Yesterday Garry found out the Dnepropetroesk Farm Show was on- in fact today was the last day. Garry, Maxim and I drove in around ten o'clock, the wind was whipping the loose snow around- the temperature may be -8 C but it feels like Manitoba wind chill out there today! Last night Maxim was in bed around 11:30 when Yana called to say there was a heifer calving- (her first time) he pulled the calf- no problems, but of course it was the second bull calf of the day!
In case you are wondering, Maxim's name is pronounced Max-e-um- but I thought Maxime would look feminine to North Americans- interestingly, most of our boys' names sound feminine to Ukrainians- Joshua, Micah, Noah, and Jonah- all end in -ah, like all good female names in Russian.
We met Victor there at Meteor- the auditorium where the show was held- after the guys checked out some of the equipment outside (no one was looking for long out there) It cost ten grivina to get in- just about a dollar forty US or Canadian- and Garry enjoyed walking around with Victor to ask the questions he wanted to know the answers to. Check out the sunflower balloon sculpture hanging overhead, and Maxim with the motorcycle on display.
Many of the exhibitors were local, so we can actually buy things from them. We even found a supplier of dairy minerals imported from the Netherlands. Garry has been wanting to find trace minerals to balance the ration for the cows. The most popular exhibitors seemed to be the guys with walnuts- one booth had walnuts almost as big as tennis balls.
The deal of the day was when Garry talked the ladies at one of the corn seed booths into selling some of the bags they had on display (the company was from a city halfway to Kiev) at their regular price we picked up four bags after we walked through the show- it was supposed to close at two o'clock but most of the booths were packing up before/at one. Garry put one on his shoulder, Max carried two, and when I asked how many more there were (they had 6 on display- but didn't eant to sell Garry the other two) I carried out the last one, when they said they'd come back for it. Weighed less than a bag of calf feed. By the way, they cost thirty dollars a bag. Garry said we'll buy some more expensive seed, but he just had to try some of this really cheap kind (compared to North American prices).
We headed out to put it in the car as the crane started loading up the equipment outside.
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