Updated crop and luggage report

To update you I am trying to adjust to the time change here in Canada, while Garry is still eight hours ahead in Ukraine, on the farm. Air Canada has not phoned yet to say they have found my suitcase (and it's in Winnipeg.) I have enjoyed being with the kids, granddaughters and the pets at home. I have decided the best time to blog is early morning as everyone is sleeping- pictures load way faster when no one else is on Noah's homenet! I have done a little house cleaning and will get serious about getting stuff done on Monday, as Garry's parents are due to arrive for their yearly visit Tuesday.

I have talked to Garry about 3 am here most mornings, he gave up on the baler after it broke again Thursday after baling 200 bales of hay. Since Maxim is leaving for a trip to the Sea of Azov on Monday (his brother Andrei will remain to help Garry with chores) Garry got someone to round bale the rest of the hay and straw. When I spoke to him on Saturday they were putting the seventh and last round bale into the mow (he says that they are smaller, soft-core bales and not that heavy when I asked if that would be safe.) I reminded him to take a photo- however he says that Andrei standing in the bucket of the loader on top of the bale looks a little unsafe...we'll have to wait and see.





Crop report













The rain that has fallen lately is keeping the new cornfield growing, so it should make silage later this fall. When I took photos two weeks ago it was growing out of root worm damage, so some of the plants were leaning sideways. A few plants are much taller because they are from the original planting, not the replanting after the rain came. It will be a thicker stand of corn than the other fields. The field by the highway is the thinnest stand, but the ears of corn are big!



Garry has been working on getting the new blades (from Canada- thanks to Orban and his luggage) into the chopper since he plans to start chopping corn in a week or so. Since the later field will become corn silage, he will only chop part of the earlier corn, and the rest will become grain corn to feed the cows.

The last time I asked it was the corn field on the highway he was going to chop, since it is the field we bought, and would be easier to plow up after harvest. Combining the corn leaves lots of stalks which get tangled up in the plow, since only the dry ears are harvested; while the chopper cuts the stalks close to the ground and turns the whole plant into food for the cows. Since we got the other field without it having been plowed the fall before as is the custom, he is not worried about plowing it, since he plans to try to work the actual pieces we have rented next year instead of substitute ones as they should not be planted in winter wheat yet; he will locate them this month, before they are planted again.























Here are some photos taken at the same time of the the third corn field (the one that was planted in sunflowers last year) the kernels were just starting to dent when Garry checked. I sometimes tell him he will check all the cobs in a field someday on the plants he didn't dig up to check for sprouts or pull up to check for rootworms - and there won't be any left to harvest. While we were doing the crop tour the weekend before his camp he picked me a nice bouquet next to the field.




Garry also laid in a supply of brewers grain for the winter during camp week. The trucks would deliver it one day and dump it on the cement pad behind the barn to cool until the next day when the man who came with the Ag bag machine would turn then into long plastic tubes of brewers grain. They used the neighbor's payloader to fill the machine most of the time. There are a number of long plastic sausages back by the barn now.











Now Garry won't have to worry about what he's going to feed the cows this winter - He has purchased brewers grain, enough grain (wheat I think) to grind that is stored at the mill(for the whole year) already, plus there will be lots of corn silage (there's some barley/pea/alfalfa silage still) and a bit of alfalfa hay that he grew himself and there will be dry corn to combine that will also be ground into grain for the ration.





Last September Garry was walking back to the village with his new cows, wondering what he was going to feed them, (besides the corn silage he paid someone to grow) when he passed a field of alfalfa ... and found a farm to buy hay from ... but you can read about that in last year's blog posts.