Goodbye

 

Garry has left the village and started his trip home. However, I have some more photos sent to me by Marina, our friend who's living in Ontario now, who was on this trip to visit her home and husband in Zaporosia. Marina and the guys in Kirvoy Rog (and Dnipro) have been hearing the shaheed drones going to the cities with the Russian attacks while they were there. However in the village Garry has not heard any. 

With Sasha Borchuk

In the cheese house

Garry did get a suitcase packed to bring home, he was showing me clothes and asking if I wanted them on video chat. He also packed a suitcase with clothes for him to wear on his next trip back to the village that he's leaving there. Our room is empty now so Alona and her children Danil and Sofia, who have been sleeping in the living room, can move in. Her husband has been drafted into the army. Nikolai is currently moving to the front lines, so pray for his safety.  

Tomorrow Adam will drive them to Moldova, where they will find a hotel for the night and fly out on Tuesday. Garry said everyone says that it seems he just got there and he's leaving already. 

Trusses

 So Garry's time in Ukraine is drawing to a close after the weekend, and the effort to finish the hay shed has been going well. The only thing that won't be done before he leaves is putting the steel on the roof. They can't get the steel delivered until next week. 

They got the trusses finished and the welding done, and put the wood around the top of the cement posts on Wednesday. Wednesday morning they realized that the new hay shed is a little longer than the old one, so they needed one more truss, so Garry got to work building one from scratch. 

He had to hustle to get the truss done because he was going to the notary with Oleg to sign something so he can sign for Garry on things in his name. It's been a problem for paying taxes and other official paperwork. Garry said they even had a translator to explain everything at the office. He said it was nice to talk to someone in English (besides me on messenger). 

Anyway they got the wood around the top of the shed as darkness fell, because they had a crane for Thursday morning to lift the trusses into place. They got all the trusses into place and a good deal of the bracing in place. 

Since everything was the same size they were cutting 2 by 4s off on the ground and handing them up for the guys to nail on. Thursday Garry was doing most of the cutting while Max and Andrey were nailing up top. 

Friday the guys were finishing that while Garry went to the dentist.

 

Garry got some photos of a pheasant that was near the barn while they were working.

He's been tired from working on the shed all week, and now his mouth is sore (he's getting two implants done), so he says he will pack the suitcase tomorrow. Marina and he will meet up with the guys on Sunday and they will all be going back to Moldova Monday for the flights back on Tuesday. Garry's back home Wednesday. Three weeks will have flown by for him, and he's already planning a trip in the fall.

Meanwhile, it's March break here and I'm expecting company for the week. 

Cranes

 A sure sign of spring, the cranes are back in the village. Or the crane, Garry says it's quite friendly, you can get about ten feet from him. You may remember there were a pair of cranes, they even had a nest on top of the water tower four years ago, and three years ago, the students were sending us photos of their babies. Unfortunately, one of the pair was lost when she landed on the transformer (and knocked out power to most of the village) in the summer two years ago. So now there's one lone crane, who hunts for mice in the straw bale pile. 

Hard at Work

 Monday night I talked to Garry and he was tired after a long day working on trusses, he said he had started the day by making pancakes for the girls for breakfast. By the end of the day, they had finished fixing trusses. 

Danil, looking much better now.
Garry thinks he liked being in the hospital.

Today he sent me photos, lots of photos, as they were working from 9 to 6 on the building project. They continued building the structure, Max welded something onto the thing they use to push grain around in the shed so he could get 24 feet up to cut the tops off the posts so they are even. Tomorrow they plan to put up boards around the top to get ready for the crane to come put up trusses. 

There's still some welding to do, two sides will have the metal bars.

Garry says he played the part of Phil (from the work team in the fall) and went and made coffee and brought it and cookies out in the afternoon for the crew. 

Garry tells me that there's a new young guy from the village working with them, he's 17 and his father died, he lives with his mother and three younger siblings. Max even has him driving tractor. I did not catch his name, but he's in the photo.

Today they had the guy from the Ukrainian Canadian Ag people come with liquid nitrogen and frozen semen, he brings it when he's delivering out this way. They chatted a bit, his daughter is living in Montreal. Max breeds the farm's cows with Garry gone, but he does not go all over like Garry used to. 

The product of that work, the biggest cow on the farm had a heifer calf today.

Weekend

 The guys did come tour the farm Friday around 10:30 when Garry was helping with trusses and had a nice dinner at Max's mother's house in the village. Garry said they talked until 3 o'clock and afterward he drove Alona and little Sofia to pick up Danil at the hospital in Zaporosia. They did not take any photos of dinner, although there were a few at the farm. 

So the house is even fuller, Garry has been going through stuff in our room to prepare for Alona and kids moving in there, he's bringing a suitcase back with some of our stuff, he had the girls go through my clothes for things they could use. Garry said he found my SEI shirt I was thinking was there to bring home. I haven't seen those clothes in three years. 

Saturday they did more truss fixing, Garry says there are only five more to fix. However, still lots of welding to do onsite before they can go up for the roof. They hope to get them done and craned on before Garry leaves next Sunday. 

Garry also got interviewed for a vlog, he said they were there about 3 hours, and took some footage at the farm, too. Oleg sent them away with some cheese samples.

Sunday he was at the church in the village, he said more of the students are attending now. You can see Butterfly Yulia wearing my red Canada cowboy hat in the photos. Garry says she has it on almost all the time. 

Oleg leading the children singing

Monday he plans to be back at work on the building project. It's a lot more spring looking in Ukraine.

Last night and this morning, we had snow in Manitoba. Two or three inches. Some of the grandkids were out for the weekend and enjoyed watching the birds at the feeders.

Cheese and construction

 Thursday Garry was out with Oleg delivering cheese and kefir to another group of stores, I think it translates to Cossack Farm (that chain has their own milk) and a delivery to one small Bridge store that's on the other side of Zaporosia, that they don't do on the other days. He tells me the Salami chain want to do an interview with him, the face of Fermer Garry. 

Since it's the shortest delivery day, Oleg picks up groceries for the week for the daily student noon meals that are at the "new house" (remodeled about 10 years ago) on the corner on the way to the barn. Garry says Oleg also buys 2 liter bottles of soda (cheaper in the city than the village) that he sells to the students for less than the village store, in hopes of keeping them from running up unpaid tabs at the store.

They stopped at the hospital and visited Daniel, who's been in the hospital a week- I said hello via messenger chat- he's looking great and getting out of the hospital today (Friday). Garry says from what he heard adults are not staying in hospital as long as in the past because they need beds for injured soldiers, but kids still stay in for a long time with things that probably wouldn't put them in hospital in Canada. 

This morning while Garry was eating toast and making coffee at seven am his time (midnight here in Manitoba) we video chatted for an hour. The little girls woke up, Leila started making breakfast for Butterfly Yulia (there are a lot of Yulia/Julias in our lives). 

He said he didn't have to go anywhere today, so he hoped to get lots of work done on the building project. Max told him that someone in the village asked why we were rebuilding the wood trusses instead of using metal ones, and he said that would take three months, and they want to be done in three weeks. Anyway, he sent me lots of photos while I was sleeping. 

Looks like they were taking the repaired ones back to the site from the shed. Garry was hoping to free Max up to help Andrey with the welding. Today Adam, Daryl and Ken were coming for lunch, Max's mother was going to make it. I'll look for some photos to share.

I also found a photo of the cheese house addition that they have been working on recently. About ten people work on the cheesemaking. 

Keeping busy

 Garry did go to church in Dnipro on Sunday morning, and spoke at Lena's English class in the afternoon. He said that afterward he went to coffee with some people at a cafe for about three hours. He said he drove home in the dark. He forgot to take any photos on Sunday.

On Monday they got the big shed ready to fix trusses inside, because the weather has turned wet and it's around freezing (Garry had been running around in a t shirt since he arrived). Garry says they have a hundred tons of wheat and sunflowers still to sell. They try to sell crops when they need to buy seed and fertilizer to balance income and expenses. They are spreading liquid fertilizer on the wheat, it's in the big black tanks.

Since it was rainy he and Max drove to Kremachuk to visit a Ukrainian seminary. It's with Kontakt, the mission organization we have applied to join. They did take a photo there, he said the young guy here spoke pretty good English.

Tuesday he delivered cheese again with Oleg and Margo. They take bottles of milk and kefir that are bottled that morning, and different fresh cheeses.  They took 1200 liters of milk and 700 liters of cheese. He's the face on the van delivering Fermer (farmer) Garry milk and cheese, so the people at the store are excited to meet the Canadian. Friday and Tuesday they go to Bridge and Salami stores. 

The biggest order goes to one of the bridge stores, the smaller stores take 50 bottles of milk and 18 bottles of kefir, and some cheese to sell. Thursday they will go to another group of stores they stock once a week. They picked up more new plastic bottles to fill at a warehouse before heading back to the village.

Oleg sent me this photo from Friday, before Garry got a haircut, Tuesday he was wearing sweater under the overalls he was wearing in the photo on the van decal. 

He missed going to Julia's birthday party because he'd made plans to meet our friend Jessica for dinner in Zaporosia. He did give her the present. Hopefully the right one, because today he was asking me where one of the other Yulia's in our house present was, he can't find it.  

Garry says they have fixed about half the trusses already and have about a third of the welding done on the framework. 

Hopefully it warms up soon, I just sent him in a sweatshirt instead of a coat. He's been going through a lot of our stuff in our bedroom, and found some Hope for Each t shirts and gave them away to students.