Digging a hole

The snow has melted and the frost is (mostly) out of the ground, so Garry and Maxim have started one of those projects mapped out for springtime last winter. This morning they started digging a second pit to store brewers grains (the one they made in November can't hold all the truck brings) I took some photos around eleven am, just before Garry had to run into Dnepro for another dentist appointment. They were using the bucketloader to hold the dirt they were digging out of the hole (which is located right next to the first pit) which made it easy to get the dirt into wagon, and take it to dump somewhere (much easier than the pre-tractor days last year, when it was all moved by hand.)










This afternoon I took another photo around 4:30- for a while a couple of boys from the village helped dig, so of course Garry had to dig faster when they slowed down. Even with his three hour break, by the time they got done feeding the cows, he was feeling a little tired and sore. You can see they got a lot out of the hole, a few more inches and they will be done digging. That's one of the boys walking out the driveway as I was going in.



I took some photos of the new members of the farm, there's the new bull calf from Saturday with Polo and the all-red female calf Garry bought yesterday morning (he did say he would go look at the next one he buys first, but the ladies will have her fatter in no time.) The new pregnant heifer from the haircutting girl's family is the white one just outside the doors in the barnyard, she looks like she has a lot of Holstein in her. The fresh-a-month red skinny cow that also came on Monday is enjoying all the food variety here (instead of straw) she's already giving six liters more than she was at their house- up to 20 a day, after just a few days.
The cows set a new record yesterday 650 liters from the 30 cows. On Sreeda Wednesday the ladies are getting some help with milking- Luba's daughter-in-law (who visited last week with her young grandson) is going to come help milk to give the ladies a bit of a break.
Garry tells me that the milk truck that drives through town buying milk from the village cows is paying 2 grivna a liter, so he asked Maxim to ask a couple of people from the village who came to buy our milk while they were digging today why they pay 5 grivna a liter to buy our milk. They said that we always have milk when they come to buy, and it always tastes good.