Cheap milk

Thursday when the guys talked to the milk tank driver in the morning, he didn't want to take the milk- he said they'd have to be regular customers. Garry was ready to dump it in the field, the tank had not been empty since Monday -remember all the milk in the tank tastes as old (and has the same quality) as the oldest milk in the tank, no matter how much new milk goes in. In Canada or the US, milk is picked up by trucks every other day (sometimes once a day.) Maxim (and or Victor) managed to broker a deal where the truck would come back on Friday morning for 1000 liters of milk. Victor took a bunch of milk, sour cream and 50 kilos of the cheese (in photo) that was made on Wednesday back to Dnepro to sell Thursday evening.









The lady milk buyer's van showed up early Friday morning and left without any milk- Max refused to sell them any because he had promised the other truck 1000 liters and there wasn't any extra to sell in the tank. So we ended up with 1.8 grivina a liter for a thousand liters. Garry washed out the milk tank (cooler) and then poured in the morning milking to cool for his new buyer Vasili, who is selling on Friday mornings. Oxana (the lady buyer) phoned Maxim and arranged to come this (Sat) morning, but one of the Oleg's beat her guys here this morning and bought milk first, so her guys took about 120 liters back to sell. So either the buyers step up or we will call the plant in Dnepro because they will make a trip out to empty the tank of a 1000 liters next week. At least they pay in cash, even if its not much.













Garry promptly took the cash and Maxim off to buy 2 tonnes of grain for the cows. I asked what happened to not feeding any more grain- which Garry had declared the day before (what was the point of buying expensive grain to get maximum production from the cows if he couldn't sell the milk?) But now that the milk was sold, they came back with all this grain in bags that will last for a couple months, so back to the cows setting records. Since December the compicorn (any kind of ground grain) had come from a mill with a truck to blow it upstairs, but they do not have any left to sell. This new mill only has grain in bags so this little truck brought it out and Max piled it in the bucket of the tractor and unloaded it upstairs since the grain bin is in the second story.






The garden plants looked taller after the little rain on Thursday evening, but by mid-day it was dry. The ground didn't get wet under the clods when I pulled some weeds, but a few more seeds have sprouted, more beans, peas spinach and even some cucumbers are up. if we are lucky we'll catch another shower this week, there are no fronts coming through. Seemed like last year there was two weeks of rain when the vilage farmers were making hay, so we'll see if that happens again this year. After lunch Garry is going to be chopping hay for the big farmer hopefully - it needs to be done before Tuesday, when the chopper is going away with the Canadian-Ukrainian dairy commission people- they are going to demo a silage bagger they have imported.