Crop (and bird) report June 20th

For all you farmers all there here is the new crop report for our little village. The rain last week saved most of the crops (at least for the time being). Garry's field of corn that was replanted on Friday has already sprouted (he dug some up to look today) should be up out of the ground soon. He cleaned out the planter that he borrowed on Saturday morning before returning it. It was cool, cloudy and sprinkled a bit this afternoon (and windy.) The forecast is for 32 (90 F) later in the week, with a chance of rain tonight and Tuesday.













Maxim and neighbor Serosia spent the day cutting down the barley/pea/alfalfa field today. Garry said the barley was a little yellower that he wanted but he didn't want to be making silage over the weekend. The peas kind of dried up in the hot dry weather as you can see in Garry's hand in the photo. Still cracks in the ground from the dry weather- it will take a lot more rain to really soak the ground. However it looks like there will be lots of silage to feed the cows. Maxim had the blue tractor with the new mower, while Serosia used his little tractor with the mower Garry bought last year. The swallows were swooping all over looking for insects to eat. You can see someone's ripe winter barley field behind Maxim mowing. Garry said he saw a combine at work today when he came back from Dnepropetroesk. The winter wheat is not as far along. Garry plans to get the crop raked and chopped into silage tomorrow.














Here is the other big corn field- Maxim cultivated it for a second time last week. The one across the highway has a lot of grass growing it it as the rows were too crooked to try to cultivate it. Thanks to Stacy who took the photo of Garry and I in the corn field. While we were driving from the corn field to the barley one, we saw a cuckoo bird with a crested head- I took several pictures, but his brown body was too well hidden for anyone to find him in the photo, at least Stacy got to see him.



The cuckoo was in a field with a lot of sunflower stalks from last year on the ground. Garry said it was worked up and planted in sunflowers a couple weeks ago, it seemed a few were up thanks to the rain (but it was mostly brown dirt and tan stalks). Most of the sunflower fields are up and growing- they really took off after the rain, as you can see in the photo. Next month there will be a lot of yellow fields.