her with their little legs going nineteen to the dozen. We came home from there with a pot of honey, the last honey of the year as all the bees make from now on is for over the winter and so it is not good to take any later. It is this time of the year the beekeeper also starts to treat the bees for various illnesses and to start feeding them to make sure the reserves are built up. Our son decided honey from the farm was far superior to the stuff from the shops - not bad for a city boy really.
On our misty trip into Riga. This shows one of the many
disused fields turning slowly into forest
Saturday was forecast to be wet and so we decided that we should sweep the chimney at our other apartment. It was a job we were dreading as we have one bad experience of sweeping chimneys. Most of the time back in England, our middle son and Ian would tackle the sweeping together, as we had an awkward fireplace made up of rough hewn stone - not ideal for a good seal. Most times they had a good system going but once it failed with rather catastrophic effects. Soot ended up everywhere and it took me a week to clean that room, including some rather large curtains. This chimney that we were cleaning this week doesn't have a cleaning chamber and has to be virtually dismantled to clean it, which proved a little tricky at first but eventually we got it separated without covering everywhere with soot - an amazing feat in itself. In fact it all ran rather smoothly and we got it all put back together and tested it with a small fire - no problems at all.
It's amazing to watch the guys who stack these hayricks
they are so fast. They do the field in about a day. These
ricks allow the hay to dry out and now they are slowly
being collected in.
I was hoping for a bit of a slow day on Sunday, taking things easy, but I got chatting with a neighbour at our other apartment and she was asking when we were going to dig up our potatoes. I said sometime this week, but couldn't tell her that it was because the weather forecast was looking good for the whole week. She showed me some of the potatoes she was digging up and some looked like they were going rotten, probably from blight and her garden is higher than ours, therefore should be a bit drier. This news got me bit worried and so we had a change of plan and decided to dig up our potatoes that afternoon. Ian went to get the two-wheel tractor as he was planning on cutting someones grass the next day and he had a go with the potato lifter. It was hardwork and we realised that he needed a guide to work towards to keep a fix on where the rows were, but it worked and we know how to use it better next year. Our potatoes were actually quite good from that plot, and no more than half a dozen bad ones, so we were really pleased. Maybe our neighbours put them in the same plot each year, or maybe their potatoes are more susceptible than ours, I don't know, but I will make a point of looking to see where they plant potatoes next year.
This little chap was determined to help out and at times we
had to stop digging because he was in the way. He seemed
to be completely fearless.
By Monday our nice dry week seemed to be evaporating with an increase in forecasts for rain, so after I had picked two buckets of beans plus removed all the weeds from the potato plot and Ian had repaired the clutch on the two-wheeled tractor that seemed to be slipping, we then got cracking with digging up the second plot of potatoes (the shorter rows running across the hill meant it was quicker to resort to the old-fashioned method of digging with a fork and not using the two-wheeled tractor). We have found out that straw definitely helps to suppress the weeds but also benefitted the size and number of potatoes produced, well that and our neighbours sprinkler must have been having an effect too, as our first two rows of potatoes were ginormous, with many big baking potatoes. We just got most of the potatoes in and was gathering up the last ones when the rain started. Phew! Just in time! We will give the plot a week for weed seeds to germinate, dig those in and then scatter some clover seeds over it to hold the ground together over the winter to stop the nutrients leaching out and to give a green manure to dig in in the spring. Well that's the plan anyway and very much depends on the weather. The ground has gone quite soft and so it is going to set our cutting of the last of the hay back. Fortunately we don't want it for feed or anything and will only compost it but if we don't cut it the dominant weeds take over and as we are still trying to improve the grassland it needs to be done.
We took the time for a stop and a cup of tea on the way
home from Riga. The mist had gone and from this point
you can see for miles and miles.
One of the effects of living in an ex-Soviet country is that many of the older people still speak Russian, but we found out this week, it is not just the people, sometimes it extends to the animals too. Our friends have a new horse rescued from an abattoir, well when I say new I mean new to them and they were relating to us the other day how they have been riding it and proving it is not just a horse for pulling carts and agricultural equipment, which is what they have it for. The horse, however, only seems to understand Russian and not necessarily the sort of Russian you learn in school. I get the impression it is not the gentile kind of Russian you use talk to your grandmother either.
There is lots of forest in Latvia
Not had has as much time on the internet as usual (probably a good thing) but one news item that did strike me is that Sweden apologised for a turning a blind eye to post-war Soviet occupation of the Baltic States. I think this is a very good thing as it acknowledges the mistakes of history. The Swedish Prime Minister stated that Sweden had a "debt of honour" to the Baltic States for the way they behaved. I think they still do have a debt of honour for turning a blind eye to the way the Swedish banks have dealt with the Baltic States, using practices not used in their own country, hiding the details of how much interest is paid on loans. Oh yes! I know the poor always end up paying higher rates because they are considered a poor risk, but how many could pay back if they weren't being charged extortionate rates? I know that the Swedish banks are not the only ones to operate dual standards and legal but immoral practices but I still think these things should be acknowledged and promises made to reform dealings. Instead we have the situation where the banks are returning to profit while the nation is weighed down by debt incurred through immoral lending practices.
I shall leave you with a link to a Youtube clip of a young girl aged 10, Ta'Kaiya Blaney from the tribe Silammon, singing about the effects of oil extraction from tar sands, called Shallow Waters. The lines "If we do nothing it will all be gone" really echoes through my mind and makes me more determined to keep going and trying to do what is right.
Oh yes before I forget. Last week Karen asked what did goat taste like? The first meal we had tasted a bit like a cross between a low fat lamb and stewing steak, but that could be how I cooked it. The rib we had today was much more like lamb but without the fat.
