fresh paint and furnaces

We have been getting ready for the winter season, last month Garry had young Andrei paint the calf hutches he built. Since they are made of chipboard (real Canadian stuff the guy at the lumber yard was proud to point out) he thought two coats of enamel paint will hopefully help protect it from the weather. We have not found any truly washable latex paint here, the stuff we used in the house is either not washable- more pigment than dirt comes off when you wipe it, or you can wash it but the dirt doesn't all come off. We repainted the doors on the bedroom with stinky enamel paint this year, at least you can wash the dirt off.













Apparently the gas company people complained that our line is not painted yellow, like all good gaslines (most villages, like ours, have the lines above ground). Any way Yana stood on a ladder leaning on the line (just over the clothesline) a couple evenings and painted it yellow, from the road to the summer kitchen. Garry took a picture last week of her mother Genia up on the ladder painting the outside of the summer kitchen. I believe that they have done some painting inside also, we bought the paint. The summer kitchen looks really white now that they are done.





This morning Victor was here early (before nine) along with the man to install the new furnace. That's the new furnace standing in the doorway of the summer kitchen while they were taking the old one out. The new one features self-lighting, and a thermostat to set the temperature of the water. The old furnace had issues like a gas smell when it was on, and you had to light it like this: turn on the gas, light a match, stick it under the furnace, and wait for the whuff! as it lit. Then you would turn the gas up to what you hoped would keep the house warm enough. If you guessed wrong, or the weather outside changed, you had to go back to the summer kitchen and readjust. With the milker ladies living there for the last year, you couldn't just pop in at any time and adjust it. In the summertime, when the heat was off, the ladies would have to light the furnace every time they wanted hot water. The first summer we were here, we only had the bathroom and kitchen in the summer kichen to use while we were remodeling the house. Garry would light it every night, so once a day you had hot water from the tap for washing the dishes and all four of us would shower after a hot sweaty summer day. The trick was to remember to turn it off when the water got hot, because if you left it on it would send hot water all over the hall of the main house where the overflow tank is. So the new furnace will be safer, more efficient and way more convenient!



This morning I helped Garry and Victor clean out the heifer pens- mostly I stood guard outside in the barnyard to make sure the heifers stayed outside in the barn yard and didn't go back in the barn, since all the gates were open in the heifer pen row while Garry pushed the manure out with the bucket loader of the tractor. Then he got a couple round bales of straw out of the mow to bed them up, and the sort them back into the pens according to size. Finally they put the two water bowls back- they made them removable for when they clean out with the tractor, the water line is flexible hose instead of pvc and the bowls hook over the cement curb with a bracket made of rebar.














I did notice that Shisklik, the bull calf is now one year old (remember I wrote about our first cow Zera in September last year) and looks like someone should eat him, even if he isn't really fat...that's him in the photo - the first red one trying to sneak down the slope to barn level.



The power went out while I was trying to cook lunch, I ended up finishing the stew for dinner, since the electricity was off until after three. Garry had to get the generator going to pump out milk at noon for Oxana who came to buy milk, and then Victor had to get more gas to run it so milking could be done.





With the door standing open so much today - the lines for the welding equipment kept it from closing for a while, since some new connections were welded in Maxim's bedroom so the new radiators can be installed in there and the green bedroom later. We are putting some in the summer kitchen too, apparently they heated it with the oven when it was colder last year! Then Victor was working on the pump and overflow for the heating system this afternoon in the hall and had the door open for light with no power.... the outside cats had a great time eating catfood and napping on the Mennonite couch. Polo thought it was great fun, and I have killed at least twenty flies tonight!