It was payday for the milking ladies yesterday, Garry was hunting for money to pay them at noon (before he got paid for some of the milk he had "sold" earlier this month) He says that he should have dropped the milk price, instead of paying the ladies for milk they made that was not sold- when it had to be thrown away. They had gotten some of their wages ahead this two week period- they have an account at the store like most people in the village and the ladies running the store needed payment when their boss was coming out to the village. The store ladies needed to have enough accounts paid up so that the boss would pay them, so Maxim had taken money to pay Yana and Luba's credit line off at the store that day. The store ladies knew we could pay it off and many of the other customers on their list cannot.
Yesterday afternoon Garry was heading off the talk to "the big dairy farmer" about needing to chop his hay on Friday or Saturday (so he will need to mow it on Wednesday) since the Canadian-Ukrainian dairy commision need it on the 25th for a demo of a silage bagger that they have imported. We only have a garden of alfalfa that was planted last spring for our own hay, so Garry plans to bale it. We won't have any of our own stuff to chop again until the barley of the barley pea cover crop that we planted with the alfalfa seed is ready to turn into silage.
As he was backing out of the house driveway (the blue gate) he noticed a car parked by the farm driveway gate- which was closed. It had a blue government licence plate and the babushka was talking to the guys. (You can see how leafy the view is from the living room window - that's where I took the photo.) Garry wondered if they were there about the complaint Victor made about vodka sales next door, so he walked over. It turned out that it was the sheriff, and the two men were there because they thought that Victor had not been to the sanitary inspector office (which he did about two weeks ago- paying a 102 grivna fine for too many cows) so Garry had to call Victor on the phone to talk to them. Then the babushka told the men that Garry was in Ukraine illegally so then they had to see his passport. Which of course is untrue- we are here with missionary visas, but she really wants to find a way to get us to leave I think.
The cows' milk production has come back up now that we feeding the rye silage instead of hay(all that chopped hay Garry bought is gone), and feeding the new grain they bought in bags (although they are feeding less dry grain now- like 5 kilos since they found out it was enough when the ran out of the other grain) Saving money! We are selling more brewers' grain to people in the village since regular grain is difficult to find to buy to feed their animals, and expensive.
The people in the village that milk a couple cows and sell the excess milk on the street to the milk truck that comes through in the morning are boycotting the truck, since the price it is paying for milk is 1.5 grivina a liter. Apparently Danone is paying 2.5 right now- price goes up and down with supply and demand.
Anyway we are now looking into an idea the Canadian-Ukrainian dairy commision people talked about in the fall- a village co-operative that would sell to Danone- people in the villagge could join and bring their milk to put in our milk tank. Garry and Victor decided that this is the way to go on Friday (instead of registering as a private farm) when Garry got back so late from his English class he visited- by the way the little cows in the photo are from the students he visited that day- some kids also made pigs- it went with the Old Mc Donald had a farm theme- see Saturday's post for more. So they are looking into the legal stuff to do this.
There is some milk testing to do and record keeping with the co-op, it will be like the brewers grain, someone will need to be around to take care of the details all the time- or two or three times a day -most cows in the village at milked before 7 am when the cows go out to the fields with the herd and after 7 pm, when they return home. Garry says that people go out to the field in the afternoon for a third milking in the field too. We were surprized that three times a day milking is so popular here in Ukraine, since it is a "big farm" thing at home. People in the village should be ready to sign up for a co-op with the current price, and it seems a good way to help our neighbors in the village.
No comments:
Post a Comment