Is it raining with you?

This is the lower pond where Ian removed the drainage
channel and blocked the exit. We are not sure if that did the
trick or it is just all the rain we have had, but it sure is filling
up fast now. We were also excited to see the fish swimming
around in it today. We haven't seem them since they were
put in just before all the water receded and left them just a
small area - deep, but small. It seems like they have
survived well and grown quite a bit in the process.

It sure is raining here on a frequent basis. We've had some sunny spells but a lot of rain. The ponds are full, the road is a mess and plants are struggling with the damp conditions - so is Ian. Ian does not like the rain, I'm from the soggier side of Britain and used to frequent trips up to the even damper Lake District as a child and so I don't mind so much, but even I would like to see a spell of dry weather again, maybe not as long as the last time, but still is a week too much to ask for? Every time it rains I have one of two songs going through my head and for those who recognise the lyrics from the title, one of them is Annie Lennox's "Here comes the rain again" or alternatively Supertramps "It's raining again." I think I'm getting a little tired of those earworms.

The baby swallows have all grown up now and left their nest.
They are still roosting in the girls' alpaca house at the moment
though, but we are not sure for how much longer before they
take off to sunnier climes. It was amusing to see them all hovering
around inside this evening as we treated some itchy patches on
Agnese's nose. Five young swallows all making a noise
because we were in there.

Today's collection of mushrooms from our forest in the
bucket. Some advantages to the damp days anyway

Some of our potatoes are showing signs of blight due to the soggy weather and it is a dilemma as to whether to dig them up yet, but it might be still early when we need to store them over winter and besides, did I tell you? It's raining again! That of course makes it difficult to dig them up. Mind you, the ones we have dug and are free of blight have been lovely. We are finally getting an assortment of vegetables and we were even able to offer some vegetarians an evening meal just using the vegetables from the garden and not feel like apologising for the lack of variety. Since we only have a halogen oven, one hob and a slow cooker I settled on a vegetable stir fry and baked potatoes. So we had peas, cauliflower, carrots with some carrot leaves, lovage, marjoram, sage, nettles and hollyhock leaves. Today we had wild boar pie, carrots, peas, onions and mushrooms in a white sauce and baked potatoes. Rather tasty too, if I do say so myself.

We emptied the water out of the well to see if it would fill up
again - it did! We could see the water level rising immediately
after we emptied it, so that was encouraging. We are still waiting
to hear whether the guy is going to help us dig the well, as Ian
is still not quite sure how to go about it yet. Still if the
worse comes to the worse, he can have a go himself. At least
we know there is water there.

Mari drinking deep

This week I went to some church meetings. We haven't done that in a long time, as the nearest churches are quite far and we are quite comfortable not attending meetings. We haven't given up meeting with people of faith and wouldn't want to, but our rich heritage from our previous churches has more than sustained us over time. I went primarily to connect with some folks who we haven't had the chance to meet for a while and also to hear the main speaker who was Terry Virgo. I'm not a fan of big meetings and definitely wouldn't traipse half way across the country to listen to some big speaker, as I know that God is quite capable of speaking through people without special titles as much as those who are held up as leaders in the faith. However, it did amuse me that a famous speaker would come to a little camp down the road from us in the middle of rural Latvia, so couldn't resist going to listen.

At least we have onions. These are hanging in the barn to dry

Tellus (left) and Turbjørn (right) in the sun that lasted until
10am this morning. 

Ian came as well but he was a bit late as he had to wait for the vet to microchip our male alpaca. The last time she checked she was not able to find a signal and it did concern us as they were all microchipped before we got them, according to the breeder. Tellus was meant to be going to visit some females and so we felt he really ought to have a readable chip. In the event the vet did find a signal but it was much deeper in the shoulder than she would have thought - at least we are relieved he does have an original chip and the number does correlate with the one we were given.

Slicing pie, as you do in the barn. The fridge is in the barn
and not in our greenhouse kitchen for a reason - sometimes
it gets too hot in there. Admittedly it has not been that hot just
recently.

Brencis with a green patch at the top of his neck. He and Mr.P.
have been having some spats and lots of we hope play fighting.
Nothing seems to be particularly serious, but we will have to
keep an eye on it as they work out their place in the
hierarchy of the herd

The meeting was nothing startling, as I said, we have a rich heritage, but it was good to hear someone speak of Jesus being here and now and building his Kingdom rather than we are all just waiting around for him to come back again. It was also interesting to watch Terry Virgo as he does remind me of a friend of mine and the way he tells Bible stories, bringing out the little details that can be overlooked when purely reading the story compared to imagining yourself in the story. I also went to another meeting on the Friday morning and was encouraged by a young lady who came up to me and asked if she could pray with me. Her words were reassurance from the Father's heart to me and although she did not know me, she prayed for clarity of mind - which towards the end of doing a PhD is particularly poignant.

Asleep in the greenhouse

A new Olympic sport? Synchronised
eating courtesy of Tellus (front) and
Herkules (back)

As I mentioned Tellus was off on an adventure to see some ladies which entailed a road trip. He wasn't particularly happy about going into the horse box, but quickly settled down. The journey was not great, too many roadworks and the roads were dreadful after the rain, but we got there. We took Tellus into one of the sheds and showed him the girls, only he didn't seem that interested. We left them alone while Ian went to practice his dentistry skills on llamas. He has cut alpaca teeth before but not llamas. It was a little more interesting from the point of view that it took just a couple of minutes to sort the teeth out but it took them a good ten to fifteen minutes to get the llamas pinned down, one in particular was really difficult. The two alpacas, however, were done and dusted in just a few minutes. We don't think Tellus actually mated with the girls but we were anticipating him spending two weeks there so that he would have time to recover from the journey, instead we understood that he wasn't required - so not really sure what happened there apart from some form of miscommunication. Still it was nice to have Tellus back with us, it was a bit of a worry to send him out to someone else, even if we do have two other breeding males - well potentially, one is still a bit young yet.

Mari looking thoughtful - or just deciding whether to bother
going out in the rain or not again. 

Looks like Mr. P is having a laugh, but actually he has a
droopy mouth after spitting at Brencis

Chanel's coat really glows in the sun - when it shines

Alas dear Yorik, we knew him well! Or tomb for the unknown
farmer! Those are just two of the quips we came up with
for the new rockery. This is just across the road down
to the barn outside the greenhouse and is there to stop
little children running straight out of the greenhouse and
into the pond. It is also a place for our herbs for tea to grow.

Despite the rain we've had visitors again this week. One group came from the camp where we had joined in with a few of the meetings. The weather was lovely for once and we had afternoon tea outside in the sunshine. They brought some cakes from the bakery in the village and nearly all of them had black tea with milk - we had almost forgotten what it is like to have friends who drink black tea - or rather "normal" tea with milk. Our second lot of visitors also brought cake, a huge slab of home-made Latvian blueberry cake - absolutely delicious and I contributed a cake made from sour dough and roasted grapes, which worked fine. I am so pleased that it doesn't affect my blood sugar as much, in fact it is lower the day after - of course I know I still should take it easy on the sweet stuff but it is nice to find that as long as I watch the portions I can eat pretty much everything now, especially after having lost around 18llbs or around 9kg.

We were also pleased to welcome back the Northern English couple who had visited us previously and the reason the blog was late last week. They will be heading back home soon, the long way round via Finland and Sweden - quite an adventure and we wish them well. The weather wasn't quite so kind and so we were in and out of the greenhouse while we chatted for around five hours or so, which is why they stopped for tea. Being Northern I could say tea and not dinner or evening meal.

A golden coloured alpaca house at the end of the rainbow

It was lovely to hear of folks who had enjoyed Latvia so much that they are determined to be back again and hopefully they will visit us again, maybe to even help on the farm. Something to look forward to. It also really feels like we are building something worthwhile when people feel inspired to try something different after we have been chatting. I'm sure many folks could do a better job of what we are doing and if we can be an encouragement on that journey then that is fantastic.

Just a typical week really!

Not quite sure why the picture is cropped the way it has, but
never mind, I love the cloud scene anyway

What a range of visitors we have had this week, from India to Liverpool. The reason for the lateness of this blog was an unexpected visit from some folks from what we jokingly call Northernshire in our family, in other words from the Northern parts of England. It is bizarre to meet people here in the middle of rural Latvia who come from near where I lived as a child and close to where my parents now live. There were a couple who were from Blackburn and Preston who were house sitting for a young chap who has a house nearby and is a regular visitor to our farm now. They came with a friend who had come to visit for a few days, who was from Liverpool. Well we extended a typical northern welcome and invited them for some tea and cake, which they graciously accepted.

A marshmallow plant

I'm afraid that sometimes the offer of tea and cake can send some folks on their way for some reason. Not sure if it is my cakes - they're not bad really, ask Ian - or just not used to being invited for a cup of tea or they really do have to be on their way. Still it was nice they accepted and we had a great time chatting. They were really open about where they are at in life and we talked about our journeys. It is exciting to hear of some young folks who are willing to be different and experiment in life, but sadly as they say, they have nothing to lose these days.

A soggy unshorn sheep. We need some dry weather again

They appreciated my feelings that I feel my generation have let them down by taking so much and expecting so much from them too. It annoys me that rents and university fees are so high, when our generation benefitted from much better provision for the future. We were thrilled too that they felt inspired while chatting to carry on pursuing what is on their hearts. We were all amazed how time flew and by the time they left it was time to make our evening meal and then I had chanterelles and some boletes mushrooms to sort out for drying and they couldn't wait or I would have wasted the hour or so that it took for me to pick them. Not forgetting that I also had chickens to feed and put away for the night.

Lots of mowing done

Grapes ripening

As usual in July my supervisor and his wife come to visit us, or our alpacas really. This time they brought a fellow PhD student, his wife and their little four year old, who are originally from India (we are clocking up an amazing array visitors from many different countries now). The little one was a bright spark, who spoke good English and presumably Hindi, but not absolutely sure and a little Estonian, but on this day she was adamant she was speaking English. Being Indian but spending most of her time in first Edinburgh and then Tartu, she was not familiar with some of the plants we have here on the land and unfortunately discovered nettles. I had to show her what they looked like so she could avoid them and I also had to get out my spray for itchy spots and bites, which fortunately worked well on her, although she looked very dubious about it before she let me spray the area that she had stung. We were amused to hear her talking about the "sting rays" afterwards.

More early morning sunshine, but don't be deceived it clouded
over later.

Starting to get a regular supply of tomatoes now at last

At one point she asked me why we had buckets under the caravan and I explained it was to catch the rain water. With absolute logic she stated they should be put out on the grass away from the caravan so they could catch more rain. I could not convince her that all the water from the roof of the caravan trickled down at these points into the buckets and would collect more water that way. She was quite insistent that they should not be there. I wonder if one of our own granddaughters would display the same forthright opinions on such matters when she comes, I could imagine she will.

It would have been nice to share some of the photos from
the visit, but we haven't seen any yet and we are too busy
showing people around to take photos normally

We also had a coach party in this week again. We were told it was going to be a group of about 30 with special needs but weren't given much in the way of details. We thought that meant 30 total with some who had special needs, not necessarily 30 with special needs plus about 20 helpers. When the bus turned up, we realised it was going to be a few more than 30. Fortunately most were mobile with only three in wheelchairs. Much as we would like to be accessible, we are not entirely and the only reason we were was because the ground at the time was still relatively dry and Ian had been able to mow the grass around the girls' paddock area to make things easier. If it had been today, it might have been a bit of a struggle with the wheelchairs, as it has got very muddy with the very wet weather we have had over the last few days.

A sunflower in the brief spell of sunshine we had this morning

We gave them the talk, with one of the ladies from the group translating, about what we do with the alpacas and many of them were really engaged and were asking questions afterwards. One young guy was really lovely and went onto tell us that his uncle uses a horse in their garden and he combs the mane of the horse. Those with special needs are not well integrated into society here and people tend to look down on them, however, we have had experience over the years and love working with them. They were a really warm and friendly group. We explained that if they were calm and quiet the alpacas would be more likely to come to them, and bless them they really were very gentle with the animals. We gave them carrots to feed the alpacas and let them into the girls' paddock.

The soggy barley has been mulched

We brought two of our young males across too, as we didn't think it would work to take them across to the boys' paddock as that was a bit too challenging with the wheelchairs. Ian made sure that those in the wheelchairs got to feel the soft coat of our youngest alpaca, Brencis and the smiles on their faces was priceless. When it was time to go we walked down the road with Brencis and Ian gave one end of the leading rope to the young chap who told us about his uncle's horse. There was a cluster of young boys as well who also wanted to hold the rope. I don't think they really wanted to go. There were lots of happy faces and cheery waves as they left in the coach. If all coach parties were that easy, it would be lovely.

At least we have some squashes ripening

Of course there were other visitors too, who were all just passing and had noticed the alpacas in the field. There was a group of four cyclists who Ian spotted in our field taking a look, he had quite a chat with them as they were really interested in what we were doing. I had to cut short chatting with them as another couple came on. I could tell by the way the lady was talking that she was more business orientated as she was asking about the marketing of the place and I explained about using Facebook and how word of mouth seems to be quite effective. Later on she asked if we believed in God and I explained how we felt we should care for this wonderful world he gave us. They couldn't stop long but they asked if they could pray for us, which was really nice and to cap it all they wrote a lovely piece about our place on Facebook.

A soggy Mr. P.

There was another group of three who were also just passing but we had a problem with the language. They still enjoyed the visit and the young chap was on the phone to someone telling them about the llamas, to which his mother corrected him and told him they weren't llamas, they were alpacas, which amused me. At least someone got it! We often have to correct people who think they are llamas. Close but not quite.

Rain clouds gathering

Our other animals were also up to antics this last week. Our youngest cat is getting to be quite a pest for cleaning up after we have finished a meal. She hardly even waits for us to leave before she is up on the table investigating. We have lost cake and bread in our forgetfulness. We now have tins on the table ready to put that kind of thing in. She also tried to bring a live mouse into the greenhouse. Not helpful at all. I ended up fatally injuring the poor thing, as we can't afford to have a mouse loose in there. Ian ended up evicting both cat and mouse.

Early morning sunshine though

One of our chickens went broody on us and I had to put her in a box last week to stop her from hogging the nesting box and stopping the other two from laying. It appears though that putting the chicks in seems to have helped as she has now adopted them. Not sure if they appreciate this fact, although one night I opened the nesting box a bit later than normal, as I had forgotten to check for eggs and found the previously broody hen surrounded by all the chicks. I guess they appreciate her some of the time though. It is amusing to see her clucking away to let the chicks know where the food is.

Our forest and the wood pile where we are growing
the squashes

Last but not least we had a visit to the accountants to chat through some ideas of ways forward. We were relieved to find that we don't have to have a signature on all the receipts for money that people give us for tours around the place. We just need to write it down in the book and give one of the copies to the accountants. That makes us feel a lot better, as most people are just leaving and thrust some money in our direction as a thank you, they don't want to spend the next ten minutes while we fill out the receipt book with name, address, number etc. What we do need to do though is to investigate if it would be beneficial to have an association or non-profit at the moment, while we build the business. I was thinking that it might make it easier for others too, as it would then be possible to make donations to enable more visits from those with special needs and maybe at some stage we can work on how to make our hilly piece of land that bit more accessible for wheelchairs and those with reduced mobility. Maybe a golf-cart or something similar- now there's an idea!

Whoops! Where did the time go?

Had a lovely time with some folks from my neck of the woods in England and time just whizzed by, so sorry no blog till tomorrow.

It's good for the garden

The new pond is nearly full now

They say the rain is good for the garden, but I think we've had enough now. Our ponds have begun to fill and in fact some are near to overflowing. Of course to defy the theory of gravity, the lowest pond still has a way to go to fill, but it is still steadily filling up after Ian blocked the outlet drain and dug up the drainage pipes. I know they laid the pipes to drain the swampy fields but we want the water to remain on our land and not drain away, especially important since the dry weather we had earlier on this year. I guess we won't be swimming in it though as there seem to be quite a few leeches in it.

Clay land drainage pipes from the bottom of our pond

A cat's perspective on the important things in life, like sleep

A six week drought makes you realise the importance of water. At least since then we and the animals have had plenty of rainwater to drink and not had to fetch it in from our apartment. As we normally have tea, then it is not a problem of how clean it is exactly because the water is boiled, but even so the lack of pollution around here means it is clean enough to drink cold and it doesn't have the chalk or chlorine in it. Having said that, Ian is not sure he likes the taste of the chalkless water - funny how you get used to certain tastes.

We've had cauliflowers this year. Normally we just don't seem
to be able to grow them, but this year we have managed. This
one was the first and showing a little bit of having been shared
with snails but not too bad. It was enough for a meal of cauliflower
in herb sauce for the two of us.

There's nothing like having a few grapes
whilst cooking. I can heartily recommend
having a grape vine in the kitchen
(probably won't be saying that when the
leaves start dropping) 

The rain today was pretty heavy, but fortunately not as heavy as they had been forecasting. We still had rain from 9am to 3pm though and not just the drizzly rain like we remember from summers in the UK but persistent, heavy, Latvian rain (and if you have been to Latvia, you will know what I mean, only not just in a summer shower sort of way). I am sure most farmers around here will now be praying for the rain to stop, even though they were probably praying for the rain to start about six weeks ago.

Ian's new toy, a grinder for the cutters for
his shears for the animals. He has already
saved €130 by sharpening all his cutters
and combs, as well as saving the three hours
of travel getting them done.

There has only been enough dry weather to make silage, which is bagged up while still moist. The hay though has to be dry and the weather has not been good enough, for long enough to do that and several farmers around here have cut hay and it is now just lying in the field soaking - it won't be good stuff for their animals to eat and may just be okay as bedding if it doesn't rot in the meantime. Oh the joys of farming. We are just grateful that we probably have enough feed hay for winter since we cut early, but we still need more to make sure we have enough for bedding for the animals.

A rather large grasshopper

This beetle had some rather wonderful electric blue, iridescent
colours on its body, particularly underneath

The weather hasn't been all bad, for the whole week, we have had hot dry days too, just not enough of them. On one day though Ian and I went to my supervisor's summer home about 3/4 of an hour north of us. Well normally it is 3/4 hour, but this time it was over an hour due to 5 (or was it 6) sets of traffic lights on the way there. It was a dreadful piece of road and they are removing tarmac in some places and relaying the base of the road, but they always have to work in several places at once, hence all the traffic lights.

A rainbow at sunset, an unusual sight and a very eerie colour

A chorus of hungry baby swallows. We didn't realise until
today that there are five of them

The reason for our travels was to help with some landscaping after wild boar had got in and over a period of three nights turned over the ground between currant bushes and around their sauna. Ian first cut the grass to see what he was doing and I and my supervisor cleared that, then Ian rotavated the land. It was pretty impressive to see the after effects of using the two wheel tractor and the various implements and it looked much better than the very uneven land before he started work. We were surprised how well the rotavator handled the steep but uneven ground. On another good day when Ian hasn't so much to do (hahaha) he will finish the job off, providing of course it isn't a run of good days with enough time to cut the hay and bale it.

This is the largest of our lambs and he is very photogenic.
He also has a sore bum and we finally managed to corner
him to put some spray on it to help it heal and some more
spray to keep the flies away, so he now has a blue bum. The
ram also has a sore on his head, as does another of the sheep.
The flies are dreadful to them, but at least they have now
all had spray on that needed it.

A rather soggy Mari

Other than the more mundane jobs of looking after animals and gardens this week we have made a brief appearance at our local village festival. I had heard there was a pizza van that cooked the pizza on a wood burning stove, it is hard to believe that they had a brick built oven in a caravan, but they did and very nicely it cooked the pizza too. They can only cook one at a time and for some reason I didn't quite catch, they could only do a plain tomato and cheese pizza. If we wanted anything more complicated we would have had to wait until about two hours later. We couldn't wait that long as we needed to be back to feed animals.

The echinacea in my garden is now flowering

Mari looking a little drier but only just. This is from the
morning dew though and not the rain

We weren't sure if people would call in on our farm whilst in the area for the festivities and didn't want too many folks just wandering around whilst we weren't there, so we didn't get to see much of the festival. In the end most people were occupied with the various activities in the village itself and the only visitors we had were our neighbour's daughter and her new Estonian boyfriend. We love the way she always brings her friends around to show them our farm - we must be getting something right and she is always encouraging about what we are doing. So instead of a busy weekend with visitors we had a quiet weekend, but that was okay too, as I managed to get a shawl made from our alpaca wool (no pictures it is soaking to clean it).

Not all rain! Chanel's colouring really shines in the sun

Another eerie sunset photo

I did get to one other event and that was to see medical herbs all arranged in the basement of the old hospital. I went with someone who had some knowledge of the herbs in Latvian and I knew just about all of them in English and knew what type of uses they had too, so I was quite pleased with myself. There were one or two herbs I knew but I didn't know I could grow them in Latvia and so I am determined to find a source of them, especially my favourite plant, Southernwood which has the most wonderful smell. There were one or two herbs that were used for different medical uses than the ones I know, so always amazing to learn something new about herbs.

The boys are on an eating spurt - do they sense the changing seasons?

The right was just right to take a photo of Mr. P. It is hard to
photograph a black alpaca

The pied wagtail on watch

Back in the old routine

A misty start to the morning

We were back into a more ordinary routine this week. We mainly did ordinary chores around our land. Our regular routine is to get up when we get up, anywhere between 5:30am to the latest 7:45am, but normally around 6:30am. It all depends on how tired we are and how well we sleep in the caravan. It can be a little noisy when it rains overnight, but usually we sleep pretty well, as it is so quiet despite having two cockerels, however they are far enough away to not bother us.

Our kitchen in the greenhouse

I pack away the bedding and Ian gets the breakfast out, which we now have in the greenhouse, since we put the second-hand kitchen in there. It is nice to have our breakfast in a bright and roomy place. I've never had such a big kitchen-dining room. Even better is that spillages on the floor don't matter as it is just the floor of the greenhouse with a scattering of straw to soak up anything. I had better not get to used to that. The downside is we can't leave food in there, because it gets too hot during the day and mice could get into it, or the cats. They do like bread, even when in plastic bags.

Our new animal feed preparation area is in the
corner. This was taken on our workshop by a
friend. No idea what I was trying to do, reminds
me of Tommy Cooper.

Marie on the floor at the back got into a pickle this week. She
must have been trying to get away from the male and ended up
head first with legs dangling in the feed section at the back.
Ian was a little panicky when he saw her and thought she must
have hurt herself quite badly, but no, she was just stuck. To
while away the time, she was tucking into the hay quite
contendedly. At least Ian managed to get her out okay

The daily routine this week has been for Ian to take the boys up to see the girls. A routine that does not need much encouragement and I feed the chickens. This got a little more complicated this week as we put the chicks in with a group of older hens. We were going to give them their own ark, but that meant culling some chickens that hadn't been producing, only of course they started producing again and the other chickens stopped laying. It seems like they have the idea the cooler weather means autumn, after our early and hot spring/summer. They got a reprieve, but we still intend on culling the cockerel because he seems to get in a flap too easily and we wonder if part of the reason for the low egg production is stressed out hens due to his panic calls.

Chicks of a different sort in the girls alpaca house. This is the
first brood of swallows to be raised in that building. They
are so funny with their big mouths and punk hair dos

The older hens have been a bit mean to the little chicks, but the little ones can escape under the ark, where the big ones cannot reach, so it isn't too bad for them. I also push a tray of food under there so that the little ones can eat in some sort of peace. One of the older chickens is particularly mean, but the little ones congregate around my legs when I am around and so I fend off the older one while they eat a bit. It was hard trying to get them all in at night though, but tonight I found a good system of getting the big ones away first and then opening up the side of the ark where we check for eggs and putting the tray in for the little ones in there. Since they congregate around me, they soon found the tray and all hopped in as good as gold - these are certainly the best chicks we've had for doing what we want them to do.

Morning fog hovering at tree line

After those morning chores comes coffee. We don't drink coffee that much, although our consumption has increased after our trip to Estonia earlier on in the year, but the morning cup is a must these days the rest of the day is usually tea. We often sit and chat about what we plan to do during the day, or is it I give instructions to Ian! Most often though we are putting the world to right before our regular daily chores of gardening, cleaning out the animals, moving fencing, or whatever other jobs are needed to keep all in shape.

The sheep behind the alpaca house and paddock area

Our visitors this week have been a motley crew. There have been our friends who wanted to learn more English and they helped us cutting alpaca toe-nails, well the husband helped with that and the children and their mother watched. It was so much easier with an extra pair of hands again, especially one used to larger animals, even Turbjørn couldn't get away, despite trying. The little ones did help at one stage when one of our alpacas looked like she might try and escape out the half door, by standing in front of the door and chatting to her.

The bought in food for our felting workshop last week from
the local hotel

Our next group of visitors were quite a surprise. We are not sure if we have met one of them before or not, but if we have they were young at the time. What was for sure is we know many of the people they know from the camps we used to do when we first started coming to Latvia. In fact they were off to do join a camp at the place we used to visit after their trip to our area. Small world, as they say. It was funny though reeling off names that we knew and they knew, even folks who used to go to the same church that we did back in England - all connected through camps in Latvia. It was really exciting to hear their plans to come and attend the local technical school in our village and use that to earn money in the countryside and run a farm - this is so much on my heart to see and one of the reasons for my research to see how that can be encouraged.

Dessert - rather nice

One set of visitors were more returnees, who had visited in May. The lady had suggested to her mother that since they were going past our place they should call in and see the alpacas, to which her mother replied "what's an alpaca?" Well she knows now and she thought they were lovely. Our next set of visitors were also enamoured with them. They hadn't intended to visit us but were wondering through our woods looking for mushrooms, as Latvians do. Private property is different here and something we have to just accept, which is fine. After all in the bible it talks about gleaning and not harvesting everything so we should not consider our mushrooms as just for us. It's hard sometimes when we haven't had time to look and someone else has got their first though. Unfortunately they came with a dog, which we are not happy about, especially a dog without a lead. It was not an aggressive dog, but we did insist it be kept away from the alpacas, for the alpacas' safety and the dog's. Alpacas have been known to stamp foxes to death if there is a big enough herd, so we cannot guarantee a dog's safety if they feel threatened. Fortunately the visitors were okay with that and they still got to meet the alpacas.

Lunchtime on the felting workshop

Not so ordinary or routine this week as a visit to the doctor's. A couple of weeks ago and again about a month before that, I managed to get a hernia. I have had one before about 20 years ago and so knew what to do and sorted it out myself without resorting to a hospital visit. However, with two occurrences in a short space of time I accepted that I should at least consult with the medics as to what I should do. I arranged for a friend to take me to the local family doctor, which we did on Friday. She got me into see a surgeon today (Monday), as she thought there was something wrong.

Looks like Lady V has found something amusing, she usually
has a Queen Victoria look "not amused!"

Today took a bit of organising, as the only person available was male and not comfortable about the examination, but we managed okay. The only problem is that the surgeon could not find anything wrong and said I shouldn't do such hard work and wear a belt to protect from hernias. Hmmmph! Not impressed really. It was not as if I was doing anything particularly strenuous the second time, just must have moved wrong. The first time was perhaps strenuous, as it was during the time we were shearing, but right near the end, after helping with the shearing of over 60 of them without a problem. Since the surgeon doesn't seem that bothered and I am not particularly wanting to have to go through surgery, I am going to try and see about strengthening muscles around my abdomen and hope that sorts it out. It could be that my stomach muscles are too loose after losing about 9-10kg over the last eight months. Hopefully I can avoid seeing the surgeon again in an emergency situation.

A cloudy sunset

I am not the only one getting articles published just lately, Ian now has an article in "Alpaca World" where he talks about our experience of having alpacas in Latvia. He thought they might shorten the article but they haven't or not noticeably so anyway. He enjoyed the experience and it will be interesting to see if anything comes of it in the future.