Getting ready for next week

Garry's cornfield was sprayed for both weeds and bugs on Thursday- Friday morning he went out to look at it. Maxim said we should spray as close tot he neighboring wheat field as possible becuse the bugs are living there.

Today Victor brought out the new motor for the vacuum pump, so we should be back to machine milking soon. Maxim spent most of the day with the baler and wagon, making sure everything is ready to start baling straw (however they are still having problems with the knotter, like last year.)

Garry got the chopper ready since they are supposed to do some on Monday at Vitaly's (hay luckily- they are still trying to get a set of knives for it so they can do corn silage next month- our son Josh emailed some phone numbers for a dealer in Romania but they wouldn't work for Garry when he tried calling today.) Garry hopes to trade the hay chopping for getting some big round bales of straw done so they could use them for bedding up the heifer pens this year instead of doing all small square bales. The little preemie calf is doing great.

I planned to get a lot done on final lesson prep for teaching English next week today but instead I went out the the garden and found all this...





actually Garry told me when they came in for breakfast that there were beans to pick and that he could pick them with a guys but I said I'd do it myself because the plants are delicate. Truth be told, I enjoy picking string beans, I always munch a couple raw green beans fresh off the plants and think about my cousin Doug who loved to eat them that way when he was small.




so I froze green beans, yellow beans, pea pods, spinach and made some squash fritters and cut up our first cucumber from the garden for lunch. Then tonight I made two batches of apricot jam.





Friday afternoon Garry dropped Stacy and I (and all of Stacy's stuff) in Dnepro for orientation and food with the rest of the Summmer English Institute team, followed by riding an afto-bus (or trolley bus- they are attached to overhead wires) over to the building where we held registration night for the lucky ones who passed the test and will be able to attend this year. Here is Stacy and across from her with the blonde hair is the only new member of our team- everyone else is a familiar face from earlier years (Marina had the window seat by Stacy but you can't seem to see her in the photo- we started out standing but everyone had a seat before we got there). This will be the 19th straight year of holding the Institute here. Registration went well and quickly (but I was too busy to remember to take a photo then!) We will have about 140 students and everyone will have classes to go to on Monday morning.