The flies have invaded the house- on Saturday we had the doors open for a while trying to encourage the bird that had gotten in the house to fly out. It flew behind the fridge and hid for a while, but we left the door open in the hopes he’d come back out. Unfortunately the warm sunshine had the flies coming in the door- we have had some frosty mornings but the flies are still around on sunny afternoons- which is fine with the ducks as the hunt them against the sunny canvas sides in the barn. I don’t think I want to bring the ducks in here to work on these (bad enough cleaning up after the puppy). We seem to have misplaced the flyswatter, and the cats are game to try jumping up to get them, but there have been 5-6 on the TV screen since Saturday.
Eventually the bird flew out from behind the fridge and we re-opened the doors as it banged against the windows in a frantic effort to leave as the cat and kittens chased and leaped after it. Garry came in while we had the doors open- he figured we were just hot as the furnace goes at the same rate no matter the indoor or outdoor temperature so it’s much warmer in here on nice days. He said that the boys finding a bird inside was strange as he had found two in the tractor cab in the morning (the window was open .) Garry found out later in the afternoon that our indoor bird was one of the tractor birds. It had been brought in the house by the neighbour boy Andrei who wanted to feed it to Mooska the cat – just imagine the mess if the plan had worked! Lucky for the bird it flew out the door to live another day.
Garry has had one problem after another today. This morning he took the tractor out to the field and started mowing. Maxim came to take over for him but he had driven Yana over to visit her parents at the farm where the herd came from. Garry got back for breakfast around 10:30 with the car, lucky for him we had saved 4 brown sugar biscuits for him.
Garry came back in at 11:30 after walking several kilometres home after getting the car stuck going across the fields on the laneway to go pick up Yana for noon milking. He decided it was too muddy to go through one section, and when he tried to turn around went off the edge- not problem in the fields but this was a swampy piece that left one tire turning in the air. So I rode with him in the tractor to go pull it out, then he took the car to get Yana while I drove the tractor slowly home. He was having trouble with the car pulling to one side, but couldn’t believe it when he realized he had a flat tire on the front driver’s side of the car. He had put a very bald spare on the front passenger side on Sunday afternoon when he went to look at the hay field, if any tire was going to go flat – it would be that one- not the good one on the other side (of course the original flat on Sunday was on a tire that was bought the same day.) Just as he got it changed he saw Yana go by in the lady farmer’s car heading back to milk.
So Garry had to put a tire on a rim by hand after lunch (I made chicken, potato salad and beans in a hurry when I got back)for the front driver's side tire, still has the bald one on the car, and the only spare tire left holds air for about 10 minutes.
This afternoon he was over at the big farmer- Vasili's place got good news about being able to get the beet pulp all winter, and got a few things from the vet and looked at a heifer that was just bred. She is a Holstein, very white, and has a problem with jumping fences, so they want to sell her. Garry is buying, I guess we'll keep her tied up. Long ago when we farmed in New York state we had a heifer who constantly jumped fences. She gave it up as a cow, maybe this one will too- we'll find out next year!
So after dark he and Maxim spent more than an hour fixing a broken knife section on the mower in the light spilling from the barn doors. One more day of mowing alfalfa yet, but at least the mower is ready to go in the morning. Garry will be ready to go to bed at 8 o’clock (time change is messing us up a bit) after a day like this.
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