Well, Garry drove me in to teach English on Monday morning, but he was so busy baling straw that he didn’t come back to get me until Wednesday after class. The baler is working great – it’s all fixed this time- they have baled 5000 small square bales of straw (3000 for us- 2000 for other people) and have broken hardly any. The bales are nice too- square and firm, unlike last year’s soft ones that broke when you moved them. They baled 800 bales Monday afternoon, but broke one of the needles on the baler- since it is made of aluminum Garry had to drive into Dnepropetroesk early Tuesday to get it welded, but after that they had no problems.
Maxim welded together a nifty add-on to the baler to put the bales up to the high wagons we use here. There are a number of boys from the village and a girl from Zaporosia (she is going to help with the Bible school or camp for kids Garry is organizing here in the village in two weeks- she's staying at the house now) working on moving straw bales- piling them in the wagon and taking them from the wagon into the mow.
Garry took some photos of his tall corn fields while I was gone. The corn really grew after the rainy weeks, now it is sun and heat. Garry says it is pollinating well, and if we get a good rain in a week or two, it will be a really good crop, he should be able to combine some for grain to feed the cows, since there will be more than enough for silage (no matter what his late corn field does- it is trying to grow out of the insect damage, the bugs are dead, and the weed killer did its work- even the grassy stuff died off well- but that field will need more rain this summer to grow.)
This is Garry showing why he needs a set of knives for the chopper- he will need them before chopping that corn silage in August- although he did chop some corn – the big farmer has nothing to feed his cows so they will be getting some not too finely chopped green stuff- not much to the cobs to worry about cutting up anyway, he told me.
Garry has been watering my flower beds with the water from the air conditioner- he put a big metal bucket under the drip from it. It is set at 25 degrees centigrade in the living room, but Garry has to keep convincing his Ukrainians (Maxim and his brother) not to turn it off. Their latest attempt (I hid the remote) was to pull the plug on it. You may not know this but cold breezes are what makes people sick- like the one from the A/C!
Yesterday evening I froze a big pile of green and yellow beans Garry picked for me in the garden, and washed the floor, so I didn't get around to doing the blog last night. Today was a first I drove the Lada all by myself into the city to teach and back (only stalled once at a light, the shifting is a little different than I'm used to) I still think driving here is a little... you need to be alert for drivers changing lanes, driving fast, and holes in the road. It was really nice to sleep in my own bed though.
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