Home again!

This might not look the most exciting picture of the
year, but it is to us. It shows we have more grass than
last year and so potentially much more hay. We will
just need some dry weather after this next week and
we will be happy.

A varied week to be sure, this week. It started off with rainy day planning for our next Latvian Alpaca Adventure, then onto a conference and finished off with some weeding in the garden. Well that is the very abbreviated summary of the week. It was good to be able to have a few days to reflect on what we had done and what could be done better and what could stay the same. Overall we were quite happy with the way it had gone, especially since this was our first organised adventure. We feel confident enough to be able to offer something similar for next year about the same time of year. too Although there were things we felt could be run over two days instead of one, we decided to leave it as it is because we are so busy with other farm chores at that time of the year. The weeds took over during the week and some seeds I planted either did not come or got swamped by the weeds, all I do know is I couldn't find some of them. Mercifully that was not the case for all of them and some seemed to have made a bold attempt at holding off against the onslaught. If we had a worker or two, that wouldn't have been an issue, but we are not at that stage.

Still no babies and Aggie looking very tired

Alpaca lined nest that Ian found on the floor

There was a bit of adventure on the way to the airport to drop off Heather our felting tutor. They have been doing bridge repairs for a while now on the route we take and quite often at night the bridge has been closed. Unfortunately it was closed during the day this time. It was very confusing as there was also a detour on the road down to the crossing. Maybe I missed the notice of the closure somewhere, but I wasn't the only one. I realised that it was closed when the guy in front turned his car around to go back, not sure how the truck that was in front of him managed though. Maybe it is still there! Who knows! It did mean I had to take a new way back and I was quite surprised at the route. I went over another hydroelectric dam further south of the one we normally take and it was quite a stunning view in the sun. I'm glad I wasn't going the other way though, as they were doing roadworks on this one too and the queue going the other way was pretty bad. 

Buckwheat, beans and sunflowers growing in this plot

A model of the old castle in Kandava

The day after dropping Heather off at the airport, I had to go back into Riga on the bus, so an early start to take a trip to Kandava in West Latvia for the Third Latvian Rural Parliament. At the bus station in Riga I had a bizarre conversation with an old lady. Eventually through a bit of miming I realised she wanted me to look after her bags while she nipped to the loo. Strangely enough she was travelling to the village where I live and where I had set out from in the morning. She chatted along to me and patted me on the knee, not what I expect in Latvia, but she was just a very warm kind of lady and I don’t think it was too much alcohol either. Goodness only knows why she trusted me, maybe the grey hair 

Kandava had many decorated buildings

We had a field trip to a couple of farms.
This one is famous for being used for
filming shows about rural life. The buildings
were completely covered in old implements
that the lady's father had rescued from a
recycling place

I want one of these outdoor kitchens

I loved the face on the little chap in the middle at the front

I had anticipated some problems at the Rural Parliament due to the fact there was no translation this time. The last one was during the period when Latvia took over the Presidency of the Council of the EU and so there was an international flavour to the event. I needn't have worried though, there were about six ladies who stepped up when they realised I didn't understand everything. It was brilliant. I didn't really have to ask either, they just did it. I was a little disappointed though that despite one of the ladies from our local district council, there was no advertisement about our region, except a hurriedly put together poster and leaflets from me. Others had food and leaflets handy. I really enjoyed getting to know some of the other delegates and loved the concert that the local village were hosting at the end. I love the Latvian costumes and their dancing.

Some older children dancing

I love these costumes. So elegant!

Different costumes again

A slower more graceful dance this time

Roof all done

Ian and I had a fairly relaxed afternoon when I got back. We sat and chatted but not about anything in particular. I think we just needed a bit of a breather. In the evening we started putting the roof on the newest alpaca house. We can't sit around all day when there are things to do. Well we could but I had been sat on a bus for several hours and the evening was pleasant, so we took advantage to get something done. Next week's forecast is for showers, so the sooner this got done the better. 

So pretty and just growing in our woodland

Wood stacked. More needed though

Today though we made up for it for our afternoon off. In the morning I went to pick up a young lad who has helped us before. What he lacks in dexterity due to cerebral palsy he makes up for in sheer determination and hard work. While I helped Ian finish off the roof, he got on and weeded my potato beds. It didn't start off well, as I am not sure if he has ever done it before and pulled up a few potatoes. However he got the hang of it and it was made easier by the fact that our beds have wide paths and are designed not to be walked on. As it was dry, it was easier for him to kneel next to the beds and pull the weeds out that way. In Latvia, they tend to use very neat rows, often done by ridging with ploughs on tractors. Not easy if you are not steady on your feet and not enough room to kneel down. In the afternoon he went and helped Ian collect wood and pile it up. He travelled in the trailer to help and he beamed every time he went past as I was doing some more complicated weeding - like trying to find the onion sets. 

Potatoes weeded! I was so pleased to see these just about
finished by the time I had finished helping Ian.

Welcomed back with the first strawberries of the year from
our greenhouse

Well I shall finish with the news that we heard our seventh grandchild will be another grandson, so we look forward to seeing him later on in the year. 

Done! Well some of it!

One bed of Amaranth found amongst
the weeds. Believe it or not there is
another on the right of this picture and
another four beds you cannot see.

It has been a week of a lot done and a lot not done, such is summer time. I managed to finish the paper I have been writing for ages. Hopefully this re-write satisfies everyone. We will see! I didn’t think I would be able to edit it down to the correct word count, but I amazingly managed it. I was very chuffed with myself for that.

Fortunately not all weeds are quite so
large. This was in our small greenhouse
that is more like a storage area and errrr
weed incubator.

Food mill and halters for the alpacas arrived from our good
friends in America. If only this package could talk, it would
be interesting to know why it was sent from Oregon to
Florida (diagonally opposite across the country) then up
north to New York? It took 12 days to leave the US and yet
we were give a delivery date of 6-10days. Oh the efficiency
of the US postal system, I guess. Fortunately after that it was
flown straight to Latvia and took a day to go through
customs before being delivered to our local post office.

Of course there has been much weeding and processing of berries, as usual for this time of the year. I got my new food mill that meant I could process a whole load of berries for the freezer. I decided not to do them all, but wait until later on in the year, when the weather is not so good and process the berries first by steaming to get juice and then through the food mill for jam or berry sauces and that means I can just sling them in the freezer with leaves, stems the lot. I think we have just about finished the strawberry harvest though now - so sad when that happens. We had been really enjoying the strawberries on our porridge for breakfast.

Blackcurrants ripe for picking

The barley is ripening

The season seems to have turned here and it has a definite feel of late summer now. The weeds are slowing down in growth (thank goodness) the leaves on the dandelions and strawberries are going red or mottled and the leaves on the trees are the dull green of the end of the season. Birds are also starting to congregate in preparation for migrating soon – it may still be a few weeks away yet, but the signs are there.

The first cabbage of the season. The cool weather has
favoured the brassicas this year and our cabbages are
looking quite good. We are not necessarily great
cabbage growers usually. Mind you, the snails were
out in force tonight and I had to pick quite a few off and
squish them underfoot.

We are not sure if we should be worried about the
appearance of these bugs on our redcurrants or not. Not
really sure what they are.

We are still getting summer visitors too, which is rather nice. This week the chap who wanted us to meet his German friend the other week and who Ian keeps meeting at the car technical place, came with his wife and young son. They stayed for quite a while chatting. Ian showed the wife around, since she had never been before and I got into a conversation with the chap about hunting. It is funny that I can explain the Latvian system to a Latvian, as I know more about the topic. Still not every Latvian is acquainted with the laws of their land on the topic – they don’t need to be in general and I did spend quite a while studying the ins and outs of hunting in Latvia. We are enjoying it when many visitors come, they bring chocolate - always welcome in our place and we had only just eaten up the last one from a previous group.

These bugs, however are a very welcome sight - ladybird
larvae

Oats all behind an electric fence.

Talking of hunting, our hunter told us he had shot a wild boar on our land the other day. We are pleased as we are starting to have more serious trouble with them and we had to put an electric fence around the oats to try and prevent more damage. Unfortunately the electric energiser we have available to use is not that powerful, but it might make them think twice – it made our kitten think twice when she came into contact with it. A learning experience for any farm cat!

Rather close to the barley field but an area the boars do
dig regularly next to the trees. Apparently boar are not
so fond of barley - probably due to the stiff hairs that
stick out of the head of the barley ears.

You won't see a sight like this very often. It has been nice
and warm but not too hot this week and so a chance to wear
a t-shirt and not a long, sleeved top to keep the sun off.

The reason we knew the hunter had shot an animal was because we had been to our local festival and they were having a grilling competition and he told us that on the menu was the wild boar that he shot at our place. We really wanted to organise taking our alpacas to the festival and show the fleece to people but yet again we didn’t get organised in time, not easy when we need translators for it. Maybe next year (that sounds like the gardeners’ refrain when something doesn’t work)

We have seen more bees this week, which is good news

Eyre, our kitten, obviously under-whelmed by Le Tour!

Our kitten has also been learning other lessons this week. Firstly she has been getting quite good at catching insects, unfortunately she tends to bring them into the caravan to play with, which is not what we really want. Neither was Ian impressed with the dead stinky mouse she brought in and even less impressed with the live one. We are not sure if Sofie, our older cat, had caught the mouse earlier and was trying to train our little one, or whether our little one had actually caught it herself. Either way, Ian made sure she caught it again and then evicted her from the caravan with the mouse in her mouth. She caused us a bit of consternation, just before we are about to leave the land tonight as she went missing Ian looked all over for her. Just as we were about to give up, she turned up.

Venturing out. She often accompanies us on our walks now
but gets very panicky if she cannot see us and we have to
whistle or talk to her so she can find us when we are going
through the long grass.

There are lots of flowers blooming in our meadows at this
time of year in the areas we haven't already cut

Our other visitors this week were friends of our goat farming friend and she brought her friends around to see what we were doing. It was great to hear their ideas on the things we are doing and they asked lots of questions of the sort that you know they know a lot about the topic. They have also used a seed processor before and loved the fact we had one. They reckon that ours is over a hundred years old. We were also told that the old Russian tractors use belts like the processor one and so we should be able to replace it without a problem. They told us there was a screen missing and what it would do and explained that the movable sieves underneath could do with some repair, which we thought might be the case. Other than that it was fine. At least we feel a little more confident that we know what it does and how it should work. We thought we had worked it out, but it is nice to know that from someone who has really used them. It was also nice to get an email from the people who had donated it to us where they mentioned that they think the seed processor is in good hands.

The hemp is growing well

To let more light in when we are
checking over the animals in the
evening, Ian made the back door into
a half door. It helps, but we could still
do with more light in. 

We have been trying to do some planning this week. Sometimes we get so busy we don’t really take time to think ahead, which is not so good. Ian put all my planned trips away into his diary and so he should now know when I am likely not to be around. Basically every month I am away somewhere now until November. Our daughter also asked if Ian would go over to their place to help her husband work on their new house and so that means Ian will be away for part of the time too, leaving me home alone with the animals.

We didn't have much in the way of seed for the sweetcorn and
didn't want to risk it outside anyway - heavenly food for boar
- so we planted it in the greenhouse, which it seems to be enjoying

Cooking the chicken out on our land
means using our halogen oven in the
greenhouse. It was too warm to have it
cooking in the caravan. We call our
halogen oven "Robbie." can't remember
why.

Part of our plans included dispatching three cockerels, since they are not really needed. One was making itself a nuisance by pestering our other free-range cockerel. One was favouring one particular hen and her feathers were coming off on her back, so hopefully she will recover. The other cockerel didn’t have a nice temperament and so we had no wish to keep him any longer. We had the bad tempered one for our evening meal, he was chewy but tasty. The others will definitely be put in the slow cooker.

Are we worried? These are the chicks and not for dispatch-
well not yet anyway. Some will be when we are sure which
are cockerels and which are not.

The grapes are beginning to turn too

Other plans for the future included prioritising new fences for pastures and fields, digging for water, and sorting out a container for winter storage. We started to put a list together of what needed doing when and who we needed to talk to about the plan if needed - or in other words, I got out a paper and pen and wrote it down. It’s a start. We also chatted about all the requirements for a happy and long marriage. Since we have been married for over 30 years, we feel we have some experience in the matter. We decided that deliberate mis-communication, selective deafness, repeated story-telling repeated and of course all that has to be washed down with a liberal dose of humour, otherwise all of that will end in tears. Well it did help the planning to go down a little bit better, or there would have been many a cross word I think.

Brencis is growing up fast. His mum, who
is sat behind him, must be giving him some
good stuff.

In clover

Veronica. Unusually nosy for her!

It has been an intense week this week. Although we often do lots of different activities, the pace we go at is usually fairly relaxed, but not this week. First of all Ian moved the sheep from where they have been all spring to somewhere nearer to what they would consider civilisation (being herd animals and only three of them, I think they miss the company). The poor things were so hot, but we did make sure their feeding ground include trees for shelter, but did they use it – no of course not! They had to sit in the hottest spot next to the gate.

The sheep were over this hill behind Ian taking the photo.
He then moved them all the way over to a spot to the
left of the greenhouse. They were very good and didn't
scamper off at all. I think it was just too hot

If you don't examine them too carefully, they look much
better today. Still, if they could, they would change their
hairdresser

The reason for moving them nearer to civilisation was to bring them closer to an electric point so we could shear them using the mains electric and not a generator. It went so well at first, we managed to stop any of them escaping first of all and we then tied their legs together to stop them running off while we sheared. Before you think we were being cruel, you have to remember these are animals that cleared a four foot wooden fence by scrabbling over it. If these sheep did not get sheared that day, they weren't going to get sheared for quite a while and in the heat we had this week, it was the less cruel option. Unfortunately Ian has not been on a sheep shearing course and the finish was not very professional, in fact they looked a proper dog’s breakfast - if you get what I mean. Still they fairly skipped around in the rain yesterday. Better than the big wool coat they were wearing.

Brencis looking gorgeous

Brencis' fleece. You can see it is definitely not pure white

The instrument of torture ..errr I mean
the hoist. We need to find a wider belt
for it, but at least the principle worked.
It was funny holding Snowdrop
because she would audibly sigh as she
was being milked. I think it was a relief

Although Snowdrop lost her baby last week, she was quite full of milk. Rather than waste it and because we know that she is likely to have problems feeding a baby in the future, it is always good to have spare so we milked her. That is now in the freezer – not much but at least it is something - a feed's worth. It may contain colostrum, but I'm not sure if colostrum is always the first lot of milk or whether it is only within 24 hours. We did try to milk her while she was pinned down for shearing but it didn't work. We then tried it while she was standing up, but she kept cushing (the alpaca term for sitting down with their legs underneath them, which of course means it is impossible to milk her like that. In the end Ian made a hoist to stop her cushing. I'm glad to say it worked well.

Wheat and Poppies - not red ones though

Amaranth. These have been competing
well with the weeds and Ian has been
able to keep just ahead with these.

We have also got quite a bit of weeding done, but there is not much to show for it, although I did find some carrots and dill, not many, but they are at least there. Of course at this time of year, if you don't keep on top of the weeding, the weeds tend to take over. We had some old seed and a bad year for germination and that hasn't helped. I have some carrots going to seed in the greenhouse, so that should give us plenty of carrot seed for next year and I shall buy some fresh seed from a seed company, so that we have a good genetic mix of carrots. I let enough carrots go to seed for our own use, but not enough to make sure they provide us with healthy plants genetically in the future.

Lots of wonderful flowers at this time of the year and until
Monday was blissfully relatively free of biting insects.
Monday the really large horse flies suddenly appeared.
They look like something out of a horror movie, but
fortunately they are so loud, you can hear them coming
and be prepared. It is the pesky small ones that are harder
to get.

Because we haven't got any chick pictures
this week, here is one of Eyre looking
sleepy. She has been ever so good at going
to sleep in the toilet area of the caravan when
we have been sleeping in it. She is quiet until
we wake up.

Talking of genetics, we are have bred some lovely looking chickens, with gorgeous black or grey feathers, unfortunately we seem to have bred out any sign of intelligence at the same time. All our other chickens have only taken about three days maximum to get the idea that when food is put in the back of the ark, that means it is time to go away for the night. The food is an incentive to go into the box to be fastened up. However, this lot have been chased around the ark lots of times to catch them. It would be the most awkward ark too. It was designed as a small ark for chicks to go on the floor, but then we extended it upwards to give them more room and there isn't as much access for humans. At least they are finally getting the idea, apart from one and even that one is finally getting it. It tends to look around as if to say, "where has everyone gone?" before the penny drops and into the box it goes, a good minute after the others. I do hope the folks that got their siblings are not having the same bother.

Sour dough bread buns freshly baked for
lunch

The sweetcorn is doing well in the greenhouse

Apart from all that it was an intense hay cutting, baling and shifting week. We reckon we may have shifted about 4 ½ tonnes and I have certainly walked miles behind tractor. The good news is that it would seem the UK got our heatwave and we only had to put up with temperatures around 28C (82) and not over 30C (86F) like we normally do. I certainly felt the benefit. I don't even feel particularly sore, just like I have done a lot of work.

Some of the cuttings from one of the grapevines in the
greenhouse seems to have taken. We aim to plant these
ones outside and see how they will do there.

The rain on Monday battered some of our oats. Not sure if
we will get anything out of this bit. It maybe okay. It is
not as if we need to harvest it with a combine harvester.
We might just use the scythe 

One of the first things we had to do was shift some of last years hay that we still had in our neighbours barn down to our place to make room for the new hay. While we were doing that our neighbour came into the barn carrying two freshly baked goodies, straight out of the oven. She was supplying the camp nearby with things like cinamon rolls, biezpiena rolls (kind of like a cross between cottage cheese and curd cheese in a sweet roll) and pizzas. They were absolutely gorgeous and much appreciated. She does look after us.

Tomatoes are starting to form on our plants now

Looking down from the top of the ski hill at the area
we cut, baled and cleared

This is to the left of the picture above

A remnant from the Soviet era. The signage
on this electric pole is in Russian

It was close but we managed to get all of this year's hay into the barn and stacked in the space we were allowed. I think we could have only got one or two more bales in. We had around 70 bales leftover from last year, and over 180 new ones. That will be more than enough and means we do not have to worry about trying to bale and stack any more from the land. We needed more in past years because we didn't have any where to stack it to keep it dry and ended up throwing a lot of it away. It feels very nice to know that won't be as much of a problem this time around.

Not the strawberries I picked after the hay stacking but ones
I cut up to dry. The strawberries are huge and tasty this year
and we have been having them on our breakfast all week.
Such a hard life!

I feel like a true farmer this year. We knew some rain was coming, so got all the hay collected and stacked and since the rain was imminent Ian went and baled hay we had cut around the side of our greenhouse that had been re-seeded a year or so ago and was lush and tall not like most of the hay this year. I also went and collected all the ripe strawberries because the expected rain was due to be heavy and I didn’t want to waste them. We just finished those jobs as the first few spots of rain began to fall, at that point we finally went and ate and then slept for an hour or so. I don't even feel that bad today. I thought I would have been quite stiff, but I just feel like I have over done it yesterday and need to take it easy today. So not bad, must be getting stronger each year, or not as drained in the lower temperatures maybe.

These four bales of hay came from the side and rear of the
greenhouse

Three bales from this section and one from behind

The uncut patch is to keep everyone guessing what we are
up to :) or the other explanation is to allow the clover (the
purple splodge in the middle that you can see) to go to
seed and spread around that area. The grass in that area is
rather thin and so hopefully the clover will add some
fertility

We have found that the hay every year is very different due to the growing conditions.  Often the grass is tall, but the cool, dry spring meant this year's hay was on the short side and not so dense. What we have noticed though is a huge increase in clover. I have identified at least three sorts, possibly four. There was also vetches and lady’s bedstaw in abundance. So the hay will be very scented and possibly rather fattening with all the leguminous plants– so not much grain supplement will be needed for our boys this next year, they are fat enough as it is.