The rain has made things get growing again- the garden plants seem to double in size everyday! On Thursday afternoon Garry went out to look at his last corn field- the one that they planted after the rye was harvested, and decided that the seed was not going to come up, even after the rain. So Maxim cultivated the field up Thursday and Friday morning they were ready to plant when they discover that they could find only one bag of leftover corn seed instead of the five they thought was here. Victor phoned around and found that Nikoli Nikolias had some old seed (it is the farmer that Garry bought the hay from last fall and winter) so they went over and bought some and Maxim planted the field again. Now the ground has enough moisture to get the corn growing and hopefully it rains enough in July and August to keep it growing.
The other two corn fields are growing well- I took the photo on Thursday morning when we went to town- Garry went with Victor to find the last parts for the vacuum system for the bucket milking system- the bucket milkers have been ordered and Garry finally settled with DeLaval over the price of the milk talk (they phoned said do you want the bigger or smaller one -than we ordered- and then upped the price when it was installed and they gave us the bill - but Garry agreed to split the difference yesterday.)
Momma duck decided to take the babies back to the barn on Thursday. Papa duck seems happy to be back on guard duty in the barn, while they all try to huddle under her wings. The milker ladies take her and the ducklings into the summer kitchen every night.
Friday afternoon we got another rain shower- just here in the village- that got the ground muddy again on top- and gave the last load of Seth and Jonah clothes an extra rainwater rinse. I really don't know what clothes they packed for more than two months in Manitoba, it seems they left a lot here! Luckily I had brought the sheets that were hung out in the morning in. Victor is taking a group on a Mennonite tour today and they will be spending the night here- a short night as he is driving them to Kiev for their flight in the morning and leaving at 3:30 am.
Stacy is going to take in part of the tour today (finding her Mennonite roots too)- she has been a great help with cleaning house for our visitors and picking strawberries again yesterday. We we able to take it easy yesterday afternoon, so she went outside with her journal but the rain came down 15 minutes later! The same thing happened to her on Thursday afternoon. She was out again less than an hour later and Garry took her out to the corn field where Max was working (he had to bring him more corn seed.)
On Thursday she tried out some of her Russian with Andrei (the neighbor boy) and Maxim and discovered later she had been asking what would you do after breakfast instead of what will you do in the future! Stacy has been working hard on Russian since she decided that she was coming back to teach English again this year (she taught at English Institute last summer.) She was in France with friends for a month before visiting with us (she went there on an exchange program in high school and is fluent in French).
She went out to gather hay (the loose stuff in the wagon) with Maxim while I was cooking the traditional Friday night pizza. We have three leftover pizzas in the fridge- normally there is a half one. Stacy does not eat as much as Seth and Jonah!
No comments:
Post a Comment