That's right snowflakes are falling this Thursday morning, fat ones that are melting as they hit the ground right now. Polo slipped past me when I was trying to talk to someone at the door, and is now curled up on the rug, trying to be invisible, in case someone wants to put him out. If Maxim comes in the house, the dog hides behind me, otherwise Polo figures it's safe to take a nap on the couch. The guys think it's hilarious.
Wednesday's forecast called for rain, cold, chance of snow, and somewhere in the village, the decision was made that Tuesday was the last day for the village herd to go out. I think we sent ten heifers out the first day, and six on that last Tuesday, very few were the same ones that went out that first spring day when the trees were blooming, one heifer died, some calved- two had their babies out in the field, and younger heifers took their place. Two dry cows went out with the herd, Micah for most of the summer, until just before she calved in August, and Ossa, who went dry about that time, and happily went out with the heifers until last week, when she broke off the end of one of her toes, and Garry kept her it because she was limping.
Tuesday morning he kept in a red heifer who is looking close to calving, just in case, since we had the one calve a couple weeks ago in the field, and no one even noticed (Max went out to the field and found the calf before dark). It seems the heifers don't bag up (fill their udders) as much as we are used to before calving, so you have to watch how wiggly their rear ends are getting, as their bodies start to relax and get ready to push the calf out. Yesterday Garry and Max put the heifers that normally spent the day out with the herd in the barn yard for the day.
Wednesday was also the day that the rest of our fields started getting plowed. Maxim had spent half a day last week welding back together another farmer's five bottom plow- it is really tough on the machinery trying to plow the extremely dry ground this fall. It was the farmer that grew the pumpkin seeds I wrote about last month. Since he finished all his plowing, he decided we could borrow his tractor and plow. It is a Ukrainian tractor made in Kharcov, and he bought it from the lady farmer we bought the herd of cows from last fall.
Tuesday evening, Maxim and Serosoia - the neighbor that often helps us, got both the borrowed tractor and our tractor ready to ploog as darkness fell. Maxim said it figured we were finally ready to get plowing and it was supposed to snow. Luckily, it was just 6 C (40 F) and damp, not even rainy on Wednesday, and Serosoia was able to plow the corn field we combined easily with the big tractor (it had most of the cornstalks burnt off before.) Garry says it has so much power it is hardly working pulling the plow. Maxim, using our plow, had more problems plowing his piece, the new piece we have for next year (last week it was assigned to us from the original big farmer, since the piece we had aquired the rental to this summer was under his land before, since the actual piece is hard to get to, surrounded by other plots, we get some easy to reach piece to farm instead.) It seems our new piece is long and narrow and has a lot of sunflower stalks on it (this may sound familiar, just like last year, but at least we are getting it plowed in the fall!)
Garry took lunch out to the field for them, he brought Maxim over to the corn field so they could eat together. I had made ploof- which is a Ukrainian dish- like chicken rice pilaf and Max's favorite salad- tomato and onion (that will be the last time until next summer- the last of the fresh tomatoes.) Afterwards, Garry pumped out the milk for Oxana's guys, right now we are making so little milk, the yellow van is buying almost all of it, just over 600 liters yesterday.
Garry made it in for lunch at 2 o'clock. Then he went out to feed the cows, since he wanted to go into the city and pay for the internet, since it had stopped working that morning. I took a nap, since my headcold was back in full force yesterday. We drove into Dnepro around four, it was gloomy, cloudy, and night was falling fast. We drove to Victor's house to pick up the milk jugs for Thursday's milk- Victor has a funeral to go to in his church today, so he won't be out for his milk as usual- and then drove through the traffic downtown for our weekly bowling game. I had complained we were playing on a day Garry would be sure to win every game, since my head hurt all day. However, I acually bowled better than I had in weeks, and would have won the third game with my 133 if Garry had not bowled 4 strikes to end the game! However, we had driven out of the city before we remembered our original mission, and had to turn around so Garry could use the machine at Dafi to put money on the internet!
Garry thinks it will take about three days to get the plowing done, this morning he is out on our plow, while Maxim takes Serososia's baby son Bogdan and wife to the hospital this morning. You may remember I wrote some weeks ago about how the baby recieved a bad batch of vaccine which has caused an infection, he still needs to go to the hospital to have it checked and drain out pus, and Max is taking him so his father can keep running the big tractor and plow.
Wow, it is chilly out there- I just had to go outside because the load of brewers' grain arrived, when Garry left this morning, he told me that there was 4700 grivna rubberbanded together to pay for the load of brewers' grain if it came while everyone was gone. I heard the truck back in the driveway, and grabbed the money, my jacket and shoes and went out. The driver was just screwing off the clamps on the back of the truck so he could dump the load into the pit. When the load started to fall in the pit, you couldn't see for the giant cloud of steam from the hot slurry hitting the cold air, then you could watch the pile ooze across to the other end of the pit. When the truck was empty the driver came over and took the money, he counted it three times before deciding it was the correct amount. I checked the temperature when I got back inside- a degree or two over zero, but the air feels cold and damp, even if the snow has stopped falling.
So hopefully the fall plowing will get done, even if the rain never came to make it easy, there were tractors out in the fields along the highway as we drove home last night. Garry said he didn't see anything but dry soil when he planted the grape vines the other day, and he dug down two feet, added manure, sand and water and dirt, according to the directions from the grape guy. He ended up planting the new vines behind the house near the fence, since there were so many, so the old ones live on- now they will have to build two trellises. With either five planted - or five more of the 17 to plant, he cracked the shovel handle. He came inside and wrapped it in a good part of the roll of duct tape we keep in the drawer (its a good Canadian roll) and all the grapes got planted. Somehow he found that nicer shovel I couldn't find when I was planting my rosebushes!
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