Hello Latvia: Kūgures

Showing posts with label Kūgures. Show all posts

The Wild Square and strawberry sandwiches

There's a patch of woodland just down the hill from our house in the country. The boys call it "The Wild Square". Every year we go exploring there. From the outside it looks small but once you break into it through the line of shrubs on the periphery, you realize its huge, with bits and pieces of swampy terrain, grassy spaces and trees. The Wild Square is home to wild boar and deer. We know because we see them come in and out of it. We see the patches where they have slept - but luckily, we have never met any wild animals while exploring. So today the boys packed a VERY IMPORTANT backpack (rope, sharp knives, matches, newspaper, little jars, some sourdough bread. You know. Important hiking gear.) and we went down to explore. Oh, I forgot to mention the golf clubs, for indiscriminate bush whacking.
We struggled through the bushes and oohed and aahed at anything out of the ordinary. Bugs with red spots, ant mounds, animal poo. Herbs and grasses. On emerging on the other side of The Square we found ourselves in a patch of wild strawberries, and we hopped and skipped through the fields collecting berries. Dodging big stands of nettles and thistles. Boys decided the best way to eat the strawberries was by squashing them onto the bread - instant jam, they said.
The fields at this time of the year are incredible. All the flowers and grasses and pollens and bugs. A short time in paradise, before descending again into autumn.

I was telling the boys about the tigers back in 'Nam. The Wild Square could definitely have tigers.

I wandered up the hill to see if I could find more strawberries. (The Wild Square pictured in the background) A baby deer freaked and gave up its hiding spot in the stand of thistles just in front of me. Crashed away over the grass. Not sure who jumped higher...

Same, same, but different

Midsummer's eve. I love it. I love everything about it - the golden sunlight bathing everything in the evening. The smell of honey wafting from the field, the wildflowers of all colours and shapes in glorious profusion, the wild strawberries you can eat straight from the field. The songs, the traditions, the gathering of like-minded souls, some old friends, others people I've never met. Jem the fire master setting up awesome burning rafts, cartwheels, posts. The few hours of "darkness" between sunset and sunrise, when the sky never goes completely black, but stays that beautiful shade of deep blue. The homemade cheese and beer and strawberries and rhubarb slice that people bring to the celebration. The mist down by the lake as we watch the sky growing lighter, the way all the birds call wildly as the sun comes up again. The purple-red sky before the golden orb rises, the bittersweet melancholy that takes you over when you remember the days are now going to get shorter again. Every year we go through the same process, the same rituals, but every year it is different. Different mix of people, different ways of getting through the dark hours, different reflections on the year that has gone and the year that is to come.

Can you see what I'm holding... that explains my self-satisfied expression

Procession up the hill to watch the sunset

Burning last year's wreaths

Watching the bonfire

Walking down to the lake around 4am - Mikus was the youngest kid who stayed awake till sunrise. Lovable, stubborn tyke

Jem's last fire show - a burning raft

Here comes the sun

The bleeding hearts club

My family haven't equipped me for the realities of life. From my early days I remember my mum "shooing" big huntsman spiders from our bedrooms with the use of a broom. When there was an ant colony that established itself near our pool, we put in a structure to help the drowning ants hop out of the pool. The occasional mouse that entered our place was caught via a "bowl balanced on a toothpick with a bit of cheese" trap - you know, where the mouse pulls the cheese and toothpick and the bowl drops over them. GOTCHA! We would then drive a couple of kms and let the mouse out in a carefully selected location. I have nursed quite a few baby birds with mashed up worms, and taken in the stray cat who was old and crochety, and still shied away from people in boots, obviously a remainder from a sadder abused life. The only animals I can remember my parents deliberately killing (apart from mozzies, of course!) were brown snakes, in our yard when we were little. Dad going out with a spade, and him feeding the dead snake to the kookaburras down the back paddock. I may have found some rat poison in the cupboard at some point as well, but noone talks to me about that. So who know what went on there :)
So in light of all this, we are in a bit of pickle at Kugures this year. Our hired help, who is usually wonderful, started feeding a stray cat a while ago, unbeknownst to us. So today we arrive in the country after being away for a few weeks, and a new, dependent and hungry lookin' cat comes towards us. She promptly decided to assert her territory and beat up our own cat (little princess) and then moved on to threatening my brother's cat. I got really mad, lost my cool, and started to gather a pillowcase in which to stick the stray into and take it far, far away somewhere (perhaps a coping strategy from my childhood mice herding?) - because the sad reality is, that although our hired help may feed the cat occasionally in summer time, if the stray gets dependent on our house for food, it will simply freeze to death in winter - because our house is shut up and cold - VERY COLD. No cowshed with livestock and chooks and hay to keep warm in. So I figured if there was no one willing to give the cat a home during winter, there was no point in feeding it all summer, have it beating up our own cats and make everyone miserable, only to meet a sad end in six months time. It would have more chance of survival if it roamed free and searched for a different house that was occupied in winter. A long shot, I know, but better than going to the pound, where it was sure to be destroyed.
So I ranted and raged and got the keys for the car and a box for the stray, and then inspected the cat herself. And she led me to her hiding spot.... to see her new litter of kittens. Under our woodshed. As it turns out, now we have a few more mouths to feed.
What to do? In Latvia, its still pretty common to send the litter "to naval academy" (I think you can guess what I'm talkin' about), but with the bleeding hearts club at Kugures there's no chance of that. Leaving all of them in the country means that they will either become feral in autumn or freeze to death in winter. The pound? For all of them?
I already suggested to our hired help that he should be taking in at least one of the kittens, seeing as this whole situation is his fault, but he's unwilling. My brother is moving towards taking one of the littlies. I'm not feeling particularly keen on taking a kitten - good lord, I have enough trouble with our "princess" Fizzy already. My mum is already the resident "crazy cat lady" in town, who feeds all the alley cats who come regularly to the soup kitchen she runs for feline outcasts. Don't think she could handle a permanent house guest.
So.... what to do, what to do?
As far as I can tell, mamma stray has at least two kittens, they look about 2 weeks old - all round with blue eyes, wobbly on their feet, with wonky ears and tiny tiny stripey tails. Squeaking and mewing when waiting for mum. I must admit I did suddenly find a soft spot for the mother cat when I saw her babies. The way she let me see them, and purred contentedly when she crawled into her makeshift home to feed them (see pic above - blurry bub on the left). That maternal instinct, its a millstone, yet it makes the world go round...

A nest with a view

Nope, no Easter eggs up here. We checked yesterday, when Jem crawled up onto the roof of our shed to put a webcam up by the stork's nest. For years the storks had their nest on an unattainable old electricity pylon, and we had no chance of seeing what was going on up there. We would only know there were chicks, and how many there were, after they started popping their heads up over the edge of the nest. But after last year's midsummer tragedy (for a recount look here) the storks have a new home in an architecturally designed and built nest on the end of our shed roof. We were a bit worried that they wouldn't return to this man-made home this year, but as we drove into the yard this weekend, we all breathed a sigh of relief to see two familiar silhouettes up on the nest. So we thought we would push our luck and put a webcam up there too. This year we will be able to see how the eggs hatch, how hatchlings are fed, how they grow and learn to fly. Assuming that all of those things happen, of course.

It was so wonderful to be in the country over Easter. We hadn't been since Christmas, and it was amazing to see the difference between the snow-covered wonderland we saw last time and the green pre-summer gloriousness of this visit. Nature turned it on for us, with bright sun and temps above 20 degrees, which is unusual for this time of year. So family arrived and we spent 4 days doing the usual: eating, drinking, hanging out, digging up garden beds and pushing seeds under the earth. Highlights were the egg hunt, of course, which Mikus seemed concerned about the night before - perhaps because I told him that the Easter bunny only visits well behaved children. That's right, isn't it? But he had nothing to worry about, because the bunny hopped around Kugures on Sunday, merrily tossing chokkies left and right. We painted eggs the Latvian way (you can read about this process here and here), and for the first time this year played the traditional Latvian egg rolling game. Kinda like bowls, except using a bit of old pipe as a ramp and coloured eggs as bowls. Of course.

Main thing for me is that the kids had a great time. Both of them with chocolate stained faces and muddy bare feet, and begging not to leave the country this afternoon. Another thing is that I spent some time this weekend in quiet Easter meditations: humble gratefulness for the sun, budding trees and new life that springtime brings after 6 months of darkness and cold. Always a keen near-religious experience. I suspect that others also feel the same - the storks above and us humans down below.

Spring is sprung

After visiting the zoo in Melbourne years ago, and staring into the human eyes of the Orangutangs, I vowed never to set foot in another zoo again. The manic repetitive patterns of the pygmy hippos and the desperately wise and sad faces of the apes left me so uneasy that I knew I didn't want to pay to look at animals in a glorified prison ever again.

After the boys were born, though, I have changed my tune - partly because the amazement and learning that children gain from going to the zoo is really quite extraordinary. Another reason is that I visited the Riga zoo with two Aussie vets, who had travelled around a lot of the world and seen many zoos. They said that Riga zoo was one of the better ones - the animals displayed very few signs of being stressed, and all looked happy and cared for and quite contented. So armed with this knowledge, combined with the fact that we live on the 5th floor and like to get outdoors with the kids, our family goes to the zoo regularly. We always take pens and paper and draw the animals.

One annual trip is on "Bird day" - which is held on one of the first warm(ish) springtime weekends. It's glorious to be running along without worrying about slipping on the ice, feeling the sun on your face and watching the animals enjoy it just as much. A celebration of making it through six months of big freeze.

A special feature of "Bird day" is making a nesting box. The zoo hands out a plan, bits of wood, hammers and nails, and then all the parents (mostly dads) determinedly spend an hour nailing on bits of wood, working out it's wrong, undoing it, nailing it back together. The kids watch, hammer the occasional nail, and at the end feel very proud of the nesting box they've built. The parents then carry the box around for the rest of the zoo trip.

(two pics above - Matiss; two pics below - Mikus)

Our friend Bella working on her "Giraffe" masterpiece

A relieved Jem + helpers having successfully put together the nesting box

The zoo's old cafe, only open in the summer season. Totally fabulous and in desperate need of repair. At the back there is a deck overlooking the lake Kisezers.

Lapkritis

Here's some random snaps of things we've been up to lately - many related to autumn, of course. Even after 10 years of living here, I am still amazed by the way our lives are so intricately linked to the seasons in Latvia. So this post is obligatorily about chestnuts and acorns and woolly jumpers. As it should be in late October!

At Kūgures on the weekend we made a menagerie of chestnut and acorn beasts. Lots of fun.

The building bug has bitten my parents, and a month or so ago they embarked on a dream of mum's to extend the Kugs living room to a kitchen area out the back...

In the spirit of Charlie and Lola (who are Mikus' favourite storybook characters at the moment), the next picture is named: "We have absolutely new jumpers and we will never not ever behave when mum is taking a photo" (thanks Oma for the very warm and gorgeous hand-knitted masterpieces)

We are into watching the amazing race at the moment, and this next one is from portrait photoshoot for the boys when they enter as a team. Art direction by Tiss... I wouldn't want to mess with the guy in blue!

Another early-autumn classic for Latvia is mushrooming. We don't do too much of it, because we are scared of picking the wrong mushrooms, although it is great fun to go into the forest with basket in hand, looking for funghii treasure in the undergrowth!! The pic below is a pan of chanterelles (the most basic mushrooms, and most edible, and unmistakeable!) which we picked a couple of weeks ago when visiting a friend in the country.

And here's one for the cat/old chair/red kettle lovers out there...

Miaow!

Spuds

Every year in early autumn, you can see Latvians gathering all around the countryside for a special collective working bee - the potato harvest. I have never really understood how it all gets coordinated - it's not written in the newspaper, or advertised on the radio, but somehow everyone knows that THIS is the weekend for potato picking. Farmers gather together scores of relatives and everyone goes out on the field to dig up the fields and fill up large sacks with starchy tuber goodness. Driving in the country on that particular weekend you see people toiling away, with lots of sacks on the side of the field. This has always mystified me, how everyone seems to agree on exactly the same day/s to do the work, and I have always felt a bit of envy because I have never had a chance to take part in this autumn tradition. Over the years I have hinted to my neighbour, who has never offered for us to take part in digging up her massive field. I don't know why, perhaps it is because each helper usually gets to take home a sack of potatoes?

So this year, my ambitious mum decided that we also needed a field of potatoes. She and Normunds, our trusty farmhand helper planted a modest field in springtime (around 50 rows, which is small for most locals), and we have watched the potato plants growing this summer, concerned for colorado beetles (which didn't appear), the weeds and lack of rain. When you consider the low commercial price of "Latvia's second bread", you may wonder why bother to plant your own field - but there's something about growing them yourself. I've always thought that home-grown potatoes taste better than store-bought ones, probably totally psychosomatic, or maybe because home-grown spuds are usually completely organic? Our ones this year certainly are - no pesticides or weed killers touched our field, that's for sure.

As the summer progressed and things got cooler, our thoughts turned to the potato harvest. Speaking to a few friends, I was alarmed around a month ago to hear that their parents in the east and north of Latvia had dug up their potatoes early this year, because of the rain, they were already rotting in the field. Other friends commented that the "word on the street" (at the market) was that potato prices were going to rise sharply at the end of winter, because this year's harvest was small, and of a bad quality. Almost everyone I met, including friends my age and younger, had some extra information on the state of potatoes, the future of the harvest, the dangers ahead, the importance of knowing when to dig... So I turned to our neighbour, a veteran potato grower, strode over to our place and looked at our field, the state of the stalks, dug up a spud, saw that the skin was still able to be rubbed off, and pronounced that they should stay in the ground a couple of weeks longer.

So we waited. I sat in Riga, watching the weather reports, watching the rain coming down, wondering how the spuds were going. And finally, we decided that this was the weekend. It wasn't raining and things had got a whole lot colder. I notified friends who invited us to social events that we were unavailable because we had to pick potatoes, and this was met with knowing nods and understanding comments. "oh, if you've got to dig the potatoes, then of course you can't make it". On the drive out to Kugures you could see the fields full of people with their sacks and pitchforks. We had struck it lucky and picked the right weekend!

Yesterday we started. The ground was rock hard, and getting the spade/pitchfork in under the clump to pull out the spuds was tough. Nevertheless the "buried treasure" aspect of digging overtook all of us, and motivated us onwards, and by the end of the day over half the field had been dug up. Even the boys stuck around for an hour or so, digging up their own plants and scrabbling in the dirt to find all of the spuds. We loaded the potatoes into a wheelbarrow, and spread them out in the shed to dry. All up we dug up around three wheelbarrows full, which will probably not last us all winter, but we all feel bloody proud anyway! In a couple of weeks, after they have dried, they will be put into the basement, in a cool place out of the light, ready to be eaten.

Now I'm feeling a little smug, because I've finally taken part in a potato picking expedition, and there's a bucket full of small and damaged spuds in the kitchen, waiting to be grated for potato pancakes. What more could you ask for?

And this is just a good post-potato-picking shot, taken by Mikus. Love the red apples!

Holidays

Jem and I are both on holidays. This is a pretty weird concept, as for years we were both freelancers who didn’t have officially designated holidays. Lately when we have taken leave, we have done so because were travelling abroad. This year, however, with the global economic crisis and home renovations and all, we are on holidays at home in Latvia. It has been wonderful. We have been at Kūgures and not done much. The last few days Jem has been building a bookshelf from recycled timber, while I have been meditating on preserving cucumbers. As you do.

This summer was stingy in the berry department, so I haven’t made much jam, but the heat must have for perfect conditions in greenhouses, because there is a flood of local cucumbers. I woke up two mornings ago to find a huge shopping bag crammed with cucumbers on our doorstep, left there by our neighbours who just don’t know what to do with their over-abundant crop. So I looked up pickling cucumber recipes and talked to a few preserving-guru friends, who recommended making “Latgales” salad - marinated cucumber slices with onion. So that’s what I’ve been doing. Slicing cucumbers and heating jars. And crossing my fingers, because I am taking a wild stab in the dark regarding pasteurizing the jars after they’ve been filled with the cucumber mixture – I guess they could be fermented, exploding messes in a week or so. We’ll see.

Jem’s project has been a success , and after many many hours measuring and cutting and sanding and drilling and measuring again and drilling some more and, dare I say, “finessing”, a handsome bookcase now adorns the corner of Kūgures living room. What will be his next furniture building project, I wonder?

Another thing we have done while on leave is go to a two day music festival. Of course these happened to be two stinking hot (yes – over 30 degrees, which is crazy hot in LV) days, whereby sitting in the sun listening to concerts and sleeping in an airless tent were a trial at times – but generally a good time was had by all. Music festivals are only just now beginning to take off in Latvia. You don’t get crowds as big as in Australia or other “western” countries, but it is a pleasure to see that younger Latvian music organizers are starting to give it a go. This festival mainly featured local bands and performers, but it had four stages going, the requisite activities for kids, weirdo art installations, dj booth, recycled clothing stalls and overpriced food vans.

I’ve got to admit I’ve always loved the music festival atmosphere and it was a pleasant surprise to see that the kids enjoyed it as much as we did. The night before Tiss and Mikus had put on a big whinge about not wanting to go, because they didn’t want to go to lots of concerts. But on the first night, when we stopped at 1am to have a snack before retiring to bed, I could see that my two overtired sons were hooked on the excitement of so much music and mayhem going on around them all at once. We had already seen fire twirlers, a friend’s bands play, a hard rock band in a big cleared-out hay barn, run into a crowd of crazy dancers at the front of a stage and danced madly along with them, played a bowling game and won prizes, been accosted by the evangelistic vegetarian crowd, posed for photos on a piece of interactive art, and pitched our tents in a huge apple orchard next to 100s of other tents. Of course, there were low points, for example when the DJ booth finally finished blaring over the camping area at 6am and Mikus woke up after only a couple of hours sleep - this was definitely not fun - but generally, we had a great time, and I am sure that the next time we suggest going to a music festival our sons will be hyped and excited at the prospect of what is to come!