Thursday evening's post (if the internet had worked then)

We have enjoyed a lovely two days on our own, but Maxim is due back with the car tonight so we can take off for Crimea in the morning- we plan to be back Saturday evening. All true- but the internet wouldn't connect from seven pm until I gave up and went to bed at 11:30! Yesterday I defrosted both the upright freezer and the freezer part of the fridge in preparation for the bounty of summer. I made bagels and omelets for breakfast, and tortillas for tacos for lunch- which featured the first garden tomatoes, peppers and onions and the bit of leaf lettuce that came up. The tacos were really tasty.

Today was busier than yesterday, as I finally got my summer squash in the freezer and 4 casseroles of “squash parmesan” are ready for thawing and baking sometime. I picked a bowl full of snap peas, some went into fried rice for lunch, and some into the freezer (and some went with us south). I turned the apricots Maxim picked the day he hurt his ankle into jam, so the freezer is filling up. We picked a couple cups of raspberries this morning, so one batch of jam is raspberry-apricot.



Yesterday I snapped a few pictures in the barn, like Garry tying up the "escaping heifers" last night when they came back from the day out with the village herd- the white springer (looks like she will have a nice udder too) still likes to jump out of the pen and the one he’s leading is afraid of the bigger ones in the pen and was squeezing under the bar every night, so now she gets tied in the stalls too.











Here are the ducklings- Momma still has 12 running all over, two yellow and the rest dark striped with a few lighter brown-striped ones. That is one of the ladies milking stools and their teat dip paper towel buckets behind the ducklings in the photo. They are really starting to look like they are growing bigger now, and eat everything in sight, a couple were checking out my sandals (or maybe they were going for my toes?)

Wednesday evening Andrei sold his usual ton and a half of brewers grain (he is making about 10 grivna for about 2 hours of work times 3 times a week) already making a dent in the new delivery.



Garry finally got his cement poured for his porch footings this afternoon,(he's been planning to do it all week) this morning he was cutting wood to make the forms, while the wings were on the BBQ for lunch. With Maxim gone, he is spending most of his time on the twice-a-day feeding the cows and cleaning up. Today he even helped by doing the dishes (I was going through a bunch with all the jam and frying squash.) I did make him pancakes for dinner, after I said that I wouldn’t make them until the boys came back at the end of summer. They were good with the runny cherry jam for sauce.