Well there has been lots of landscaping going on. Ian's been landscaping around our barn
Starting the process (Picture by Mavis)
Nice and level by the side of the greenhouse in preparation for the snow in winter
Levelling off the ground by the barn
and the wild boar have been errrr hindering
Not helpful! Right between our raspberries and currant bushes.
The wild boar have not just been digging up our land, they have been having a good go at the neighbouring properties too.
I know I am small but the photo gives you some idea of the depth of some of the wild boar digging. If they would just take off the top layer it would just be annoying but big holes like this are dangerous for tractors. This hole area was one of several about the same size.
I started my project this week of monitoring the pig activity and I first need to walk the perimeter of the farms and then log all the activity that looks new, so that I can record any done over the next few weeks or so. The problem is that it is a mammoth task, firstly walking all the way around as they are quite large some of them and then logging the damage, they have been so active just this last week that it is going to take me ages just to log the work they have already done, never mind what they will do over the coming weeks. Never mind! I shall be as fit as a fiddle by Christmas doing this, after the pumpkin weight training programme and the tomato challenge of carrying umpteen kilos up several flights of stairs in recent weeks.
Here we all are at the local hotel. Mavis is in the middle.
Last week, however did get off to a reasonably relaxed start, as we had our special visitor from England. It was quite wet most of the week but that was good in some ways as it just gave us lots of time to chat, and eat and chat and errr eat and chat some more. Mavis has been reading my blog now for over three years and has been such an encouragement, although we have never met in person, and so it was a thrill when she mentioned she would love to come and visit to see what we are doing. You can read Mavis' perspective on the trip on her blog. Besides chatting we also took her to visit our friends on their farms and one of them treated us to home-made pizzas using ingredients from out of the garden and cheese from her own goats, followed by honey cake and I suspect that was home-made too, using honey from our friend's bees. The other friend gave us a guided tour of the barn with all the animals in it and even gave us a milking demonstration, which she does by hand. It was very funny watching the calves being fed the milk afterwards and after they had finished the milk in their buckets they licked each others faces as they were not wasting a single drop of the precious liquid. It looked like they were kissing. Mavis has now got to see our land for real as well as the flats we have renovated over the few years we have been here. She has seen and heard firsthand some of the challenges and seen the joys of living here and hopefully taken away a real flavour of the place. Just a shame that it rained all day on the Friday she flew back and so Riga was more like a flying bus type tour - on your right you will see..... and to your left is ....... - in between mall hopping that is, where we ate and chatted some more, at least we stayed dry. The other shame is that Mavis missed the first tow of the season, as the very next day one of our young neighbours had managed to get stuck at the bottom of the allotments - not really sure what he would be doing there, but he was going nowhere fast if we hadn't helped.
Kissing calves (Photo by Mavis)
This weekend I started stripping the buckwheat seed of the plant, while Ian was busy landscaping. I got half a bucket, but it took me all afternoon, I hope the rest goes a bit quicker. We need some animals then we could just beat the living daylights out of the plants and then let the animals pick over any seeds left, but using the flail does seem to leave a lot of seed on the plants. Or we need one of those engineering types that love tinkering about developing little one off machines, anyone up to the job? At least harvesting the buckwheat will provide a rainy day project, as we can harvest the buckwheat in the greenhouse, even if I can't get out studying wild boar damage and Ian landscaping and digging drains.
The turkeys at our other friends farm (Photo by Mavis).
Looking ahead I finally got our plane tickets sorted for our Christmas trip to the UK, as they had special offers on for the days we were interested in travelling, the problem is that the next day airbaltic decided to announce cuts to staff and flights. It would appear though that the announcements are to do with a spat between the head of the airline and the Latvian Government. Hopefully they will sort it out very soon, instead of being yet one more casuality of brinkmanship between a powerful guy and the Latvian government. The Latvian government are actually the majority shareholder of the airline, but do not have a say in how the airline is run, and want to buy out the minority shareholder who runs the company. Not sure how that happened but doesn't seem to make sense really. The CEO is now back in Germany as he fears being arrested in Latvia for fraud charges. Not sure if the charges are real or trumped up either, but shows some of the challenges Latvians face.
I will just finish off with an excellent article on the effects of austerity on Latvia. The two authors are spot on about the reason for the drop in unemployment here in Latvia, it is mainly down to many people moving away looking for work rather than due to an improvement in the economy. We really need to generate a new economy now, one that does not penalise the poorest for the mistakes of the bankers - they maybe back in profit but the people are hurting.
Finally we got some Amish Paste tomatoes that are as big as advertised. I kept the seeds from that really big one, let's see what we can do next year!
The Pumpkin weight training schedules continued this week as the pumpkins have been moved in and out of the greenhouse several times in order to dry them off in the sun. Hopefully that way they will last a long time. Added to the tomato challenge - lugging several kilos of tomatoes up three flights of stairs, it all has just got to be good for me, if I don't perish in the effort that is. The end is in sight for the harvesting though, all the carrots are now up and in the process of being got ready for long term storage (small ones dried, juiced or added to chutney, large ones to go in baskets with sawdust), and some of the tomatoes got some blight on them so they were pulled up - green tomato chutney anyone? That leaves the Borlotti beans, French beans, runner beans and beetroot to deal with soon, along with the hamburg parsley but there is no rush for that yet, it will stand a little frost. It does feel like a mammoth task at times, as we are stood over the sink sorting the veg out, but it will soon be over. Once those temperatures dip below freezing we will be just about finished for the year - well food wise. We have until the snow comes for me to do some observations and data gathering on wild boar activity for my course and Ian will be sorting out the woodland again, that should keep us busy for just a bit longer.
Sorry the picture is not so good as that is in our barn on my camera phone. This makeshift shelving holds our larger carrots
We have had a bit of an exciting time this week. We are in the process of making the access road onto our land legal, which involved one of our neighbours helping us to fill out forms at the office dealing with roads for the area, and then we had to drive the lady in the office to our land to look at the access road and then drive her back to her office - a round trip of 90 km, not exactly a little jaunt. In the process of driving the lady backwards and forwards, we also gave a lift to another neighbour of ours who also had to be in Madona. It all got a little complicated, but it worked out in the end and everybody was happy, including the lady from the office. She didn't speak a lot of English but she declared the siting of the road was "good." The next part of the process is to get it sorted out and accepted by the local council offices but we were a bit too busy to sort that out this week.Okay that might not sound too exciting to you but getting everything legitimate is important to us.
And errr... there's some more, and doesn't include the bag full of small ones we dried. juiced and made into chutney. We really need some animals next year to help us out.
Unfortunately though in the process of doing all that, the gorgeous morning turned into an afternoon of rain which scuppered any chance of getting in some more buckwheat, we had to wait until the next day to do that. We still headed out to the land though after dropping our neighbour off so that we could pick up a spare windscreen wiper, which just happened to be in our workshop out on the land, as the one we were using was driving us mad with the noise it was making. We were only on the land about 10 minutes before driving off, but in the meantime three cars had parked at the bottom of our road. One was a police car, one was a national tv car (LNT) with camera crew and another turned out to be the bomb disposal squad. We had found a grenade with a pin in it and our friend who was visiting us over the weekend helpfully phoned the police for us and told him about it. About an hour later he turned up and saw it and told us he would bring the bomb squad out to get it at a later date but we didn't need to be there. Funnily enough the policeman was dressed very smartly the second time we saw him, unlike the casual attire he was wearing when he came to make his initial inspection. Wonder if it was for the camera crew? They even interviewed me in English, very funny but I hope they didn't really show it.
This weeks's harvest of tomatoes.
Well this is a short and sweet blog this week (do I hear my kids saying "thank goodness for that?") but it has been a busy morning continuing processing tomatoes and getting our home in some semblance of clean for a special visitor. More next week.
It's like our own harvest festival. We didn't plant those big
orange pumpkins or the large green ones, they just grew
in our manure heap up the garden. Guess what the cows
have been eating! Apparently it makes the milk tastier. At
the top are sunflower heads.
Still in harvesting mode this week, another coolbox full of tomatoes which were transformed into jars of tomato sauce, beans in tomato sauce and a tomato, onion and chilli sauce. We had to sit for a whole evening shelling beans for the eight jars of baked beans I made. It would have been easier if I hadn't already got the tomato sauce cooked down as the pods would have been drier and easier to shell. Hopefully the next lot of beans waiting for shelling can wait long enough to dry out. We also have pumpkins harvested and curing, along with lots of other squash as you can see from the picture but the ultimate harvest started today, our field of buckwheat. What a job! Our barn is still not quite ready and so there is not much room to put our buckwheat to dry, so we have some stacked in a corner - all four trailer loads full, on the Latvian style hay rick supports. We also have some on supports in the greenhouse and after an afternoon cutting we are gradually running out of room and nowhere near done yet. A friend of ours even came and collected a boot full to try on their rabbits. It is looking increasingly likely that we will allow some (maybe most) to be killed off by the frost and let it seed itself for next year. That way we can probably collect a harvest off it in maybe June or early July next year.
Our field before harvesting
Our first two stacks. As you can see the barn is not finished yet
we are still waiting for the doors to be done and the frames
are there in the middle
Stack number three in our greenhouse
Stack number four and the start of number
five. We packed in at this stage because
it was getting late and starting to get damp.
The worst thing is that we can't start until
the afternoon as the dew is so heavy in the
mornings now.
All that buckwheat came from this small patch, there is still
a lot more to do!!!!!!
Yes mushroom time again and we live
to tell the tale after a lovely wild
mushroom risotto
All the harvesting has made me think about efficiency. What do we think about when we think about efficiency today? It is usually measured in two ways, the costs of the output versus inputs or the output per person. A modern farm with lots of modern equipment is considered efficient because there is a large output with minimal input from one person due to all the equipment to hand, but is that really efficient? Farming with lots of big equipment can be wasteful. All the harvest has to be at the same stage at the same time to be harvested by machine, or a lot of the harvest will be rejected and wasted. An allotment garden, however, is far less wasteful as the harvest can carry on for a long period of time and less produce is rejected as it can be used in different ways (did you know that more can be produced per acre on an allotment than a farmer could ever hope to harvest?). For instance, we had some blossom end rot in some tomatoes, so I just picked them when they were green and we had them fried. They were perfectly edible with the blossom end cut off but in a modern farm that would have been rejected and thrown away. The farms also have high inputs in terms of capital to buy the equipment, the sprays and fertilisers needed to farm on that scale in a monoculture, and a large oil input in terms of diesel and manufacture of all that equipment. How sustainable is that in the long term? I will leave that one for you to think about.
Some of the not so lovely dwellers in our compost heap.
These are cockchafer grubs and they have a voracious
appetite that can ruin a crop. Ian was just going to move
the composted straw but ended up sifting through it for
these little fellows and there were about four tubs worth.
From my perspective though, we are being as efficient as possible with what we have, weather permitting. The buckwheat this year may get partly wasted as far as collecting seed is concerned but it has done its job of keeping the weeds down and giving us the time to plan for next year. It was also an interesting experiment to see how it grew and what it looked like, as none of our friends and neighbours knew what it would be like. It did prove it is worth growing in this area but there is of course a question of how much can be grown to be harvested using minimal equipment. There must be a better way to harvest it and stack it to dry and that is something we will have to think about. Having said that, if the weather had been a little kinder to us we may have had more time to collect it too. It was too dry to plant any earlier (even if we had found any if you recall the trouble we had finding it in the first place) and is only just ripe enough to harvest now. We may lose out in the end to frosts, unless of course we have another window of good weather before the onslaught of frosts. The rest of our gardening though is usually more efficient as far as trying to harvest all that we have and finding as many different ways to store it for winter use, if we can't use it now. I must say the fermenting cucumbers are interesting to watch and I do hope they turn out well in the end, the book assures me they will be lovely.
Been a beautiful day today
I mentioned last week that weather watching has become really important to us, but the forecasts have let us down badly this week as the rain often came earlier than predicted and instead of a morning of sunshine followed by afternoon rain as predicted, it just rained a lot. That also meant that the hay we cut the other week is now wet. Good job that it was only going to be compost anyway. It also meant that Ian has now started on rainy day projects such as painting radiators in the other apartment. We often joke about rainy day projects, if it is something that is inside and needs doing we jokingly add it to the list, not sure how much of that list will ever get done but we wouldn't want Ian to get bored when it rains and pens him inside the house now would we?
We had our visitors back again this
week. Those wild boar sure know
how to dig.
I think the rain held off just long enough for the return to school this week. Ex-Soviet countries still tend to stick to the September 1st as the date for returning to school after the summer. Much of the returning ceremony here in our village is held outside unfortunately, considering our weather this last week. It is funny to see children dressed up in their best, the boys in shirts and ties instead of the usual more casual attire, and girls in very smart frocks and all carrying flowers for their teacher. Going back to school is certainly a big event here. Can't imagine children all dressed up as if going to a party back in England on their first day back. Where does all the time go though? I started back to work too (I moderate an online chat room for a UK based educational organisation) and yet it doesn't seem that long ago since I broke up for the holidays. This summer has flown by and it hasn't helped that my work for my university course has not really stopped this year either. Hopefully though I shall be ready to get started on putting together the work for my Masters thesis.
Some of our magical messy forest.
This will get a make over later on but
maybe a while before we get to this bit.
Had another nice week chatting with friends again, one evening we got to know a little more about life behind the iron curtain. It is fascinating hearing stories of every day life. This week we found out that expeditions to other countries was very possible. We were always under the illusion that travel for those living in the Soviet Union was limited. The reality was that travel outside of the Soviet Union was limited, even to Poland and East Germany, but travel within the Soviet Union was very possible and that was a huge expanse of land to travel and explore. Our friends told us that they would group together and hire a coach, pack tents to stay in, then travel all over the place just not in a Westerly direction. Sweden was a far off country when you lived behind the iron curtain, despite being just over the other side of the small Baltic Sea, but East was very possible, Ukraine, Russia etc.
Aubergine! We are a little more successful than last year
but not much. One more year to see if we can do better.
Just like to finish with the tale of the Houdini rabbit. We were round at our friends farm and they have lots of little rabbits but one of them keeps escaping. After apprehending the little individual (rather amusing as it was three adults to one small rabbit and he gave us the run around for a good couple of minutes) he was placed back in his pen with lots of other rabbits of a similar age. We couldn't really see anyway he could get out, there were no gaps, but as we stood talking we could hear some scrabbling and the Houdini rabbit scrabbled his way up a 3ft high fence onto a narrow ridge and then squeezed itself around a tiny gap into the pen of some bigger rabbits. The little one then proceeded to get itself into the feed basket from which it attempted another escape - not this time though! I caught him by the scruff of the neck and put him back where he belonged. No sooner than he was back in, he was plotting his next escape. We watched him try again but not quite make it this time. I decided to put a stop to this little one for its own safety of course - that and I'm a spoilsport - by jamming a piece of wood into the crevice through which it was squeezing, unfortunately that didn't sort it. The little fellow has now been imprisoned in a cage after escaping five more times and so far he hasn't managed to find a way out of that yet. What makes this little fellow so determined to get out though, when all the others are content to be fed and watered?
Have I missed something? There is, or rather, was an inflatable Father Christmas in Ogre, just outside of Riga (Ian spotted it on a webcam he checks on to see what the weather is doing just West of us) and I'm dreaming of a White Christmas was on the radio. - whatever next? It makes the year seem all the shorter and it is speeding away fast enough as it is. It definitely feels very autumnal now and harvesting of winter storage vegetables is in full swing around us. You can here the gentle plink plink of the vegetables into the buckets and see the gradual reappearance of bare earth as the plants are dug up. (Just to confuse me even more, this evening in the local supermarket it was possible to buy Easter sweets - how bizarre is that!)
A gift from a neighbour. Now I am going
to find out how to ferment cucumbers as
I already have jars in the fridge. I might
pickle some too.
Never have the forecasts been so important as they have this year- although Ian might argue with that as forecasts were very important to him when he was cycling into work, 13 miles in the rain is not fun. Our lives though seem to be almost run by forecasts at the moment. Our hay cutting was fitted in to catch a spell of good weather, so we could take advantage of getting some good hay baled up in preparation for alpacas next year. Up till this year it didn't matter if the hay got wet, apart from the fact it got heavy, as we were only using it for compost. Most of our land is poor quality meadow as there is far too much ground elder and wild raspberries amongst it, which means it is just not worth the cost of baling it up, the hay on the ski hill, however, is much better quality and it would seem a shame to just continue to compost it. The problem is though that to improve the rest of the meadowland we need to cut it to reduce the invasive weeds and favour the grasses. We don't agree with using chemicals on it and we don't want to dig it up and reseed it, as that would mean losing all the wild flowers that are there - okay it won't produce as much hay as it would if they weren't there but then we wouldn't have orchids. That means we are left with cutting poor quality hay and composting it, which is fine for our veg and it works a treat in the greenhouse to reduce the amount of watering needed.
The third load of six trays of drying
tomatoes. They are great in soups
and stews over the winter or just popped
into a pasta dish.
A couple of days of fine weather meant we got the rest of the grass cut apart from a small area because guess what? If you follow this blog you may have already guessed, there was a distressed corncrake looking for its home where Ian had just cut, those birds are just not smart. He was sat in the tractor for a long time waiting for it to move, in fact long enough to think about getting his phone out which has a camera and find the camera setting, but of course not long enough to actually take a photo. He said the poor little thing kept looking at the grass waiting to be cut and the bit that had just been cut as if it was trying to work out who had demolished its home while it was gone. We need to put up a notice that tells them when they are supposed to have moved out, haven't they got a holiday home to go to? One that's nice and warm?
Been a busy day as this is a bowl of plums microwaving
to make microwave jam.
We have also been busily scanning forecasts to see what night time temperatures are going to be like over the weeks ahead, as our buckwheat is starting to go over, but a frost will kill it. We are trying to give the seed as much time to set as possible before harvesting and yet avoid the frosts. Ideally 60-70% of the seed should have set, much more than that and you lose seed anyway as it shatters when cut, but less than that means not a good harvest. Vegetables on a small family scale are much less exhausting as you just need a dry day to harvest, although a couple of days for digging up root crops like potatoes and carrots is better and you certainly don't want to be gardening in a mud bath.
Our storage tomatoes that should last a while and under
the cover and in the strange arrangement at the top are
beans undergoing a salting process. We shall see what they
turn out like but at least it is possible to put a lot of beans in
a small space
I have talked before about how we are learning about the land we manage, we are not rushing into decisions, but trying to work with what is there. Relocating plants and trees we want to keep, but are perhaps not in a good place and taming dominant weeds like the ground elder through regular cutting to give the grass a chance to fight back. We are learning the names of plants and what they do, learning to identify birds by sight and sometimes by call and learning the names of the trees and learning to distinguish them by bark alone at times. Learning to name nature, learning the contribution it can make, alters how you do things, less ready to uproot it and if it is uprooted it is done with thought. I can therefore relate to Aldo Leopold's words when he says
"Once you learn to read the land, I have no fear what you will do to it, or with it, and I know many pleasant things it will do to you."
These are different tomato seeds all been given the treatment
to separate out the good from the bad seeds and to ensure
we keep the productive ones next year
It makes me wonder if that is how God intended Adam to work the garden of Eden, to learn about the animals and plants in the garden and the place they had. Of learning to tame some and encourage others, to find a place for each plant that was both pleasing to the eye and worked with it for what it could do and was useful for. I am tending more and more to think of the place where we work as a garden and less and less "the land." Ian had cut a path through some trees and it looked so nice and left an area that just seemed to shout to be planted with something useful and so we are thinking of relocating a wild rose and some mint to that place. Might even put some bulbs in too and as I write I am wondering if maybe we could manage to put a seat in nearby. Not sure how often we could sit on it due to the biting insects but there are times it is perfectly possible.
It doesn't look big in this picture but that is a ginormous
bowl with dill seed in it. All ready for adding to various jars
of things and for seed for next year.
Ian hasn't just been cutting our grass, he cut some for our neighbour too. They have finally got access to some buildings they are going to turn back into a working factory producing wood for fuel. The factory has not been in use for 15 years and so is quite neglected and nature has been doing its best to try and reclaim the place. I am so pleased for this young couple with big dreams and such a desire to make a difference to their local community through providing employment and we are proud to call them friends. It is hard work though and dealings in business is not often straightforward in Latvia but they are pushing through and I pray that God will bless what they are doing and bless them for their hearts that desire to do good. Ian used his two wheeled tractor to neaten up the property and make it easier for them to sort out a car park that will take the lorries carrying the wood to and from it to help out. They let us have a flail that was lying around the place. A flail is used for separating seed from plants - not quite sure how to use it but I guess we are going to find out.
I have been following the news about Hurricane Irene, strange isn't it how there is so much news about it hitting America when there was so little news when it has already hit the Caribbean at a far higher force just not the same force of news. I guess the higher population affected has something to do with it and the fact that hurricanes don't often get that far up. I think the BBC coverage though has shown a drop in their standards, this quote was a classic
"You can see why the mayor made the New York subway system shut down, because the subway system is right below the ground level in New York."
A visitor to our land, a bird of prey of some sort but not
sure which as we didn't get a good look at it. We did
get a good look at the eagle that was flying around when
we arrived but typically it flew off before we got the camera
sorted.
Now pray do tell me, where else would you expect to find the New York subway system? Talking of New York it will soon be the 10th Anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Guardian website was asking what is your story from the event? What do you remember? I suppose it is a bit like the shooting of President Kennedy which was such a startling event that people remember what they were doing at the time, I don't remember that incident but then again I hadn't been born then. I do remember hearing about the 9/11 attacks for the first time though. We had just got back home after Ian had been signed off work with chronic fatigue and our kids were home-schooled and so were busy working in their bedrooms and our middle child came rushing downstairs saying an airplane had just crashed into a skyscraper in New York. At first I wondered if he had misheard and not understood, maybe it was just a radio play or something and I sent him back upstairs to get back on with his work. A few minutes later he came back down stairs and said another plane had flown into the other tower. We didn't have a tv and I can't remember how we started on checking the details, probably the internet, but it was amazingly awful to follow.
Our neighbour helping us rake hay. This method is better than a tractor as it is kinder to the ground and is still quite fast and definitely a lot faster than by hand.
On a completely different note I am finding out the joys of heading towards menopause. I have to admit I thought this was something that happened to women in their 50s and so, as I am in my late 40s, I thought I might be starting early. I know there is lots of info on the internet these days but there is not much about what it is actually like to go through it. How do people cope with some of the symptoms? That sort of information is a bit scarcer, unless of course it is a scare story. I haven't got friends around me who I can ask either as I am not in regular contact with those who have just gone through it and not exactly the sort of thing to ask when renewing a contact. Fortunately I am in contact through a forum of some lovely ladies who have been through it and were willing to share some of their stories, bless 'em. Reading about symptoms is all very well and I kind of know what to expect, but there is nothing like hearing stories from real people. So if I appear a little flustered or complaining of the unusually warm winter when it is -20C outside, you will know why.
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.
There were a couple of moments this week when I didn't recognise someone, very embarrassing! The first person I didn't recogniseas they were waving at me, was due to a radical haircut. It made a huge difference, and that is my excuse and I am sticking to it. The next occasion was when we walked into our local hotel. I saw some people sitting at a table but didn't initially take much notice, and then suddenly I realised I knew two of them and was frantically racking my brain to remember who they were and where did I know them from. Eventually I did work out who there were and they weren't from the village and so it was quite a surprise to see them in our locale, especially as they were from Riga, they are also friends of people we know are away at the moment and so they hadn't come to visit them either. It is odd how we do not recognise people out of context, I guess that tells us something about how our brains are wired. It did mean though that instead of a quiet meal for two as usual, we had lovely evening where we were introduced to someone else who lives in Riga but comes from Lancashire like me. We traded jokes and were able to talk "Northern" and be completely understood, it was great. Just hope I recognise our son when he gets to the airport tomorrow (I am writing this ahead of time so I can spend time with him catching up instead of sat on the computer)
Talking of brains being wired differently, it is funny how our perception of old changes with age. One young lass who translates for us on a frequent basis has found a dictionary that is really old and contains some of the terms that we were struggling with the other week. This very old dictionary was printed in ........ 1968! Old!!!!! That makes us old! That makes us very old!!! We were expecting her to tell us it was from the 1930s, now that's old! Well it is to us, being early 60s children.
Since coming to Latvia we have been eating very well, of course there are the fresh vegetables from the garden and this year we are starting to get gifts from friends, such as lampreys earlier on this year, beavers sausages, goat's cheese, chicken the other week and this week we have got half a goat. The lampreys we have to work our way up to eating, they are good but smell very fishy which we find off-putting, but paired up with some strong tasting vegetables and herbs it works well (still got a packet in the freezer). The beaver sausage we are still working our way through too, as it makes good salami for pizzas or a tasty casserole and it hasn't been casserole weather. The chicken was a free range hen that was past its productive years and so had to be cooked for a long time, but it made a lot of tasty juice for stock and still had a taste itself at the end. It made a lovely chicken and mushroom pie and yes the mushrooms were picked by Ian fresh that day. As for the goat? Well that is in the freezer as we haven't had chance to eat any of it yet, I will let you know what it tastes like when we have eaten some. It does show though that you can live very well, quite cheaply when you live as a community. We have also learnt to make many foods that we took for granted in England, such as cheese, bacon, hams, sausages and found that really they are not hard, just not so instant as opening a packet from the supermarket. I planned on giving our son some home-made bacon sarnies one day while he is here but that meant buying the meat Saturday, adding salt and honey to it in a plastic bag and turning it every day for four/five days so it will be ready Wednesday.
I mentioned last week that Ian keeps saying "winter's coming" well this week it did rather feel like it too as we have had some rather cool, rainy weather, fortunately it seems to have warmed up a lot in time for our son's arrival. Even the trees and vines have started changing colour. The rainy weather has meant that it has been difficult to get into the garden apart from the smash and grab type raids to get some veg from the garden before the next shower and so the weeds which were bad before have increased. Finally on Saturday I got in there and did battle with the weeds, which succumbed reluctantly. There are now three rather large piles of weeds complete with pulled up peas. I managed to rescue enough peas that hadn't been munched by grubs to add to our pie and they were good, just a pity there hadn't been many more of them. I did do some research and found that one of the best deterrents is fleece or fine netting to protect from the moths that lay the eggs, so I think I am going to do an experiment to thwart the beasts, one will be to cover them and another to grow something amongst the peas to confuse the moths, maybe nasturtiums and/or dill. If anyone has any other ideas please feel free to add a comment. I decided against the pheromone traps as they are just too expensive whereas the dill is free as I keep the seed - there's some drying in our bedroom as I write and so are the nasturtiums - if I manage to get some going to seed and the frost doesn't get there first.
One of the good things about winter though is the respite from the garden. There is not much to do in it when it is a metre deep in snow and all there is to do is to plan for the following year. I can really relate to one comment I read on a blog about farming this week
"One thing that has surprised me year after year is that in spite of all the challenges we New Hampshire farmers face every season we all return for the next summer. The winter seems to refresh and completely renew our motivation for growing and doing what we love."
I can really relate to that. I was looking at a plot of land today and planning for next year as I would love to increase the number of blueberries bushes we have and there is a triangle of land that is between paths and is a jungle of ground elder and wild raspberries. By laying a thick layer of cardboard mulch and then straw and pine needles on top by spring there could be a good soil layer for the plants and hopefully no weeds. Winter will do its work too.
Our land is our investment for our future. Often we are making decisions that will not be realised for many years, maybe even after we have gone. We are keeping many of the trees that have seeded themselves, some we remove when they are just plain in the wrong place, but if it can be kept and Ian can still manoeuvre around them with a tractor then they are kept, they will provide shelter for animals and fuel for us in the future. Oaks are something we are particularly keen to encourage and yet we may never see the fruit of those, although I would like to try coppicing them as they can be used for straight oak beams - they only take about 25 years I think! Just in time for our "retirement"? Actually past our official retirement age as that is just less than 20 years away (scary!). We are hopefully going to tread slowly into alpaca keeping next year with just a few to see how they cope with our land and our winters before embarking on rearing. They will still provide us with a few woolly jumpers anyway.
I see these sorts of investments, along with learning how to keep seeds as the best way into our future. Banks used to be thought of as nice safe places to store money and trustworthy places to invest our pensions, now I am not so sure. There are so many question marks over the way the economy is run and how sustainable it is that even the experts really do not know what they are doing, they are guessing too and often just praying that everything will return to normal and it will all go on as before (Delamitri yet again? here and here). The riots in England this last week should be yet more warnings that things cannot go on as before and reverting to authoritarian rhetoric isn't going to help either. I am not going to say much about this as so much has been said already and most excellently on this blog, which talks about the result of investing in the rich and in consumerism that has, like Roger's blog says, meant a lot of unexploded land mines waiting to be triggered. This blog also gives a good account and I especially like Cheryl's comments if you scroll down, where she argues for a return to living together as a society.
As Christians we are told not to store up our treasures on earth but store it up in heaven
Matthew 6 19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.20But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Thought you might like a cheery picture to
finish with! A photo of our sunflowers. Sorry
haven't got around to taking any more but
maybe tomorrow I shall post some
But what does that mean in our lives today, we often spiritualise it to oblivion and still don't really tackle what it means. The Lords prayer says "Let your kingdom come, let your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven." To me that means we are praying for heaven on earth, so invest in that. Again what does that mean in practice? Well I can't give you an definitive answers because it will be different for each one of us, but instead of looking to make an eternal difference, look to make a difference now, here on earth using kingdom principles of equality and fairness, and don't store up the money for the future. It is okay to give it out with the expectation that it could come back to you (and I did say "could", it won't always) and then recirculate it again, using it to build up, encourage and restore.There are plenty of folks that need a hand to get started on a project, so invest time, and money into those places. Get a group together to see about investing in some small projects - that's called spreading the risk. Just do something, don't get sunk in despair or believe it is all going to hell anyway and not do something about it. There is a God in heaven who is in the business of sowing encouragement and love into a hurting world and he is into transformation, so sow into it. Get behind what he is doing.
