He doesn't take my advice either...

This morning Yana (one of the milkers) told Garry to leave the white heifer in the barn because she was going to calve when the heifers went out to the field at seven am with the village herd. Garry told her it would be another week before she calved, and sent her out with the rest. He may take her advice next time, because he took Stacy out to the field to see the calf being born- however she had a tiny heifer calf before they got there. Garry brought it back wrapped in his shirt before 9 am. Then Stacy helped him chase the fresh heifer back to the barn- it took a while- she led them on quite a chase- by taking a path through the swamp!





Stacy spent her last day in the village doing what she has done since coming- washing dishes, picking cherries and raspberries, and taking a morning walk (plus that extra walk this morning!) She also cooked herself a big bowl of buckwheat for breakfast- she had told me she missed it since eating it last year.















I took some photos of the heifer after she got back into her stall, the calf - for a while they thought she might have a second calf- it's so small and looks premature- you can see it next to Polo and he's a little dog (beagle-sized). So far the calf seems to be doing OK, Maxim got her to drink a liter of colostrum.













Garry decided to pour the floor for the new porch- he took off the forms and Andrei helped by breaking up the old step with the sledgehammer- you can see the pile of broken concrete outside the forms.







They poured the floor just before lunch at one pm, they finished but had a few problems mixing cement- not enough sand in the first batch and it got too dry on top while garry worked on finishing it- he kept asking for pitchers of water- that Stacy would refill it and hand it out the kitchen door while I finished the spaggetti pizza and chopped and fried some zuchinni and carrots up.

Garry had to go to Dnepro this afternoon- he went to buy a new motor for the milk pump (they thisnk they finally found a decent one) and he took in the milk that Victor sells on Thursdays and helped Victor go around Dnepro picking up stuff for Summer Institute- it gets stored in different places for the year. They also got the motor, and stopped by the rocket factory to get the pulley remade so it will work with the new motor. (The rocket factory makes all kinds of things now- and still makes rockets- they sell them to the Americans now they say- but it was the reason Dnepropetroesk was a closed city in Soviet times.)

I did laundry, organized and baked muffins, a cake and made a batch of raspberry jam- after Stacy picked three bowls this afternoon!

Starting next week you'll be getting less posts here as I will be busy with English teaching in the city- so here's a look at the ducklings- as you can see some of them are really getting big!