A look around the farmyard

Wishing Jonah a great first day of school in Manitoba. Seth will go on Thursday, I miss them but they are really excited to get back to "real school" after two years here with us. It was also our oldest grandaughter's first day of kindergarten, but I did get to see a photo of her getting on the bus on facebook! She was wearing the princess socks we bought when we went shopping while I was home in August.














Here’s one of the brewers’ grain customers on Monday afternoon. Yes, they are filling a horse-drawn wagon.








Here are some of the baby ducks (I guess they are at least teenagers now) They come in a rainbow of duck colors- white, brown, black and white, black, and a couple have a little green on them even! The rest were hanging out at the other end of the barn with Father Duck. Mom seems to be sitting on a new batch of eggs under the edge of the barn, in the weeds.








Polo sat next to the table while I peeled apples outdoors on Monday. He dug himself a little hole to lay down in first. Garry likes to rotor till part of the yard to keep the weeds down. This morning Polo was there while I peeled some for an apple pie to bring in for team meeting. I saw some girls walking to school- it’s amazing how teenagers can add their own style to the basic white shirt, black bottom of the school uniform; one girl had skinny-legged black pants and high heels to walk a mile to school in the village!








Needles (Jonah’s kitten of last summer when he stayed while Seth went home to Canada) likes to sit on laps, shoulders, the top of chairs when he’s not running around outside. He seems to be staying in more lately. It is a surprise when he suddenly jumps up and lands on your shoulders while you are sitting at the computer.







Box is showing off one of the reasons the boys decided on her name- she likes to sleep in boxes! Cardboard or plastic, she's not fussy. Maxim’s brother Andrei thought her name was Bugs and called her Bugs Bunny. He returned home Tuesday, after staying here most of the summer. The food bill may be halved, that boy could really eat after he spent a year in the army.







The cows' milk production has been dropping with so many of them giving less milk, since they will be going dry in preparation for calving (one will need to stop milking in just two weeks.) Many of the cows who calved last January and February will have calves in November, December, and January. We are still making about 600 liters a day, and the price is going back up- it is now 3 grivna a liter. The price should continue to go up as fall goes on and the village cows go off the pastures. Then the trucks have very little milk to buy from the people in the villages. Our original milk buyers are buying a lot of our milk as they are able to sell in the markets again as milk supplies are lower. The milk truck comes twice a week also, it is paying 2.9 grivna/liter.

On Monday evening we had a fresh cow to fill the 38th stall- Micah, the cow who went dry (stopped milking) early this summer, had a large bull calf. She was bred to the Canadian bull semen Garry has been using here, the first cow (one heifer already calved last month to it.) So she should milk better than the heifers who have calved this summer. Garry says they rarely give more than 15- 20 liters a day as first calvers (the older cows do 35 at their peak production.)





Today we went into Dnepropetroesk for team meeting. There is a good deal of road resurfacing taking place in the city, even though it is not a a hist city for next summer's Euro2012 (soccer) matches. We had good time sharing what is happpening in our lives and ministries, and a nice lunch.

Afterwards Garry and I tried out our new hobby; one hour of bowling. We got in in more than four games, and Garry won every game this time. We like to go as fast as possible wince it's by the hour. However the benefits of the exercise (I work up a little sweat) may be offset by the second hand smoke. There are no smoking signs on the tables but no one stops the patrons from smoking five feet behind the tables!

We were on the way home when we talked to Victor, his boys landed safely in Kiev this afternoon after their visit in Canada this summer. We were about halfway back to the village when Victor called, Maxim had phoned him to say the water pump for the barn had broken. So we made a u-turn and returned to the city to buy a new one. When we got back around 6:20 Garry and Max got the new one going so the cows could drink before the evening milking.