Round Two

Ribwort flowers, also known as English plantain

The second phase of hay cutting has begun today. The weather forecast just lately kept promising rain and mainly it still passed us by, until last night that is. We had a very powerful storm, resembling one of those tropical cyclones, that bent over trees and even snapped a willow. It also dumped a fair bit of water on us in a very short space of time, which was good. Fortunately it didn't cause too much damage in the process but it made sure everything got a good soaking. At least by early afternoon it had dried up due to a gentler breeze than yesterday and apart from the fact we are melting in the humidity, it seemed good to go for haymaking. There was a point when we had a short, sharp shower of rain, right in the middle of Ian doing the cutting but hopefully that was it and the bit of rain forecast for Wednesday, either will not materialise or we get the hay in beforehand. Whichever doesn't matter to me.

The boys have been play fighting a lot just lately

Who us? Fighting? 

We had a few visitors over the weekend. The first group was by someone who had been before and she brought two friends with her. They hadn't decided what to do but in the end they decided that coming to us was better than going to the beach. This is the second time the lady has taken the alpacas for a walk too. They took Brencis and Mr. P. for a walk and Ian went with them with Freddie. They all did very well walking the track that Ian keeps regularly mowed. I had to make a quick keyring with Aggie's fleece, as that was the one the lady wanted and I hadn't made any with her fleece yet.

Unfortunately for Mr. P. the play fighting with Brencis got a
little more serious. Put it this way, Brencis will be having
his fighting teeth removed very soon.

The large horseflies have been bothering Mr. P and so has
the humid hot weather we have been having. We are not
sure if he is starting the fights or not due to this.

Brencis is such a placid, easy going sort normally. Here he is
investigating the chickens who are close to the paddock at
the moment. They have been moved further away tonight, so
they are on fresh grass in the morning. One of our nightly
routines.

Our other visitor was also a return visitor and was a bit more of a social call, so we sat and chatted. We also drank Rosebay Willowherb tea, which she made herself and ate cakes from the local bakery, which all sounds like a scene from Wind in the Willows on a lovely summer's day. She also brought tins of moose (or just for my supervisor, more correctly Eurasian Elk) and a contract for a local hunting organisation. We did have a contract with an organisation but apparently it is now invalid due to the rules in Latvia.

The three young swallows are close to flying now. There isn't
much room in that nest

Lady V is still plodding along

Each hunting organisation has to own land or have a contract with landowners in order to hunt. There is also a minimum amount of land in order to get the relevant licenses and the amount depends on the animals hunted, so around 1000 ha for wild boar (unless it has changed lately) and the areas must all be joined together (otherwise it is difficult to have a hunting strategy). To hunt on your own land or to invite hunters on, you must be part of the hunting organisation too. From time to time landowners change the organisations that they sign up with and for some reason some neighbouring landowners who border our land and belonged to the original hunting organisation must have signed up with someone else. That left us with the choice of either no hunting organisation allowed on our land or sign with another one. Whilst we haven't had to call on the hunters this last year as so many of the wild boar have been culled or died due to African Swine Fever, it may only be a short time before they reappear in sufficient numbers to tear up our land again. We try to live with wildlife damage but we have to draw a line somewhere.

I love the curls on Chanel's face

The view from the old ski hill. If you look
carefully around the middle electric pole you
can see a fairy ring of dark grass. Our visitor's
land is over the hill in the distance on the right.

Our visitor has a property nearby and around 17 wild horses, well when I say wild they are allowed to roam a wide area and are not used for anything else except maintaining the land. They are descended from the Polish Konik horses. She took us to see them and the horses seemed friendly enough. They came galloping over the hill when she called and then ate slices of bread from our hands, they took them very gently too. It was funny seeing the other side of the hill. It is not an area we go to very often and it has a much more open vista than our side of the hill. Our little piece of land is quite enclosed, although there is more of a view from what used to be the ski hill of course, but we don't go up there often.

No lump there now. All stitched up and covered with blue
spray to deter the flies as well as being an antiseptic.

The vet came out to look at Herk and we decided on surgery to remove the lump. Even if it was nothing to worry about exactly, the flies were bothering him so much as it was oozing a little, that it was decided it was best to remove it. The whole thing was done in the alpaca house with Herk pinned down as we do for shearing time. He was just given an local anaesthetic and the lump was removed without a problem. We allowed the trainee vet to stitch it up, after all she has got to practice sometime and we are quite keen for vets to become used to working on alpacas. If our girls need help to deliver their babies when our regular vet goes on holiday, she will be the one we call on anyway. Of course we hope it doesn't come to that this year. We are still waiting though and Mari at least seems to be showing signs of possibly going into labour sooner rather than later - how soon, no idea!

He's doing fine and doesn't seem that bothered about it. He
was a bit stiff straight afterwards but not even a limp now.

The rather distressed little squirrel. It's a good
job Ian was wearing the gloves to handle it,
he or she did try to bite a few times when it
was examined, whist trying to work out what
was wrong with it.

Our cat, Eyre, turned up with something large in her mouth this week. When we went to investigate we found it was a squirrel. We don't see many squirrels around here, probably too many predators, not just our cats but also lynx and foxes at least. We found out it was still alive and so managed to get the poor traumatised thing in a box to rest. When we tried to release it and encourage it to go up a tree out of harms way a few hours later, we realised that something wasn't quite right. We decided to put it in the hamster cage that we normally use for our chicks. Eventually we worked out that there was something wrong with its neck, not surprising as the cat was carrying it by its neck. We gave it food and water, since it still seemed quite active and decided to let it rest and check on it every now and again. Unfortunately it didn't survive. It was such a sweet little thing and died curled up as if it was asleep.

A rather large mushroom we found in our greenhouse. They
have been popping up in the straw. They are tasty.

Aggie has still been slumped about, but she doesn't like the
heat or pregnancy

I am still in a bit of a fug with my faith. It still seems rather distant. I struggle at times with wanting a house, somewhere to call home on our land, but we aren't any nearer to working out how to do that. I've travelled about a bit and lived in three countries now and until recently, my faith was always my home wherever I went. So this struggle with home is unsettling. Really it's a first world problem. I have a home, two in fact, a caravan for summer and a flat for winter. That is more than many people have. It is also so ironic to be unsettled with the concept of home while studying a sense of place in Estonia and Latvia. So why the fug? "So Lord! How do I make progress and move on from where I am?" was my cry and the phrase that keeps coming back to me, "Is start with what you have!" It reminds me of the story of the widow who asked Elijah for help and he replied "What do you have?" and she told him only a little oil. He told her to start with that and the oil kept pouring from the jar until the bottles she had got from her neighbours were full. We shall see where that leads us then!

I'm home - for now!

The site of the Latvian University of Agriculture. Well part
of it and the site for one of our lectures and lunch
on Tuesday

I never did find the kettle in the hostel I was staying at, but at least I did find out that there was one at the place where the course was being held... well eventually anyway. It was only a small course and the other students were lovely. The people who ran the course got on very well and it shows, with the lovely friendly atmosphere. In the afternoon there was always a themed break, such as chocolate break, apple break and cookie break and I ended the week with a rather high blood sugar reading when I got back home. Note to self - stay clear of the sweet stuff. That is going to be so tough for me, I do have rather a sweet tooth. Fortunately I also like fresh vegetables and there were plenty of those too for lunch.

Apple break by the river

Ironwork on the bridge over the river

A dowry chest in the old tower

The hot flushes have started up again and it is getting a little annoying to be talking to someone and then feeling myself suddenly getting rather hot and starting to sweat (okay you didn't want to really know that, but unfortunately that is the reality). Occasionally even my glasses start steaming up, thank goodness not too often. I just laugh though and say "It's my age!" I don't want people to think I'm embarrassed or anything like that, because I am not. I used to be easily embarrassed when I was younger, but not so much now.

Examples of old spindles made by young
men to demonstrate their prowess in
woodwork to the woman he wants to
marry

Traditional patterns Zemgale,
a region in the South of Latvia

This is where I spent much of the week and is called
Valdeka palace

Overall the course was good, not because I particularly learnt much new. I did finally get the idea that cognition does mean, life the universe and everything, as I thought it seemed to do. The title was Landscape Cognition and as I mentioned last week the topic was a part of what I have been studying for over a year now. The problem was that I was always a little hazy on what the cognition part meant. I of course looked it up in the dictionary and tried to get my head around what it meant, but it just seemed too vague. I explained to my course mates that I too struggled with the word cognition, as they did, because it is not a word we use regularly. On the last day though, the Norwegian visiting professor pointed out that while it is true we do not use the word cognition very often, we do use the word recognition. Finally it made sense. When we look at a landscape our brain is matching the elements in that landscape to our knowledge, past experiences, our cultural understanding and so much more. Our brains are constantly trying to make sense of our surroundings and that is basically what cognition means, so it is life, the universe and everything.

The room was painted to recreate the
original interiors of the place

The wild horses

The course was not all study and we had a couple of excursions, one to see a spit of land in the river that regularly floods every year. They keep wild horses there to keep the meadow from turning into scrub. The horses are actually quite gentle, but are free to wander around, hence the term "wild". The gentleman who cares for the horses explained that they will be selling some of the young males off because they have too many stallions this year and so I have got his details in case we ever decide to get one. They are quite sturdy creatures and very hardy, because they effectively grow a fur coat for winter and so can be kept outside with some shelter, but not necessarily a shed, it can be a hedge, even in our harsh winters.

Furniture in the tower museum

The remains of the wall of the old church

The other excursion was to an old tower that once was attached to a church, but that part was blown up by the Soviets. The tower was kept to store explosives and the idea was that they would eventually demolish the tower. The problem was that it has really thick walls and by the time they were ready to blow it up they had built housing around it. To blow up the tower would have meant blowing out the window of every home for up to 300m around, so the tower was kept. It now has a nice glass roof on top with impressive views over the surrounding area. Our guide for the day was quite a lively young man, with ambitions on being a president one day. At least he has a positive attitude to life in Latvia, which is promising.

The greenhouse in the morning light

The cold weather has meant our two cats are now tolerating
each other much more. Cuddled up for warmth

One of the ladies on the course dropped me and another student off in Riga. On a previous trip through Riga I purchased a bus ticket, but I didn't need it as it was a celebration day and all public transport was free; fortunately it came in useful this week as we had to catch the bus to the bus station so I could get the last bus home. I got there in enough time to catch the bus, but not to buy a ticket for that trip at the station. Fortunately the last bus home on a Friday is not as full as the earlier one and so I got a seat. The earlier bus is usually standing room only for those who have not already bought a ticket.

The wine we started a little while ago

My first day back at home I sorted out the green tomatoes from the red tomatoes, sorted out the apples and removed the bad ones. I then cooked down some tomatoes, made green tomato chutney and made a batch of apple sauce and juice using the steamer. I also got two loads of washing done and read through my paper that was returned with amendments just before the course. It doesn't sound like a huge amount in one day, but it took ages to sort through the large amounts of apples and tomatoes alone. Cooking them was the easy bit.

Because there has to be pictures of alpacas :)

Ian working on the roof panels

The next day we decided to stay out in the caravan so that we could get on with jobs out on the land. The alpacas needed toe nails cutting and Aggie needed an injection, all jobs that I need to help Ian out with before clearing off to the UK for nearly a month. I also helped him with the roof panels for the new alpaca house. We have been joking that it is big enough to live in and it is seriously tempting to make it into a small house to stay in.

If we had a window in the new alpaca house, this would
be the view towards the road

One side finished

The mouse storage compartment revealed

One job we didn't plan on was spending rather a long time cleaning out Larry our Lada, but had to after we discovered that a mouse had been relocating alpaca feed into the roof space of the car. We thought that Larry had developed a leak as the roof liner was sagging, but when Ian drilled a small hole into it, no water came out, just dust. The mouse had shifted about 17kg of grain into the roof space - an amazing amount of storage for such a small animal. We had to cut open the fabric cover for the roof space to clear it out. We plan to feed the grain to the wild birds over winter, as we can't feed it to our chickens or alpacas and we don't want to tip it somewhere as that will encourage the wild boar. Sadly we had to put some poison out to kill the mouse as we don't plan on feeding mice all winter with alpaca food. It is a last resort as we haven't managed to catch it with a trap and we can't just lock the cats in there.

Some of the grain that was stored in the roof

Building inspector