Wednesday-

Today, Wednesday, Garry went with Margarita to deliver milk in and around Zaporosia, today it was 20 liter jugs for people who resell it by the bottle. Oleg has been sick (he had pneumonia, and now a sinus infection) and unable to go. Garry said he caught her going 140 Km/Hour on the way home and told her she can't do that in Canada. She is applying to go to Providence University College, where Max Boradin went. 

They have a drone warning device. Garry says it must tell you just before the drone hits you. He also said the GPS doesn't work during air raid warnings, so they went a different way to the last delivery and the guard at the block post yelled at her for not stopping at the stop sign but driving the ten feet to where he was waiting. I heard the conversation between her and the guard because I'd phoned him about Daryl wanting to talk to him. 

Here's a Ukrainian farm economics story for you, it takes 23 tons of wheat to buy a ton of diesel. It's a little more expensive than in Canada, but the price of wheat is falling now, too. Max said another farmer asked how they could afford to start fall plowing and he told him that their old boss is back. 

 Garry said they have drone deflection nets up some places on the highway.  They used the solar a lot today, seems like there is four hours of power on the grid followed by six hours off. Garry couldn't cook dinner for the girls and kids tonight because the electric stove takes too much power to run when they are running on the solar powered battery. 

 They did some welding on the headrails during a four hour "on" time today. Garry said Max has figured out a way to run the generator at his house on the natural gas line instead of diesel. Much less expensive, a little difficult to get going but runs okay once he gets it started. 

Tuesday

 To go with our last post about the heifer breeding, Oleg made a reel about it. https://www.facebook.com/reel/1715632146819782

Today Garry and Max went into Dnipro to buy some liquid nitrogen for the semen tank. Unfortunately, the place were they always buy it was out, so they will go back next week when they are supposed to have more in stock. If you watched the video, you'll see a little escapes the tank when he breeds the cows. However, there's enough to keep the semen frozen until next week (or longer.)

They did however, stock up on oil for the van and other supplies. While Max was driving the team to the border he had a sudden loss of oil pressure and so they decided to change the oil when he got back. Before the trip the white van (used bought in 2014) had 550,000 km on it.

 Looks like they bought 250 litres of oil and 100 of antifreeze to stock up for the farm vehicles this winter. Garry has said that the power was out (or went out) every time he went to Dnipro over the weekend. Everything was running on generators, at the mall, even at church, where the power went out during the service. 

Garry said the sun shown most of the day, and the power was out much of the day, it seems like they may having rolling blackouts again. The power was never out the week the team was there. It does slow down welding for the headrail, because they can't weld when the electricity out.

 The power was off when Garry woke up in the morning, and was on and off several times during the day, it was back on at four pm, so he cooked supper for the girls again, beans and franks, because there are canned beans in the humanitarian aid packages that the girls get.

The power was scheduled to go out again at 8, so the girls were making sure the kids had baths in time. Garry said that it was good timing because the cows would be milked during that time period, so they wouldn't need a generator. The battery backup for the two houses means they have lights and Wi-Fi while the electricity is off this year. They should be able to finish a batch of cheese if they have started one when the power goes out, and keep the milk in the cooler in the cheese house cold (unless it's summer). 

Monday

 Garry had a busy day Monday. They started working on the shed again, mostly on the metal work for the inside, the headrail and I assume gates to be welded. There's still a couple sheets of steel to go on the roof and the gables to cover.  Oleg had another Facebook video. https://www.facebook.com/reel/1736607907438086

His pen of older heifers had seven cows in heat (ready to breed) in the morning and one more in the evening. They moved those to a new pen after he bred them, leaving only the ones yet to breed. He's hoping all 25  (Opps Garry said it looked 25 were big enough to breed to me, but there are only 15 in the pen)will be pregnant before he leaves in just over two weeks. 

With the team gone, he's spending more time with the girls (and kids) in the house. They picked up walnuts in the yard and he cracked them while they cleaned them. You might remember that last year there weren't many because of the drought. This year was a good year, so they were out to get them before the birds. The crows really love eating walnuts.

 Afterwards, he cooked pancakes for dinner. On the Sunday he made a pasta dish for supper with ground pork he bought. He's trying to inspire them on how to cook with the humanitarian aid they get. He asked me what you can make with dry split peas.

Valentina sent me this photo of Angelika from school, apparently they celebrated Halloween on Monday. That's her in the grinch shirt. Garry tells me Danil didn't go, he broke his arm a couple days ago, outside playing when one of the boys (Oleg and Elena's sons are his age) landed on top of him. 

Sunday

 Last week Sunday the team went to church in the village and had a relaxed low key afternoon. Hannah gave Garry his only in Ukraine haircut, too. 

I forgot to say that Garry said Phil made good meals for the team, he raved about the apple crisp and cinnamon rolls for dessert. 

Garry did admit he slept better Friday night when the team was back across the border, he says that the war is more evident on this trip than on previous ones, including this spring. The village is still safer than the city. On Thursday the train station in Dnipro was hit by a jet powered drone and 13 people were killed and as many injured on the main platform that we have walked across many times. Of course, the drones fly over the village on the way to the city, so they hear them and the anti-aircraft gun fire in the distance. 

Garry feels better about driving on drizzly, foggy days, because the small drones don't work as well then. It rained for three weeks before the team came, not once while they were in the village and started raining a couple hours after they left on Friday. Of course, no rain made the work outside much easier. 

Today Garry drove into the Left Bank of Dnipro because Daryl Porter was preaching at the Evangelical Free church there after he was teaching English in the city this week. Garry said it was the church's Thanksgiving celebration, so he didn't leave until after two and lunch. This seems to be the only photo he took today at the church. 

Meanwhile the team flew out of Vienna this morning and should be home in BC later today. 

Halloween

 The team members should be enroute to Vienna about now. Seems like there was some drama about a misplaced suitcase at the airport, but all's well, that ends well because it was found. Hopefully the rest of their trip home goes smoothly.

Max took a nap in the van last night on the way back to the village. He started driving again around 6 am when he woke up because he was cold. Garry said Max was almost back home this afternoon when he drove into Dnipro. Garry went to a mall to find a Kyivstar store, because he's been unable to use his phone unless he was on Wi-Fi, even after getting a Ukrainian sim card in the village. 

Garry was enjoying looking at Halloween costumes, mostly young people dressed as anime characters at the mall he went to. Halloween is an imported holiday, not a traditional one in Ukraine, but it's interesting to see kids and teens dressed up with air raid sirens in the background. He did get a working sim card, and for an extra 400 grivna had the broken screen saver replaced on his phone. 

Here's another video of Oleg's that shows the house team work. 

House opening

And a few more photos of (and from) the team 

Thanks everyone!

Goodbye Ukraine for the team

 

Making this post late Friday night to tell you that Max successfully drive the team to the border crossing today- actually around 1:30 am October 31st- they walked across the border to the yellow van on the Moldovan side and four hours later they were trying to find seats at the airport to wait for their flights home. 

They left the village after breakfast. They did some visiting with Adam and family in Kirvoy Rog on the way. Meanwhile Garry got started on his cow breeding project and drove to Dnipro to the Canadian- Ukrainian Farm Project office to buy frozen semen from Canada. He said everyone working in the office was the same and excited to see him again. He bred five cows today and started working on getting a pen of 25 heifers ready to breed while he's there.

They got to the airport around 5 am, Craig's flight is around 10 am, I think everyone else flies later in the afternoon and they overnight in Vienna and get back to BC on November first. 

The team's big finish day

Thursday was the last work day for the team from Salmon Arm, Friday morning after 7:30 breakfast Max will drive them to the border for their ride to the airport. 

They worked on finishing up the projects. The barn (or cattle shed) build team got most of the steel on the roof and poured more concrete, a divider wall and more floor. Garry said it got too windy in the afternoon, so they couldn't work on putting steel on the roof anymore. Garry and the Ukrainian part of the team will finish it, and rest of the inside. 

Jack's team worked on cleaning up, apparently when the family moved in four years ago the cupboards were full of junk that just stayed there, but they cleaned it all out now so they can use them. Garry says the main part of the house now looks like it did when it was originally remodeled about 13 years ago.

The family had them there for a celebration tonight. Craig took this group photo. 

From left - Phil, Adam, Clay & Harm (sorry I don't know who's who) Garry, Elena's father, Margarita holding one of the kids, Hannah, Jack with more of the kids, Rachel- holding another, Jeremy, Dima, Elena & Oleg with their daughter Sofia, and Pasha and his wife and 2 daughters- there are 7 children

Jeremy's (maybe Rachel's? Garry isn't sure) mom had crocheted some fun hats, enough for the whole family! Garry tells me that she also made and sold hats to help pay for their flights to come to Ukraine.  The kids really liked the hats. The team really liked (loved) the kids. 

almost done...

Tomorrow I'll put up a few more photos of the team and I will keep updating you as I hear from Garry over the next couple weeks as he works on important things like getting the cows bred and pregnancy checked.