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Shall we say the weather today was not the best. I heard the wind and the rain start about 2am in the morning. It has just about stopped now and it is after 8pm. Most of the time it was heavy sleety snow. I even had to move some snow to get into the greenhouse to feed the chickens tonight. Not because we had a large accumulation of the horrible wet stuff, but because I use the north-facing door to get in and that has been the direction it has blown from most of the day.
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Two tone alpacas! Now he is supposed to be two tone, but the damp weather made it more obvious. |
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| Yes that is snow on the bank there and it isn't even our village where the grass was mostly covered in the white stuff. |
We went for a trip out to see some alpacas and llamas to cut their fighting teeth this morning. Many fields on the way were substantially flooded and the rivers were running high with water as a brown as a Yorkshire cup of tea - in other words they look well stewed. The alpacas and llamas were a tad wet but not too bad considering the weather. It's always a worry when we go to somewhere the first time, what will be the conditions and will they be able to catch the animals. Fortunately in this case there were enough helpers on hand and the jobs themselves were relatively easy - at least with three reasonably hefty guys to help keep the llamas still.
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| A strange abstract piece of work? |
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| Nope! Just the cat hiding on my heated box of seeds. Hmmph! |
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| Silla with a rather damp and mucky hair do. |
They will be aiming to shear their own alpacas and so we suggested they come and see how we do ours. We have enough to do with the current customers we have and the tight window we have to shear, so we are more than happy for people to learn how to do it for themselves. They seemed quite happy about that, so with any luck that means a few willing extra pair of hands on shearing day. We already have one couple who will be coming to help us. It's not the case of the more the merrier, in fact that could be the more the more stressful, but when they know how to handle animals it usually works out okay.
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| Has Vanessa been having a disagreement with someone? The droopy lip suggests she has been spitting. |
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| Sometimes, you just have to have a good scratch. |
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| Lawnmowers in action. I like these self- propelled lawnmowers, much easier. Well, I would say that. I don't have to move the fences. |
It was nice to be able to call in at the bakery on the way back to our caravan and pick up some hot food to eat too, so we didn't have much to prepare to eat. We must have got a bit cold this morning and maybe disturbed by the noise of the wind and rain in the night, because as soon as we had eaten and warmed up, we both fell asleep. Not something we do in the middle of the day on a regular basis. I spent the rest of the day on the computer, even though I'm on holiday from work, but it has meant that I've managed to do some sorting out that I've just not had chance to do. I've had a desk-tidy up folder for ages when the clutter on my desktop got too much and so I just shunted it into a file to sort out later. Well it's gone now and that makes me feel like I've done a good spring clean. Not bad when there was no chance of getting in the garden due to the weather.
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| Amanda looking quite rotund and very tired. Not long now to go.  The three amigos |
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| Another bad hair day |
Even though I've been on the computer for half the day, I haven't really been on the internet much. Our internet generally suffers when it is a holiday in Latvia and bad weather doesn't help at all. Facebook in particular is far too slow when the internet gets lousy, so I haven't been on all day. Pretty unusual for me, I do like to keep up with everyone's news and so tend to spend too long on it. It just shows though what an utter drain on energy Facebook is when it takes so long to load.
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Love the angle, makes Ilvija and Mari look like their having a kiss. A layer of mucky fleece but then nice and clean. Phew! Not long to go now before shearing time. |
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| Lecturing 2021 style. My backdrop was a field of alpacas though. |
I gave a lecture to a German university this week. I was given permission to be controversial, so I threw a few comments in to get students thinking. I also outlined some of the problems that farmers face at certain times of the year, when the job can be so draining. I gave an example of us at haymaking time when the clouds are rolling in and we have to load up the hay. A time when we might be barely talking to each other because we are both irritable, tired, dusty and hungry. Those times when there is no clocking off at 5pm because you work till you're finished. It wasn't to make us look good, because our days are not all like that, but I wanted them to understand how advising farmers to diversify makes a mockery of what they do in those busy periods. If their income is not enough, then it is because they are not receiving the benefits they should for the hours they work and the system is broken.
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| A little daffodil. They are still hanging on in there. I thought we might have a mass of them by now, but the wild boar thought they were tasty a while ago. |
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| And what else does the modern lecturer do? Feeds the chickens of course. They are still in the greenhouse. I was tempted to get the arks outside but the cold forecast put me off and I'm pleased we didn't. |
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| We've had some lovely days too, just a bit cold. |
One student asked how they could support farmers to be more efficient and I challenged the student on whether that was a good thing to do because efficiency is a rather difficult term for someone facing the challenges of climate change. To be sustainable and resilient might not mean becoming more efficient. What is efficient in a factory or a laboratory is not necessarily efficient in the field. It is not necessarily efficient to plant four crops, but if one fails then there is always the other three to fall back on. It is efficient to plant up one large field with one crop because it doesn't require a multitude of machinery, but then that might not be sustainable or resilient, particularly in a bad summer weather-wise. I certainly enjoyed the challenge of the presentation and I look forward to hearing the feedback from the students.
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Chanel looks very proud of her grass balancing trick Turbjørn is at least eating well. He is still struggling a bit though and some days are better than others. |
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| It is amazing how similar these two are in colour. They have the same father, Tellus, but George on the left has a white and brown mother, Mari and Freddie has a dark brown mother, Chanel. |
I also finished my own seminars this week. My students still have an essay to hand in, but there are no more whole class meetings. It was a good job it wasn't today, as I think I would have had to cancel it. I think I will miss them. It was only a short course, but I've enjoyed hearing the progress they've made in their ideas and it was great to hear how they are thinking about including people, even children, in future planning. If that is the route they take then that is something to be optimistic about.
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| Josefs is a lazy one, can't even be bothered to stand to eat. Don't worry, there's nothing wrong with him. He can run around and leap about when he wants to.  Not as clever as his brother George, but still quite a bright spark is Jakobs. |
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| You can see the alpacas share our challenges! Don't worry, they are just sunbathing. |
On the farm itself we've had a few challenges of our own. One day I went to our fridge that we keep in the barn to find that a mouse had obviously been in it and left a few calling cards. Ian had even put wire over the back to stop them getting in, but it wasn't sufficient. We think it might have hurt itself on the wire as there were also a few spots of blood. Well the fridge has been fixed now and Ian has managed to work out a way of attaching a piece of metal over the only possible place it could have got in. It was a bit tricky and it is into the foam insulation, so we hope it holds enough to deter a mouse.
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| Poor Aggie. Her nose is sore. I will be giving her another course of cream to ease it. We do it for three days then stop because she gets so fed up with it and gets awkward. More stress won't help. |
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| Mr. P tucking into the grass too. He's much better. He was staring longingly at the girls today. |
Mr. P has been having antibiotics and steroid injections most mornings but at least his breathing seems to have improved. We think it might be an environmental allergy of some kind as Ian realised he asked our vet out to listen to him this time last year. We knew it was a regular thing but hadn't realised it was tied to a particular time of the year. It's a good job that Ian is very methodical in his approach to note taking - unlike me!
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| Some glorious days indeed. |
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| Aggie is looking huge. |
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| Josefs is an inquisitive chap. |
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| Silla was the bravest and went into the field first. Mari and Aggie were having a sniff to see who she was before Silla decided to make a rapid exit. |
The grass is still growing slowly as the days have still been a bit cool and so the animals have needed to be moved fairly regularly. They started to eat through the fences rather too quickly - even though they have plenty of hay they could eat instead. Ian ended up having to sort out the charger units as they seemed to be not working well enough. So they are cleaned up and working now. Ian also took the opportunity of letting the two groups of girls mingle together. This will help us later on in the year when the youngsters need to be separated from their mums. It means we can create a new herd with less stress. We'll see how that works obviously later on.
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| The rest of Vanessa's group starting to investigate the field where Aggie's group were.  Aggie's group investigating Vanessa's paddock  They have better trees to scratch through.  All together now. They are still not quite acting as one group, so still easy to separate. |
So on this rather blustery wet day, when it still cannot quite make up it's mind whether it's spring or winter that is about it for life in our little rural place.
