It was a cool wet day- periods of light rain/drizzle with a high temperature around 12 C (more like 60 F)- you needed a sweater if you were outside for long- although Seth wore shorts- even when the boys walked to the store.
Garry did some investigating and while the storm yesterday only made it wet an inch down here in our garden, across the highway it is wet all the way down in the corn field they planted there. He said he drove past some farmers seeding near the Dniper river today, some places missed the rain all together.
It seems hard to believe that one year ago the Steinbach team was here working on the hayloft for the barn. It was an earlier spring then, today the lilacs are just starting to bloom. Last year the garden was growing well, this year it's barely coming up- we couldn't plant it as early. There are a couple spinach plants working on their first set of true leaves- last year we had spinach salad from the garden while they were here. Yesterday's rain has the snow peas that had sprouted shooting up- hopefully the rest of the row come up now. Garry picked up a few more pepper plants to replaced the ones that did not make it last week (seems like the hot pepper plants did better than the green peppers.)
Garry has been breeding cows for people in the village and he sometimes worries about them getting upset when they don't get pregnant because they weren't really in heat since he charges them for the cost of the frozen semen we buy to do it. He has told Max to tell them to make sure they are in heat, but sometimes they are wrong. A couple days ago a man led his red cow up the lane for Garry to breed in the middle of the day, he brought her from the field. Garry says she seemed to be ready to breed, just like last month. Maybe this time he'll be lucky.
Garry went to breed a cow for someone in the village today and discovered something strange when he reached inside her. She turned out to be very pregnant but from what Maxim told me the owner decided she must be in heat because she had suddenly dropped to almost no milk. Garry thought maybe 7 months pregnant- so she must be going dry! The owner told Max she had visited the bull back in October maybe.
We may have a batch of ducklings waddling around the barn in a couple weeks. The pair of ducks are proudly piling eggs in a nest, although they have not started sitting on them yet. The male likes to hiss at you as you walk past them in the barn, furiously waggling his tail and shaking his head.
Garry got Victor to convince the dealer to release the mower they bought yesterday- he even hired a crane to move it off the dealer's yard into a hired truck. Monday is the 9th of May and another long holiday weekend, and Garry hopes to mow the rye down before Tuesday or Wednesday- when the dealer might have gotten around to giving it to him. Maxim and neighbor Serosia were trying to find a problem with one of the tractors- but did not find anything, so but it back together. Yesterday Garry and Max worked on fixing the chopper up so they are ready to go on the rye. If you are wondering- the spout is bent over like that to fit under the shed!
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