Yesterday Garry and Max went over to the village mill, and took a few photos. Most of the activity this time of year is crushing sunflower seed for oil. Here is the flour mill (some of Garry's photos were too dark) He says most of the people were bringing in bags of sunflower seed to be crushed or picking up their sunflower oil. I think the mill gets a percentage of the oil for crushing. Most of the oil is put in 5 or 6 liter empty plastic water jugs and taken home for use in the village kitchens.
Here is the seed going through a second crushing machine, the one in this photo. The stuff falling out the bottom is called mukaka and is used as cattle feed, as a top dressing. Garry says that they get 40% oil from the first crushing and 5% when they crush the seeds again.
If you keep a close look out the window or look out the door of Garry's new entryway, you'll see all kinds of things coming in the driveway to the barn.
Today's weather forecast for Kiev on the internet gave us a laugh this morning- it said 0 C and smoke! I think that would work most days and most places in Ukraine- the last two days in the village I have had smoke creeping inside the house from burning leaves.
This morning Maxim took Yana, the young milker lady to the hospital to get checked out, she has an infection on her face. Her father has been here helping milk, while her mother has been at their home, so now Yana will go there, and her mother will come back to milk. They have been rotating so one is there to take care of their animals she bought, and two are here to milk the cows, since Luba left.
When Maxim got back, he just had time for a cup of coffee when he went outside to help Oxana's guys load up milk in the yellow van. Garry tells me that they have some pictures inside the van of our barn, the milk tank, and the cows in the stalls to show the customers where the milk comes from, to prove it is high quality. Maxim says every one knows that milk bought from babushkas (grandmas) a few liters here and few liters there is not so good, and now they have proof of their better milk.
After Max left, Garry walked down the street to bring home a heifer he bought while I made brown sugar biscuits for breakfast. It took him a little longer than he thought but the biscuits were still warm when he got into the house. He tells me that he is trying to buy heifers ready to breed.
If you are wondering about the chubby little heifer heading into the barn- like if she's old enough to get pregnant- she's 18 months old (most cows calve for the first time at 2 years and it takes nine months for a calf)- he says this black heifer is a Belarussian cow and is almost as big as her mother. Garry says we have two other ones in the barn already. Most of our cows are small compared to the ones at home in Canada, but these are even smaller.
Here are the two remaining baby ducks that were born this fall. Remember how they kept escaping and then went to live inside the summer kitchen with Yana? They are now in the barn. Yana shut the remaining big ones in the chicken coop. I think they might be happier (and warmer) all together.
While I was waiting for dinner to get done- it took longer to heat up frozen squash parmasan than I thought- Garry and Maxim played mini-table tennis on the coffee table- a horse and wagon came in the lane, followed by a second wagon pulled by two horses, a dappled gray and a white, they were here to by corn silage I think. Max says that the farmer has six horses and does all his work with them.
A few weeks ago I talked here about how Garry bought some old bricks from the neighbor who has been remodeling his house (for our entryway). Misha took down the walls facing us this spring, and they were rebuilt with thick light weight cinder block size brick that is supposed to be good insulation, and then covered that with new bricks. Here is the before and after- (I was looking through some photos from March and found one of their place- I think I was getting one of the tulips in front of our house)I bet Jonah and Seth wouldn't even guess its the same house, and they looked out the bedroom window (on the other side of our house) at it everyday for two years!
It's November 23rd, and Jonah was born on a Thursday afternoon sixteen years ago. I know he enjoying all his science classes back in Manitoba but I am really looking forward to seeing him and the rest of the family in one week plus one day!
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