Garry's crop report

So Garry arrived home shortly after 1 am Monday night and was up at 7 am and was out to check his fields with Maxim. He took the camera along so here are some of his pictures. This is the corn field across the highway. It is a long skinny piece next to a wheat field - directly across from the road that comes into the village from the highway The weeds are starting to turn yellow and die off. I was worried when we went by on Sunday- it still looked pretty green(the weeds that is).





Garry says that field did not come up as well as the second field. Here is the second field- the one you get to on the little winding track past the swimming ponds. The third field (where the rye was) is coming up but not real great. We have had almost no rain in the last month, but Garry says the corn is OK the ground is still moist down aways (pretty dry on top I'd say in my garden!)




The farmers are having no trouble making hay this year- you can see someone's piles on the field next to the crop with poppies (its time for the most colorful wildflowers of Ukraine.) On Sunday we saw someone filling the trunk of their Lada with the grass that was cut by the road dept on the highway. Garry tells me Maxim has found some grass to cut to make hay. The guy that they bought hay from in the fall does not want to sell any of his alfalfa now. It will be easier next year when we have the new alfalfa field of our own to cut. Garry says the peas/barley is a few weeks from soft dough stage when he will cut it for silage, and let the alfalfa grow back. No photo of that field- they were looking at corn!





Here is Maxim in one of the little gardens of corn- they planted three in gardens behind houses in the village where people wanted to rent out their garden- one is the house up the street Garry has been in the process of buying since last year. he cultivated (or scuffled) between the rows with the tractor while Garry was gone for weed control in these plots. I think they have decided not to scuffle the big fields since the weeds are dying and it is so dry. Garry says it would have been more effective on the foxtail (weed) if the spraying had been done the week before, but he had to wait for the other farmer.

Turns out we won't get paid until a week after pickup for the milk that left in the blue truck on Monday (they liked it- it passed all the quaility tests at the plant we're told) On Friday they will be back for more- and the cows set a new record with 777 liters in one day today.

Yana had an infection in one of her fingers and had it drained so her mother is back and milking for her with Luba. You may have read about her mother in the Mothers day story. Garry said he didn't realize it at first when they were milking in the morning, because Yana and her mother look so much alike. Garry did not bring back milking machines from Canada after all- too hard to get quickly and the price was not that different (they make them in China) but he did get the stallcocks he needed to complete the vacuum system - he had not been able to find any here(these are little shutoff valves that the milkers are attached to so they work- you need to go down the line, attach your milker to the line with a hose, milk the cow on either side, then close it and move down the row- if all the holes are open- no vacuum!)