Sunday, Monday

Saturday I was wishing I was in Manitoba for our granddaughter Xaris' fifth birthday, Garry and I did phone and talk to her in the evening- mid-morning there, she was anxiously waiting for the party guests (her Aunts and Uncles mostly) to arrive. Less than seven weeks until we fly home for Christmastime.

Sunday we headed to church after dropping off the milk at Victor's church. It was Morningstar Church's 17th birthday celebration, and there was a full day of activities planned. After the service, which had more singing and presentations than normal and ended with a photo montage of highlights of the year, including weddings and baby dedications, there was a luncheon to share. We left around 3 pm, before the end of the program, since Maxim's church in Zaporosia has switched from meeting on Saturday to two Sunday services, since the church was too full, one service at 10 am and the second at 5 pm, that Max was attending.

I made some stir fry and we watched a live feed of the Eagles game over the internet, it varied in quality, and got really slow at the end of the game, but the Eagles held on for the win, much to Garry's relief.

Early Monday morning the ladies tested the cows (Yana and her friend are milking fight now, her mother is on vacation). The Ukrainian-Canadian Dairy Commission is trying to organize a milk testing service here, and Garry noticed the boxes in the office when he was there once. So the ladies kept track of how much milk the cows each gave for the last two milkings on Sunday plus this morning. This morning they also filled a small sample bottle of milk for each cow, so it can be tested for fat and protein. They wrote each cow's name and milk amount on each bottle with a permanent marker.

Maxim drove Serosia's wife and baby Bogdan to the hospital in Zaporosia this morning, so Serosia could work on fixing his tractor. The little guy has had to go in every third day for about two weeks now. Maxim said they drained 5 cc of pus out of his side and washed it out again. It seems the baby (he is about six months old)was one of about a hundred babies that got a bad batch of vaccine, they tell us, but today the doctor said that now he can come in just once a week for treatment.

While Max was gone, Garry tried to match his cow list with the names on the bottles so he could make a list to go in the box. Months ago, someone made Garry a list of cow names in Russian of the milk cows in the herd. Soon Garry had a number of bottles set next to him on the couch with names on them that were not on his list. When Maxim got back around eleven, those cows turned out to be the heifers that calved this summer. Then they went out to the barn to get all the dates that the cows calved on written down on the list, along with breeding dates so that the cows next calving could be estimated. There were five cows with no breeding dates written down, but Garry preg-checked them to see what was going on. Garry and Max came in for lunch all smiles, as all five are pregnant.

Zera and several other cows were declared dry since they are giving only a few liters of milk. We now have 8 dry cows. The most milk- 24 liters- belongs to a cow that calved in January then two had 20 liters- a cow fresh in May and the white heifer that calved in June (the one that liked to jump fences) Lada- fresh August, and Romasha- fresh July had 19 liters, and a few more cows had 14-18 liters, and few more were around 5 liters, but they are getting close to the end of their lactations. There are a few sample bottles full of orange milk sitting on the coffee table, since the ladies filled bottles for all the cows, squeezing some out of the dry cows too, but we don't need samples for dry cows. They are orange because, just like in Canada' each bottle has a small pill inside that preserves the milk until testing. After lunch Garry and I went into Dnepropetroesk and dropped the box of bottles off at the office of the Ukrainian-Canadian Dairy Commission office. The guy said he was taking them to the lab in Kharcov Tuesday.

Then we went bowling to kill time until we were supposed to visit an English class. I bowled well, but Garry bowled better. The girls next to us had never bowled before, they bounced a lot of balls into the gutter. Sadly I hooked a couple there too. Luckily, more spares and a couple strikes though. Garry had a game with mostly spares and strikes, impressive, almost another game over 200. My best was 142.

We answered questions from the first class one on one, most had not spoken to a native speaker before. How many children do you have? always makes them look amazed at the answer of eight. Lots of questions about hobbies and pets, also. Then we listened to presentations about Dnepropetroesk- lots of information about the bridges, churches, and famous people, we even found out that there is a monument we have not seen yet. Then we answered questions from one more class, this class was mostly girls, I asked the one boy how he liked being the only guy, but it seemed he was promoted from a class with two males in, so he was used to it. On October 27th we are going to go on a trip to Odessa by train with another English class, it should be interesting.

We drove back to the village in the dark with a cake from the English teacher, after a stop at Metro since they need more paper towels in the barn for milking, the ladies wipe the cows' udders dry after washing them before milking. It was quite cool coming home, 5 degrees and windy this evening, I can wear the sweater I finished crocheting this spring finally.