Starter Smallholders

After two years, a change of computer made me realise that I could no longer remember how to get into blogger, but when I eventually found my way back by signing up to google (did they buy blogger?) I found a couple of comments, and a story of oil theft on Stonehead's blog, that made me think an update was called for.
2007 was spent in something of a daze so far as the smallholding project was concerned - the final round of thefts had taken a large toll on our affection for the house and the area. We still spent most weekend's there in the summer, but were less motivated to put in the work required. Ironically, the thefts reduced in regularity, which felt like a final insult, but was probably just an acknowledgment that there was not much left to take.
By the beginning of 2008, we saw the spiralling inflation in Latvia as a warning of things to come (although we did not guess at the IMF loan to come) and so, like rats, we deserted the sinking ship in the middle of 2008, selling our property just as the market was coming off its peak.
We are now in the UK, living in a tiny rented cottage and deciding what to do with our lives, while accepting that the loss of a plan has probably been the most destructive part of the process.
And that should end this story.
Except we regretted the sale immediately it had gone through. And I miss the Latvian countryside, its huge numbers of trees, its low population density and the wild animals and weather far more than I expected.
So, after we had done with culture shock, got over the depression of being in a country that felt more foreign than the foreign country we had left (just for reference, the last time I lived in England there was a Conservative government in power), settled into our charming house and started to get used to enjoying the fruits of other people's labour (box schemes are excellent), we started to think about the future again.
And now we are, once again, looking at smallholdings for sale in Latvia. This time we are more focussed: we have a list of attributes that our next house must have, as well as a secondary list of desirable attributes. And while we are here, we are earning enough to buy a larger property, that does not need huge capital input, with a relatively (to the UK) small mortgage - one that our UK salaries should be able to pay off very quickly.
It's good to have a plan again.

One of the blessings of our neighbourhood thieves was that they limited themsleves to relatively small items. In fact, the vast majority of items that they have taken have almost certainly been transported away internally, with others carried in pockets. The exception was one winter visit when they stole our sled to carry away the twenty litre fuel can, with a few litres of old and worthless petrol. Last month, either the stakes went higher or the thief changed. They would certainly have needed some form of transport to get some of these items away, which precludes the young 'lads' who we always assumed were to blame. During two visits, two weeks apart, we lost, among other things:
Fifty metres of hose on a large reel
Some more hose
Thick black waterpipe-type hose
Waterpump and power supply
Kettle
Vacuum cleaner
Toaster
Sandwich toaster
and various other items
Our local copper was his usual sympathetic and probably totally useless self, suggesting that the items probably ended up in one of the local tochkas - illegal alcohol shops - in exchange for a dubious mixture of home made vodka and imported ethanol. He claimed that he would go and ask at the three village tochkas, which prompted us to wonder why, if he knows about the shops, they still exist. Apparently Latvian laws preventing entrapment make it almost impossible to get a conviction. I cannot help wondering if a slightly more dynamic policeman would, perhaps, find another way around that problem, and also suspect that his promise to go and look falls into the same category as his claim that he could be at the house within ten minutes if we fitted a remote intruder alarm. It always takes him hours to arrive when we call him, and it seems to me that a thief who knows that he has beaten the alarm is unlikely to be deterred. It's fortunate that he is such a 'nice chap'.
The silver lining, or less bad news, is that they have not managed to get into the tool shed since a different nice policeman rehung the door for us last winter, so at least that collection is safe so far, alhtough who knows, as I write these words anything could be happening.
It is all pretty depressing, to be honest, and really starting to get me down - hence the silence for the past month. We really cannot see a solution, apart from going to live there full time, but the additional cost of round the clock security that would be needed at the building site makes that even less likely to be affordable in the near future. Fed up, and finding that I really don't even feel like going out there at the weekends, except for...
1. The occasional fun discovery - our vegetable garden has finally been found by the local wildlife and a deer has enjoyed a great meal of mangolds. It was inevitable sooner or later, and however disappointed I am about the vegetables, we had eaten a couple of meals from them so I really cannot begrudge them to a hungry, or even greedy, deer.

2. The latest addition to our family really likes to get out of the city.

Her name is Emma, and she came from a dog's home so we know next to nothing about her, except she obviously has some collie blood and runs like the wind.

School has started again, after what seems like weeks of preparation, and we are back to being just weekend visitors to the countryside. Thankfully, it has started to rain again so we do not desperately need to be there to water the plants as we did for much of the summer. Even more usefully, the weather continues warm and everything is growing well. As the food is ready for picking we have been kept busy planning what to do with it, and weighing our losses. When the very dry weather ended, we discovered that it had kept many of the worst pests at bay, and literally within days of the first decent rainfall we lost most of our savoy cabbage to a series of very hungry caterpillars. At the same time, the flea beetles returned to the basil and rather than treat them with ash again we just picked all 25 plants.

These were swiftly turned into a couple of litres of pesto, some of which was given to friends, and some kept in the fridge, where I am assuming that, drowned as it is in olive oil, it will keep for the couple of months it will take us to use it. In the meantime we are busy eating our way through kohlrabi, delightfully sweet baby broad beans, while treating ourselves to some still small, but very tasty leeks. Our pathetic crop of peas is done, but we still have some spring onions, runner beans, pumpkin, mangold and white cabbage to look forward to. Plus apples, of course. Our not very well pruned apple trees had a heavy year last year and we were not expecting much this season, but they have done better than expected - we ate the first and almost ripe fruit of the earliest variety yesterday.

Still no rain. The only rainfall since the beginning of June was a thunderstorm in late June. All of our plants are on starvation rations of water because the well is very slow to refill after being pumped down. However, it is still refilling so all is not lost. Our damage list so far includes the peas, which are looking disastrous, and the broccoli, which went from tiny heads straight into towering blooms more or less overnight. Also about half of our runner beans did not germinate, but I am not sure if this was due to bad seeds or drought. The redcurrants gave a very depleted crop and the blackcurrants nothing. But the pumpkins are loving it and growing well and most of the other vegetables are surviving, although I do not dare to transplant the leeks until their new bed has had a real soaking and they are looking a bit overcrowded in their seed bed. Gooseberries and cherries both gave good crops, although with unusually tough skins.

And on the bright side there are no mosquitoes - our pond has more or less dried up. But there are also no frogs. I suspect that the depleted borders of the pond made them easy picking for the storks.

My grandmother certainly thinks her house is perfect for her and, after forty years, has no intention of moving on. We visited her when we were in England, and I fell in love with the place all over again - the view from the kitchen sink is literally breathtaking. But, with my new found knowledge (I refrain from saying expertise as there is precious little of that), I could see that an unreliable water source is not the best thing for an isolated homestead, and couldn't help noticing that the soil is dreadful - very shallow and full of rocks. But the view is wonderful!