Winter's last stand?

An icy scene

Is it winter's last stand? Probably not, there maybe more snow again tomorrow, but in between spring peeks out and so did the poet in me

Chanel enjoying the snow. She is starting to show her
pregnancy

Winter’s last stand
The swelling buds speak of times to come
Peeking out from their furry coats
The soft wind whispers, “Soon”
The love-struck birds chirp in echo, “Soon”
The warming rays embrace the earth and murmurs sleepily, “Soon”
Winter screams back “Never!”
Covering the earth once more
In a blanket of white.
But already his power is spent
He recedes
Thrashing into the waters of the raging river.
Losing his grip on the earth once more
Spring rises drowsily from her long sleep
Then racing with abandon
Lights the ground with a creeping verdant layer
Trees rush to embrace the warmth
Bursting with wavering branches,
Unfurling flags of the brightest green
Eager to pronounce the coming season.
Spring has come!

At least we got to see the sun this week

Flags flying in the stiff breeze in Tartu
outside the gym of my university

It has been a week of meetings and writing. I had a meeting with my local colleagues in Tartu on the Tuesday and had the privilege of getting the key to the office for two whole days. I've given it back for now as I won't be up for a little while, or not that I know of anyway. The following day was a bit hectic and started early with a visit to the health centre for my employment health check. Everything was normal, little does she know then. Weight, a tad high because I've put some back on, but normal for my age. Waistline a centimetre too big, but normal for my age. Blood pressure, just towards the higher end, but normal for my age and not too high anyway considering I had to try and find the place first. Anyway you get the idea. I did find out I was a centimetre higher than I thought I was, so a whopping 153cm and not 152cm. Close!

Ian halter training Josefs

A view of the old and new parts of the university

The doctor asked me about the stresses of the job, potential risks etc, Did I have a proper chair to sit at the computer? Do I sit correctly? Errr! Of course... not! But I wasn't going to say that. I have installed an app on the computer to remind me to take my focus off the screen and to get up and move around though. The app started off at every 10 minutes but that drove me mad and so it is now set for every 20 minutes for a microbreak and longer breaks every hour. It still drives me mad, but I embrace the distractions as something necessary. She was surprised that I don't suffer from issues with my wrists as I don't use a keyboard for my laptop. I think I would have more issues with keyboards than my laptop, but each to their own I guess.

It was as cold as it looks

The benches by the river look a little empty at this time
of the year

The health check was an hour long and I had to get a taxi, paid for by the uni, to get to the office to join in the Skype meeting with my international colleagues. I was representing our team as one had to go to the doctors and the other was lecturing and couldn't get out of it - hence the taxi to make sure I was on time. This was followed by another meeting with my local colleagues since they were back in the office by the end of my Skype meeting to fill them in on what had been said. I then had a bit of time to work in the office before heading on down into town to get a bus card so I could then go to the Border Police to collect my new Estonian ID card. Phew!

Just a few days ago and we actually saw
grass, Ian saw some cranes were flying
over and we both saw geese. Today it
is back to white

This morning's sunrise

Thursday morning my friend took me down to the tax office. I had been told to go down there by the university personnel department, so I dutifully complied. I asked the lady at the desk if she spoke English, to which she replied "No!" very firmly. Hmmm! Good start! So in classic English style I explained very slowly what I needed. I suspected that she might know a little bit of English really and at least enough to get by and she did. She got out a form for me and I realised that it could be a bit of a problem for me, as it meant I would have to change my tax residency. Whilst it is okay to have more than one place to be resident, it is usual to choose only one place for tax residency. The lady at the desk called in a senior member of staff, who spoke English.

Someone's been out in the snow

Jakobs looking cute

I explained to the lady that although I work for an Estonian University, I worked most of the time from my home in Latvia. This would mean my tax residency should be Latvia. I also said, I really didn't want to change this at the moment due to Brexit, as it could cause me issues later. She smiled sympathetically and agreed. She explained the university just needed to put that I was non-resident. The university were worried about the travel expenses that were not covered in the budget to pay me for travelling up to meetings in Tartu. I explained that it was fine, just think of me as resident in Estonia for part of the time, just not the whole year and that would work. I also mentioned the B word to them too.

No alpaca was hurt in the making of this photo. 

The melting snow earlier on this week
has meant Ian was on drain duty, trying
to make sure all the water was running
away from the alpaca houses. 

The B word was mentioned more than once this week. I had to explain to my international colleagues that if they wanted a face to face meeting, then they would have to convene in Estonia because I might not be able to travel if the UK left the EU without a deal, until my status is settled. Oh yes! Less than three weeks away and I can make no guarantees to anyone about my status. Not as if we live in a war zone either. It is extremely exasperating, but there is absolutely nothing I can do about it, except watch the circus in the UK Parliament to see where it is going. What an absolute shambles.

Chanel, Veronica and Josefs all enjoying the sunshine

George thinks the sunshine is something to smile about
anyway

I had been keeping up with news on an expat Facebook forum and contributed a few comments from time to time. I was a little surprised to get a request to write an article for them. I took a bit of time to find out more about them and then decided to give it a go. It was only short and didn't take a huge amount of time to write. It was something swilling around in my brain anyway. I was quite pleased with the response to the piece, it seems to have hit the right note and people have been quite kind in their comments. (You can read it here)

So does Freddie. He wasn't so sure about having to stand
still to put cream on his legs the first time, but he now
just accepts the process

Even Herkules looks happy to see the sun

I finally made it out to the land to see the alpacas again. Not sure that the alpacas were so pleased to see me though, as the girls were given Vitamin D injections and Freddie had some of my magic cream applied to his legs. The first day I went out the paths were a bit icy but we could see more and more of the grass appear as the day went on. Today we are back to whiteout with heavy snow showers on and off in the afternoon. So I still haven't made it out skiing yet, but at least Freddie got some more of the magic cream and I Skyped with my Estonian colleagues from the caravan in a snow storm. It's a good job the caravan is still in the greenhouse at the moment.

George practicing his yoga

More sunbathing alpacas, this time Amanda and Silla

Bad but not that bad

The view from Ian's home. Well he does spend more time in
the caravan than he does in the apartment

The weather this week has been much cooler, not quite cardigan weather yet, but certainly a shirt over the t-shirt weather or a blanket on top of the sheet weather. We had been forecast some heavy deluges again and since Ian's modifications to the barn and alpaca house have not had a thorough testing yet, he decided to stay out in the caravan so he could be prepared. I was stopping at home to write my blog and then be at home to collect the milk in the morning. Also we were a little wary in case it rained in under the window at home too. In the end it was a heavy drenching drizzle, but not the great deluge.

We processed some more buckwheat this week. Here
you can see the chopped and sorted seed on the floor
of the greenhouse to dry. We also bagged up the wet
grass, leaves and stalks to see if we can make silage
from it. Nothing wasted - we hope!

I love the colours in this photo. In the
front are Adam Tomatoes. No not
Adam's tomatoes, that is the name of them

We are now officially in an emergency zone, but don't panic, it is nothing to do with the Russians or anything that bad. It does have everything to do with the wild boar though and we have been hearing shooting over the last couple of days. So since we don't have pigs on our farm then the threat of the African Swine Fever, for us is nothing to worry about. I am not sure if one of our neighbours has pigs this year and that would be sad for her, as the pork she gets from those animals is amazing. Then again what else would you expect from someone who feeds her pigs on milk fresh from the cow. The African Swine Fever has been spreading westwards from the Belarus border for a few weeks now and so it was not entirely unexpected to see a state of emergency being declared as the high pig population begins to succumb to disease. In some ways it was only a matter of time.

Some of the tomatoes are rather large. Must be the alpaca
manure we used this year

We also have a forest of peppers

We went to the tax office this week to declare Ian's income, well the transfer of the land into Ian's name, which is effectively an income. We were expecting a hefty sum to pay and I transferred some money in anticipation, as it had to be in by August 15th we were told, when we wrote the contracts out for the donation of land into his name. When we got to the tax office, however, we were told that he doesn't need to do anything about it until June 15th 2015, by which time all money needs to be paid and details declared. It was also only half the amount to pay that we were expecting. Bad, but not that bad! What was good news too is that I got a tax rebate that was just over half the remaining amount. Funny how paying out a few hundred Euros can seem not too bad, when you are expecting whacking great bills.

And the squash glut has begun. To be more precise these are
Spaghetti squash, also enormous and self-seeded next to
the alpaca manure heap - do you sense a theme here?

This plant or plants grew from some squash that ended up
on the compost pile

We had a response to the interview that our young neighbour wrote for the local paper about our alpacas this week. A lady from the opposite end of the region asked to come and see us, as she has spun with dog fur, but never alpaca and she would like to give it a try. We let her take away 9 x 50g bags of fleece to try. We have to decide how much we would charge if we were selling it but she has told us that she would charge €10 for a 100g ball. It sounds quite a bit but a commercially produced 50g ball costs over €3 and that wouldn't be wool from our own Tellus. Neither would it be giving meaningful employment to a local person, which is what we aimed to do. It might take her a little while, as she also works during the day and this is very much an experiment. Can't wait to see the result.

One of the many squashes growing in the compost pile.
We are surprised to see so many squashes, since they seem
to have got off to a really late start. Better late than never
I suppose.

Well since there is already a photo of some alpacas, here
is a photo of Bella, our cat, in her favourite sleeping place,
a tray of string on some shelves in the greenhouse.

Talking of alpacas, I forgot to mention the other day that Ian tried to cut Estelle's teeth again, this time with two strong and willing helpers. Unfortunately she still wasn't cooperating very well and Ian ended up with a thick lip and a bit of a bash on the head. Nothing too major and no broken bones for either party. He did manage to take off a bit of her teeth, but not enough and Estelle is still friends with Ian. We have also started putting oil on Herkules' skin again. It wasn't getting any worse and he just seemed so fed up with us messing around with him and the hot weather that it wasn't worth making him feel any more miserable than her already did, so we stopped it. The skin though still looked a little crusty and the reason for resuming his treatment. He also managed to pick up another eye infection and so we were treating him for that anyway. Bless him! He really seems to be picking up anything going at the minute. At least now it is cool he is out eating for most of the day and that can only do him some good. Agnese also has been having a problem with her feet. We are getting to the stage where we are almost paranoid about mites, but I think this might be a fungal infection, a bit like athlete's foot. Cor! If it isn't one thing, it's another.

Our little punk haired chick. These are onto their third home
now. 

We have had fun and games with the chickens today. I decided that the arks all needed moving, as they are on a regular basis to give the hens fresh grass to eat and manure another part of the field. The problem is that the big chicks were scalping the area way too fast. We don't mind them scalping the area, as that was working for us in the part of the new vegetable plot that hadn't been planted up, but not good if they needed moving too often. Ian can't move them on his own easily. So we decided on a big move around of hens from one ark to another. The little chicks have been little terrors for escaping from their enclosure until Ian made them a new gate that they couldn't get out from, but they have now been moved into the ark that the big chicks were in. The big chicks have moved into Ark 2, as that has a bigger box and just a little more floor space and Ark 4 which the little chicks were in, was moved up the ladies alpaca enclosure so they could start on becoming cleaners in there, in other words start to reduce the fly population. We had problems with that plan though, Agnese chases the chickens and they escaped through the fence. We were hoping that at least the bigger white ones, wouldn't be able to - well they can when they are being chased by a baby alpaca - it's a bit of a squeeze, but doable.

Couldn't miss Sofie could we! She is being super affectionate
at the moment.

So those are the highlights from our farm this week and sometimes it all still seems surreal, writing about our life on our farm. Someone wrote on their facebook wall, "If you were given a $1 million would you move to a country where you don't speak the language," hah! Well we have done that for less. There are times when the reality of what we are doing hits me, that money can run out and the dream we have been living taken away for some reason beyond our control and sometimes well within our control if we make stupid decisions. It can be kind of crushing and disabling, but I cannot live like that for long, others have risen from depths far worse than this and become overcomers in their lifetime, others have suffered much and so what right have I to sit and bemoan what might happen and hasn't yet? So it may have been a bit of a tough year so far, but there will be other years, both good and bad. So here's to the future and I will keep plugging on.

More grapes, this time very sweet red ones. The wasps seem
to prefer these too, not so keen on that idea.

One of those issues where others suffer far worse is in the current Ebola epidemic in Africa. To me it does seem reminiscent of a cholera epidemic in Victorian times, where the masses can succumb to it and the wealthy don't care, and seeing as many of us in the West are relatively very wealthy, that means us. The upper classes did not put their hands in their pockets to confront diseases like cholera, until it came to their very door, then they realised it was serious, deadly serious. After the rude awakening of their senses they then started to develop public health and sanitary services to deal with such problems. Ebola may prove to be such a disease, with money pouring in, once it is realised that to stop it coming into our own homes we have to support meaningful development of health care in other nations, because it can affect us too.

Nude tomatoes. The lower temperatures usually means that
blight will set in and rather than wait for that to happen
I took off all the leaves and we will stop watering them.
They can just then carry on ripening on the vine and with
plenty of airflow, that should stop the dreaded disease.

Last but not least, I want to advertise a website set up by a follower of this blog. Gunta contacted me a while ago after noticing a comment of mine on another blog. Gunta was born near where we live here in Latvia but moved away when she was one years old when her family fled before the advance of the Russian army in the Second World War. She loved seeing photos of her homeland and hearing a bit about the place and so we have been in email contact and even Skyped a few times - a bit difficult due to time differences though. Gunta takes some amazing photos and now she has a website set up to sell them, so take a look at "Gunta Style"

Noshing time

Ian rotavating the orchard. The yellow coat is not to keep
rain off but the mosquitoes

Ian raking our new orchard

We had to pay a visit to the tax office this week to register our new company. We were given a book of codes to describe what our company is going to do, there were hundreds of codes and some were very similar to each other, so which ones more closely matched what we planned to do? Tricky! Fortunately they were also in English so we didn't have to rely on our dear friend to translate it all, in fact she gave me the book to make the decisions; don't blame her really as she has so much to do because most of the information etc is in Latvian, of course! Well we decided on mixed farming for one, herbs another, silvoculture with something else and I can't remember the rest (plus the list that I do have is in Latvian and I can't read the writing very well), I think we managed to cover all the different bases though that we are endeavouring to include in our company without being so specific that we haven't got room to grow or diversify if need be.

Inside the greenhouse is now planted up with tomatoes
cucumbers, melons, peppers, chillies and  sweetcorn 

It has been a very busy week in the garden as we try and get as much started as possible, the season is short but thankfully intense. I sowed some seeds in trays in the new polytunnel,  it was so nice not to have tray after tray of seeds on our windowsills but unfortunately something got into the polytunnel and noshed on some of the seeds. Whatever it was wasn't that fond of the beans as only one was half-eaten but the winter squash which was just sticking out of the soil awaiting some more compost to cover them up were all neatly picked out bar one. I hope the one it left will produce something as the aim was to save the seed to produce more next year. It wasn't the only thing that got noshed either, one of our new apple trees had its barked noshed and so they are all now covered with a natty new coat made out of fleece, not sure if it will do the trick or not but it is the best we can do for the time being. Our orchard is looking rather good now as it has been rotavated, raked and seeded with grass and clover (clover to give nitrogen to the trees), okay the rotavation should have been done first but we had to get the trees in quick and early spring or early autumn is the best time to put them in. What we need now is some gentle rain to water the seed in, although in practice what will probably happen is all the grass seed ends up at the bottom of the orchard.

Our tomatoes are racing away now

I have also been well and truly noshed by mosquitoes, my head is like a relief map of the alps, my hands are covered in bumps and I even have a few bites on my knees as the the mossies took advantage of a gap in my jeans, it wasn't even a big gap but they found it. The problem is so widespread in Latvia this year that getting hold of insect repellent is very difficult and even if you find it there is only the stuff with DEET in, which is definitely effective at keeping the little blighters at bay but makes me feel ill in the meantime. We have a little Boots insect repellent for kids, left over from last year, but to be honest it is so vile as it makes us wheeze when it is sprayed, how someone can spray it on kids we do not know and so we would rather not use that either. Hopefully our youngest son who is coming out at the end of this month will bring some citronella insect repellent with him, otherwise he is back on the plane to get some. One thing that I have been talking to God about is the mosquitoes, if the earth will eventually be redeemed will there be mosquitoes and if there are will they still be drawing blood? And if we are a part of redeeming the land for his glory will he get rid of the mosquitoes? Unfortunately I haven't had an answer on that one yet and so I guess we will still have to put up with the little blighters for a little while longer.

Speedwell, I think!

I am not noshing quite so well though as I have more tooth problems, a filling fell out, it is sensitive but fortunately not painful. Can't complain though as it is a filling which was put in when I was pregnant with our middle child who is now 22 - lasted a while then and certainly lasted better than the two gold crowns which were put in first and I somehow managed to swallow. Whoops!

Rainbow coloured beetle

The wildlife around is seems to be bursting with energy and colour now even with the cooler weather we have had this week. There are loads of ladybirds on the land and some rainbow coloured beetles (see the photo), I have no idea what they are called though. One incredible sight I saw when I went to fetch some water for our plants from the pond were shoals of tadpoles, not sure if that is the technical term for a group of tadpoles but the pond was black with them, they were all congregated together but slowly moving off in waves. We stood and watched them for ages, marvelling at the seething masses and then suddenly we thought of our pond on the land and grabbed a bucket and caught some. We put the bucket in the back of the car, wedged in nice and tight, but one thing you have to know about Latvia is that some of the roads are only gravel roads and so are not the smoothest of rides. When we got to the land we were greeted with some very sad little tadpoles on our runner board at the back and a few swimming around in the ridges of our plastic lined truck boot (not very technical I know but I am trying my best!), fortunately not many had escaped and those that had we scooped up and put them back in the water. We poured them gently into our pond and Ian assures me there doesn't appear to be any dead ones floating but lots still in the pond swimming around, so we are very happy about that.

A relief to some maybe but I have not pondered much this week as I haven't had a great deal of time. Hopefully once all the seeds are in then things will quieten down a bit and I will have more time but then I am looking at the backlog of washing and cleaning so perhaps not! Heh ho! It is different from studying anyway.