Yesterday I mentioned that many people in the village who have milk for sale are boycotting the milk truck that comes through buying milk since it is only paying 1.5 grivina a liter for milk. I bet you are wondering what they are doing with the milk instead. They are processing it in their kitchens into sour cream and cottage cheese (and then feeding the whey to the pigs.) Then they are going into the city to sell it at the market (or on the side of the road.) The neighbors across the street are doing this, she makes product twice a week, sticks it in the fridge and he sells it in the market in the city on Saturday. Most of the people doing this have only one or two cows, but multiply it by many families in many villages and the market becomes flooded with product.
This means that the small processors who buy our milk (at 3 grivina now) are having trouble selling their sour cream and cottage cheese at the market like they do all year, so they are coming to buy less milk from us. Yesterday the cows set a new production record for our little farm with 723 liters of milk (from 34 cows milking now- Micah the cow is now dry.) However, we sold only 60 liters of milk from the tank yesterday. Garry also had a bunch of cans of milk he filled from the tank on Monday morning sitting in the milkhouse (he sold about half of this milk on Monday).
This morning half the cans went over to the other neighbor’s wife who made some cream and cheese for us a couple months ago (she became ill, and was unable to do it on a regular basis, so Victor had been buying from the milk buyers when he had orders from his church customers.)This couple lives next door to us (as I sit here typing they are on the right and the angry babushka's house is to the left.) Sasha's wife said it was at the perfect stage to process into cheese _ see milk in can photo- the fat rises up in a crusty layer while the milk sat since Monday. This meant she was able to process the rest this afternoon. Garry says the first batch of cheese was hanging in bags draining when they brought the second batch of milk cans over to her. He was unsure if it was "fat cheese" which has the cream still in. So we’ll have lots of cheese for Victor to sell this week I guess.
tThis morning Garry and Maxim sat on the bench by the road waiting for that milk truck to come by after the cows went out to the field for the day. Max had talked to a babushka down the street who sells milk to the truck- which apparently comes three times a week. Garry has decided that 1.5 grivina in cash and a hopefully empty tank would be a better deal than selling milk to the buyers on credit when they do come- the lady buyers van did not show this morning as expected- so they were ready to flag the truck down. However it turns out that the milk truck does not come until Thursday, so in the morning they hope to sell that milk- the tank is at least half full. And Victor is working on” getting all the ducks in a row” to set up that milk co-op that I wrote about yesterday, to hopefully solve the problem of selling milk.
Yesterday the DeLaval people were back to fix the valve on the milk tank- they said they couldn't find the right fitting for the one on the tank, so they cut it off and welded a new one one so we can pump milk from the bottom now. They were also expecting the final payment for the tank installation, which Garry had in cash, because the brewers' grain delivery was set for Thursday (we had cash on hand for one thing but not both). While the guys were here working on the tank, in drives the delivery truck (without calling ahead.) So Garry had to go to the bank for money and drop it off at the DeLaval office in Dnepro (he had already been to the city in the morning to look at a sprayer to buy to apply herbicide on the cornfields- he would have gone to the bank then if he'd known.) He was home after eight I think-- long after the boys helped Maxim get the cows/heifers in at 7 pm when the village herd comes back. It seems that no matter how carefully you plan, some days you just can't win (he did bring us cheeseburgers.)
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