Sunflowers

Today the combine came to start harvesting sunflowers. It was supposed to start yesterday but the guy wanted to make some improvements to his combine first, it's brand new and he has not done much yet with it but apparently it was feeding too many sunflower head into the center and slowing him down. The first field they did was the one down by the highway- the one I have been taking photos of most of the year- and it did quite well. They got about 2.4 tonne per hectare. Garry says he'll figure out the bushels per acre for me. 74 bushels an acre!

Garry says they will be combining for five of six days yet. We'll sell about half right out of the field and put the rest in the shed to store and sell later. Some will go for shares for the people who get goods instead of cash, they get 150 (good thing Garry reads over this I said 500) kilos each, most of them get them crushed for the oil.

We sent off a big truck full of sunflower seeds to sell to the mill today. That's Victor with the guy who has been helping with us becoming an official business (I forget his name- sorry). He and his wife, and a prospective group home couple came out to the village with Victor today. They stayed for lunch, I made chicken tacos. They all cleaned up the dishes while I was outside with Garry talking with a group of Mennonites outside from Manitoba.

When we left for our SEI follow up group in Kamanskya (former Dneprapajisk) around 5 pm, the combine was working in our field across the highway.

Garry was excited about how well the disc was working up the ground in the sunflower field after harvest, they will be planting wheat there as soon as possible. Tomorrow they will be baling hay, too, all before it starts raining. The forecast is calling for rain on Friday.

We had a good drive there and back and a good meeting with seven people there. We did some English speaking practice introductions and improv with tea and cookies. Garry will see them again in two weeks while I am in New Jersey. If you are wondering why I have toilet paper on the table, we played an intro game where everyone choose 3,4 or 5 pieces, then they found out they had to say that number of things about themselves as they tor off the pieces. Everyone can play, the beginners get a little help from others.




Today grad student Oksana turned 20 and we had cake with candles at the school this morning and she got a bag of new clothes for a present, it's what we give all the students. Many of the presents are from suitcases the Steinbach team bring from Canada.

 She got a special present today, the engagement ring that Kolya bought yesterday at the mall. There will be a wedding to plan, maybe in the spring.

When we got home at 8:30 tonight, I somehow got both Needles and Box inside at the same time. Since summer with all the people in the house I hardly ever get her inside, sometimes around 11 pm, maybe a couple times a week. She is so shy of strangers. I am sure the cats will be inside most of the time when the colder weather comes.